Burnt Sienna

by David Morrell

  “I think I’m missing something here.”

  “No, I don’t believe you are. I think you know exactly what’s going on.”

  Christ, does he know I’m working with Jeb? Malone wondered. Bluff, he warned himself. He couldn’t assume anything. He didn’t dare risk showing even the slightest sign of having been caught at anything. “Just so there’s no confusion, why don’t you be explicit?”

  “Do you think I’m a fool?”

  “Never.”

  “Did you think I wouldn’t know the effect it would have on you to be with my wife all day every day? Did you think I wouldn’t expect you to be attracted to her when she took her clothes off? I knew you wouldn’t be able to keep from imagining what it would be like to make love to her.”

  Malone’s heart pounded less violently. So this wasn’t about Jeb. “You’ve got the wrong idea about —”

  “Shut up. I want you to understand something very clearly. I can’t control what you feel when you’re with my wife. But if you ever act on those feelings, if you ever touch her in a way that’s more than what I saw a while ago, if you ever react to her more than an artist merely giving comfort to his model, I’ll drag you back here and … My wife belongs to me. I don’t like people touching what I own. Is that clear?”

  “Very.”

  “You’re certain you understand?”

  “Absolutely.”

  Bellasar swung the barrel back toward the village and squeezed the trigger, atomizing the walls of several buildings, until the last round fed through the firing mechanism and the gun became lifeless. He glared toward the ruins, a tremble working through him, but not from the effect of the massive recoil. When he finally spoke, his voice was tight. “Now get the hell back to work.”

  5

  “I’m sorry.”

  Malone looked up from a sketch he was doing from memory. Sienna stood at the entrance to the sunroom. He wouldn’t have thought it possible for someone whose face had been so ravaged by tears to repair the damage in such a short time. She wore a loose pullover and a similar ankle-length skirt, both of them a blue that reminded him of the jade of the Caribbean that he had loved to look at from the beach of his home on Cozumel. Had loved, he emphasized to himself. Even though Bellasar had promised to return the property to its original condition, Malone would never go near it again.

  “What are you sorry about?” he asked.

  “Making a scene.”

  “You didn’t make a scene. Your husband did.”

  “No. I apologize for being unprofessional. We both had jobs to do. I didn’t approach mine very well.”

  “It’s not a big deal. We had some issues to work out.”

  “And now that they’ve been settled …” Sienna gripped the bottom of her pullover and started to raise it over her head.

  “Stop.”

  “I don’t want to make Derek any angrier than he is. You’ve never seen him when he’s truly upset. We have to do this second portrait. The sooner the better.”

  “Sit down.”

  “Is that how you want to pose me?”

  “It’s where I want you to relax a minute while I talk to you.”

  “No, please, we have to work. If Derek thinks we’re wasting time, he’ll —”

  Malone’s muscles tightened. “I’m the one doing the portrait. Let me worry about your husband. I want you to sit down. Please.”

  Sienna peered nervously toward the door. Hesitant, she did what she was asked.

  Malone brought over a second chair. Straddling it, resting his arms on its back, he hoped that his casual movements would put her at ease. He spoke softly. “When your husband came in this morning, he said you looked the way you did when he first saw you in Milan. He said you weren’t photographable then.”

  Sienna peered down at her hands.

  “What was he talking about?” Malone asked.

  Something in her eyes went somewhere else. She was silent for so long that Malone didn’t think she was going to answer.

  “That was a bad time for me,” she said.

  “When was this?”

  “Five years ago.”

  Malone waited.

  “I …”

  Malone gave her an encouraging look.

  “You have to understand …” She took a deep breath. “Models are the most insecure women you’ll ever meet.”

  Malone didn’t respond, afraid that if he said anything, he might make her too self-conscious to keep talking.

  “We keep trying to assure ourselves that we’re more than just a beautiful package. We worry about aging. We’re always afraid that our best days are behind us.”

  Malone forced himself to remain silent.

  “Oh, there are exceptions. But I wasn’t one of them. Imagine what it’s like to have to stay so thin that if you eat even a small amount, the camera shows the bulge in your stomach. To go as long as you can without eating. Or to eat and then make yourself throw up. Along the way, you try a little cocaine. It doesn’t put on any weight, and for a while, it makes you feel better about yourself, so you try a little more, and meanwhile, with so many people trying to manipulate you, you hope for a man, stronger than the others, to help you get your life together. But when you think you’ve found him, he turns out to be a son of a bitch who wants to control everything you do, and …”

  Sienna had spoken faster and faster, and now all of a sudden she seemed to realize that Malone was before her.

  He took the risk of saying something. “Tell me what your husband meant about your face not being photographable back then.”

  “I’d been eating so little, I finally got too thin even for the camera. Worse, the cocaine had put a permanent glaze in my eyes. Worse than that, the man I was living with had split my lip and given me two black eyes.”

  Malone felt sick.

  Her hands fidgeted. “This happened in Milan. I was there for the fall shows, but after I got beaten up, I obviously couldn’t work. I stayed in my hotel room while the guy I was with went out to screw everything in sight, and the next thing I knew, there was a knock at the door. When I opened it, Derek was standing there. I’ll never forget it. He was wearing a tuxedo and holding red roses. In my blur from the cocaine, I frowned at that handsome tan face, and I swear, for a moment I thought he was Rossano Brazzi, that Italian actor. I have no idea how he knew where I was or what had been done to me. He put a hand under my chin and said, ‘I’ve come to take care of you. Don’t bother packing. Just get your coat and come with me.’ I blinked. I nodded. I didn’t even bother with the coat. I just shut the door behind me and went down to his limousine.”

  “But you told me you had a loving family. Why would you have been insecure?”

  “I didn’t say I had a loving family, only loving parents.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  Sienna swallowed. “After my parents died when I was twelve, I was sent to live with my uncle. He couldn’t keep his hands off me. Whenever his wife wasn’t around, he’d try to …”

  Malone tasted bile.

  “A couple of times he forced me to …”

  “Jesus.”

  “He warned me that if I told anybody, he’d throw me out. I’d be sleeping in the gutter, he said. I couldn’t concentrate. I did poorly in school. I cried myself to sleep. Finally, I retreated into a fantasy world. All I did was read fashion magazines and fantasize about being a model and having a glamorous life. This went on until my sixteenth birthday. When he snuck into my room again, I screamed that I wasn’t going to do it anymore. I woke up his wife and kids. My aunt wouldn’t believe what I said had been happening. He beat me black-and-blue for telling what he claimed were lies about him. I hurt so much, I had to stay in bed for two days. The third day, while they were at work, I stole money from under the flour jar, where I knew my aunt hid it from him. I hoped she’d think he’d found it and taken it to buy booze. I packed a bag and took a bus to Chicago, where I lived in a boardinghouse and worked at every rotten job y
ou can imagine. But I never stopped dreaming about becoming one of those women in the fashion magazines. I found a company that gave modeling classes at night. I worked as hard as anybody can imagine to make good on my dream. And by God, from modeling for underwear ads in the newspaper, to doing swimsuit ads in catalogs, to appearing in Vogue, to doing covers for it and Cosmopolitan and every other major fashion magazine you can think of, I finally got what I wanted. The only trouble was, it wasn’t what I’d dreamed of. It wasn’t glamorous. It was a meat market.”

  “What happened when you went away with Bellasar?”

  “In the limousine, as we drove to the airport, he looked at the bruises on my face. He told me he couldn’t let beauty be destroyed. He said he was going to make sure no one ever harmed my face again and that I never harmed myself, either. He brought me here. He had a plastic surgeon waiting to make sure the injuries to my face wouldn’t leave scars. He had a medical team detoxify me. He had a psychologist who specialized in eating disorders cure me of thinking food was my enemy. It took six months before the results met with Derek’s approval. He was so proud. He’d created me, he said. He’d walk around me, study me from all angles, beam, and say that my beauty wouldn’t have existed without him.” She shrugged wearily. “He was right. At the downward rate I was going, I’d have been dead in the time he took to resurrect me.”

  “So he gave you what you needed. Finally, you had someone to take care of you.”

  “Until three months ago.”

  Malone frowned. “What happened then?”

  “He came back from a business trip, and all of a sudden he’d changed. He complained about the start of wrinkles at the corners of my eyes. He claimed he saw a strand of gray in my hair. He warned me to stop being expressive with my face — the movement was starting to cause furrows in my brow, he said. I kept asking myself what had happened on that business trip to make him change. Had he fallen in love with another woman? When I raised the issue with him, it made him furious. He told me I was imagining things, that I had to get control of myself. I had my hair dyed, had facial scrubs, did whatever I thought would please him. But he only became more impatient with me. Nothing I did was good enough. I began to look forward to his trips away. They gave me a measure of peace. But each time he came back, he was even more critical.”

  Malone opened his mouth to reassure her and abruptly stopped as something behind him made Sienna stiffen.

  She jerked to her feet. “Honestly, Derek, we’re just talking about how to pose me. We’re just about to start working. I swear it.”

  Bellasar stood in the doorway. “We’re flying to Istanbul. Be ready at five.” He narrowed his gaze toward Malone. “You have two weeks to finish your work.”

  “That might not be enough time.”

  “Make it enough.”

  “When I agreed to do the portraits, I told you I had to do them on my terms. You accepted those conditions.”

  “The conditions have changed.”

  “How am I supposed to work without a model? How long will Sienna be away?”

  “As long as necessary.”

  “Well, the longer she’s gone, the longer it’ll take me to finish.”

  Bellasar’s eyes darkened. “I’m beginning to agree with Alex. It was a mistake to get involved with you. Five o’clock.” He turned angrily and left the room.

  Watching him cross the terrace, Sienna shivered. “What time is it?”

  “A little after three.”

  “God, that doesn’t give me enough time.”

  As she stood, Malone asked, “What’s in Istanbul? What’s so important?”

  Her voice was tight. “Whenever this happens, it’s business. Several of Derek’s clients enjoy spending time with me. Derek has an easier time negotiating with them because I’m around.”

  Malone nodded. Sure, Bellasar would be a bigger man in their eyes because he was married to a woman so beautiful.

  “I can’t talk any longer.”

  As she hurried away, Malone continued his thought. Yes, so much beauty might dazzle a client, might subtly affect his judgment. But what about when that beauty developed flaws? Bad for business. Bad for the rigid standards of a husband who couldn’t settle for less than perfection. Bad all the way around. When someone stopped fulfilling a necessary function, a replacement had to be found.

  6

  The sun was low enough to throw the terrace into shadow, but not enough that it didn’t cause a reflection off the spinning blades of a helicopter. Malone watched as Sienna, Bellasar, Potter, and three bodyguards got into it. She wore an elegant suit, her hair impeccably arranged. Even from a distance, her beauty was overwhelming, but also from that distance, Malone was able to tell how reluctantly she got into the chopper. In fact, she had the manner of a well-dressed prisoner being taken to a trial. Or to a funeral.

  The metaphor made him uneasy. As the helicopter roared away, he felt a stab of separation.

  | Go to Contents |

  FIVE

  1

  Accustomed to cocktails with Sienna each evening at seven, Malone was more uneasy as that hour approached. I would have started down to the library by now, he thought. Instead, he roamed those sections of the grounds permitted to him, a frustrated animal trying to relieve tension. When sunset finally tinted the shrubs, statues, and ponds of the estate, he decided that he ought to try to eat something, but sitting alone at the long candlelit table, he only poked at the veal cutlets that had been prepared for him. He couldn’t stop wondering where Sienna was and what she was doing.

  If she was still alive.

  He had a sudden harrowing image of Bellasar hurling her from the chopper, of her body crashing onto rocks, or of Potter blowing her brains out and dumping her into the sea. No! he kept telling himself. Bellasar’s manner suggested that he needs her. For now at least. The crisis won’t come until after Istanbul.

  He slept fitfully. In the morning, trying to subdue his mind, he extended his calisthenics from one to two hours, but his fear for Sienna intensified. He went to the sunroom and spread out his sketches, gazing at her features. Drawing her from memory, he imagined that she was seated before him, talking to him.

  He went to the library. Smelling the must of its ancient volumes, he crossed the carpet to the far wall and climbed a ladder to the middle shelves. It was toward them that Bellasar had gestured the evening the portrait had been unveiled, the evening Bellasar had compared Sienna to Dante’s Beatrice, the inspiration for the Divine Comedy. “If you’re curious about Dante and Beatrice, Rossetti translated Dante’s autobiography,” Bellasar had said. “You’ll find an 1861 edition of Dante and His Circle over there …”

  Bellasar had said something else: that Beatrice had died young and that Dante had obsessed about her ever after. Malone couldn’t avoid the insistent comparison: Is Sienna going to die young?

  I’ve got to stop thinking about death.

  Because the books were arranged alphabetically by author, he had no trouble finding the volume he wanted. In the process, he thought it curious that Rossetti’s first name was Dante, the same as the poet whose autobiography he had translated. He sat in a leather chair, opened the book, and came to the first time Dante had seen Beatrice.

  Her dress, on that day, was of a most noble colour, a subdued and goodly crimson.… At that moment, I say most truly that the spirit of life, which hath its dwelling in the secretest chamber of the heart, began to tremble so violently that the least pulses of my body shook.

  Yes, Malone thought.

  2

  Two nights later, Sienna still hadn’t returned.

  Malone lay tensely on his bed, listening to the sounds of guards patrolling in the darkness beyond his window. The intervening slow passage of time had been agonizing, but it had given him a chance to plan.

  Rosetti’s translation of Dante lay open before him.

  The same wonderful lady appeared to me dressed all in pure white.… Because it was the first time that any words f
rom her reached mine ears, I came into such sweetness that I parted thence as one intoxicated.

  Sweat beaded his brow. He went into the bathroom, rinsed his face with cold water, then shut off the lights in his room and went over to the window across from his bed, watching the shadows and floodlights on the gardens and paths.

  A glance at his watch showed that the time was almost midnight. In a few moments, a guard would appear on the right and walk along a white-pebbled path in the middle, his boots making crunching sounds. Malone shifted next to the window, where not even his shadow would be seen. He waited.

  There. The sound of boot steps preceding him, the guard came into view. Malone nodded. Ten minutes later, another guard would appear, this one on the left. Five minutes after that, a third guard would become visible from beyond the changing rooms at the swimming pool, heading toward the chopper pads. The schedule hadn’t varied in the weeks since Malone had noted it.

  He picked up the book and left his room. The dimly lit corridor was deserted. His footsteps made no sound on the runner that covered the floor. He reached the top of the curving staircase, started down, and heard boot steps on the marble floor below as a guard emerged from a room on the right, watching him descend.

  “Couldn’t sleep.” Malone showed the guard the book. “I came to get another.”

  The guard looked puzzled by the notion of finishing one book and wanting to read more.

  Malone didn’t linger to talk about it. He went along the corridor on the left and opened the library door. In the darkness that faced him, the room had a smothering staleness that reminded him of the funeral parlor in which his grandfather’s body had lain. The only thing missing was the cloying scent of too many flowers.

  Stop thinking that way, Malone warned himself.

  He flicked a switch on his left, blinked from the glare of the overhead light, and closed the door behind him. The books were arranged not only by author but in categories: fiction, nonfiction, and reference, the latter on the right.