6. Mirror as Muse
I have come to Willow’s place tonight to tell her something important. When I arrived she and Lionel were finishing the task of putting her large round framed mirror on the wall, near the window with the cloth butterflies. Actually, here in La Latina, windows are not windows so much as French doors that open onto tiny terraces, suitable for flowerpot gardening or, as Willow likes to remind her male friends, looking down the necklines of the women strolling by.
Lionel, one of these male friends, looked at me. Strands of his light brown hair stuck to his forehead, which shone under the too-bright incandescent bulb Willow had employed temporarily to illuminate the work zone. “You can help,” he declared neutrally. Lionel is a physicist. I love the way scientists make observations and leave us to draw our own conclusions. This can be, ironically, very persuasive.
“I’m at about 40, maybe 30% right now,” I warned. I had noticed the drill and its accessories strewn on the floor. Fortunately, I only had to hold the top of the mirror by its relatively broad frame as Lionel and Willow tried to slide it into place. On the third attempt, the mirror cleaved correctly to the rubber-encased screws set in the wall.
“Really?” Willow exclaimed. Her green eyes got bigger. I hadn’t known that was possible. She stepped past me to throw her arms around Lionel. “You’re my hero of the day. I needed a hero,” she said to him.
After Lionel left I told her what I had come to tell her, that she may be my muse. “You held up a mirror to me when you said that my emotions are complicated. It made me understand a lot of things today about what I’m like when I’m in love. I can see why it would be difficult to be in a relationship with me, because I feel things more strongly and in more complex ways than most other people, at least according to you and Alexander. And last night I couldn’t sleep, so I worked on my book, and realized I need a major overhaul of the whole first third of it. I can’t wait to get started. I think that when you told me your observations of me it helped me to start moving forward.”
“The universe rewards people who follow their dreams,” Willow said.
It is abundantly clear to me that I have came here after Alexander specifically to meet Willow. He brought us together. It’s amazing the things that happen while we follow our dreams. We may not know why we’ve made a decision until after it’s already manifest.
“I know you never really registered Alexander,” I laugh as we walk down the stairs of her building.
“When he emailed me to tell me he was here, I was like, great, I’m meeting some people on Friday at this place, why don’t you join in… OK, you’ll be wearing a Superman shirt? Fine.”
I sighed under my breath as Willow and I negotiated the broken cobblestones a short distance from our destination.
“So he showed up, and it was me, and Joe, and my friend Pablo. Afterwards Joe said, ‘That guy Alexander is really nice,’ and I said, ‘It’s funny, I didn’t get to talk to him.’”
Willow greets the gal behind the bar as we walk into Artebar. It is her favorite place, and I happen to live next door, on the other side of it from her street. By pure chance, we live a stone’s throw from each other. Shortly after she and I first met at Alexander’s dinner party, I messaged her on Facebook and she suggested I drop by her new flat. I plugged her address into Google Maps and then wrote her back, “You are my neighbor!”
She steers me toward a far table, close to the inner room of Artebar, where on some nights there are flamenco performances; on others, tango classes. “I can’t even be mad at him for finding you on OK Cupid,” I say as we sit down.
Willow’s face suddenly draws into a matter-of-fact expression. “Oh, people don’t necessarily use that site for dating. In his profile he was very clear that he was looking for friends. He wanted to meet people in Madrid, and my profile says I know cool people in Madrid. I’ve met a lot of people I know here on OK Cupid. Some of the women who were at the party Saturday, for example.”
Willow and I have already been over the fact that neither of us is into women. That discussion must have occurred before last Sunday afternoon, when we stood inside the enormous green door of her building, waiting for Lionel, who had forgotten something upstairs.
“Sometime I’d love to go with you to this Mexican place for brunch,” she said. “They give you a pitcher of margaritas-”
It sounded great to me and my face must have reflected that because she broke off and began gazing at me intensely then she let out a whoop of laughter and threw her arms around me and we were both laughing. She lifted one knee as if to wrap a leg around me and I might have picked her up off the floor but something prevented me.