SCHEHERAZADE

   "Quite a view, don’t you think?" he asked without turning to face her. "Mother Nature paints with such a glorious palette."

   "I guess," she replied. "Though I’m not sure this is the best view. Looks kind of ordinary to me."

   At this point, he did turn to look at her, and did so with a look that reminded her of a teacher trying to reach a rather dense student.

   "If a man who spent his entire life in the desert were to be whisked away from there and landed here, he would think it the most beautiful sight in the universe. Everything is relative, young lady."

   "Are you from the philosophy department or something?" Carrie asked, trying to ponder the man’s question. "I’ve never seen you around here before."

   The old man stifled a chuckle at her discomfort. "No, merely a traveler."

   Carrie set her books down and took a seat at the table beside the old man. "Do you mind?" she asked him. The man shook his head. "I’m Carrie," she said by way of introduction.

   "You can call me Peter," the old man answered. He turned and looked at her textbooks, and picked one in particular from the pile and began thumbing through it. "Creative Writing in the Elementary School Curriculum," he mumbled.

   "Kind of a boring class, I’m afraid," Carrie told him.

   "Hmmmm. Carrie, tell me a story."

   "Now?" she responded with more than a little surprise.

   "Now," he answered her. "Its what you’re studying. Can you do it?"

   "Don’t I get any time to think? You can’t just compose a story like that!" She punctuated her final word with an irritated snap of her fingers.

   "In that case, I shall tell you a story--like that!" With a snap of his fingers, he began to speak.

   "Let’s begin with the assumption that I am dead."

   Carrie raised her eyebrows. Peter shook his head at her. "Play along with me, okay?"

   "So you are a ghost? Is that what you are telling me?"

   "If you cannot imagine, you cannot hope to write anything creatively," he replied sternly. "Now, may I continue?"

   Score one for him, Carrie thought to herself. She nodded her assent.

   "When I was your age, I would have looked at those trees and seen nothing, either. I thought I was a genius and knew everything as a child. I used to show off in school, get the best grades, annoy my classmates..."

   "Be a real pain in the ass, in other words..."

   Peter looked a little shocked. "Rather inelegantly stated, but true. As I got older, I got lazy. I was still a good student, but others worked harder and soon became better than I. Not being the best was hard to take, and so I had to look for other things to develop: Hobbies, friendships, character, soul..." He paused for a moment.

   "Did you?" Carrie asked.

   "I tried, but I started too late. When I got to the bus station, the bus was already leaving. I chased it for a while and then lost it. I lost my chance at being human--at really having a chance to live life the way it was meant to be lived--and so I was left to go through the motions."

   "I don’t understand," Carrie interjected. "How can you not be human? You look human. You speak a human language. You’re intelligent enough to be human."

   "I have a theory that humanity is almost as much a state of mind as a biological classification. Unless you can cry or laugh or see the beauty of an autumn landscape, you’ve not truly achieved your humanity. You’re nothing but an animal with delusions of grandeur. For a while, I tried to smell the roses and fall in love and live happily ever after, but it didn’t work. I saw with my mind and not my heart. Eventually, I just faded away."

   "So you died and are haunting the world in search of what you lost?"

   Peter seemed lost in his thoughts. "When I ceased to exist, my soul went to be judged just as all souls are. When my number was called, the judges looked over my life and conferenced a while. Eventually, the Chief Judge came and explained the problem. My soul was intended for Paradise, but as I’d not left any legacy to prove I’d ever existed upon Earth, I would not be allowed to enter."

   "And what is that supposed to mean?" Carrie asked. It didn’t match any religious dogma she’d ever heard of.

   "I could see Paradise, but I could never enter until I’d discovered the meaning of humanity and regain it in my own soul."

   "Looking at the trees for their colors rather than just leaves on sticks," Carrie mused. "Why are you still here then? It sounds like you’re loving the forest for the trees."

   "Trees are easy to love. They have no evil inside them. People are more of a challenge and I’m still working to understand what makes them tick and why they act with such extremes towards each other."

   Carrie nodded silently and peered into the old man’s eyes. They had seen much pain in their day, and seemed to grow even more sad as he watched someone else sit down a couple tables away.

   "Who is that?" he asked.

   "Rob from my literature class," Carrie replied. "I don’t really know him. He keeps to himself a lot. Kind of nerdy--not really my type, I guess."

   "Perhaps. Then again, he might be the perfect lover or a wonderful father in time."

   "He could belong to the Future Serial Killers of America club, too," Carrie said jokingly.

   "But you don’t know, do you?" Peter asked her in a steely tone.

   "Neither do you." Her eyes glanced briefly at Rob and saw that he was staring at the trees. She looked at him and quickly turned back to Peter. Her heart skipped a beat. "Oh my God," she whispered. "He’s you." The resemblance was uncanny.

   Peter was silent for a time, and then spoke in a soft tone that seemed more directed at himself than at her. "I always come back to this place sooner or later. A wise man once told me that you cannot truly love others until you can love yourself."

   "And you can’t, can you?"

   "I have lived everything he has. All of the hurts, all the mistakes, all of the self-defeating things he does to hurt himself---rather a neat temporal paradox, but I’d just as soon let someone else live it for a while."

   "You could walk over there and talk to him. Telling me this isn’t doing any good."

   "Could I? Time doesn’t work that way, Carrie. I can’t change what has already happened. I know him. He wouldn’t listen to me if I told him who I really was. I’d just be a crazy old man who fancied himself Jacob Marley."

   Carrie looked back and forth between Peter and Rob with a sudden feeling of sadness and revulsion passing over her. Something wasn’t right here. Something had to be done.

   "It hasn’t happened yet, because Rob is still here," she said in very measured tones. "I think you’re content to let it happen. You can’t be human, because if you were, you wouldn’t let someone just die and not try to help. You haven’t learned a damn thing except that trees are pretty."

   "You think I like watching him die?" Peter asked in disbelief.

   "Yes," she shot back. "I do."

   With that parting shot, she got up from the table and stalked away. Not back to her dorm, however--she wasn’t sure why, but she walked over to Rob’s table and sat down beside him. Rob looked at her with surprise. "Now what do I do?" she thought to herself. "Think up a story, just like--" She snapped her fingers.

   "Rob, I really, really, really need your help. I can’t come up with a thing for my writing assignment and someone suggested you might be able to help." Carrie tried to sound the part of the damsel in distress. Guys loved rescuing those types.

   Rob opened his mouth but no words came out. He looked at her, cocked his head slightly, and blinked, as if he wasn’t sure his eyes really were seeing the woman across the table from him. "Me?"

   "Yes, you, silly. You looked so busy admiring the scenery, I hated to disturb you. Never bother an artist at work and all that."

   Rob shook his head. "I wasn’t busy, Carrie. I was just thinking."

   "Penny for your thoughts?"

   "Wondering what the point is in wasting such a lovely skyline on such a cruel world."

   "Nobody said saving souls was an easy business" Carrie told herself. If Peter and Rob were the same person, nothing she would do could make a difference in the slightest. Walking away would be so easy. She’d be no better than Peter then, and she wanted to at least feel that she’d done all she could.

   "I happen to know that God put that there so you would be inspired enough to help me write my paper," Carrie told him, wondering if lying about such things would make matters worse.

   Rob looked at her with a rather bemused grin. "Did he now? I was under the impression he wished it to inspire me."

   "Was it working?"

   "No," Rob responded glumly.

   "That’s the problem," Carrie chuckled. "That’s my forest, not yours. You help me write about my forest, and I’ll help you find whatever you were supposed to find. We muses have to help guys out all the time. Part of our job description, you know."

   Rob cracked a smile. "If you were a real muse, you wouldn’t need my help."

   Carrie put her hands to her head in frustration. "Mortals are our inspiration. What am I supposed to do--ask another muse for advice? We don’t actually do anything other than help you lot out and attend boring parties at Zeus’s palace. People stopped being interested in that genre when Homer died."

   Rob smiled wider. "You made that up, didn’t you?"

   Carrie smiled. "Yeah, I guess I just did. Maybe I should help you with your paper."

   "Would you?"

   "Of course I would," Carrie said, and leaned over the table and kissed him on the cheek. She knew it was the last thing he expected. If he was as screwed up as Peter implied, a little moral support like that might do him good. She’d figure out a way to explain her way out of it later. She was a muse, after all.

   Rob blushed as she did this and the two didn’t say anything for a few moments. "Have you ever heard of Scheherazade?" Carrie shook her head no. "He was a storyteller whose life depended on pleasing the king with every new story he told."

   "I’ll meet you in fifteen minutes at the library, and it is queen to you, Rob."

   "Yes, your majesty!" Rob got up from the table and gave a flourishing bow to Carrie, who giggled at his attempt. He walked off in the direction of the library whistling a tune and she turned to head for her dorm to collect her notebooks.

   "Scheherazade!" she exclaimed, and turned to look at Peter. Peter sat at his table, head perched on his hands, and grinning like the Cheshire Cat did before he’d disappear.

   "You bloody bastard!" she exclaimed. "You set me up!"

   "Dear me, I did, didn’t I? I must remind you that you had your chance to think up the story first. I see I got you to believe mine. How very flattering to think it worked so well."

   "So everything you said was a lie?"

   Peter shook his head and pulled a tarnished pocketwatch from somewhere underneath his coat.. "Rob Kingsford would have killed himself at 9:22 pm this very evening. His suicide letter was to have read that he had nothing to live for. Rob’s story was very much the one I told you. The only difference is that he’ll be so busy on his homework tonight, he won’t be able to keep his appointment with death."

   "Who are you?"

   "Maybe I’m a guardian angel. Maybe I’m like Scheherazade, except that I tell stories to save the lives of others and not my own."

   "It must be hypothermia. I’ve just spent half an hour talking to someone who thinks he’s a guardian angel and kissed a nerd. My life is over now. I think I’m going to die. How are you going to save my life, storyteller?"

   "Remember that lie you told Rob?"

   "Don’t throw that in my face. I save your geek from killing himself and you’re gonna sweat a little white lie?"

   Peter pointed to the trees. "Without those trees, you wouldn’t have stopped to talk to me. Those are your trees. They brought you to me, and to Rob. Your futures are very much entwined in ways you will only understand in time."

   "You aren’t suggesting...." Carrie began to say.

   Peter looked at his watch. "You’ll be late, Carrie. Go."

   Carrie began to walk away. "I’m not kissing him again, Peter," she said, whirling back to confront him--only the table was empty and not a soul was in sight.