Muse

She pushed the door out of the way, tossing her bag and a few other stray possessions towards the dining table.

The day had passed without her.

Work was, as always, oppressive, mediocre and long. The phones rang. People hung over the reception desk to ask favours. Lunch was overpriced and unsatisfying. She did so much, but accomplished so little of what she meant to. And so, at the end of the day, when her manager walked by to check in and asked something to the effect of ’what have you done today?′ Mallory Porter stumbled through an explanation of why she hadn’t finished transferring over old files she’d completely forgotten about, and why Upstairs couldn’t access the accounts she hadn’t entered yet. At five o’clock she had walked out the glossy front door with her figurative tail between her figurative legs.

Unfortunately, the dejection did not end there. She rode the train home, standing sandwiched between a larger, evidently asthmatic gentleman and a sweaty cyclist with his unwieldy bicycle. Holding delicately to a just-too-far-away stability pole and concentrating on not falling helplessly into the other commuters, she spied three or four Upstairs professionals- lawyers, by trade, soul-sucking A-types by habit- seated comfortably aside the masses. They were joking about something work-related.

One of them had caught sight of her.

'Hey- hey...uh, what's her name, boys? Maggie! Hey Maggie!'

In her awkward don't-fall-over pose, she couldn't even pretend she hadn't seen them.

'Mallory.'

The suit offered an exaggerated wince, 'Oh, Mallory! How could I forget? You're at reception, usually, aren't you?'

And you're a pain in my ass, usually, aren't you?

Mallory smiled tightly and turned her gaze to study the cyclist's arm instead.

She knew who he was. She had seen him around, sauntering in and out of eleveators, talking loudly to the other greasy clones of himself, and occasionally making over-confident attempts at seducing any of the women he worked with.

When she had started at the firm, his cheap gestures were at least fodder for her bored ego. As expected, he was looking mostly for a quick in the men's after hours. But, as soon as she realised he was also grooming front desk girls to do his work for him so that he could leave early, Mallory's intent darkened. She obliged to finish two of his reports, both well above her expertise and pay grade; she filled them with financial inconsistencies and a loose implication that he had committed some kind of fraud.

There were rumors that he was on probation, or had to attend a very confrontational board meeting, but it was hard to say what had really happened. Regardless, he never asked her to do anything for him again.

As he and his friends passed by to leave the carriage, he had shouldered her into the pole she was leaning on. Mallory felt a hand forcefully grip her left buttock as he shoved past.

She inhaled sharply.

'Sorry, didn't see you there,' He mumbled.

But that was done now, and she wouldn't have to face any of them until Monday. Mallory could walk into her apartment, strip away the work garb, throw on a dressing gown, pour a wine and the entire day would be dissolved in the melting pot with all the other days.

She threw off her work clothes and donned her dressing gown. It was always like shedding skin, ripping off the old and returning to the natural state of self. Clothing in it’s more restricting forms never feels more wrong than when it’s being removed.

Mallory released the clip holding desperately to her long, amber hair, and, passing a mirror, wiped away with her finger a few stray smudges of eyeliner that had crept into the creases of her eyes.

And now, finally, she took half a bottle of merlot from the kitchen and a glass and followed herself to the balcony. Nobody policed these hours. They were for sitting quietly and wondering, or hoping; maybe daydreaming to music, or just soaking in the slowness of the sky.

The sky was slow tonight. Pinks and purples hugged rays of nearly-sleeping sun, bathing the side of her building and her very self in deep orange and hope.

She closed her eyes and felt the hope warm her skin. Not everything was terrible. Not anymore.

Across the way, just above and to Mallory’s right, beyond two lanes of flowing traffic and another two lanes of metered parking; above the parking officer doling out tickets to forgetful drivers, and looking over the neat green lines of council-approved trees- a man, standing on his own balcony, observing the calming sunset in a similar fashion.

His name was Tyler Ramos, a twenty-something half-artist, half-student with a modest corner store day job. He had come out to the balcony, bored and hoping for a sunset to suspend his cares. He had done this a handful of times in the few months he had lived there.

Somehow, for all the sunsets visible from their balconies, the two had never watched the same sky.

Lazily scanning the building opposite, he spied her. A slender figure draped across a wicker loveseat, gown draped across ivory legs and glass balanced in hand. For a moment, he stopped.

Her skin glowed like silk under the reflection of late sun and early moon. One foot, acting as if of it’s own volition, extended to the rail of the balcony to rest. Her frame reached from one end of the universe to the other, it seemed. Like a monument to early summer, an idol to the cool moon and the warmth of evening. She was something for the insects to scream about every night. To her one-man audience, this woman felt like the reason every summer night brought beads of sweat to the surface of his skin.

He held his breath for a moment as she shifted. Even as she moved, every line sat in the gentlest way; one leg crossed lazily over the other, arm propped across the back of the chair, her glass half-held, half-hanging. Even from his distance he marvelled at each finger, furled around the glass like individual blades of a tropical fern. This woman, this perfect form of being, leaned her head back and shut her eyes to soak in the last rays of warmth from the collage of sunset. Her hair caught the golden light as it fell around the back of the chair. It burned like fire in the setting sun.

Tyler was a romantic, and a lover of art and physical beauty in all it’s forms, but felt in a rhapsodical second that he had never seen anything like her.

Move again, he begged internally.

She did. The woman reached her glass over to the table, and then, free to fling herself about, stretched cathartically towards the heavens.

Gravity had pulled him to his elbows on the guardrails. He could remember nothing but how to stare longingly.