“So you saw me inside,” Izzy said.
“Probably.”
Izzy shivered. What kind of an answer was that? It was so creepily vague. “Look,” she said. “You’re starting to freak me out a little.”
“Sorry. I just wanted to meet you, hear what your voice sounded like—that’s all. I didn’t mean to upset you. You can go back inside or wherever you were going. I won’t bother you.”
Izzy started to relax then. Now she thought she knew what he was doing out here, waiting for her.
He’d seen her inside and was trying to work his way around to asking for a date.
“What’s your name?” she asked.
“Mizaun.”
“I’m sorry,” Izzy said, leaning forward a little. “What did you say?”
“Call me John.”
Izzy frowned. The first thing he’d said hadn’t sound at all like “call me John.”
“Well, John,” she said. “Being mysterious and everything’s kind of interesting—I’ll give you that—but considering what happened a couple of nights ago, it’s not exactly all that endearing at the moment, if you know what I mean.” The figure in the shadows shook his head. “What happened two nights ago?”
“You don’t know? What planet did you beam down from tonight anyway—Mars?”
He hesitated for the length of a few heartbeats, then said, “I’m not sure I understand the question.”
Oh boy, Izzy thought. Maybe it was time to reevaluate the idea that he wanted a date.
“This is getting a little too weird for me,” she began. “Maybe we should just forget about—”
Before she could finish, the door to the library opened and two girls came out, a brunette and a blonde, chatting to each other, books bundled up against their chests. Izzy stepped aside to let them pass by, but when she turned back to where her mysterious companion had been standing in the shadows, he wasn’t there anymore. Alarm bells went off in her mind.
“Hey!” she called to the departing girls. When they paused to look back at her, she added, “Are you going as far as Lee Street?”
“Just as far as the bus stop at the Green,” the blonde said.
“Mind if I walk with you?”
“Not at all.”
“Great. I’m kind of nervous of walking over the common by myself tonight.”
“I know exactly what you mean,” the brunette confided when Izzy joined them. “Everything feels a little weird after what happened the other night.”
Izzy looked back at the library steps, but they were still empty. Where had he gone? Hopped over the wall into the vegetation that grew on either side of the steps? But then why hadn’t she heard him moving in the bushes?
“You’re telling me,” she said slowly.
Her nerves felt all on edge and she realized that she wasn’t at all tired anymore. Or hungry. The strange encounter had stolen both her fatigue and her appetite. She was never so glad to be in her apartment as she was that night, even if Kathy was out for another hour before she returned home as well.
“Oh yuck,” Kathy said after Izzy related what had happened to her. “You’re giving me goose bumps.”
“Do you think he was dangerous?” Izzy asked.
“Jeez, that’s a hard call. But let me assure you, I would’ve done exactly the same thing you did.
There’s no way I would’ve stuck around to find out. Uh-uh.
“No, of course not,” Izzy said thoughtfully.
Kathy had to shake her head. “Oh, ma belle Izzy. Don’t start romanticizing it.”
“I’m not. It’s just ...”
“Just what?”
Call me John. Not “my name is John.”
“I don’t know,” Izzy said. “I guess I just felt like I knew him from somewhere.”
Kathy sprawled out on the cushions under the window and laced her fingers behind her head. “Let’s see now,” she said. “You said that he didn’t strike you as either threatening or shy—right?”
Izzy nodded.
“Well, then how did he strike you?”
Izzy had to think about it for a moment. “Odd, I guess,” she said finally.
“And maybe a little lost. Like he was a stranger, still trying to get his bearings.” Kathy started to play an imaginary violin until Izzy threw a pillow at her. “Be serious,” Izzy said.
“I’m seriously glad you took off when you did,” Kathy told her. “I’m just not all that keen on hearing you mooning over this guy. You don’t know anything about him except that he hangs around outside the library, giving people the willies.”
“If it was all innocent—”
“And he can make a good exit.”
Izzy sighed. “I suppose. But I can’t help but wonder if the reason it all seemed so weird is because of what happened to Rochelle. I mean, everybody’s been feeling weird lately.”
“And no wonder.”
“But if what happened to Rochelle colored something that was perfectly harmless—”
“Oh please,” Kathy said. “You don’t even know what he looks like. Maybe he was hiding in the shadows because he’s got a face like a toad.”
“You like toads,” Izzy pointed out.
“This is true, but for themselves—not as a frame of reference for a potential boyfriend’s features.”
Izzy’s face went red. “I never said—”
“I know, I know. Just do me a favor. The next time you talk to him, do it in a crowd.”
“If I get the choice.”
Kathy nodded. “If he’s as interested in you as you are in him—hold on, let me finish,” she added as Izzy started to protest, “then you can be sure he’ll be approaching you again. And if he’s got any kind of smarts whatsoever, he’ll do it at a more appropriate time, like the middle of the day when there’s lots of people around. If he doesn’t, my advice is: run.”
“Advice duly noted and to be followed,” Izzy said.
“Good. Now ask me about my night.”
“How was your night?”
“Borrrring,” Kathy said. “Alan and I went to a poetry reading at The Stone Angel and I honestly didn’t think we’d get out of there before our brains had turned to mush.”
“I thought you guys liked poetry.”
“We do. But this wasn’t poetry. It was more like—” Kathy grinned suddenly, “—posery.”
After two years of being roommates, by now Izzy was used to the way Kathy liked to coin words.
“Which means?” she asked.
“They were more interested in the way they looked—in being ‘poets’—than the content of their work. Except for this one girl—Wendy something-or-other. I didn’t quite catch her name and she left before I had a chance to talk to her. She was good.”
They stayed up a little while longer, talking over a pot of tea before finally calling it quits around midnight. When Izzy finally fell asleep that night, she didn’t dream of ruined paintings, but of a shadowy figure who stayed out of the light and called himselfJohn. She woke up wondering when, or indeed if, she’d ever see him again, not at all sure that she was even looking forward to another encounter with him in the first place.
XI
But Izzy didn’t have to wait all that long to find out how she’d feel. The next morning as she was coming down the lane toward Rushkin’s studio, she spied John again, a lean shape in a white T-shirt and jeans, lounging against the stone wall a hundred yards or so farther down the lane on the far side of the coach house. She hesitated briefly, then continued past the coach house, coming to a sudden halt when she was a half-dozen yards away from him. She’d stopped more from shock than from any fear of his harming her.
He smiled, but looked a little uncertain as to his welcome.
“Hello, again,” he said as the long moment of silence continued to stretch out between them.
All Izzy could do was stare at him. Last night’s feeling of familiarity had returned in a rush, but it was no longer vague. She knew those broad,
flat features, those dark eyes, that spill of long black hair.
“This is so weird,” she said finally. “You look exactly like the guy in the painting I just finished yesterday.”
Right down to the small silver earring shaped like a feather that dangled from his left earlobe. The resemblance was so uncanny she couldn’t suppress a shiver.
“Really?” he said. “I’d love to see it.”
Izzy turned to give the coach house a glance, then brought her gaze back to her companion’s handsome features. “Maybe some other time. My teacher doesn’t much care for visitors.” She paused, still off-balance, still trying to sort through what she was feeling. To cover her uneasiness, she added,
“Aren’t you cold?”
“Maybe a little.”
“Then why don’t you wear some warmer clothing?”
He shrugged. “This is all I have.”
“Oh.”
She still couldn’t get over the way he was exactly like the painting. It wasn’t that he bore a resemblance to the young man she’d used as a basic model for the pose rendered on her canvas; no, he was exactly like the man in her painting.
“There’s a used clothing place on Lee near the corner of Quinlan,” she found herself saying. “Rags and Bones. I was in there the other day and they had some really cheap jackets, you know, for like under five dollars.”
He smiled. “I don’t have any money, either.”
Izzy remembered an article she’d read in The Newford Star recently about the abject poverty on the Kickaha reserve. God, and she thought she had trouble paying her tuition and making her rent. Here was someone who couldn’t even afford a warm shirt or jacket.
“Um, I guess you’d,” she began, hesitated, then started again. “Would you be insulted if I spotted you the money to get yourself one?”
“That depends,” he said.
“On what?”
“On whether or not I can see you again.”
He gave her another smile and that, she realized, was the one thing she hadn’t gotten quite right in her painting. His was a smile that was utterly guileless, that spoke of the pure joy of simply being alive and breathing the crisp autumn air, jacket or no jacket, never mind the cold.
“Well?” he said.
Oh boy, Izzy thought. Like you have to ask. Then she remembered how Kathy’d been teasing her the night before and felt herself starting to blush. She wondered if he’d noticed, which made the flush rising up her neck grow hotter, then realized that he was still waiting for her to answer him.
“Urn, sure,” she said. “Maybe we could have dinner tonight. Do you know Perry’s Diner? It’s also on Lee.”
“No, but I can find it.”
“Around six?”
“Sounds fine.”
Feeling a little awkward, Izzy dug out her wallet. All she had was a pair of tens, so she handed one of them over to him.
“Thanks,” he said. “I’ll bring you the change.”
“Sure. Whatever. Just get yourself something warm.” Izzy glanced back at the coach house and this time she saw Rushkin standing at his window, watching them. “Look,” she added. “I’ve really got to run. I’ll see you tonight—okay?”
He nodded.
“My name’s Izzy,” she said before she left. “Isabelle, actually.”
“I know.”
“Oh.” How did he know?
This time he was the one to look up at the coach house. “I’ll see you tonight,” he said, his gaze dropping back down to meet hers once more. “Be careful, Isabelle.”
“What do you mean by ... ?” Izzy began, but he’d already turned away and was walking off down the lane as though he hadn’t heard her. She started to call after him, but then shook her head. She’d ask him tonight. There were a lot of things she was going to ask him tonight. She wondered how many straight answers she’d get, and then realized that she didn’t really care. The whole mystery of it was sort of fun. His resemblance to her painting, the way he just kept showing up, the way everything he said seemed so ... so ambiguous. She remembered how he’d frightened her last night, but she didn’t feel he was at all scary anymore. Odd, yes. And he still seemed a little lost. But any fear she’d felt toward him was gone.
She was humming happily to herself by the time she climbed the stairs up to the studio. Tonight was going to be fun.
XII
Who was that?” Rushkin demanded.
“Just this guy I met last night,” Izzy replied.
She took off her coat and hung it on a nail by the door, then walked over to her easel where The Spirit Is Strong was still drying. Yes. Except for the smile, he was exactly the same.
“But it’s so strange,” she went on. “He looks just like the fellow in my painting here.”
“You must not see him again.”
“What?”
Izzy had been so taken with her encounter in the lane earlier, and in subsequently comparing John to her painting, that she hadn’t really been paying much attention to Rushkin since she’d arrived. She looked up now to see him glowering at her. The fear that had been absent when she’d met John returned now, but John wasn’t the cause of it.
“I ... I’m sorry,” Izzy said. “I didn’t mean to be rude.”
And as she spoke, she could hear the last thing John had said to her, the words echoing in her mind: Be careful, Isabelle.— What did he know?
The anger left Rushkin’s face, not without some obvious effort upon his part to calm down. He regarded her now with what was merely a stern expression, but Izzy was unable to relax. She stuck her hands in her pockets to keep them from trembling.
“Do you remember what I told you about angels and monsters?” he asked.
Izzy nodded slowly. “But what’s that got to do with anything?”
“It has to do with everything,” Rushkin replied. “Come, let us sit down.”
He led the way to the windowseat, where Izzy had seen him standing earlier. The bunched knots in Izzy’s neck and shoulders started to ease when she realized that they were only going to talk. She gave the lane a hopeful glance as she sat down, but John was long gone. Although Rushkin noted what she was doing, he made no comment.
“The ancient Hellenes,” he said instead, “believed in the Garden of the Muses as well.”
“The who?” Izzy said, not wanting to break in, but also wanting to make sure she knew what they were talking about. There were often times when the train of Rushkin’s conversation grew so arcane that she was left more confused after they’d talked than before they’d begun.
Rushkin didn’t take offense at the interruption. “The Greeks. They themselves never used the word
‘Greeks.’ That was a Roman invention.”
“Oh.”
“They considered themselves to be descendants of Hellen, the son of Deucalion, the Greek Noah.
When he navigated his ark and landed his passengers on the top of Mount Parnassus, he brought them to the heart of the Garden of the Muses—the home of Apollo. Now one can either take such a story at face value, or consider it a metaphor, but what can’t be denied is that the Hellenes believed that the world abounded in deities, all of whom had their place of origin in this holy garden.”
“Sort of like Eden?” Izzy tried.
Rushkin shook his head. “No one was cast out of this garden. Its inhabitants were free to come and go as they pleased between it and our world. We might call them spirits and the Hellenes believed that they touched upon every facet of our lives. Every country lane and mountain, every river and tree had its own spirit with which we might commune. Every endeavor of man had its patron spirit.”
Although her grasp of classical mythology was undoubtedly not on a par with Rushkin’s, Izzy at least didn’t feel quite so lost. Yet.
“It was through their arts,” Rushkin continued, “they could call these spirits to them. Their presence was considered a great blessing—which we can still see from the stunning display of art that the Hellenes
left behind—but those spirits were also responsible for the great wars between the Greeks and the Persians and that which finally decimated their culture, when they went to war with Lacedaemonians—you might know them better as the Spartans.”
Izzy nodded in agreement. She had heard of Sparta, though she’d always been a little fuzzy on the context beyond an adjectival use to describe austere lifestyles.
“Before their downfall,” Rushkin went on, “from artists of great genius to merchants trading in commodities which only happened to be art, theirs was an era of glory; their art, the perfect marriage between inspiration and technique. We have had too few of them in the history of the human race.”
“And ... and this is another?” Izzy asked, wondering if that was what he was leading up to. Living on Waterhouse Street as she did, and from the explosion in all fields of the arts that had begun at the tail end of the sixties, she could easily believe it.
But Rushkin shook his head. “No. I waited forty years to find someone who had the potential to learn and use this gift. It might be another forty years, or even longer, before another could be found. But that will be your concern, not mine.”
“My concern.”
“When the time comes for you to pass on the knowledge I am giving you.”
Izzy wasn’t so sure she was at all interested in teaching anybody anything, but she gave a dutiful, if uncertain, nod of agreement. Rushkin fixed her with a long, considering look before he finally finished up with, “So you see why we must take such great care as to what spirits we invite into this world with our art.”
Now that, Izzy thought, seemed to come right out of left field and all she could do was shake her head. “I’m sorry,” she said, “but I don’t see it at all. What do the ancient Greeks or Hellenes or whatever you want to call them—what do their beliefs have to do with us?”
“They made the same covenant with the spirits from beyond that we do,” Rushkin explained. “As the Hellenes did, we connect with those spirits through our art; if they agree with our renderings of them, the art allows them to cross over.”
“You’re talking about real ... what? Ghosts? Spirits?”
“Yes,” Rushkin said patiently. “Angels and monsters. Beings capable of leaving great good in their wake, but also those that may leave great evil.”
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