<\/p>\n
Ahmed sits at his favourite table in Tim Hortons, gazing across the parking lot of the mall. Beyond the lot is a road, and beyond that another parking lot stretches into the distance. It is only 10 a.m. but the lots are already congested with the enormous pick-up trucks of shoppers.<\/p>\n
In the foreground, a woman in a pink smock stands beside a small blue car, dragging ferociously on a cigarette. On the car door, vivid pink letters spell out \u2018Molly Maid.\u2019 <\/p>\n
Ahmed\u2019s laptop is open upon the table in front of him with the novel he is working on. Page 37 waits on the screen, its second half still unwritten, an accusatory blankness remaining after days of effort. Sartre wrote prolifically in bistros in the middle of Paris. In a Canadian suburb, Tim\u2019s is the best that Ahmed can do.<\/p>\n
The novel tells the story of a protagonist named John who is becalmed with his wife on a small sailboat somewhere in the Caribbean. Whenever Ahmed thinks his way into his story, a strange heaviness descends upon him. He feels the stillness of the water, the motionlessness of the boat. John\u2019s incapacity, a paralysis imposed by humid heat, is overpowering. Ahmed feels the desolation and inexorability of it, the unbridgeable gulf between John and his wife, between John and action of any kind.<\/p>\n
\u201cA muse,\u201d Ahmed says to himself. \u201cA muse is what I need.\u201d He is talking to himself in a suburban Tim Hortons while his novel is not getting written. Authors are entitled to be eccentric, but Ahmed knows this is not good.<\/p>\n
\u201cHey, talk about coincidences. I\u2019m here to help.\u201d<\/p>\n
It is the woman from the parking lot, standing by his table. She is older than he thought, a lock of golden hair peaking from under her Molly Maid cap. Her eyes are a startling blue. Her gaze is penetrating.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m sorry?\u201d he hears himself say.<\/p>\n
\u201cI overheard you,\u201d she says. \u201cI\u2019m Angela, and I happen to be a muse.\u201d<\/p>\n
She smiles. It makes her beautiful and her face sympathetic, kind. Ahmed can make no sense of what is going on but can\u2019t quite bring himself to make it stop.<\/p>\n
\u201cHow do you do,\u201d he answers autonomically, ingrained politeness taking over. \u201cI\u2019m Ahmed, and I\u2019m pleased to meet you.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s something I\u2019ve been doing since I graduated. But I\u2019m just here on my cleaning break, so we need to be efficient. If you get me a double-double, medium, I\u2019ll take a look at what you\u2019ve got on your screen there. Then we can talk, and I\u2019ll give you my brochure. No obligation.\u201d<\/p>\n
Ahmed finds himself rising from his seat, sliding the laptop over to her. He is still struggling to make sense of what is happening as his legs propel him in the direction of the ordering counter.<\/p>\n
When he returns with the coffee, Angela is peering intently at the screen.<\/p>\n
\u201cMy brochure gives you the practical stuff,\u201d she says. \u201cHow we work and all that. The whole business has changed a lot over the years. Now most of us support ourselves with other jobs while we\u2019re muses in our spare time.<\/p>\n
\u201cSo let\u2019s talk about your story,\u201d she continues. \u201cI\u2019m going to be blunt with you because my break is short. I get the feeling of being becalmed when I read this. You\u2019ve done that very well and it comes through strongly. But your whole first section doesn\u2019t go anywhere. Are you writing for people who need insomnia cures or what?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWell, it\u2019s an imaginative work,\u201d Ahmed stammers. \u201cIt\u2019s …that is, I\u2019m trying to evoke the feeling of being becalmed here and I\u2019ve created a protagonist who struggles with this. That\u2019s the part that I\u2019m working on right now.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cBig problem, right there,\u201d she says. \u201cYou\u2019ve made up your protagonist. This is the kind of thing that is happening all over, and we\u2019re completely swamped trying to put a stop to it. It\u2019s the MFA programs. These days they\u2019re churning out people who know how to write\u2014some of them very well\u2014but they don\u2019t have anything to write about, and they think that writing fiction means they\u2019re supposed to make things up. They\u2019re making up protagonists and then they\u2019re trying to make up things that happen to them. Or, in your case, I guess it\u2019s things that don\u2019t.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cBut Angela,\u201d Ahmed breaks in, overcoming compulsive politeness. \u201cThis is fiction I\u2019m writing. Fiction! Surely this is what we do in fiction. We make things up, it\u2019s the human imagination. We imagine things, sometimes whole worlds that we can take people into. This is the magic of it and\u2014\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cNo, no, no,\u201d she interrupts. \u201cThat\u2019s what people have persuaded themselves they should be doing, but this is all quite recent. Muses have been tracking this from day one, and we have records. Fiction hasn\u2019t been done that way in the past, and it isn\u2019t how people should be writing it now, either.<\/p>\n
\u201cThink about it, Ahmed. Do the math. The planet has what, seven billion people on it? Seven billion and counting. More people than a human mind can comprehend, which means more perspectives, more unique experiences, more intriguing problems and dilemmas, more dimensions… We live surrounded by life, Ahmed, unfolding life! Seven billion unique lives out there, every one of them with a story to tell. It\u2019s kind of inspiring, don\u2019t you think?<\/p>\n
\u201cSo why do we need to make people up? We already have enough of them. Too many, in fact. Literature will never capture more than fragments of all these lives. We are immersed in untold stories, Ahmed. Vast opportunities to enrich our awareness of each other. People sitting around trying to make things up are just a distraction. They just take us away from the understanding we could get if we only open our eyes and look around.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cBut Angela,\u201d Ahmed can\u2019t stop himself from interrupting. \u201cWhat are you saying? What should fiction do, if authors stop trying to be creative? We might as well all be journalists and write for People<\/em> magazine or something.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m not saying don\u2019t be creative,\u201d she responds. \u201cI\u2019m just saying writers need to write about what they know. How often have you heard that, Ahmed? Well, that\u2019s what most of them have been doing, over the years. They\u2019ve been writing about themselves, essentially, along with lives they know by empathy, but they change the names because they don\u2019t want to get in trouble.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cAngela, you can\u2019t be serious. All the great writers that I can think of, they do the complete opposite of this. What about Shakespeare, with Hamlet or Julius Caesar? Or the best authors of today like…um…well, you could pick anybody. Like Margaret Atwood, or..?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cAhmed, we have our records. It\u2019s pretty clear from diaries, especially Shakespeare\u2019s dark lady Emilia\u2019s, that Hamlet was all about his mother, basically. About 80 percent of literature is about their mothers, one way or another. Of course he couldn\u2019t say that because of the family dynamics involved. So he punted the whole thing over into Denmark. Clever of him. Shakespeare may not have been that creative, but he was nothing if not clever. In some of the other plays, he brings his father in or some of the uncles, or sometimes it\u2019s just thinly disguised politics.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cBut what about authors who are still alive? What about Atwood? She\u2019s completely amazing, her range and everything…\u201d <\/p>\n \u201cFor ethical and legal reasons, I can\u2019t talk about Margaret or other living authors. And besides, Margaret is probably the exception that proves a whole bunch of rules. What I can tell you is that many of the more prolific authors today work with teams. What do you think happens to all the MFA graduates, after all? Authors don\u2019t have to personally experience things to find out about them. Once they have an established brand, they can hire staff. This is where muses come in now, too. We help them position their writing and build their brand. Then, when they\u2019re ready to ramp up and take things to the next level, we help with business planning and management.\u201d<\/p>\n She downed half of her double-double. Ahmed had been waiting for a chance to do more than interject.<\/p>\n \u201cI haven\u2019t read your brochure, but what you are describing doesn\u2019t fit with what I know about muses at all. It seems to be more like what a good editor might do, combined with an agent or some kind of marketing consultant maybe. But when you look at Dante and the role of Beatrice, for example, he was fascinated by her. She was his lifelong inspiration. She was the grace and beauty in his life.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cAhmed, you\u2019re forgetting something. Unless they\u2019ve left their own diaries, like Emilia, what we know about muses like Beatrice is mostly what the authors have written about them. And remember, these are fiction authors. You really can\u2019t believe a word they say. Or write, in Dante\u2019s case.<\/p>\n \u201cAuthors mostly live ordinary lives just like the rest of us. But they have to dress them up or they\u2019d never sell any books, so that\u2019s where we muses come in. What you think you know about the muses is what the authors have made up about them. Muses can take a lot of the credit for what they came up with. You need to take it all with a big grain of salt. The women who play the role of muses in public mostly haven\u2019t been the real ones. They\u2019re part of marketing, and we work very hard to find the right women for this. The public gobbles these stories up, no doubt about it.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cBut Angela, this is completely preposterous! What you\u2019re saying is that most of the fiction we read is really autobiography, except dressed up and disguised. So really, what is left for fiction to do?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cYou just nailed it. Autobiography. That\u2019s where the real fiction comes in. When you have someone who thinks the world needs their autobiography, that tells you something right there. You\u2019re probably dealing with the kind of person who gives people an urgent need to refresh their drinks at parties by going on and on about themselves. So, these folks get frustrated with everybody getting thirsty whenever they start talking and, sooner or later, they want to put themselves out there in a book. This is where we muses really earn our keep. We let our imaginations run wild and make their lives interesting, but of course not interesting enough to get them into legal trouble.<\/p>\n \u201cAnyway, I\u2019m running out of time, and I really have to go. Read the brochure and think about what we\u2019ve talked about, OK?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cI will, but I really don\u2019t know what to do about my writing now. I wonder if I should even be writing.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cYou\u2019re a bright guy and you\u2019re figuring things out fast. So let me leave you with this thought. What about not writing? It\u2019s really what we encourage, if we think there\u2019s any chance a client will go that route.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cWhat? I don\u2019t\u2014\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cIf you give it up, you would qualify for our diversion program\u2014\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cAngela, who are you anyway? You\u2019re supposed to be a muse, but now you sound like you\u2019re trying\u2014\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019ve just established this new program. It\u2019s modelled on some of the things they\u2019re doing in criminal justice and mental health, shifting people away from self-harm essentially. In literature, we\u2019re paying people to stop trying to write with revenues coming from the people who do. It\u2019s a triple win. We muses get muse credits for every diversion we do, the people who are writing face less competition, and the people we divert get some money and free up their time for something else. I can explain the details when we meet again because it\u2019s not the kind of thing we can put into our brochure, obviously.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThis is getting crazier and crazier! You\u2019re saying that muses try to discourage people from writing, but they also get contracts to support the ones who do. This isn\u2019t making sense\u2014\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cYou\u2019d be amazed at the stories. We have our rehabilitated authors going on to successful careers in all sorts of things: construction, dentistry, you name it. They all need to have their stories, no matter what they do. They just don\u2019t need to write them down. I\u2019m working with a real estate broker who\u2019s gone from getting peanuts for short stories to creating wonderful stories that help clients picture themselves in bungalows, sitting on the deck sipping lattes with birds serenading them from gorgeous overhanging trees. When her stories work, her clients rush to buy and she pulls in $20k, maybe more. Think about it Ahmed. Think. That\u2019s all I\u2019m saying.\u201d<\/p>\n She breaks off and looks at her watch.<\/p>\n \u201cShit, I\u2019m late now. I really have to run. Thanks for the coffee, and I\u2019ve enjoyed meeting you. Read the brochure and give me a call. You\u2019re an intelligent man, anybody can see that. You have real potential, and I\u2019d love to work with you on your stories, wherever you want to take them.\u201d<\/p>\n She leaves so fast that Ahmed doesn\u2019t have a chance to respond. She exits Tim\u2019s and dashes to her car. The Molly Maid sign quickly disappears in traffic.<\/p>\n Ahmed continues to look out the window, mulling over what Angela has said. Seven billion people. Seven billion! Who could even imagine the stories they could tell?<\/p>\n Even here, in Tim Hortons, stories were unfolding. Stories waiting to be written, or at least recognized. This was Angela\u2019s point. Ahmed\u2019s eyes explore the tables around him with new interest.<\/p>\n A small girl, perhaps four years old, sits across from her mother and toys listlessly with a half-eaten chocolate muffin. A soft drink rests in front of her. The girl is trying to get her mother\u2019s attention. The mother\u2019s face is lined with fatigue, and her coat is shabby. She talks on her phone, concentrating on papers in front of her.<\/p>\n Laughter bubbles from a nearby table. Two children are playing some kind of quiz game with their mother. The mother reacts with dramatic shock, or feigns horror, each time a child says something and she has them giggling with anticipation whenever she asks a question.<\/p>\n The girl watches wistfully. Her attention shifts back to her mother and anger flashes across her face. Eyeing her mother, she reaches for her soft drink and tips the container, sending a small flood across the table. It washes onto papers in front of the mother. The mother snatches the papers from the table and closes her phone.<\/p>\n \u201cSelena, how could you be so goddamn clumsy?\u201d she yells. \u201cShame on you! This is the last time I\u2019m bringing you here, and now we have to go home so I can finish this.\u201d<\/p>\n The girl\u2019s face crumples.<\/p>\n The mother jams papers into her knapsack and jerks her daughter to her feet. She marches between the tables, pulling the girl past Ahmed on their way to the door, face rigid with frustration. The little girl is now crying. Bits of chocolate muffin cling to her chin and chocolate dribbles from her mouth. She cries with the hopeless misery of her need and the futility of what it made her do.<\/p>\n They don\u2019t know what they are doing to each other, Ahmed thinks sadly. They may never know. A lifetime of not understanding each other may be ahead of them.<\/p>\n Angela\u2019s advice takes on new meaning as he reflects about what he has just seen. Seven billion people. Billions of stories, waiting to be told. The stories that people don\u2019t know about themselves are so often the important ones, the ones we really need.<\/p>\n Ahmed sits at his table, gazing across the parking lot. There are stories that can change lives, he tells himself. But only if there is someone who sees, someone who understands, someone who finds the words. <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Muse Ahmed sits at his favourite table in Tim Hortons, gazing across the parking lot of the mall. Beyond the lot is a road, and beyond that another parking lot stretches into the distance. It is only 10 a.m. but the lots are already congested with the enormous pick-up trucks of shoppers. 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