False Impressions (21 page)

“And yet
you
are not over,” he said.

“What do you mean?”

“You haven’t lost your spirit or your fight.”

“No, of course not.”

“Why do you say it like that?”

“Well, what else would I do but move on?” I looked around, as if searching. “Really, what else is there to do?”

He threw his head back and laughed, then raked his hands through his blond hair. “There are many things. I like that you choose to reinvent.”

We talked for about an hour. He told me about his process, how he’d come to it.

Finally, he nodded, falling silent. “If you are, I think I’m ready to begin.”

* * *

And now I was naked. I’d been base-painted black by the makeup person—deep black, Axel had said, which I found curious.

While that took place, there was still a lot of activity. Axel issued orders to his photo assistant in that slightly gravelly accent. The makeup person occasionally asked Axel about certain blacks he was using, which would affect later paint. For example, whether my right shoulder would be painted. And what about my quads? If so, what colors was he considering?

It was all done so quickly and with such a businesslike manner, that I was surprised when the makeup artist, said, “Voilà,” and pulled out a bunch of fans and a hair dryer.

And now, and now, and now…

And now Axel Tredstone was sitting in front of me on a stool, a palette of vivid colors in one hand, brush in the other. His brush touched me. I looked down at my breast. The dot was blue, like part of my arm, which boasted curls around the bicep, reminding me of Theo’s tattoos. There was also blue on my belly, high on my ribs. Below that was a circle. A circle of flesh that Axel had achieved by washing off some of the black and painting a black tree in the circular space he’d created. It was as if I’d ingested the tree.

“Does that feel okay?” he said, in a distracted kind of voice, dabbing the paint on my nipple.

“Sure, sure.”
What else to say?

“I see a lot of blue in you.”

“You do?”

“Yes. Not necessarily
blue
like you Americans say, like sadness. I don’t find you sad.”

I nodded. I didn’t see myself as sad, either, at least not on a regular basis.

“I see blue as a mysterious color,” Axel said. “I see you as having a lot of mystery.”

“Hmm. Do you think that’s because you simply don’t know everything about my life?”
Like the fact that I’m investigating the invasion of Madeline Saga’s gallery and the forging of her artwork?
I looked down at the peach-colored heart shape on my left shoulder. It struck me that this body painting was a kind of art that would be impossible to forge.

“No,” Axel said. “It’s true that I’ve only had the briefest amount of time with you, so of course, I don’t know even a fraction of you. Yet, I believe you don’t know everything about yourself, either.”

That one stopped me. But he was right. I was discovering new things about myself all the time. My quickly changing life kept shifting things around, causing random revelations and never-before-imagined passions.

I had certainly never imagined being part of the art world before, not like Pyramus, not the gallery and certainly not like this. Axel kept painting my breast. A cloud was there now, blue and lit with white. A plain red banner ran over the other side of my chest and twisted past the tree on my stomach, and down my right leg. One of my feet resembled a tangle of vines, laden with green grapes. My other was still black.

“You seem like you know yourself very well,” I said. “You know what art you want to create, what it means, who you will work with.”

He paused, brush in the air, the tip now coated white. Then he laughed. “I don’t feel that way.”

“You don’t?”

“Not most of the time. I worry that my artwork will begin to be viewed differently. I worry my best work is behind me.”

I cleared my throat. “Excuse me, but you have your paint brush on my, um, breast. Please don’t say your best work is past you.”

He laughed and laughed. So much, he had to put his palette down. He clapped his hands and looked at me. “No, this…” He drew a hand toward me. “This is going to be some of my very, very best.”

He looked at me then. “You know
you
are an artist.”

“How do you figure?”

He pointed to my face. “You had done your own makeup before you got here. I saw it. You did that makeup. You selected colors, determined how much or how little. You shaded, you blotted. You made certain aspects of your face stand out.”

I thought about it. “I guess that’s true.”

He nodded, then pointed at my hair. “And you did this.”

After the base painting was done, Axel had said he wanted my hair “massive and fiery.”

Since I was always trying to tame my hair, I knew exactly what would pump it up. I’d teased and teased, and now it stood about six inches away from my head.

A comfortable pause. I smiled at him. We started talking again, and we didn’t stop.

51

W
hen it was over, it was a shock, as if a door had been opened fast, forcing cold to barrel inside. In reality, nothing about the studio or the physical surroundings had changed. But after finishing the painting, after Axel had been snapping with different cameras for two hours, it was simply over.

I said as much to Axel. “This is just the death of
this
particular experience,” he replied. “At this point in time. That is all.”

Still, a wave of sadness overcame me, then the feel of cold. Axel handed me a present wrapped in shiny silver paper. Inside was a thick, silk robe that bore a tag,
Made by hand in Germany.
The color was a burnt orange.

“I always get these for my subjects. But I’ve never bought this color. I chose this for you before I knew too much about you. Only what Madeline had told me on the phone. But I see now the color is perfect.”

I thanked him and slipped it on. “The color
is
perfect. Funny that you didn’t use this color at all in your painting.” I waved a hand up and down my body.

“Too obvious.”

We smiled at each other.

“So you have some options,” Axel said to me. “We can take the paint off now or tomorrow or the next day. We can give you a special soap and you can do it yourself at home. Whatever you want.”

Under the robe, I could still feel the paint, and strangely, I enjoyed it. Somewhere in the hours of the painting and the shoot, I had grown into the paint like a second skin. It felt like me—like all of me was represented in the images (even the parts, Axel had pointed out, that I didn’t even realize I had).

I decided I wanted to show Madeline the painting. She was the one who had gotten me into this, after all.

I told Axel I’d take the soap home. Eventually, I went back into the restroom, took off the robe and put on the dress I’d worn to the studio. I slipped on my long, black cashmere coat and my boots. I pulled my hair back. However, my face was painted black, covered in tiny stars. It would have to go. Using Axel’s soap, I took off the facial paint, then wound a scarf around my neck. When I was done, the body painting was completely covered.

Before I left, Axel stood in the doorway and faced me. “May I say something?” he asked.

I looked at him, nodded.

“You are all these things,” he said, pointing to my body, referring to his painting. “You are all those things. And we must not be afraid of ourselves.” He said “our” and “selves” distinctly like two separate words. “
You,
Izzy, should certainly never be afraid or ashamed or angry at yourself. You are remarkable.”

“So are you,” I said.

We hugged and I thanked him. It was one of those goodbyes that might be the last or might be the beginning of many in a friendship.

Outside, the city was abuzz with activity—many people still digging cars out of the snow, others ready to let off stress, packed the bars and restaurants.

It took me a while to find a cab. Once inside, on the way to Madeline’s gallery, I kept thinking of Axel’s words.
We must not be afraid of our selves.

When I reached the gallery, it was dark. I looked at my phone and realized that it was more than an hour after closing time.

“I didn’t realized how late it was,” I said to the security guard. He was there five nights a week. His brother took the other shifts. Because he was the evening guy, I didn’t know him except to say hello and listen to talk about his wife’s tamales (which sounded delicious).

“She just came back, actually,” he said, jerking a thumb toward the gallery.

“Madeline? Oh, great. Thanks.” I felt the paint then, and I wondered if he sensed something different in me, some shift, something lurking below the surface. But he just clicked the button under the desk to open the gallery door.

When I stepped inside the gallery, I saw a light in the back. I walked toward it, feeling strange and wonderful in the dark gallery—a painting myself.

When I reached the back room, Madeline was standing at the drawers where she kept various canvases. Unlike her usual daywear, Madeline was dressed in black jeans, black shirt and vest.

When she looked up, she seemed surprised to see me.

“I know it’s after hours,” I said, “but I just finished with Axel.”

“Axel,” she said, blinking.

“Axel Tredstone.”

“Yes. Of course.” She didn’t seem as enthusiastic as before about my being painted.

“So anyway, I just wanted to thank you,” I said. “It was such an incredible experience. I don’t know what the final images will look like, but the process was… it was exquisite.”

Madeline nodded. “Exquisite. That is good.”

She said it in a flat way. I didn’t know where her excitement for the project had gone. But then again, Madeline had more to worry about than her assistant’s fun-and-sexy foray into body painting. Suddenly my impulse, to show her Axel’s work, seemed silly and self-centered.

“Are you okay, Madeline?” I asked.

“Yes. I’m okay.” She looked back at the drawer, avoiding my gaze. She was speaking a bit strangely, using few words.

“I’m sorry you’re going through this, Madeline,” I said. “I know the thefts and forgeries have been very painful for you.”

Her eyes stared intently into mine now. “Painful. Yes.”

“Well, let me know if you want to talk about it.” I made my voice as welcoming as possible, but in truth, I was feeling the same way as I had when she told me she’d given Syd information about the forgeries and our investigation—like I had less faith in her than before.

She said nothing.

“I’ll get going,” I said.

She nodded. “Yes. I’ll go soon, too.”

52

T
he next morning, Sunday morning, I lounged in bed thinking about my time with Axel Tredstone. But often my thoughts returned to Madeline.
Was she cracking under the pressure? Was she all right?

Yet, as I thought of her in her back room after hours, at the drawers where canvases were kept, that image kept striking me, or maybe it was that fact that she was in her gallery, after hours, with canvases that could be rolled up and easily taken away.

What if…what if…what if Madeline, herself, had something to do with the paintings going missing and being forged?

Maybe she needed money. Or maybe she loved art as much as Mayburn said she did, and she wanted to keep the real things for herself. I’d never even been to her home. It was near the lake, I knew, somewhere around Astor Street. Were the walls in those rooms laden with the most amazing collection of original art, stolen from her own gallery? What if the inheritance money was gone, or she had exaggerated the amount? Or made up the whole thing? Did she need money? If so, had she quickly rid herself of the originals on the black market?

I got up, padded into my kitchen and called Mayburn.

“It’s not Saga,” he said, even before I could get out my potential theories.

“No, listen to me.” I laid out my thoughts.

“She absolutely does not need the money,” he said.

I kept talking.

He interrupted with a sigh, frustrated and, I sensed, disappointed in me. “I can’t believe you don’t see it,” he said.

“See what?” I asked.

“That she would never do what you’re saying. And I can’t believe that you don’t see her love for the art.”

“I have seen it. And I wonder if it’s so strong it could cause her to do something she wouldn’t usually.”

He said nothing. He didn’t refute me. “I can tell you that she wouldn’t send herself a sculpture of a knife in flesh, or whatever that shit was.”

“Well, we know the sculpture was created by someone with talent, right? Madeline and Syd both said as much—that it required skill to make.”

“So?” Mayburn said.

“So someone either commissioned it or made it.”

“It’s not…” He paused, and then that pause went on, as if he were seriously considering something. “It’s not Saga.”

I said nothing. I didn’t have to. I’d heard the pause. And he had, too.

“Hang with her,” he said. “As much as you can.”

53

I
called her cellphone.

“Okay,” Madeline answered, without any other greeting. “Tell me about the shoot.”

She sounded like her good mood was back.

“Feeling okay today?” I asked.

“Great,” she said definitively.

She sounded so different from her remote mood of last night. I was happy to feel the connection I had thought was building between us again. I summarized the experience as best I could, and as she responded I felt excited, too, at being able to share the experience, especially with someone who understood it well. Maybe better than I did, myself.

“Are you still wearing the paint?” she asked.

“I am. I slept in the silk robe that Axel gave me and it doesn’t seem to have rubbed away.”

I thought about Mayburn telling me to spend as much time with Madeline as possible. I also thought about that pause of Mayburn’s. What if this whole “investigation” Madeline had brought to him was an elaborate hoax to cover up the fact that she was the thief?