Anja settled in for a long summer's nap. Her fingers felt knotted, thick with linseed and indigo oils. The two-room flat was cluttered with canvasses of varying sizes, scraping tools, a bag of sand she used to stucco today's work. What I learned at the Academy: London needs more texture.

She rubbed at the small flecks of blue on each palm, massaging the muscles beneath. It's not going away - I'm becoming a Smurf the more I grind it in. Anja considered sleeping in the afternoon light, four illuminated columns that shunted through her windows. Dusty haloes fell at her feet.

Whatever happened to epiphany, she thought. Where's the harm in waking up to an angel with a prescribed life in tow, all decisions made for you? A muse with wings. Self-doubt and false starts removed from the equation. Accept or flee, you make what you are meant to. She thought about the film festival below Waterloo Bridge. When the angel of death plays chess with Sydow, what's the knight thinking? Is he wondering if his time is almost up, or is he thinking about his wife at home? Maybe he realizes he's on the wrong crusade. Anja rubbed one toe along the floorboard. Why doesn't your muse ever show up as something soft - a talking cardigan would be so practical here.

Anja clenched and unclenched her fingers beneath the pillow, baby blue. She didn't wear rings anymore. She remembered her lecture to the middle school art classes in Kentish Town. The preteen with my black hair and my mother's silver rings. I saw that girl stretching her hands, fingers flashing and I knew. Kids have no pity for weakness - this arthritis before my time, just thirty and I can't hold a brush for more than minutes without wincing. The girl with the rings will paint, regardless of talent, for decades. Where the fuck will I be? She cradled her knuckles awkwardly under her head and tried to ignore the throb. Silly thing, she murmured, don't take to pitying yourself.

Later. Anja dreamt of Marlon Brando - middle-aged, not the great whale of recent times. Brando from "The Godfather," a little jowly but crisp, composed. Radiating control. He sat in a high-backed leather chair etched in sepia tones, gesturing to the papers in front of him. 'So you want to marry my daughter.' Anja was confused. Whose point of view was this? Should she speak? The office was wide, bare, with light coming from a stained-glass window behind him. Catnip on the floor, a headless chewtoy.

'Take me for a walk in the wheatfield out back.' And now she was escorting him through the wall, into an open series of crops with no color, black and bright gray like night snow on tree limbs. Cool, close air but Brando was a furnace next to her. Anja could feel that he was suffocating in his tuxedo. 'Can I take your coat?' she asked, and her voice sounded too high. He ignored her, and ground his teeth as they walked. 'Stifling. My girl needs rain on a good day.' Brando paused, looked right at her, and she could see his widow's peak and eyes without an iris. 'Take care of it for me.'

She woke. Shivered. Looked at the clock, and felt the dream pulling away until she was troubled without remembering why. Anja registered the time slowly. Late again. Late for Jack's show.

She donned her ritual gallery clothing - blue boots, blue slacks, feathered blue summer coat. Tugged at her hair, flew down the stairs, pulled open the door. More Chilean wine and Carlsberg with the young British artists. She rummaged in her coat pockets for a pound coin, found one, squat and reassuring in her hand.

When the bus arrived at Southwark, Anja got off and buried her hands fiercely in the coat. Pub-goers fell to the left and right as she cut down the street to Jack's gallery. I need that space, I need more showings. I need a doppelganger to sleep with Jack for me. It's his broken tooth, just can't get past it, no matter how much we drink. I keep thinking he's going to fang me.

Around the corner, almost there - not so late, really, Anja - and she glanced at the brick wall. Airbrushed in black and white, an icon of composure. Fucking Marlon Brando spray-painted on a wall. Heat, eyes, words in a field rising up, circling in her memory. When did you get there? Have I walked by you before, just haven't noticed?

She hurried down the street to the gallery. Walked in, and weaved through a clutch of her peers flashing red-crusted lips, stained smiles on the offensive. It's the red wine that bloodies your teeth at these things. Perpetuation of a tired joke, doesn't anyone remember to buy white? Thirty-five artists here, who do I know? Two. Now where would the food be?

Anja picked up a few tangles of prawn and dyed spinach, munched quietly in a corner. The sculpture on show was a series of huge worms made with children's bedsheets. She wanted to dislike it, but found herself enjoying the knots of Strawberry Shortcake, Asterix, boys with dogs, bears with red balloons. Each worm opening its great maw in the northwest corner, the throats darkly lit from inside by an indigo bulb. Weaving and rising above the heads of the gathering, the worms canopied in faded, much-washed tones of reds and creams and browns and blues. Anja remembered the small bed of her childhood. That poor thing withstood midnight pees and the first period and the first guilty thrill and my last real bedtime prayer. Kept the ghosts from climbing in with me too. Sheets smelled like cedar.

She turned around. She blinked. Anja was walking toward herself, and her self was smiling in recognition on the arm of the gallery owner. 'Isn't she amazing?' Jack was speaking, fang fluttering in the wind. 'Anja? Anja, have you met Jane? Jane, this is Anja. You two, with your raven-hair.' He exploded with what was clearly a revelation: 'Ladies, I want each of you to take my arm - we're going to drink heavily to Jane's masterpiece tonight.' Jack ambled off to the wine table alone. Anja stared. Jane smiled quietly. 'I know what you're thinking.' Anja dropped a prawn.

That you're me? 'I'm not sleeping with Jack to get this space.' Anja smiled weakly. Her hands were pulsing. She wiped them on her trousers, stuffed them violently into the coat pockets again. 'No, no - your work's great.' Jane leaned in close, made a face. 'You don't mean it. Doesn't the piece make you feel anything?'

Anja hardened, and then let go, looked up. Not an unreasonable request. Her eyes traced the flannel and patchwork cotton, worn evidence of a restless sleeper. 'It makes me feel small, takes me to a place where everything was bigger and darker. WhereÉ where even familiar things took on a quality of awe. My dreams are tangled up there.' Anja paused, breathed. 'How did you get the idea for these worms?' Anja felt foolish, well that's what they were, looming and absurd and maybe wonderful worms. She looked over to see her mirror image beaming.

'Came to me when I woke up, this is what you're going to make - creatures to tunnel through dreams,' Jane declared. And Anja wanted to say, who are you, really? Are you my successful long-lost something, or my ancestral spectre, or the weirdest quirk of fate? And is that what I look like at shows?

Jane nodded. 'I spend a lot of my time in bed. It does beat working for a living.' She paused. Anja looked up at the ceiling, found the canopy, imagined herself stripped bare up there. Legs and limbs and aspiration twined snugly in one of Jane's flannel beasts.

'We get a thrill from being shocked by art,' Jane said and gestured toward the studio-goers laughing, debating, gingerly looking up at the sculpture. 'But I think more than shock, people want evidence of the muse. Do you know what I mean? Down deep, they want inspiration by proxy.'

Anja nodded, and answered slowly, 'All of us waiting for something, or trying to create a series of somethings to meet the wait halfway. If the muse doesn't come.'

Jane squeezed Anja's arm. 'Mm. But why wait?' Anja was light, dazed by Jane's touch licking fire along the skin as the sculptor said, 'I don't know about you, but I want my muse to be tall, dark and agreeable. I want my muse more than anyone to look at my work and feel something stir.' She looked at Anja, and Anja's slow grin matched her own. 'Anything stirring will be exciting,' Jane said, 'but the heart is paramount.' Five fingers burned Anja's right arm.

The gallery began to fill with more people and Anja was swallowed up by the heat of the room. Jane's eyes danced from Anja and up to the dreamsheets, back to Anja again. 'Anja, I'm sorry, I didn't even get your last name. Are you a sculptor?' Jack returned with two glasses of red wine, noticed Anja's hands. 'Painters. Always covered in color.' Jane grasped Anja's left fingertips, began to move away. 'You really felt something when you saw the sheets?' Anja nodded dumbly. 'I felt five again.' Jane nodded, leaned in for a parting kiss. 'Take care of you,' Jane murmured, and drifted off with Jack, guided toward a knot of artists all with impossibly red hair.

At the exit, Anja propped open the double doors to let in the early night air. She felt faint, thought of her canvas, her freshly painted canvas at home and its twines of variegated blue spiraling across open space. Like worms, or whales. Like dreams, she thought, great mouths taking us to the floor of the ocean until we relent.

She walked for a bit to the bus stop, leaned against the brickwork by Brando again, stroking his invisible cat somewhere off-camera. Take care of it for me. Take care of you. She was tired of waiting. She felt small and sure in the mild London night. Woman, heal thyself.

Anja kissed her fingertips slowly, tasting the paint and prawn and cedar on each. And the ache in her knuckles began to unknot. Her palms, unclenching, her wrists dipped in coolness.

Artwork by Jennifer Murphy