The Muse

Hank held his breath and slowly crept down the staircase, carefully, as his eyes were swimming with unshed tears and his head was spinning. Once back down in his shop he sat in a rickety wooden chair and held his pounding head in his hands.

Thoughts and emotions raced, uncontrollable. What he had seen, what he was an unknown and unsuspected witness to just then...it was the most beautiful thing Hank had ever witnessed in his life. It was if he was given the rare blessing of watching the most ancient and profound act, watching his exquisite wife being given the greatest physical pleasure Hank himself could never hope to give her. Hank mentally relived it over and over, watching his usually reserved and reticent wife transformed into something wild and feral, almost otherworldly; a marble statue melted and come to life into the soft flesh and warm blood of a glorious and unbound woman.

Hank felt... so much, too much, it threatened to all burst from his chest and heart and head. It confused him. He knew he should be feeling anger, rage and an urge for ineffective violence; but instead he felt pride, love and joy and... glancing down at the tightening bulge in his pants, oh yes arousal. Hank could taste the acrid bitterness of shame in his mouth, the shame in realizing he himself would never be able to give his wife the pleasure Aaron had given her and, if Hank listened very carefully, was continuing to give her now upstairs, but Hank's mind spun deliciously with new images.

He wanted to pull the thoughts out of his head, to see these images in front of him, hold them and caress them himself, mold them or smash them, he didn't quite know which. Getting up from his chair with a new-found energy, he stoked the forge to a blazing bright red heat, grabbed several bars of bronze, copper, steel and iron and worked... and worked.

Hank worked like a man possessed, or a man renewed, bathed in the sweat of primordial creation.

Much later that night closer to dawn, Hank fell exhausted into bed next to his already sleeping wife. He had not stopped working, not even stopping for dinner, until his hands were cramped and his leg was a stabbing knife of pain. If only I were a better man, he had thought, a stronger man, I could at least continue working a few more hours...

"Hank?" Vena's whispered question reached to him in the dark. "What's wrong?" Did he nearly hear tears in her voice?

Hank rolled over to her, although it pained his sore abused body and made him grimace; he put his arms around her slender frame and held her close.

"It's ok," he whispered. But he could say no more.

What could he say? How would he say what he longed to tell her? Where could he begin? He kissed her then, a light brushing of her lips with his at first, then a harder press, an urgent tasting. Hank imagined her mouth tasting of Aaron, or of her own juices transferred from Aaron's mouth. She soon reciprocated his kisses, and, though it pained him physically that night, they made love; slowly, softly, almost reverently.

Over the next few weeks Hank repeated the process, working himself hard, pushing past his limits, collapsing into bed next to Vena only a few hours before sunrise. Like he was exorcising some demon, he would take his rest and solace in her arms for a few hours, then go back to the struggle again the next day.

Vena became worried, tired of the sleepless nights waiting for him and, though she knew he disliked being disturbed at his work, she decided to go down to the shop to see for herself what was going on with her husband, why he was working so obsessively lately.

As she crept down the stairs she heard the hammering, the tinny strike of sheet metal being shaped into a developing form, a sound she knew well married to Hank now these 10 years, but this was somehow different; it was almost too fast, too hard, too...desperate.

When Vena reached the bottom of the stair and stood in the smith shop, Hank's back was turned to her and he hadn't noticed her approach. She looked at what seemed to be several already finished pieces, the sculptures Hank had been working on for the gallery opening she guessed. As she walked slowly amongst them, she gasped softly.

They were so different from what he usually did; they were unspeakably beautiful, finely wrought and honed, the bronze and copper glimmering, the steel and iron strong yet unfathomably fine. They were sculptures, she realized finally in amazement, of her. Her and a man, posed together in loving and erotic embraces flowing and melting into each other, bodies opening and dissolving into each other, limbs wrapped sensuously, disparate metals merging and blending as she had never seen before. Her hair was fine strands of copper hammered and pulled filament thin wildly scattered in ecstatic disarray, her metal breasts shaped smooth and held by impossibly fine long fingers of steel caressing them as if they were warm and malleable flesh, the man's young robust body was the polished smoothness and hard glint of tempered steel and iron. She stepped slowly closer to Hank as he hammered a sheet of heated metal over a cylinder form, and she saw her own face take shape in the sheet with each of the precise hammer blows, her mouth open in a cry of pleasure, the metal mask an image of pure sexual abandon.

"Hank!" she said aloud, startling him. He stopped hammering and turned to her blinking like he was coming out of some kind of trance.

"This ...where did this all come from?" she asked, her hands upturned and gesturing to the pieces.

Hank put down the hammer gingerly on the table and turned off the blowtorch he was using alternately to heat the metal sheet between hammering. Pulling off his heavy gloves, he limped towards his wife, eyes downcast; he found he could not look her directly in the eye as he spoke.

"I saw you. You and Aaron." Hank whispered. "I guess I became obsessed. I wanted to capture it, capture the two of you like that, forever."

Vena barely stifled a cry, her hand flew up to her mouth in shock and in horror when she realized what her husband was saying.

"No, no!" Hank protested, "It's ok. It was beautiful, the most beautiful awful gorgeous thing I ever saw!"

Hank grasped his wife's hands in his calloused grip, how like a frightened bird they trembled. He lifted her hands to his mouth and kissed her fingertips gingerly.

"I was so inspired, filled with..." he paused, searching for the words, "awe, that I made this. Some from memory, some from imagination." He swept a hand around him toward the sculptures surrounding them in orgiastic coupling.

Vena's lips trembled and a tear slipped down her cheek. It left a fissure on her smooth face, like a fine hairline crack in an otherwise perfect and smooth piece of cherished marble.

"No, please," Hank brushed the tear away with his thumb. "I loved seeing you so happy, so fully pleasured. I know I can't do that for you, that I haven't in a very long time since the accident but my god it was so amazing seeing you like that again. So wild, so beautiful, so free!"

"Hank, I love you," Vena tentatively started to explain. "It's just been so hard and so long since..."

"Oh I know, I'm so sorry," Hank's gaze softened and he took a deep shaking breath composing his thoughts, things he had wanted to say to her all these weeks that he could only express in the way he knew how, through his art.

"Vena, my love, I want to ask something of you. I want, no...I need to see you like that again. I know I can never make you look like that, like this." he gestured toward one of the pieces, the woman's head thrown back, her graceful steel neck stretched and smooth glimmering steel back arched, the metal seeming to retain in its shine the heat of the fire that created it. "Please, I need to see you like this again, with him or someone else, I don't care, I just want to see you in that moment: on fire, glorious and divine." Hank smiled at Vena, still holding one of her trembling hands.

Vena smiled. She loved her husband, had been in love with him since she met him all those years ago in art school, with his brooding dark looks and artist's soul. She loved their life together even though he put so much strain on himself and too much pressure on them both sometimes. She loved the way Hank made love to her as well, so tenderly and sweetly, and she knew how much effort, care and love he put into it despite his pain and physical limitations. But more often than not she found herself with those unspeakable urges, those desires, to free herself, to let herself go completely in a way she could not do with Hank.

And though she never wanted to hurt her husband, a part of her, a very small, vain and entirely human part of her relished the idea of him watching her with Aaron, of being so filled with rage or awe or lust or jealousy all mixed and mingled together in a passion that it inspired him to create these amazing works of art. No impotent humiliation for her husband, no directionless jealousy and rage of a man who glimpsed of the true core and beauty of his beloved wife. Her husband, her god-touched artist, found a way to make her immortal forever with fire and bronze and steel. She smiled at him warmly, lovingly. What better tribute could any goddess ask for?

Weeks later, Hank and Vera were late for the opening night of the gallery. Vera adjusted the bow tie of Hank's tuxedo as they sat in the back of the limousine Aaron had rented for them to take from their warehouse home to the upper east side gallery where Aaron and everyone he could think to invite were waiting for them.

"Ah, stop fussing," she admonished him playfully. "We're almost there." She kissed him quickly before stepping out of the car on her side, grasping Hank's cane in one hand while the driver held the door for Hank and offered a hand, helping him out on his side. Vena quickly walked around and handed her husband his cane, and smiled at him.

Aaron was waiting for them outside the gallery, pacing, excited. In the months before this night Hank had watched Aaron make love to his wife several more times, always without Aaron knowing, but with Vena's complicity. Once or twice she even winked at Hank in his preferred hiding place when she glanced his way. Those moments were magical to him, made him feel connected to his wife in ways he could barely understand and would never be able to describe in words but found a way to communicate in the growing collection of statues in his smith shop. They had inspired the last few pieces Hank felt the gallery needed for a good opening night. Or so he had hoped.

"Hank!" Aaron walked quickly toward him, excited. "It's amazing! Your best work! All the works, all the pieces, they've already been sold, spoken for as soon as people saw them! It's fantastic! Can you believe it? They are already asking when your next show will be!" Aaron opened the gallery doors and as soon as Hank and Vera walked in the room it exploded in thunderous appreciative applause.

Once the applause died down, Hank felt a small and warm hand slide and nestle into his. He turned his head to see Vena and she smiled up at him, pride beaming in her lovely face.

"Oh Hank, it's wonderful. And I have one more bit of good news, just for you." She whispered close to his mouth when he leaned down to kiss her. Hank blinked and looked into her face questioningly.

"I'm pregnant." Vena breathed and smiled, a beatific smile Hank had seen before, on the statuary of the Blessed Virgin his grandmother had in her bedroom back in Italy, or the statues of Athena and Aphrodite he often sketched endlessly in art school; faces sublime and tranquil, so self-assured of the devotion and love of their supplicants. Hank smiled back and squeezed Vena's hand. It was good news indeed. grandfather