Eddie’s Muse by Chris Silvini Few things in the world are as pure as a crisp new sheet of paper. Untainted by the smudge of grubby fingerprints or the permanent stain of ink, each piece holds unlimited potential. But for Eddie, turning to a new page in his sketchbook meant nothing but inevitable failure. It was as if he was rolling the curtains on a bad play. From the moment the lights reveal the clumsy backdrops painted on the discarded boxes from whitegoods and Ikea furniture, followed by the understudy’s stammering first line, there’s the distinct feeling that the whole thing is not going to end well. Rolling his pencil between his thumb and forefinger, he waited. Around him the world buzzed by: a steady stream of cars, the intermittent whoosh of passing cyclists, a chatty pair of cockatoos in a nearby tree. Overhead three army helicopters hacked their way through the canopy of sky. But Eddie was silent. Still. One finger at a time he released the tension in his knuckles, first on his right hand, then on the left. He rolled his wrists and turned his head right, then left, then right, and left, six times until his neck felt just right. He ran his fingers over the woven bracelet on his right wrist and counted the grainy wooden beads. One, two, three, four, five, six. One, two, three, four, five, six. And so on until he had counted them all six times. The faces on his cherished black Radiohead T-shirt inflated as he took in a long cleansing breath and held it for 12 counts. When he exhaled, he let out a whistle caused by a surprise snot blockage up his left nostril. Quickly clearing it with his pinkie finger and wiping the remnants in the pocket of his faded jeans, he tried again. Another deep breath in, and a slow, quiet exhale and he was ready.
He slipped his oversized headphones off his neck and onto his head, and ran his finger across his smart phone screen to select the perfect tune. As he prepared to press play, his private bliss was interrupted by a croaky voice from behind him. ‘Has the 31 come yet?’ Eddie shifted his gaze toward the voice, careful not to make any sudden movements. In the very corner of his peripheral vision he spotted a pair of squinty eyes behind square, frameless glasses that poked out from underneath a small-brimmed straw hat. He pressed play, turned up the volume and focused back on his sketchbook. A diminutive old woman stepped out from behind the back wall of the bus stop. ‘Hey. You. The 31. Has it come?’ she grumbled. Eddie was silent. She sighed and poked him on the arm, staring pokerfaced until he replied. ‘Oh. Sorry?’ he said, feigning surprise. It never occurred to him how bad an actor he was until he was faced with such a situation. And each time he was reminded, he made a mental note to practise in front of the mirror when he got home. ‘Has the 31 come?’ ‘I don’t know. Sorry. I just got here.’ ‘Aargh. What’s the good of ya?’ she scoffed. She continued on her way down the street, leaving Eddie ready to retreat to his former state of Zen. He stared down at his sketchbook. Focusing in on the music, Eddie pressed each of his knuckles in turn, waiting for the familiar pop but getting nothing. He rolled his wrists, turned his head side to side to side to side, and counted the beads on his bracelet. One, two, three, four, five, six. A few deep, cleansing breaths and once again he was ready to begin.
He poised his pencil on the clean sheet of paper and allowed the lead to crumble across the page. One clean line followed another. A smooth curve here, a gentle contour there, and some subtle shading to bring them together. His pencil swept across the page like a surgeon’s scalpel. Precise. Meticulous. He paused a second to assess his progress. Another travesty. Another unmistakeable pile of steaming cow plop. He scribbled out the latest in a string of failures and turned over to a new page. Right knuckles. Left knuckles. Wrists. Neck. Bracelet. One, two, three, four, five, six. A deep breath in and out and he was ready. Again he started to sketch. His pencil swishing in every direction, Eddie began to feel lightheaded. He could feel himself getting high off the steam from his creative juices. There is nothing quite like the rush an artist feels when they are fully immersed— 20,000 leagues deep—in their craft. This was Eddie’s drug of choice. Unfortunately for him the high was always short-lived. No matter how hard he tried to keep the buzz buzzing, it always ended with a doozey of an artistic hangover. Plonk. Eddie paused and looked down at his grubby boots where a lonely orange rolled gently toward the gutter. ‘I’m so sorry!’ He slid his headphones down and looked at a young woman struggling to keep her oversized woven handbag from falling off the seat. She had a peculiar way of moving—clumsy but still somehow graceful. Her long blue gypsy skirt flicked and folded in every direction as she manoeuvred one leg out toward the orange. The turtles on the pendant around her neck swung violently from side to side as she twisted and turned. One arm remained fixed on the bag, balanced precariously on the seat’s edge. The other arm was strapped tightly across her
body by a sling and encased from fingers to shoulder by bulky plaster in a perfect 90-degree angle. Eddie closed his sketchbook and slid his pencil neatly into the spiralled spine before hopping up to rescue the wayward orange just before it landed in a puddle with a greenish tinge. ‘Thanks.’ She smiled as she sat down, wiping the fruit on her sling. ‘Okay,’ Eddie said. He picked up his book and took out his pencil. ‘It’s amazing how the simplest tasks can become fully blown ordeals when you’re one limb down,’ she said, sinking her teeth into the tough citrus skin. She tore off a chunk and spat it out toward the road. ‘The other day I tried making bread like I usually do. Didn’t think that one through. Ended up having to knead with my good hand and the side of my face.’ Eddie let out the customary puff of air he used to replace a proper laugh when strangers tried making small talk in elevators, checkout queues, GP waiting rooms, and generally in public. He turned his gaze back to his pad and flipped to the page with his work in progress. When he found it he scowled and etched a deep cross through the middle. On his left, the woman fished possessions out of her bulging handbag and placed them beside her on the seat: a huge hardcover book with no writing on the cover or spine; the orange, now with a mouth-shaped patch missing in the skin; a pair of knitting needles plunged deep in a ball of yellow wool; a lonely boxing glove; and what looked like the beginnings of a coffee mug made out of dry clay. New page at the ready, Eddie took a deep breath. Knuckles on the right. Knuckles on the left. Wrist roll. Neck turn right, left, right, left, right, left. Then bracelet. One, two, three, four, five, six. One, two, three, fou‘What’re you doing?’ ‘What?’
‘There!’ she said, pointing a sad bent cigarette at his fidgeting hands. ‘All that there with your hands and your neck. What is that?’ ‘Nothing,’ Eddie said, secretly finishing the bead count in his head. ‘You’ve done it like a billion times already.’ She slipped the cigarette into the corner of her lips and reached her good hand down into the deep dark recesses of the bag. ‘It’s nothing,’ he said. ‘What’re you drawing? Ahha. Yes!’ She pulled out a lighter and held it high above her head triumphantly before bringing it down toward her face. ‘Nothing. Just mucking around.’ He closed the book and tucked it under his leg, craning his neck in an exaggerated looking-down-the-street-for-the-bus fake out. ‘Can I see?’ ‘What?’ ‘Your drawings?’ ‘Sorry, I think that’s my bus at the lights.’ He began to gather his things. ‘That’s a garbage truck. What’s your name?’ ‘Eddie.’ ‘I’m Claire. Nice to meet you Eddie.’ Eddie forced a polite smile. ‘So are you some sort of artist or something?’ she asked as she held in a long drag of smoke. ‘Far from it. Just mucking around.’ Claire closed her eyes and raised her face to the sky. Eddie stared, caught up in the spectacle of her general oddness. Her lips began to part slowly, before popping open and closed to release a stream of smoke rings that drifted off into obscurity. She reminded him of the hookah-smoking caterpillar from Alice in
Wonderland except with fewer functioning limbs. When she finished she turned back and continued with their conversation as if the whole thing had been a strange mirage. ‘So if you’re just mucking around, why can’t I see?’ Eddie looked hopefully down the road again. There was still no sign of the bus and he could sense that Claire was nothing if not persistent. A person bold enough to attempt making their own bread with one hand is not exactly a pin-up for quitters. He slid his book across the bench. Claire left it sitting next to her for a moment, looking up at Eddie with a roguish grin. She stuck the cigarette in the centre of her lips and practised inhaling and exhaling without using her hand, before scooping up the book and flicking through the pages. One after the other she passed a succession of scribbles. Some were no more than tiny embellishments momentarily interrupting the stark white; others were comprehensive swirls of lead filling every corner of the page. ‘Wow, abstract,’ she said, turning her head to the side to assess one of the pages. Eddie slumped. ‘They’re trash.’ ‘Well, yeah... But only ‘cos you wrecked them with the scribbles. They didn’t have a chance to be anything.’ He shrugged and wrestled the book back. ‘Can you draw something for me?’ she asked with a faux eyelash flutter. ‘What?’ ‘We can call it payment for my services.’ She flicked her cigarette out onto the road where it became inadvertently lodged in the leg rest area of a passing Vespa. ‘What services?’ ‘For rescuing you from being a Nigel-no-friends at a dodgy bus stop.’
Eddie let out another one of his puff of air laughs and tucked his sketchbook into his bag. ‘Come on. You can draw anything you want,’ she begged. ‘What do you like to draw? You know, other than the masterpiece scribble series?’ ‘I mainly do life drawing.’ ‘Perfect! Draw me!’ Claire turned and plunged her arm down to the bottom of her bag and started digging. ‘What?’ ‘You say that a lot don’t you? Is there something wrong with your hearing Picasso?’ ‘No.’ ‘Do you think Picasso had hearing issues? You know, with the whole cutting off the ear thing?’ ‘That was Van Gogh.’ ‘And you say you’re not an artist! Where the hell is my mirror?’ she said, shuffling her hand around in her bag with her tongue sticking out. ‘Everyone knows that,’ Eddie laughed. It suddenly dawned on him that not only was he having a lengthy conversation with a total stranger in a usually interaction-free zone, but the urge to curl up into a ball like an armadillo and roll away had decreased. ‘Please? Draw me?’ Eddie let out a long loud sigh. ‘Okay. But only until the bus arrives.’ With an exuberant yelp, Claire withdrew her arm from her bag, flinging it and its contents to the ground in the process. A water bottle rolled under the seat. A small bouncy rubber ball bounded off into oncoming traffic. A small set of cutlery clanged onto the concrete and landed in a shiny mass. Claire stood flustered, trying to decide what to salvage first. ‘Stay right there. Don’t move.’
She looked over at Eddie as he reached into his bag to retrieve his sketchbook, eyes fixated on the scene before him. ‘What?’ ‘Don’t… move.’ From the moment the pencil’s tip touched the paper it didn’t resurface for air until Eddie was satisfied that he was done. When the bus pulled up, Eddie lifted the pencil away from the pad like the maestro conductor at the end of a great orchestral performance, milliseconds before the applause. ‘Can I see?’ She snatched the book away from him. ‘Not bad. Not bad at all. Can I keep it?’ ‘Here,’ said Eddie, taking the pad away from her. He carefully tore the page from its spiral spine. The process went well until the unfortunate three-quarter mark, leaving him with a freeform triangle of paper flapping in the corner of his book. ‘Sorry.’ He handed her the misshapen page and laughed at what was left behind. Claire’s left eye, her eyebrows, her spiky hair and some messy background shading. ‘Why? It’s perfect.’ She attempted to fold it by holding her sling-ridden arm still and using her other hand to do the bulk of the work. The end result looked more like a scrunch than a fold but Eddie watched on with a smile. Claire tucked the crumpled mess into her bag and sat down. Eddie gathered his things and rushed to the bus. He climbed the stairs and handed over his bus pass before clambering down the aisle towards an empty seat. He placed his bag next to him and lifted his headphones over his ears. The bus door hissed closed. Eddie looked out the window at Claire clutching her bag.
The bus pulled away from the sidewalk. Eddie pressed play and allowed himself to sink into some psychedelic rock music for a brief moment. He took out his sketchbook and his pencil, and scanned his surroundings and fellow commuters. He studied their faces, their hair and their invariably odd wardrobe choices. He took a long, deep breath, opened his book to a crisp new sheet of paper and began to sketch.