“No, she did not, and I informed her that I am not permitted to give out that kind of information. It violates the rules concerning student privacy.”
It’s obvious Mona has guessed this is the Iona Taylor, and it’s absolutely killing her that she can’t come right out and ask. “Thanks, I appreciate you looking out for me,” I say, and take the message from her.
Taysha doesn’t have anywhere near Mona’s restraint, because the second we exit the office, she plucks the pink paper out of my hand. “Iona Taylor? I knew you grew up in Beverly Hills, but—”
I don’t let her finish. “I might have grown up in Beverly Hills, but I didn’t ‘grow up’ in Beverly Hills.”
“Care to explain?”
“It’s not the same when your mom’s the help.”
Taysha blinks like she’s recalibrating what she thinks about me. I should have come clean weeks ago.
“You’re telling me your mom works for a Platinum Mom!”
I squirm, seeing people turn around to look at us. “Worked. Just for a little while.”
“What do you think she wants?”
“Don’t know. Don’t care.” Crap. Taysha’s never going to drop this.
“Iona Taylor’s a piece of work. Did you see the episode where she tore into her assistant, Lacy, over losing her designer dress?”
“Nope. Missed that one,” I toss back.
“She stormed around that big-ass kitchen of hers, yelling—” Taysha slams her hands down on an invisible counter and contorts her face into the one I’d see scream at Mom. “‘VAL-EN-TIN-O, VAL-EN-TIN-O. Can you not hear me? Where’s my VAL-EN-TIN-O?’”
My heart squeezes so hard I can barely breathe. “Yeah, sounds like Iona,” I manage to force out.
Poor Lacy. I glance at the restroom because I need to end this, but Taysha will just follow me in, so I dive for my phone. “Oh, gotta take this. See you later?”
I walk away, mumbling nonsense like “yeah” and “okay” while I walk down the ramp as if someone’s waiting for me outside. Then I duck around the side of the building behind what I think of as the flying chopstick sculpture.
The aluminum rods hover a foot off the ground. Strung on steel cables, they vibrate when a car goes by or a breeze hits.
I park my butt on the cement base. My stomach’s churning, because what did I expect would happen when Iona figured out I had her dress?
I kept thinking I’d return it. Toss the box with it over the gate and drive off. But weeks went by and I didn’t get around to it. And then when a cop warned me that I had twenty-four hours before my registration lapsed and I could lose my car to an impound lot, I did what I had to.
I took care of myself because no one else was going to.
I pull out my sketch pad and stare at the steel stairs spiraling up the outside of the building. My head begins to clear as I capture how the wide steps narrow and shrink the farther away they are.
Iona Taylor called CALINVA personally to track me down? That can’t be right. Iona wouldn’t waste her time trying to find me if she couldn’t reach me on my old cell.
No, she’d tell someone else to call me. Like Lacy, her personal assistant, or more likely the girl who took Lacy’s job after Iona fired her for losing the dress.
I tell myself not to freak. Lacy or whoever is probably about my age, desperate to break into the industry, and Iona’s got her running around doing a thousand thankless jobs like scheduling her highlights and ordering bee pollen. She doesn’t have time to go to the bathroom, much less track down the former housekeeper’s daughter.
And even if this girl did track me down, let’s be real. What would she do?
I chose a 6B graphite pencil because I wanted the lines crisp and sharp.
You’d think a sketch this simple would have been easy: boxes lined up in a garage against the wall. A dozen identical rectangles. Four in a row and three high. Perfectly taped and labeled REYES.
The cardboard was blank, negating the lives inside.
My pencil didn’t falter until I went to draw the battered guitar case lying across the top row. I was always good at perspective, but when I tried to draw the curved black case, I lost it.
As I look at it now, the sketch is deceptive. Anyone seeing it would flip to the next sketch, thinking there’s nothing interesting going on.
But me, I see the tiny Latina who met me when I showed up at the Taylors’. She took my hands in hers before I could stop her. “Miss Iona, she did not think you were coming back.”
I shook off this stranger, so tired I could barely stand, and pulled out my phone to call Iona. Forty voice messages from her and I’d ignored them all.
Phones weren’t allowed in the ICU, and what could I have told Iona? I didn’t know when Mom would be coming back. But now I could tell her. Never. Mom was never fucking coming back.
I remember scrolling down to the oldest voice mail.
“Hi, Sabine, it’s Iona. We’re back from Telluride. Skiing was amazing. Haven’t heard from your mom when she’ll be back. The crew from Platinum Moms is shooting here on Thursday. Hair and Makeup is scheduled for six a.m. Crazy, right? So I need one of you to take the boys to school—”
Buried in the drama of Mom’s accident, I’d completely blanked that Iona had snagged a starring role in Platinum Moms of Beverly Hills.
Oh God, I thought, and scrolled up seven messages.
“Sabine. You or your mom need to stop screwing around and call me back. I don’t have time for this. We’re filming every day this week. The producers sent a cleaning crew to the house, but I can’t be expected to feed the twins and get them to school and softball and Mandarin and coding class—”
I skipped forward another fifteen. I knew I’d messed up bad by not calling, but…“It’s been two and a half weeks, Sabine, and not a single word from you or your mom? This is so self-centered, so rude. You’ve put me in an impossible situation, and I’m done defending you. One of you needs to get back to me TODAY.”
The last message had been days before.
“Hi, ah, Sabine? This is Lacy Efron, Iona Taylor’s new personal assistant? Um, she asked me to let you know that your mom is in violation of her employment contract due to her unexplained absences, and ah, she’s been officially terminated. She will be paid for the days she worked, but we need to know where to send the final check—”
The world, time, gravity stopped for a moment. “You took Mom’s job. You work for the Taylors.”
“Sí. Sí.”
There was air all around me, but I couldn’t breathe.
Any normal human being would have known this was a crisis, that things with Mom and me were horribly, horribly wrong, but not Iona. She couldn’t imagine we needed help, not when she was busy with Hair and Makeup and driving the boys to Mandarin.
“It’s okay, it’s okay. Don’t worry,” the new housekeeper cooed. “Your things, they are all packed. Very carefully. You show your mother. Nothing is broken.” She hit a button and the garage door rolled up, revealing Mom’s guitar case lying across a row of cardboard boxes.
The blood drained from my head. “What? No.”
I’d begged Mom not to leave me, begged her to come back from her coma because I needed her. I was only seventeen. How could she expect me to take care of myself?
I looked up at the blue, blue sky, tears dribbling down my face. No. Mom, I pleaded silently. I can’t. I can’t do this.
“Where am I supposed to go?” I murmured.
The housekeeper shook her head helplessly at me and I buried my face in my hands.
I can’t. Mom, do you hear me, I can’t do this.
I started to sob. The new housekeeper looked on, wringing her hands while I cried so hard I doubled over, clutching my sides. When I finally stopped and caught my breath, the woman took my arm and guided me into my car. “You rest while I load your things,” she said, and tucked Mom’s last paycheck into my hand.
The check was only a few hundred dollars, a few
hundred even though Mom had worked for the Taylors for over twelve years.
Every time I remember this I get angry all over again. Mom had been like a second mother to the twins, and this was how Iona treated her?
At seven, Adam’s waiting at the back door of CALINVA, holding a cardboard box.
I’ve had doubts all day about whether I should do this, so I approach slowly, telling myself I can end this now before any rules are broken. But then what will I do? Adam’s the only person trying to help me keep my scholarship, and I can’t afford to alienate him. I offer up a smile. “What’s in the box?”
“I scrounged up some supplies for you. My roommate had some leftover pigment from a project he did last year.”
I peek inside, and there are a couple dozen partially used tubes of pigment and a bunch of empty tuna-fish cans. At first, I’m puzzled. “Oh, I get it. The cans are for mixing.” I reach in and read the labels on the pigment. It’s imported from Germany. The good stuff. “Wow. You need to thank your roommate for me. This pigment’s super expensive.”
“He was happy to get rid of it. Called encaustic his nemesis. Ready to do this?”
I’m not. I shouldn’t. But the image in my head of Krell’s portrait dissolving into shards of color while still conveying the essence of Duncan makes me answer, “Let’s do it.”
“Good.” Adam shadows me to the door. His keys rattle in the lock and he holds the heavy door so I can go first. We step into the barely lit hallway. My heart begins to pound as we creep into the back area where students don’t normally go.
Secure Storage is double locked, but Adam’s got keys for both. The room is dry and cooler than the hall outside. Deep metal lockers, big enough to slide in a canvas taller than me, line the walls. “The panel is over here,” he says.
I peek through the ventilation holes in the steel door. The panel shines pristine white even in the faintly lit locker.
Adam spins the combination lock and slides out the panel, which looks about the same size as Krell’s. I run my hand over the surface. “I thought you said it was cracked.”
“I filled it with wood glue before I primed it.”
“You did a really nice job. I can’t even tell.”
“Thanks, I’m known around here for my superior canvas prep,” he jokes.
I pick up the box of supplies and Adam carries the panel over to the door. I open it and peer out. The atrium is echoey, and I hear voices coming from a floor above us, but there’s no one on this one. I hold the door for Adam, then we sneak down the hall to the service elevator.
When I press the button, nothing happens. My pulse ticks up. We’re away from the public spaces, deep in a gray cement hall, but I feel like a spotlight’s trained on us.
“Adam, what do we do if we run into security? What do we say?”
His brows are knit and I can tell he’s nervous, too, but he’s trying not to show it, because he says, “I think we’re okay. The service elevator’s so slow, nobody uses it if they can avoid it. And security’s not going to care about a blank panel.”
He’s probably right. Carrying around a blank panel or canvas is nothing. People lug them around CALINVA all the time.
Finally, the elevator wakes up and rumbles down from an upper floor. “You’re sure Krell went home?” I say.
“I checked his parking space before you got here. Empty.”
We’re insane for doing this. I should stop it right now. My mouth fills with saliva as I try out how to tell him. Adam, I’ve changed my mind. I’m not sure I want to do this.
The elevator opens and he steps in. Faded gray moving quilts line the steel walls like it’s a padded cell, and a nervous giggle bubbles out of me.
“What’s so funny?”
I don’t want to admit how anxious I am right now. “Nothing. Just a stupid random thought.”
Adam’s making a big effort to help me, which I’m sure he wouldn’t do if he didn’t like me, and if I’m being honest with myself, if he didn’t believe I’m in real trouble.
We get out on Krell’s floor and I peek around the corner. The hall’s empty and I don’t hear anyone on this floor or the one below. Adam tells me to dig the keys out of his pocket. He tells me which one’s Krell’s and I put it in the lock.
The door swings open. The studio looks like it did the other night. Adam lays my panel on top of the worktable. I reach underneath the table and take out Krell’s electric palette, which is a little like a griddle, and plug it in. My messenger bag is packed with the waxy medium I’ll cut into chunks and melt with the colored pigment in the tuna cans.
Adam carries over the easel with Krell’s painting and sets it upright by the table. One glance, and Krell’s amazing, enigmatic portrait draws me over, hands linked behind my back as I fight the urge to reach out and touch it.
“The painting’s going to Art Basel Miami right after the unveiling,” Adam says. “It’ll only be here for another month.”
“Why is it being sent to an art fair when someone already bought it?”
“Krell’s dealer wants the art world to see it so he can sell the next one Krell paints.”
I can’t stop staring at it. “What do you think is underneath?”
“You mean what do I think he’s obsessed with?”
“Yeah.”
Adam scowls and shakes his head. “Power? Fame? Money? Take your pick.”
The way Krell treats people reminds me of Iona, the total disregard for anyone’s feelings or needs but her own, so I’d have to say power or fame. But the way he paints? I wonder if it isn’t something much deeper, more personal. “I don’t know. Dogs playing poker?”
Adam laughs. “Women’s underwear?”
“Ew.”
“Satanic symbols?”
“More likely.”
Adam adjusts the angle of the easel. “I’ll be back in two hours to help you clean up,” he says.
“You’re not staying?”
“I have my own work to do.”
“Yeah, of course.” I don’t let him see I’m disappointed. Silly to think he’d waste time lounging around here when he’s got his own projects to finish.
“I’d invite you to see what I’m working on,” he says, “but I share the studio with three other grad students and one of them lives there.”
“That’s allowed?”
He shrugs. “No, but I’m not about to kick the guy out. See you later.” He walks out and the door clicks behind him.
I weigh the block of waxy medium in my hand. Am I really doing this?
Inside those layers of paint are secrets Krell won’t share with me, because he’d rather cut me to shreds. My hesitation vanishes.
I dig into my pocket for my magnifying glass. Time to focus on why I’m here.
As the layers of Krell’s painting emerge, I puzzle through how to deconstruct it. I peel the photograph of Duncan off the wall and go back and forth between it and the painting it inspired.
To understand the brilliance of an artist like Krell you need to look at the choices he makes. What he includes and what he ignores. What colors he uses, and how he employs line, light, and shadow. Even things like the length or energy of the brushstrokes, or the thickness of the paint, define his work.
I hold my magnifying glass over the areas where layers of color shine through, revealing more than I first thought.
The feeling that I’m a detective, an archaeologist unearthing buried secrets, makes me almost giddy. Reading his brushstrokes is like learning a new language. I’ve always tried to make mine disappear, but now I see I could use them to add power and depth.
You couldn’t just teach me, could you? You had to tear me down.
Study a painting by an artist whose work you connect with. At least that advice was valuable.
I focus on how to begin the base. Krell’s muted background isn’t eggshell like I first thought. It’s complex, layers of faint pastels that aren’t quite blue or peach or the palest yellow.
I set out cans on the warm palette and drop in chunks of wax. As it melts, I shave in the pigment, and bounce on my tiptoes, seeing the colors on my palette match Krell’s. Yes yes yes.
Unlike acrylics, encaustic takes time. Paint on a layer, wipe it off if it’s not right, or fuse it with a warm blast from a heat gun before you paint the next.
The cloudy background begins to take shape, but I’ve only done one corner when Adam reappears.
“Oh, I thought you’d be further along.”
He sounds disappointed, but I guess he’s never done this kind of painting. Most people haven’t. “Yeah, I hoped so, too, but you know, encaustic takes a while.”
He’s looking doubtful, like he’s realizing he probably shouldn’t have agreed to help me, but he says, “What do you think? You learning anything? You want to come back Monday?”
The thought of not coming back sends me reeling. I’ve only begun to solve the puzzle of Krell’s painting, so—“Yeah, but I don’t want to screw up your schedule.”
“You’re not. But we need to clean up before the night crew comes in.” He picks up Krell’s easel and carries it back to where it was, then unplugs the heat gun and wraps the cord.
I dip Krell’s brushes in melted wax to release the pigment before I rub them with a paper towel. Despite how gently I rub, bristles come off in my hand. Damn. I can’t use these. Krell will see the wear on them. I’ve got to buy matching ones.
I’m running numbers in my head on how much this will cost me when Adam says, “We should go to 365 Mission sometime.”
My neck starts to tingle and I stay turned to the wall so Adam can’t see me grin. Yep. He likes me. “The art gallery? That would be cool. Everyone’s talking about it.”
“I was there Saturday night for the Amphibs album release, and Gavin Brown—” He pauses. “Gavin Brown?” he repeats, and I realize I’m supposed to be impressed.
I shrug, embarrassed I’m so clueless. “Sorry, who is he?”
What I Want You to See Page 7