Free Muse: A Novel by Jonathan Galassi Page B

be responsible if anything happened to them.”
    So whenever he could steal time from his regular duties, Paul worked alone late into the evening, bent over the old metal desk in the fluorescent-lit back office, laboriously mapping the notebooks, trying to identify recurrences in Arnold’s symbols. At times the work was so stultifying thathe felt like giving up. But he wanted to impress Sterling with his industry and ingenuity, so he kept at it, searching doggedly for some way into their mystery.
    Then one evening, out of the blue, after one of their whiskey-lubricated confabs had stretched long into the wee hours, the old man made Paul an unexpected offer.
    “Why don’t you come spend your vacation up in Hiram’s Corners? You can keep chipping away at these cussed things, and we can keep talking about Arnold and Ida and everything else.”
    It was more than a dream come true; it was the fulfillment of a dream Paul hadn’t known he’d had. He didn’t fully understand why he was so drawn to Sterling, as he was in a different way to Homer, these figures from another era, these competing fathers. As someone who’d always felt faintly fatherless himself and who was always quietly searching for mentors, he found that each loomed in his psyche in his own unsettling way. Homer, outlandish, imposing, larger than life, was the immutable sun around which everything in his universe revolved. Sterling was cooler; he had the nonchalance, the charm and modesty and arrogance, of the privileged man nothing had ever stood in the way of. He was tall, though at his age his knees gave slightly when he walked, so he had no doubt been even more imposing as a beautiful young man. Now he ambled along like a daddy longlegs with or without cane, still slim and elegant, stillsure he was the handsomest man in the room, yet innocent of the self-love that emanated from Homer like a musk.
    Paul understood that Homer and Sterling represented worldly effectiveness, a congruity of aspiration and achievement that Paul wanted for himself. The trouble was, they hated each other. Paul felt tarred by Homer’s brush when he was with Sterling, and vice versa: too venal for Impetus-like sainthood, too airy-fairy literary for a he-man’s world of fucking and cigars. When he was with one or the other, Paul made light of their antipathy, as they themselves did, to their credit, yet he had an uneasy intuition—or was it simply a projection?—that each man wanted him all to himself. Each commanded his loyalty. Homer was Paul’s chief enabler, the senior partner in the rough-and-tumble game they both enjoyed so much, often precisely because of its (relatively civilized, to be sure) rugby scrum–like mixing it up. But Paul esteemed and aspired to emulate Sterling’s taste and finesse, too. Now here he was, employed by Homer but moonlighting on a project for Sterling. It was an uncomfortable place to be, like so many others he’d found himself in.
    Much the same was true, in a different way, of his relationship with Jasper Bewick, the fetching young music critic he’d been pining over for the past couple of years, ever since his on-again, off-again thing with Tony Heller had come to an end. Tony was an actor who filled in as awaiter at the Crab, and he’d played the part of a boyfriend beautifully, until their run was suddenly over. There’d been a long period of misunderstandings and hurt feelings and what felt like betrayals, until they both had the sense to end it. After Tony’s aimlessness, Jasper’s rash enthusiasms and 24/7 seductiveness, not to mention his wavy dark hair and compact, muscular body, had been catnip for Paul—as had Jasper’s push-me-pull-you,
fort/da
ambivalence. Jasper clearly needed Paul around. The trouble was he didn’t seem to
want
Paul, least of all as a lover. They would have long, intense dinners during which they’d talk about music, literature, their families, Jasper’s dreams of fame—everything under the sun—but