The Color of Light (17 page)

“This is Mr. Sinclair,” he said urgently. “Janina, please. Now. The usual place.”

“Yes, sir. We know there are many other import export businesses in the city. We appreciate your patronage,” she droned, and cut the connection.

He placed the phone back on the receiver. His eyes fell on the dim glow of her window. For a fleeting moment he felt warmed just by being in her corner of the city.

He was shivering now, and the hunger made it worse. He pulled up the collar of his tuxedo jacket in a fruitless attempt to keep out the cutting wind. Luckily, an empty taxi turned down Sixteenth Street.

Go back to the party. It’s not too late.

“Gramercy Park,” he told the driver. “Northeast corner.”

“This could take awhile,” the cabdriver told him. “Faster to walk.”

“That’s all right,” Rafe said. As the cab nosed its way through the crowds, he settled back into the scarred leather seat and closed his eyes, letting fatigue overtake him.

12

A
pril Huffman held a makeup class at eight a.m. the following Monday.

Over the weekend, the temperature plummeted. Heavy snowstorms and frigid conditions blanketed the Midwest, a parting gift from the perfect storm. The classroom was cold. David, Clayton and Graham were huddled in their winter jackets mixing paint and blowing on their fingers when Portia stuck her head in the doorway.

“You’re not in this class anymore, you sissy,” said David.

“Yeah,” said Graham. “This class is only for real men.” They made hooting caveman noises.

“Tessa here yet?” she asked, trying to sound casual.

“No,” said Clayton, putting down his palette knife. “Why?”

“Oh, you know. Just wanted to say hi.” Portia hadn’t heard from Tessa all weekend, and she was concerned. Not that she heard from her any other weekend.

“Are you worried that she’s been turned into a vampire?” he said, lowering his voice.

“Clayton,” said Portia, putting her hands on her hips. “I thought we were over that.”

“Hey,” he said defensively. “I
was
over it. It’s Gioia. That’s what she was saying at the party. She was talking so fast I couldn’t understand her. She kept saying,
‘vampiro, vampiro, vampiro.’
She wouldn’t shut up about it. So now I can’t help thinking Tessa got turned into the evil undead over the weekend.”

“Hey, guys.” said Tessa, lugging in her load of paints and space heaters. “Evil undead monitor, coming through.”

“Tessa!” Portia pounced on her joyfully. “Where did you learn how to dance like that! You should have seen the look on Lucian’s face!”

“Those were some sexy moves, Tess,” David said. “Why don’t you give us a little show right now?”

“That’s the thing,” she said. “I can’t. I can’t move like that. I can’t do the hokey pokey. It was all him. Anyway…nothing happened. We went up to the studios. We talked, that’s all. He’s nice.”

Clayton groaned. Ben shook his head sadly.

“No, no, no.” David said firmly. “We don’t want to hear any of that ‘he’s nice’ crap. Many things have been said about Raphael Sinclair. No one has ever said he was nice. Let’s hear it, Tessa. What really happened up there?”

“He knows about me and Lucian. He was trying to make me feel better.”

More head shaking from the men. “I’m sorry,” said Graham, “But recent polls indicate that nobody believes you. Come on, Tessa. We saw the way he was looking at you.”

“He wanted to see what everybody is working on for their thesis projects. I took him around the studios.”

David, Clayton, Graham and Ben were like a wall; they crossed their arms expectantly, waiting patiently.

She sighed, set down the heaters. “Okay,” she said, lowering her voice. “I never thought it would happen to me. First, I said, ‘You have really beautiful eyes,’ and I asked him if he would pose for me. He said he didn’t want to, but I could tell he really did want to. So then I said, ‘Hey, Mr. Sinclair, you look uncomfortable, why don’t you take off your jacket?’ So he takes off his jacket, and stands there just kind of looking at me, like you’re doing right now. And then, I say, ‘I paint better when I’m nude, is it okay if I take my clothes off?’ And he says, ‘Okay, I guess that’s all right.’ So I take my clothes off, and then he says, ‘My pants are really chafing me, would you mind if I removed them?’ And I say, ‘Sure.’ And then the cleaning lady comes in, and she sees us, and she asks if she can…”

David cut her off. “Come on, Tessa. The guy’s a major hound. He’s boffed half the women on the Upper East Side. You can’t expect us to believe that nothing happened.”

“Hey, I want to hear the rest of the story.” Ben protested.

“Nothing happened,” she repeated, thinking of Raphael Sinclair’s eyes, his voice, feeling a little flutter of warmth.

“I know this sounds crazy,” said Portia hesitantly. “Look…I’m incredibly grateful to him, for what he’s done for us, for this school…nobody appreciates it more than me. But when I looked in his eyes, when he shook my hand, I felt…
violated.
You have to trust me on this, Tessa. I have a nose for these things.”

“He was so kind.” Tessa said, in a voice filled with wonder. “I don’t know how he knew, don’t know how he found me…when Lucian came in with April…and then later, when I saw them making out on the dance floor…well, for me, it was like the end of the world. I’ve been with him through so much, and for so long, I don’t even know what I am anymore, besides Lucian Swain’s assistant. When I looked in his eyes, when he touched me, suddenly none of it mattered. He said
—
”

Portia never got to hear the rest of what Rafe said, because at that moment, April Huffman blew in like a cold front. Without a word, she closed the door in Portia’s face.

“Monitor, where are the heaters?” April demanded. “Where are my lights?”

“I’m sorry,” Tessa apologized swiftly. “Here you go.” Hurriedly, she clipped the lights to scaffolding on the ceiling and distributed the heaters. In the meantime, April posed the model. She put a stool on the stage next to her, then added a coffee cup and a trashcan to the composition. As an afterthought, she placed her leather bag next to her feet.

For a while there was quiet, nothing but the sound of bristles scratching on canvas as they roughed out their compositions. The trouble began after the second break.

“Awful,” April ejaculated. “Just awful.”

She was standing behind Ben. Tessa heard him murmur something in reply, and it grew quiet again.

Come on, Tessa, focus.
She frowned at her canvas. Normally, she concentrated on the figure, getting the anatomy right, trying to paint the
progression of light as it moved and changed across the body, but April wasn’t interested in that. She scraped in some lines to describe the pose, then drew the bag, the coffee cup, and the trashcan. Squinting to eliminate unnecessary detail, she began painting in Sivan’s torso.

April’s loud voice broke the silence. “I want everyone’s attention,” she announced. “Look over here.”

She held up Graham’s canvas. “This,” she declared, “is a disaster. The composition is static. The drawing is clumsy. The colors are muddy.” Her words cut clear across the classroom. “I’d say it’s ugly, but it’s worse than ugly. It’s
boring.”

She handed the painting back to Graham. “Painting is seduction, boys and girls. Seduce me.”

And then she turned to Tessa.

“Hey there,” she said brightly, with a big artificial smile. “Great party, huh?” Her candy-apple-red lipstick made her look vaguely wolfish. “I had no idea you could move like that. You were
hot,
girly.”

“It was all Mr. Sinclair,” she responded politely. “My talents lie elsewhere.”

“No, kiddo. It was you. You were sizzling.”

There was a moment of silence. Tessa thought she was studying her composition, but apparently, the painting instructor had other things on her mind.

“It was a bummer about the Cape,” she continued affably, as if they were friends. “It’s so romantic there, especially during a storm…you should go there sometime, when you have a boyfriend. After the party, Lucian wanted to drive out to Coney Island to hear the waves crashing on the beach… you know Lucian, he’s such a romantic. Then we picked up Chinese food and went back to his place and played Strip Trivial Pursuit. I let him think he won.” Her voice dropped to a conspiratorial whisper. “Get this! Four times in one night…I could barely walk the next day. Someone should have warned me. Anyway, I was just cleaning out some drawers over at his place. Are these your things?” She slipped a Balducci’s bag under the easel.

“Okay. Let’s have a look.” April stepped back to view her work. Her lips drew together as she shook her head. “Oh, no. This is a disaster. A dis-
as
-ter.”

Tessa looked at her painting, confounded. “What’s wrong with it?”

“What’s right with it, you mean.” She took a wad of paper towels and wiped everything on the canvas into a greasy brown smear. Then she moved on to the next student.

Tessa stared at the ruined canvas in disbelief. She felt like she’d been assaulted. Putting down her brush, she retrieved the bag April had left under her easel. Inside were a couple of back issues of
Vanity Fair,
a dried up Maybelline Great Lash mascara that could have belonged to anybody, an old toothbrush, a half-empty bottle of Crabtree and Evelyn almond massage oil. Her nightgown, balled up like a rag at the bottom of the bag. A single Polaroid picture.

Curiously, she pulled it out and turned it over. There she was, kneeling on the floor of Lucian’s studio in a black teddy and cowboy boots, trying to look sexy. A black-and-white self-portrait taken six months ago. She ran her fingers over her miniature image. She had sent it to Lucian when he was away in rehab, along with extra socks. Scrawled on the bottom were the words,
This is waiting for you. Come home.

She looked furtively to the right, then left. Her heart pounding like a hammer, she slipped the photo into her art box.

When it was time for the critique at the end of class, Tessa was the last to come forward. She propped her canvas up next to Clayton’s, and melted into the back row, trying to hide behind the burlier sculptors.

April put on a pair of glasses and stepped up to the stage to survey the day’s work. She moved slowly, from left to right, as if she were reading. At Clayton’s painting, she came to a stop. There was the model, sensitively drawn, richly painted. Everything was lovingly, exquisitely rendered, except for one thing.

“Whose is this?” April demanded.

“That one’s mine, Miz Huffman.” Clayton said.

She consulted her clipboard. “You are…”

“Clayton El Greco, ma’am.” he said, stepping forward with a dazzling bad-boy smile. Tessa glanced at him. With his shirt tucked in and his hair combed back, he looked just like Elvis.

“That’s quite a name to live up to,” she said, smiling back at him, putting her clipboard down. “Any relation to the painter?”

“That is what they say, ma’am.” he said, disarming her with his raspy Mississippi drawl and winning smile.

“Traitor,” Ben whispered to him.

She peered at her clipboard. “It says here…you’re a sculptor.”

“That’s right, ma’am. Please go easy on me.”

“No, no,” she said encouragingly. “It’s very good. Don’t sell yourself short.” She turned her attention back to the painting. “So, Clayton El Greco…what happened?”

He frowned. “What do you mean, Miz Huffman?”

April gestured at his canvas. “The model. When I saw this painting earlier, it was pretty much finished. Then you scraped off her ass. What happened?”

He rubbed his chin. “Huh. You might say…I dis-
assed
-her. Get it? Disaster? Dis-assed-her?”

The room exploded in raucous laughter. April Huffman’s smile froze on her face. Without another word, she grabbed her bag off of the model stand and stormed out of the studio. Hilarious laughter followed her, echoing wildly down the hall.

“Okay,” said Graham, when he was sure that she had gone. “Is there anybody in this room who didn’t hear how many times she came on Friday night?”

Tessa glanced at Clayton. He grinned at her, patted her shoulder. “I didn’t like the way she was treating you.”

“I hope you don’t get in trouble for this.”

He shrugged. “It seemed like the right thing to do,” he said authoritatively. “I don’t know why folks are so worried about pissing off other folks.”

Harker moseyed over to them, holding a can of Colt 45. “That was totally uncalled for,” he agreed.

“Are you drinking beer before noon?” Graham asked him.

“Are you drinking in school?” David said incredulously.

“Nah.” Harker flipped his long black hair back behind his ears. “It’s for my chewin’ tobaccy. I’m using it for a spittoon.”

They all took a step back.

Clayton followed Tessa around like a puppy as she gathered up the heaters. “Why don’t you transfer to another class? I know people like April. She’s not gonna give up until one of you is dead.”

“She can’t,” said Graham, rubbing down his palette with turpentine. “She’s on work study. All the monitor positions have already been assigned. If she’s not working, she loses her scholarship.”

For a moment her classmates halted in their activities, considering her predicament.

“Here. Let me help you with that.” Clayton offered, taking the heaters.

“I’ll do the lights,” said David. “Why don’t you just take your stuff and go?”

There were six more weeks of painting with April before the fall semester was over. Tessa wanted to run all the way home and bury herself under the covers. But she had to work; she had another class in an hour. She gathered up her coat, her palette, her brushes and her canvas. Mournfully, she weaved her way through the easels and paint stands.

On the way out the door, she stopped just long enough to stuff her painting in the trashcan.

13

T
he phone was ringing. Rafe opened his eyes, slammed his hand down upon it before he was fully awake.

“I had forgotten what a thing of beauty it is to see you at work, my darling,” purred Anastasia. “Your little tango has the knickers of
tout le monde
in a tangle! The passion! The drama! Everyone is calling.”