Re: Sitting area; sofa
Discomfort wasn't a new development, and he wasn't sure it counted if it was self-inflicted. The important thing was that it didn't matter. The only thing that mattered was getting his ideas out. In the morning, they would be gone. He knew how this worked. If he was going to pen his Ulysses it needed to be now. James Joyce hovered as a modernist avant-garde deity, demanding. (Great. Now she's Nora Barnacle...)
"No offense to screenwriters," he added, but it was probably too tardy an utterance. "Don't tell on me," he added in a wily whisper, their secret, his and his reclining muse. Folded, actually, she was folded, but reclining sounded more appropriate for a great muse. Reclined would read well in a future Wikipedia entry. Folded made her sound like a cheap metal lawn chair.
She stopped his arm, but he barely he noticed. He was envisioning the scent of lye soap. Personally, he thought lye soap was perfect for a Pulitzer. It was a good detail. The best, and he scribbled faster, even with her hand on his arm. Heat seeped through the sleeve of his sweater. "When's the right time. Describe the scent of lye. What scares you?" The questions were fired like ammunition in an automatic. He pictured her in a gas station bathroom, standing at a stained and rusting mirror, someone's phone number fading on the wall at her shoulder. In the mirror, her face was plain, and her cheeks were gaunt and starving. The baby wasn't there. She was something the world had forgotten.