The Chalk Artist

by Allegra Goodman

  Collin nodded, but the verdict cut deep. He had never been sentimental about his art. He had erased his own work with freedom and with joy, but this was different. He had worked so long on these bright horses, invested so much of himself—and he had not been the one to wipe the board.

  Phone in hand, he stood that evening in the parking lot and texted Nina, Im fine working late. He was okay, just as Nicholas had said, but he couldn’t talk to her. He had to absorb the shock, along with his new assignment.

  —

  He would work on UnderWorld’s Flamethrowers, evil Amazonian women guarding treasure in UnderWorld’s Sixth Circle. Testers had reported that these characters looked too much like elves. Collin had to make them scarier.

  “Condolences,” Daphne told him the next day. It was as if he’d been demoted to a janitor, cleaning up other people’s work.

  “I don’t care.”

  She pretended to believe him.

  With numb determination he drew the Flamethrowers and their fiery arrows. His heart wasn’t in it, but he forced himself, working for weeks to make the women nastier, sharpening features, drawing snarling faces. He even tried Peter’s trick of bloody eyes. Peter rejected every iteration, and responded to the red eyes with contempt. “You’re painting by number now, and that’s just desperate.”

  Discouraged, Collin took his slate and scrolled through his old work. He saw all the faults that Peter found and more. Crude Flamethrowers and pretty horses, thoughtless cartoons. He was a copyist, just as Peter had predicted. His art was superficial, glib.

  Nina said, Don’t let Peter mess with you. Her uncle was harsh, unreasonable. She pleaded, Don’t believe him. None of this meant anything to Collin. In fact, her exhortations made him feel worse. He would rather talk to Nicholas, who said, Shit happens. He would rather play Daphne, dueling late at night with broadswords. For the first time, Collin avoided Nina. He used work as an excuse, and when she asked about Arkadia, he picked a fight or pushed her away. He said, Don’t tell me what to do.

  Offended, Nina drew back. Her own days weren’t easy. Her kids were rowdy, and she had her evaluation coming—observations and online surveys of her students. She wanted to confide in Collin as she had before, but she held back because he had so much going on. This too will pass, she told herself. She would teach and he would find his way. Therefore, she didn’t offer help, nor did she come with Collin to the hellions’ Halloween party. She didn’t trust herself to see Peter without losing her temper, so she stayed home.

  Collin’s roommates were not so reticent.

  “Take us with you!” Emma said, as Collin set out for Peter’s house.

  “It’s hellions only.”

  Darius handed him a stack of Theater Without Walls postcards. “Disseminate!” The company was staging The Importance of Being Earnest at South Station, with the audience convening on one platform and then departing on two different trains.

  Collin shoved the postcards into his jacket pocket.

  “Seriously. Pass those around.”

  “It’s the least you can do,” Emma pointed out.

  Collin said, “People at this party don’t care about plays.”

  “What are you talking about?” Darius exclaimed. “Videogames are us. Games are plays.”

  Collin began wheeling his bike out the door.

  “Don’t be jaded,” Darius said.

  “I’m not jaded. I’m late.”

  Darius called after Collin, “If they need actors for UnderWorld, we’re available!”

  Collin jumped on his bike. “They already recorded all the voices.”

  Across the shining river, through the looking glass to Boston, Collin sped toward Joy Street. The wind was harsh, but it felt good to travel to a new place, neither Cambridge nor Arkadia. He was nervous but curious as well, crossing the bridge into Peter’s city, with its gas lamps and cobblestone streets.

  Peter lived in a pair of townhouses, catercornered. One faced Joy, and the other faced Myrtle, and they shared a basement, like conjoined twins. There were two sets of windows, and two front doors, but the windows were all curtained, and both doors closed. Locking his bike to a lamppost, Collin eyed the Myrtle Street entrance. A bouncer stood on Peter’s steps. He was a massive man with short arms and a little derby hat.

  “Name?”

  “Collin James.”

  Officiously, the bouncer scrolled down on his tablet. “You’re not on the list.”

  “Yes I am. I’m from Arkadia.”

  “You aren’t here.”

  Collin felt a prick of anxiety. Then he said, “Were you looking under C for Collin, or J for James?”

  The bouncer opened the door, releasing a tidal wave of sound.

  Walls pulsed with laughter and with music, and it was dark, the entryway cavernous, shrouded in mist.

  As his eyes adjusted, Collin found himself at the foot of a grand staircase with a body splayed across the bottom. A woman in a ripped ball gown lay quite still, her body painted white, blood trickling from the corner of her mouth. Nimbly, caterers stepped around her. In the next room, guests posed for pictures with another dead body languishing on Peter’s velvet couch.

  The furniture was dark and battered, fantastic, unrestored. Velvet upholstery split at the seams, leather crazed and cracked, rough to the touch. A pair of gilt clocks on Peter’s mantelpiece stood motionless, hands stopped, but the effect was lively, nothing like a morgue. The whole place thrummed with song and shouted conversation, bartenders in every corner. He saw the Dresden Dolls, the actual Dolls, in matching corsets, pounding drums and electric keyboard.

  Animators crowded the dance floor—colleagues Collin saw each day at meetings, solving problems, scrumming together. They looked ghostly now, in slippery black gowns and feathered masks, black lipstick, fangs. The pudgiest programmers seemed ethereal in flickering candlelight. Like night-blooming flowers, they came into their own, singing together—“Coin. Operated boy. Coin. Operated boy”—louder and louder, with pedantic glee.

  Drink in hand, Collin scanned the crowd for Peter, but couldn’t find him. Maybe he didn’t come to his own parties. Maybe he just wound them up and hid somewhere to watch.

  A tarnished mirror leaned against the wall. Collin recognized that mirror, the model or dilapidated cousin of the Magic Glass in EverWhen. When Collin touched the surface he half expected it to dimple and then melt, a watery portal to the Trackless Wood.

  Peter was everywhere, even when you couldn’t find him. He had changed each room into a theater. Aeroflakes transformed the paneled library into a forest of shifting autumn leaves, and Obi and Akosh were gaming there. Obi was a Fire Elf breaking a path, cutting through underbrush with his ax. Akosh was a falcon. Like a dancer, he gestured with his hands and wrists, flying his avatar above his head. At a little distance, Collin discovered Peter watching every move.

  “Welcome.” Peter turned to Collin as if he were sharing a particularly lovely view. “What do you think of falcons in the round?”

  Together they watched the falcon soaring and dipping between trees. Collin kept thinking Peter would leave, but he was in a rare mood, gazing at the colors haloing Akosh and Obi.

  Collin ventured, “What if Akosh could do more than fly? What if he could see like a falcon too? He’d have this incredible vision where suddenly every detail was magnified twenty times. The whole game would shift to his point of view.”

  Intrigued, Peter glanced at Collin, who seized the moment. “You’d be swooping through the air but you could see your prey down on the forest floor and every clue, and every crevice. You’d see it all so fast.”

  “That would be terrifying,” Peter said.

  He could be gracious, acknowledging your contribution. He could be generous. He had opened his grand home, draping windows with the softest, darkest velvet, adorning his marble mantelpieces with prosthetic limbs, filling each room with a different food or drink, a raw bar in the parlor, a dim sum station in the breakfast room. He had sta
ged this party with corpses that looked real, and flowers that seemed artificial. He’d filled great urns with protea—blossoms spiky green, and curling coral, and deep pink fringed with feathery black.

  “That’s beautiful,” Collin murmured as he watched night falling in the game.

  “You think so?” Peter pounced. “What’s beautiful about it?”

  Collin gazed at the deepening shadows. Lavender, lilac, indigo. “The colors.”

  “They’re boring,” Peter said. “They’re just what you’d expect.”

  Of course Collin saw his mistake. Once again, he’d made the easy, sentimental choice.

  Peter kept his eyes fixed on the game. “Let me give you some advice.”

  Collin waited.

  “Don’t rely on clichés. You aren’t good at them.”

  Dappled forest light played on Peter’s face, but he looked at Collin now. “That’s why you can’t get the Flamethrowers right. Are you tired of them?”

  You know I am, Collin shouted inwardly, but he said, “What would you suggest?”

  “Use your sketches of Daphne.”

  In all that noise and all that shifting light, Collin stood perfectly still. Peter spoke without rancor. He made his suggestion without heat, but Collin didn’t for an instant take Peter’s words as artistic advice. He heard them as a casual display of power: I know about your drawings; I know everything about you.

  “You do better when you draw from life,” Peter concluded as he walked away.

  The party was raging all around, but Collin heard only his own heartbeat. I know you, Peter had told him without words. I know you and I know that you’ve been drawing Daphne.

  But how did Peter know? Gazing through the doorway where Peter had gone, Collin saw a flash of white. Three steps and he had caught Daphne in the hall.

  She had no idea what was wrong as she laughed up at him. Her blue eyes were dark, almost black in the black shifting light. She was barefoot and she wore a sheer slip of a dress.

  “Come here,” he said.

  “Why?”

  Hand on her back, he steered her away from the dance floor.

  “I’m not drunk enough for this.”

  He hurried her out to the dark entryway.

  “It’s cold.” The stone floor chilled her feet.

  Collin didn’t listen. “You told Peter.”

  “What?”

  “You told Peter I drew you.”

  “I did not.”

  “Of course you did.”

  “I never told him anything!”

  “Tell the truth.”

  Playground-sincere, she said, “Cross my heart and hope to die.”

  Her mockery infuriated him. Either she had told Peter, or she had let him watch. He took her by the shoulders and demanded, “What is wrong with you?”

  “Nothing!”

  His hand tightened on her shoulder. “He saw us and you knew the whole time, and you never warned me.”

  “You’re hurting me.”

  He heard the fear in her voice and he let go. She saw her chance and slipped into the dark.

  The party burst apart. The corpse in the ripped ball gown sat on the stairs with a plate of calamari. The man impaled near the bar took to the dance floor with his ax protruding from his chest. Other cadavers mingled, dancing, laughing, rolling cigarettes.

  Hellions crowded the dining room with its massive table and carved chairs. As Peter spoke, those material objects began to change. Above the table a Japanese lantern waxed into a full moon in the gathering mist. Dead water pooled where Peter’s table had been. Stalagmites replaced chairs, and UnderWorld’s white bats swarmed overhead. In the confusion, it took a moment for the assembled animators to perceive a dead knight lying in the water.

  Collin edged closer to hear.

  “Those would have been our maggots.” Like a surgeon demonstrating in the operating theater, Peter pointed to the corpse with a red-tipped laser. Tiny silver worms were writhing in every open wound and orifice, consuming flesh inside ears and eye sockets, underneath the skin. “These would have been our rats.” Peter announced with grim satisfaction. He pointed to a crevice where a blind rat devoured her own pups.

  At first Collin didn’t understand. Then, gradually, he saw that Peter was displaying outtakes, gorgeous horrors he had cut from UnderWorld before the launch.

  A thundering of hooves, a crashing avalanche of stone, and all bats scattered as Collin’s horses broke through virtual stone. Watching his horses run together, Collin felt his heart shift. He was watching his horses and they weren’t pretty. They were earth shakers, storm raisers. How had Peter stolen Collin’s confidence? He had messed with Collin’s mind. He was messing with Collin even now.

  “These would have been our horses. We had to choose just one.”

  The herd raced past, tails streaming.

  “Look,” Akosh exclaimed. “There must be some way to use them.”

  “Murder your darlings,” Peter said.

  “Asshole,” Collin whispered. Fucking vampire. He pushed his way out of the dining room, past hellions deep in conversation. He skirted the dance floor and crossed virtual fields, stubble white with frost. He dodged dart games and turned away from tables of good food. He would not touch any of it. He took narrow stairs into a dark passageway. He kept moving away from the music. Suddenly, he realized he’d passed through to Peter’s other house.

  This twin house was grand, but empty and undecorated, dimly lit, with plaster peeling, windows covered with brown paper, floors bare and scuffed. In one room Collin saw mattresses upended and leaning against a wall, in another an old couch draped with a white drop cloth. Doors opened into empty rooms and narrow passageways. Desolate, confused, half dreaming, Collin imagined snow behind those doors, a lamppost in a wintry wood. Instead, he found dark closets and brick walls.

  “Are you looking for the way out?”

  He turned and saw Daphne sitting all alone in a small straight-backed chair. He had never seen her so quiet or so still. “I didn’t tell him,” she added.

  “How does he know, then?”

  “He has the sketches. He has everything.”

  “I deleted them. They don’t exist.”

  “Deleting doesn’t help. The system backs up every image. You know that!”

  Her words chilled him. He had known, but he had imagined some vast dump, electronic compost no one sorted. He had not pictured Peter collecting his discarded work. Every image, every version, every line.

  “I thought you didn’t care.”

  Peter hadn’t just heard about the drawings. He hadn’t just glanced at them. He owned them.

  “What’s going on?”

  She wouldn’t even look at him.

  He knelt down at her feet so he could see her face. “Tell me.”

  “Nothing to tell.”

  “Then why are you crying?”

  She glanced down at her own elaborately inked arms, and it seemed to him that her tears magnified and blurred her leaves.

  “Come on.” He took her hand. “It’s late.”

  Her words were lively, but her voice was sad. “No, it’s not. It’s early.”

  “You know what I mean. Let’s go.”

  She shook her head.

  “I’ll take you home.”

  “That’s just it,” she said. “I live here.”

  Fear mixed with anger as Collin fought his way through passages and crowded rooms to push open the front door. Confused images flashed before his eyes. His horses and Peter’s face, and Daphne’s tears. She lived with Peter. She was no longer obsessed or tangentially involved. Nor was she wild or independent, as she pretended. She lived in Peter’s house. She belonged to him.

  How different Peter’s past behavior seemed. Not just critical, but jealous. Not just impossible to please, but punishing. He had punished Collin with advice. I’ve got you. That’s what he’d been saying. I know what you have and I know what you want.

  There he was even now
. Standing outside on the steps, Collin opened a message from Peter on his phone. Subject: Flamethrowers. Attachment, a huge cache of sketches. Not just three or four, but every sketch of Daphne. Dozens of drawings, quick and slow, dressed, undressed. Peter had them all. He had been collecting them.

  Collin whirled around to stare at the closed door on Joy Street. This was a threat. This was Peter saying, I have your art—not just your art, but your ideas—and I can send them anywhere. He could send the sketches to Nina. He might have sent the file already.

  Collin sprang onto his bike and raced away. It did not occur to him that Peter would protect his niece from these pictures. Collin sped across the bridge with just one idea. He had to get to Nina first.

  Cold knifing his throat, legs burning, Collin didn’t stop to rest. He had to catch her before she left for school.

  He used his own key, took the elevator up, and rushed into her dark apartment.

  The rooms were still. At first he thought he was too late. Then he heard her stirring in the bedroom. “Collin?” She appeared in her big Hill School shirt. “What’s wrong?”

  “I thought I’d missed you.”

  “Why?”

  “Aren’t you supposed to be at school?”

  “It’s Saturday.”

  He sank onto the couch, and pulled her down next to him. It was the weekend and he hadn’t even realized. They had the whole morning, but she was wide awake now, and her laptop lay there on the table like a bomb.

  “What is it?”

  He wanted to say, Nothing—I just missed you; instead he forced himself to tell the truth. “I drew some sketches and I never showed them to you.”

  “Sketches of what?”

  “Peter got them, and he says that I should use them.”

  Nina looked at him and said, “You drew her, didn’t you?”

  “The thing you have to understand—”

  “Show me.”

  “I just wanted to tell you…they’re rough sketches. They weren’t…”

  She wasn’t having that. He didn’t get to talk about his drawings in the abstract. She handed him her laptop.

  Guilty and indignant, hating himself, but hating Peter more, he logged in and opened Peter’s message.