A Writer's Dilemma and the Muse

I wasn't sure how the police would finally tag him with the crime, but I could do that later. What I needed to do right then was watch the guy set up Marion's pool so I could put that detail into my novel. I was going to have my female character watch him while he worked. My pool guy would be working but staring at the woman at the same time and figuring out a way he could force her to have sex with him.

Marion did watch her pool getting set up but there were two guys. They used sand to level off a spot and then set up a circular steel framework. Once that was up, they put the plastic liner inside the framework and then secured it to the edges of the framework. Then they left.

About half an hour later, they came back, this time with a water truck. It took an hour, but when they left this time, Marion's pool was full and there was water bubbling from a hose at the top edge.

It was about four by then, so I figured I'd start writing. I was starting to wheel my chair back to my desk when the back door of Marion's house opened and she came out in a blue two-piece swimsuit.

When I first met Marion, I couldn't really tell much about her figure, but it was obvious she had some curves. In that blue swimsuit, those curves were pretty fantastic. Her breasts looked pretty heavy, her hips the hips of a mature woman, and her waist maybe a little thick but not out of proportion. It wasn't just that either. When she climbed up the ladder at the side of the pool, her ass did some fantastic things.

It felt a little weird to be sitting there watching her but I couldn't make myself leave the window. Well, I did leave for a few seconds to get my binoculars out of my desk, but then I was right back at my window and looking out and down at Marion.

She didn't stay in the water very long, maybe fifteen minutes but that was enough time for me to decide Marion was pretty sexy in her swimsuit. When she climbed back up the ladder to get out, she stopped a the top and turned around, then pulled the leg of her bottoms up over one butt cheek and let the water drain out. Her butt cheek looked pretty firm through my binoculars.

When she got to the bottom of the ladder she turned and looked up at my house, smiled, and then went back through her back door. I thought I was sitting far enough away from my window that she couldn't see me, but I wondered why she'd smiled.

I started writing after dinner that night. My usual way of starting a murder mystery is to describe what happened in broad terms to the reader. That way the reader has some idea about what the police might find when they investigate and they can play detective right along with the detectives in the book.

After I described the crime, I wrote that the woman's husband came home and found his wife gone. Since they had only one car and he'd driven it to work, she couldn't be shopping. After checking with the neighbors on both sides and finding they hadn't seen her since that morning, he called the police.

When the detectives talked to the husband they wanted as much information about the wife as he could tell them. That was when I began describing the wife. I got into the description as far as physical characteristics -- about forty five, dark brown, medium length hair, full figure, about five feet six and a hundred and thirty pounds -- when I realized I was describing Marion.

That wouldn't normally be a problem. Probably half the women in the US would fit at least parts of that description. The problem was Marion was my next door neighbor and she knew I wrote novels. If she read this novel and saw the description of the victim, she might decide I'd written about her and sue me. It had happened before to other authors.

I deleted that description and started to change it, but that was hard to do. What I needed for my victim was a good looking and sexy normal woman of average size that a man could easily overpower, but who was big enough to fight back. My intention was to have the autopsy of the victim's body indicate that she'd put up a fight before she was killed, however that was. I wasn't sure at that point.

I must have tried writing that description a hundred times, but none of them fit what I wanted the reader to see except the description of Marion. At midnight, I decided to take a chance and wrote Marion's description into the novel.

The next morning I woke up about seven, had a bowl of cereal and a cup of coffee for breakfast and then went back upstairs. I read what I'd written so far and then started with the police investigation. By about ten, I'd gotten to the point where the detectives begin canvassing the neighborhood to see if any of the residents had seen anything unusual that day. Since my house had a view of Marion's back yard, I started writing what I'd have told the police if my novel had been real and they'd come to talk to me.

I started writing that dialogue and realized I hadn't really looked at any of Marion's back yard from my window. I'd been concentrating on her in her pool. I rolled my chair back to the window to see just how much I could see.

Well, what I saw was Marion out in her back yard in little shorts and a T-shirt and running shoes. She was trying to carry something that looked really heavy and she was struggling. I thought about just going back to my computer, but then thought maybe I should go help her.

When I walked outside Marion hadn't gotten much further. I walked over and asked her if she needed some help.

"Hi Marion. I came outside to take a walk when I saw you. It looks like you could use some help."

She put down this post thing made of concrete and then wiped a strand of hair from her face.

"I went to town today and bought a bird bath. The garden center put it in my trunk and I didn't know how heavy it was until I tried to get it out here. This is just the bottom part. The rest is still in my car trunk and it's heavier."

I asked her where she wanted to put it, and she walked over to a place about in the middle of her back yard.

"I was thinking here would be a good place. I want to put some iris and daffodils on both sides and then some annuals in front of them."

The damned base must have weighed fifty pounds and there wasn't a good way to grab it because the column was over six inches in diameter and base was at least two feet. I finally grabbed the column with both hands, straddled the base and sort of duck-walked it over to where Marion was standing.

When I put it down and looked up, Marion frowned and said, "Maybe a foot or so to the left". I picked it up and moved it and then looked up again. Marion was still frowning.

"I think maybe a foot to the right and a foot closer to the house."

After a couple more iterations of that, she was satisfied. She smiled then and said, "All we have to do is get the other part from my trunk and we'll be all done."

The other part was a big dish shaped bowl almost three feet in diameter that probably weighed at least sixty pounds. I tried picking it up out of her trunk, but there was no way. I asked her if one guy put it in her trunk and she shook her head.

"No, there were two. Maybe I should help you with this part."

Between the two of us, we got the dish thing out of her trunk and started for her back yard. It was touch and go there until I started matching her steps. After that, it just took a while to get all the way around her house and out to where the base sat.

We put it down on the base and I held it while Marion looked underneath to see if it was lined up right. She stood back up and said, "It's almost right. We just need to move it an inch or so toward the house. You move it and I'll tell you when to stop.

That took another five minutes, five minutes of me using everything I had to inch the top around on the base until Marion said it looked right. I gingerly eased up my grip and said a silent prayer when the top stayed put. I tried jiggling it a little but it didn't move so I figured barring an earthquake or a tornado, it would stay there forever.

Now all that work wasn't without its rewards. Like I said, Marion was wearing a T-shirt so when I was setting the top on the base, she was bent over. The T-shirt had a low cut neck, and when she was bent over it fell open enough I could see down the open neck to the breasts nestled in her bra cups.

I hadn't been looking to get involved with a woman in several years, but that didn't mean I was immune. Marion's big breasts were definitely causing a reaction. It was only because of the effort of moving the top of that birdbath around that it didn't get too obvious.

Marion walked about ten feet away and then shrugged.

"I won't know for sure until I get my flowers planted, but it's good enough for now. Thank you so much for coming over and helping me, Todd. I could never have done it by myself."

She looked at her watch then.

"This took longer than I expected. Let me make us some lunch to pay you back for your time."

During lunch we talked about a lot of thing, but mostly about me. Marion wanted to know where I got my ideas for novels and I told her sometimes from something I'd read, but more often from watching people and what they did. She grinned then.

"So, are you going to put me in one of your books?"

I didn't know how to answer that since I already was, well, sort of. I just smiled and said it depended. She asked what it depended on.

"Do I need to kill somebody? I'm not sure I could do that, though I did consider it with Bob. I thought about it for just a minute though. Then I decided it would be better if I just took everything we had together."

I said, no, I probably wouldn't make her one of my killers because I didn't think she was that kind of person. She grinned again.

"So, what kind of person do you think I am?"

I was getting the feeling like I was in one of my interrogation room scenes and being questioned by a gruff old detective trying to make me say things I didn't want to say. After watching her in her swimsuit and then in her back yard today, I'd had a lot of thoughts about Marion that she probably didn't want to hear.

"Well, I don't know you very well yet, but so far, I know you're a nice woman who likes flowers and birdbaths and orange lawnmowers...Oh, and that you read romance novels."

Marion chuckled.

"Well, that's not all I am. I guess you'll learn more as time goes on. Oh...I finished your book. I kind of felt sorry for the woman because I know how she felt. Bob never hit me, but what he did to me hurt almost as bad as if he had. I don't think you put enough of how she felt into the book. Of course, you being a man, you can't think like a woman."

I had to agree with Marion about that, and nodded.

"Yes, that's something I struggled with when I was writing that one. I did a lot of research into women who have killed their husbands or lovers and that's how I wrote her."

Marion smiled.

"Most women in her situation would have thought it was somehow her fault and she'd have tried to fix it, not just kill him. Other than that, it was pretty good, well, except there wasn't enough sex. You said you've written another one. You wouldn't happen to have a copy of it too, would you?"

I gave Marion a copy of "Bits and Pieces", the novel about the contractor with the woodchipper that afternoon, and then went back upstairs to write. Out of curiosity, I glanced out the window before I sat down at my computer. After I pulled my chair over to the window and sat down, I made a mental note to not look out that window again. I knew if I did, I wouldn't be able to write anything.

Marion had walked out to her pool and was in the process of climbing the ladder to get in. Her swimsuit was still a two-piece but there wasn't as much to this one. All I could see as she climbed up the ladder was that instead of the bottoms reaching down far enough to cover her ass cheeks, the bottoms were cut a lot higher, high enough I could see where her ass cheeks met the back of her thigh. It also looked like the bottoms fit tighter because there was a definite bulge between her thighs.

That was enough to make me reach for my binoculars again. When she turned around, I pretty much forgot about writing.

The top of her suit was cut really low so her big breasts flowed over the top of the cups a little. Those cups weren't very supportive either. Her breasts pushed the cups out at her sides, and as she climbed down the ladder into the pool, they swayed back and forth.

I couldn't take my eyes off her when she started swimming in circles again. She was on her stomach and after a while of kicking her legs, the bottom of her suit worked its way up into her ass crack. It was like she was wearing a thong bikini and she was starting to stir my cock.

After a couple minutes, Marion stood up and pulled the shoulder straps of her top down her arms and then dipped down so only her head was above the water. I saw her doing something with her hands, and a second later, she draped to top of her suit over the side.

She was standing by the pipe from the filter that pumped water back into the pool so I couldn't really see anything, but I could imagine and what I was imagining forced me to unzip my jeans to give my cock some room.

Marion swam around in circles for a while after that. I was hoping she'd do the backstroke, but she didn't. She just made a few more rounds of her pool, stopped by the water hose thing again and put her top back on. Just like the day before, she climbed up the ladder, pulled the bottoms out of her ass crack to drain the water in them, and then turned around and came back down. Also like the day before, she looked at my house and grinned before going back into her house.

I sat at my computer for half an hour wondering two things. Did Marion know I'd been watching her, and if she did, was that why she'd taken off her top? I was pretty sure she couldn't see me since I didn't have to be close to my window to see her. If she couldn't see me watching her, maybe she just liked swimming with no top on. If she did know I was watching, did she take her top off to tease me? I couldn't think of any reason she'd do that because we didn't know each other all that well.

All I finally figured out after all that thought was that Marion was proving to be more of a distraction than my former neighbors. At least with them I could block out the noise. There was no way I could block what I'd seen of Marion out of my head. I shut down my computer and went downstairs to fix some dinner. After I ate, I watched a movie on TV and then went to bed.

I didn't see Marion again until Saturday. Saturday is when I mow my yard and evidently Marion had decided that would be her mowing day too. I was thankful when she didn't have trouble getting her rider started. I knew I'd just be staring at her instead of helping her.

The reason was she was wearing another pair of little shorts and a halter-top that obviously didn't have a built-in bra. Her big breasts sat a little lower and they were jiggling and swaying all over the place every time she hit a bump in the ground or turned. It was distracting enough I ran into a tree in my yard.

I looked up to see if she'd been watching when I did that, but she just kept mowing, so I figured she hadn't.

At one point we were both mowing down our property lines and when we were side to side, Marion waved, shut off her blades and then shut off her mower. It looked like she wanted to talk so I shut down my mower too. When I did, she walked over smiling.

"Did you miss me", she asked.

I said I'd noticed she wasn't around much and she grinned.

"I don't really need the money, but I had to have something to do so I got a job. I work at the garden center where I bought my plants and my birdbath. I only work three days a week and I only get paid ten dollars an hour, but I get a ten percent discount on anything I buy there."

I chuckled and said she'd probably be buying more stuff that she needed help with. Marion just grinned.

"Well, as a matter of fact, we had grills on sale and I bought one. I love the taste of hamburgers and steaks cooked on a grill but we couldn't have one in the city. It wouldn't fit in my trunk if they put it together for me. I bought some charcoal and lighter, and some hamburger, buns, some chips, and some sodas on my way home. If you have the time to put it together for me, I'll cook us some burgers tonight. If you'd rather have beer, I still have time to get some. I just need to know what kind you like. I already have a case of Corona and some limes because that's what I like."

I told Marion that Corona was fine and she didn't have to make a second trip. She smiled and said she'd open the trunk for me.

I figured what she called a grill would be one of those round grills with a cover. What Marion had bought was a grill that would probably cook thirty hamburgers at a time. I didn't try to carry the damned thing. It had two cutouts in the sides of the box to use as handles, so I dragged it from her car to the patio behind her house. After I opened the box, I went back to my house for some tools because I was going to need them.

About an hour later, I had the grill put together while Marion watched. She did help hold things a few times, but that was worse then if she'd just watched. Like I said, her halter-top didn't appear to have much support. When she bent over, her big breasts would well up and threaten to come out of the top. I'm sure that at least once I saw the darker pink of her nipple beds when that happened.

Marion didn't seem to notice when that happened. She just kept holding up the part I was working on. She didn't even pull the top back up once I was done. She just used both hands to sort of move her breasts around until they slipped back down into the top, then said she'd go get the charcoal and the lighter.

While she was gone, I took the opportunity to rearrange my cock from down my leg to up towards my belly. When I looked down after that, it didn't show much.

Marion came out with the charcoal in one hand and the lighter in the other, sat them on the ground beside her picnic table and then said she'd go get us a beer while I started the grill. When she came back out with two bottles of Corona, each with a wedge of lime in the mouth, I had charcoal in the grill and lit.

We talked while the charcoal was burning down to coals. Marion wanted to know more about me, so it was kind of like an interrogation again.

"So, Todd, what's it like to write a novel? I mean, I know you type it out and then send it in to a publisher, but do you start and write until you finish, or do you write a little and then read what you wrote, and then write some more until you finish?"

I shrugged.

"Well, I suppose every author is different. Some say they start writing and don't stop until they finish and then go back to see if everything makes sense. I've tried that and it doesn't work for me. I keep thinking that if I write this particular thing, I need to go back and set it up earlier in the book."

"So, you change it as you go along?"

I nodded.

"Yeah. Like if I'm going to have it look like my murder victim probably knew his or her killer, I have to make sure to introduce some possible suspects earlier in the book. Depending upon the location of the murder, I'll usually go back and add a couple people a man works with. If it's a woman, I'll usually go back and have her meet some guy or break up with a guy and then find a new one."

Marion smiled.

"Sounds pretty complicated. How's our grill doing?"

The grill was ready and so was Marion. She went into her house and brought out a plate of hamburgers and a long spatula. She put the burgers on the grill and then said she'd go get us the rest and another beer.

I had to admit that Marion knew how to grill a hamburger. I turned her down when she offered me a third.