Hold Back the Night (15 page)

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Sander had chosen afternoons, and the hour of two o'clock had been agreed upon, but it was only half past one when Domini arrived at the little art gallery. In her arms were more supplies taken from the stock she kept in a corner of her loft; this time a huge role of chicken wire and some lengths of strong but bendable tubing. The materials were reasonably portable, and she hadn't needed a taxi for the trip ... a small saving but an important one, because already Domini was planning for the day when she would buy Sander some additional clay. Her optimistic nature refused to contemplate the possibility that the whole venture might be a dismal failure.

'Something else for Sander?' asked Miranda as Domini came through the door and deposited her bulky burden.

'He'll need these to make an armature,' Domini said. 'If he's doing a large sculpture, he has to have something to build on. He can't make it out of solid clay. It would break too easily just from its own weight.

Miranda sighed and looked at the bundle askance, 'I hate to tell you this, Domini, but I think you're wasting your time. Sander is dead set against trying this. In fact, he's been in a cold fury ever since yesterday. There's no way you're to get him to do something he doesn't want to do.'

'Doesn't he keep his promises?' asked Domini lightly as she removed her coat. Today her hair was carefully smoothed into its French knot, with only a few pale tendrils escaping to frame her face. She had donned navy slacks and a rib-knit gold sweater with the unsettling knowledge that she would only have to take them off. With thoughts of chilled skin as much as modesty, she had also stuffed a terrycloth bathrobe into her capacious shoulder-bag. There was no point being naked more than necessary.

'Did he make a promise?' Miranda asked in surprise.

'Yes,' Domini said. 'In exchange for a promise from me.' Miranda's confusion was evident, so Domini outlined her arrangement with Sander, keeping her tone light and her explanations simple.

Miranda's face turned increasingly dubious once she understood.'I should warn you, Domini,' she mentioned without censure, 'I don't think he has any plans of going through with it, no matter what he said. He told me you'd be coming, and he told me to send you up. But I heard him mutter something between his teeth. It was hard to make out, but I think it was something about making short work of the whole thing. Or maybe of you. He does keep his promises, I'll grant you that, so he must be intending to make you break yours.'

That knowledge hardly helped still the butterflies in Domini's stomach. 'I'll face that when it comes,' she said and shrugged with a light laugh. 'Disaster is still half an hour away. Do you mind if I sit and visit with you?'

Miranda indicated a chair close to her sales desk. 'By all means. Do you mind if I munch my lunch? I always bring a sandwich down because I don't like locking up shop more often than absolutely necessary.' She circled the desk and sat down, then paused and eyed Domini anxiously. 'Although I could do that for a few minutes this afternoon, if necessary. Do you think you'll need to be rescued?'

'I doubt it.' Domini smiled, with more hope than conviction. 'I'll scream if I'm in need.'

'Have you eaten?' asked Miranda, extracting a sandwich from her drawer. 'I'm not too hungry and I'll be happy to share. Not fancy, but if you like chopped eggs...'

'I've eaten,' Domini lied. Nerves had prevented her from getting a single morsel down her throat, even at breakfast time, when she usually ate the oatmeal porridge she made for Tasey. 'Besides, Miranda, you could use it. You're all skin and bones. Very attractive of course ... but you could use a few pounds.'

'Thanks,' Miranda replied with a wry grin. Still in her carefully kept black dress, she presented a picture of chic respectability, but Domini wondered if she would not be far prettier in some lighter colour ... a soft dove grey, for instance, to enhance eyes that were many shades lighter than Sander's. But dove grey, Domini supposed, needed too many trips to the dry cleaner.

'You've hung a new show,' Domini remarked, looking around the gallery. Gone were the indifferent art toys, and in their place was a collection of indifferent paintings. 'You must have been working very hard to get them all up since yesterday.'

'The picture rails help,' Miranda said. 'Joel came over this morning to lend a hand. Sander keeps offering to do it, but I don't like to let him in case he falls. I get around it by not telling him when I'm going to rehang.'

'Joel seems very nice. Is he divorced? Or widowed?'

Miranda was studying the sandwich in her hands. 'Divorced,' she said. 'His wife went off to discover herself, or some such thing. Crazy, isn't it? Trading kids for a career! I'd give my eye teeth to have the choice, but I wouldn't make the same decision.'

'I thought he looked decidedly eligible,' Domini observed. 'I gather you haven't known him for too long?'

'Just since he bought the restaurant.' Miranda ducked her head and busied herself in brushing imaginary crumbs from her lap. Then she looked up and smiled brightly. 'Now tell me about yourself. Do you know, in all the conversations we've had, you've hardly told me a thing? It's really unfair, the way I've dumped all my problems on you! Now start at the beginning. Where are you from? New Yorkers are never from New York.'

'This one is,' said Domini, smiling. The lie had become so much a part of her existence that she told it now without hesitation. But talking about herself was not the purpose of early arrival. For the next few minutes she tried without success to turn away Miranda's questions. Today, however, Miranda would not be deterred, and so Domini went through an assortment of fanciful tales invented long ago: parents who had died in her youth, a kindly aunt and uncle who had reared her and then moved to Europe, a lover who had died in an aeroplane crash, leaving Tasey as his only legacy. The stories had served Domini well over the years, and by this time they came trippingly off the tongue.

It wasn't until shortly before two o'clock, after a browser had entered and left, that Domini managed to turn the conversation to the topic of Sander. 'You know, there are stores that would be interested in the kind of thing he makes,' she said. 'Maybe not here in SoHo, but in the ritzier neighbourhoods. Have you thought of approaching them?'

'Of course.' Miranda laughed shakily. 'I did try one or two, but I had to close the gallery while I trundled the stuff around. I have a suitcase full of his samples over there in the corner, but I simply can't spare the time to show it to any interested buyers. And as for Sander, he can hardly .. .'Her voice trailed off.

'Maybe I could try,' Domini said thoughtfully, wondering if she could manage to squeeze in some calls when she was out looking for new clients.

'He'd probably resent that,' Miranda said with a helpless shrug. 'For some reason, he seems to resent you. I'm sorry that he does, because . . . well, frankly, you're the first new female he's met for some time, and, and ... I was hoping .. ' Miranda covered her confusion by beginning to speak very rapidly in defence of her brother, giving Domini no chance to interrupt. 'He is a very attractive man, even with his disability. He's a little reluctant to make advances nowadays, but women . . . Well, it's not as though there's been nobody interested in him all this time. That nice nurse you met, she shares a big loft with several other girls. New apartment mates move in and out all the time ... commercial artists, folk singers, dancers. There was one in particular, an airline stewardess who always used to want to see Sander whenever she was in town.' She laughed half apologetically, torn between revealing confidences and establishing that her brother was not an undesirable man. 'But you know, airline stewardesses come and go and they're not always, well, you know, serious. The girl was transferred a couple of months ago, so that was the end of that. And since then . . . well, I mean, blindness does scare some women off. And when you seemed so very interested...'

'My interest isn't like that,' Domini said crisply, not wanting to give rise to Miranda's hopes. At least Miranda had answered one question in the back of her mind: she was relieved to hear that Sander was probably not in a state of dangerous frustration. 'I have other male friends, and I'm not short of dates. Just because I agreed to model for him doesn't mean I'm looking for a husband ...or an affair.'

'Oh, well, of course not. I didn't mean ...' Miranda broke the tension of embarrassment by glancing at her watch. 'Two o'clock,' she said. 'Hadn't you better go up?'

Domini rose, smiling. 'After what you told me, I expect I'll be lucky if I'm not thrown right back down the stairs.'

'I'll catch,' Miranda offered. 'Good luck!'

Domini shouldered the tubing and chicken wire and started up the stairs with wry thoughts that perhaps all her efforts had been in vain. She couldn't deny that mingled with apprehension there was some sense of relief; the idea of modelling in the nude was not at all to her liking. Well, if there was any truth to Miranda's warning words, she wasn't very likely to have to go through with it.

'Very prompt,' Sander said coolly as he met her in the hall at the top of the stairs. 'I've been wondering if you'd show up. I confess I'm surprised and pleased.'

Domini blinked with astonishment. After what Miranda had said, she had expected to be met with rudeness, insolence, or outright refusal to let her set foot through the door. But this? What on earth did Sander have in mind? She stared up at his face, but nothing in the carefully bland expression hinted that his polite greeting was anything less than genuine.

'I've brought you some tubing and chicken wire,' she said. 'I thought you might need it to make an armature.'

He reached his hand forward slowly until it connected with her offering, and then with more sureness he took it into his own arms. 'Very considerate, but it won't be necessary today. I need to get the feel of the material, so I've decided to start with a small model, a maquette. Come in, won't you?'

Domini walked through the open door to a rearranged room. The workbenches had been pushed to new positions, both against a wall, in order to free the main space for other use. Central in the room was a platform Sander had constructed of raw lumber. It was about the height of a bed, and the layer of blankets over the hard surface informed Domini that it was intended for posing. The big kitchen table had been pulled right up against the platform, with some clay, some modelling tools, some wet cloths, and a large pan of water resting at the ready on its oilcloth surface. Could Miranda have been mistaken about what she had overheard?

The door clicked closed behind her, and she turned in time to see Sander's enigmatic expression as he said, 'I imagine you're unfamiliar with posing in the nude. No doubt you're nervous, but there's no need to be concerned. I'll be as impersonal, I assure you, as a doctor. You can undress whenever you're ready.'

Wordlessly, and with feeling of total apprehension, Domini started to remove her clothes. Had she really once started to show herself to Sander in the innocent belief that that sort of thing should be done without reservation or modesty? She had been taught as much, of course. Her father's dislike of false prudery had been drummed into her from an early age, and she hadn't been in Paris long enough at that point to realize how truly unconventional her upbringing had been. On that day, when she had begun to strip, she had felt embarrassed and sickeningly ashamed of her embarrasssment, thinking it some sort of lack in herself. Now, with more experience of the real world to guide her, she realized it had been natural enough in a young girl unused to displaying herself. She was more mature now and she thought it should bother her less, but it didn't, despite Sander's unemotional reassurance. Oh, how simple life would become if everyone were as open and uncomplicated as Papa would have them be!

'I'm ready,' she said a few minutes later when the clothes were off and the terrycloth robe on.

Sander was idling with some clay, moulding it into some indeterminate shape on the table. Absently, without turning to what he could not in any case see, he nodded towards the platform to indicate she should mount it. With trepidation, Domini climbed on only two feet away from him, still decently wrapped. 'Are you ready? Shall I . . . take off my robe?'

'Please do,' he said dryly. 'Just lay it over the end of the platform. A moment, and I'll decide on the pose I want.'

Domini discarded the last of her coverings, feeling very vulnerable and visible despite Sander's inability to see. For a time he continued to mould the clay as though getting the feel of it, a dark forelock falling over his brow as he bent his head and knotted his brow in sightless concentration.

His frown suggested something less than pleasure with the new medium. During the wait Domini's apprehension mounted until she was shivering with nervousness as well as chill.

Finally he slapped the clay on the table in a decisive gesture and started to remove his shirt. 'Old habit,' he explained with a faint grin. 'I always used to work stripped to the waist. Perhaps it will help.'

It didn't help Domini. The uncovering of remembered muscles and matted textures had an awesome effect at this close range, multiplying every sensation a hundredfold. Alarm prickled over the naked surfaces of her skin. Her agony of suspense became almost unbearable, but she fought down the overpowering desire to flee.

'Will you be... long?' she said after he had wasted some more suspenseful minutes experimenting with the texture of the clay. By this time she was hard pressed to keep her teeth from chattering. 'If so, I think I'll put my robe on. It's very ...'