The Color of Light

by Helen Maryles Shankman

  “I think he was just trying to impress the chick he was with. She must be a new girlfriend, because they were all over each other. I was, like, get a room!” Something jogged her memory. “Hey! Isn’t he the artist you work for?”

  No answer. Gracie looked up from putting away her charcoal pencils to find her studio partner staring at her. Every feature on her face was trembling.

  “Yes,” she said in a faraway voice. “I guess that is what I do. I work for him.”

  Gracie took another look at Tessa and left the studio.

  Tessa sat carefully down in a folding chair, across from the drawing of the naked girl and the man in the tuxedo. She pulled it off of the wall, took the pushpins out of the corners. Looked at it for a long moment.

  Portia strode into the room, with Gracie trailing behind her. “I’m so sorry,” she said softly, putting her long arms around her in a hug.

  “I feel like an idiot.” said Gracie apologetically.

  “No, no. The only idiot here is me.”

  “Listen,” Gracie said earnestly, her golden cat’s eyes filled with sympathy. “I’m working the new student party tonight. All I have to do is put out a bunch of folding chairs and tidy up when it’s over. I couldn’t get anybody to help. You’re work-study. Why don’t you come?”

  “I can’t,” she said, hating herself for what she was going to say next. “What if Lucian needs me?”

  “He’ll survive without you for one night.” said Portia.

  “Come on, it’ll be cool.” Gracie urged her. “It’s at this board member’s townhouse on Gramercy Park.” She brightened up, waggled her eyebrows at her. “They say he’s a vampire, you know.”

  “Okay, okay.” She sighed, rolled her shoulders, swiped at her eyes with a clean paper towel. “But he’d better be a real vampire, or I’m going to be very disappointed.”

  They split a taxi going north on Lafayette Street; it was too late to walk the ten blocks to Gramercy Park. Clouds were gathering overhead, the sky deepening to the transparent dusky blue of evening.

  They got out at Irving Place and Twentieth Street and walked the rest of the way. The park was an oasis of emerald lawn, carefully tended flowerbeds and gravel paths, surrounded by a high iron fence that ended in sharp golden spikes. Oxidized bronze urns emerged from moody groves of rhododendrons and pachysandra. A neoclassical statue of some forgotten nineteenth-century figure stood sentry from his pedestal at the heart of the park, casting his beneficent gaze over all who passed.

  A cat was sitting on the grass soaking up the moonlight. At their approach, it melted into the shadows under a copse of cherry trees. The townhouses around the park dated from Victorian times, with fanlights, leaded windows, and elaborate wrought iron galleries. Windowpanes shimmered with age, slatted shutters were pinned back against gracefully crumbling brick. Gargoyles grinned down from downspouts, window boxes spilled flowers and vinca vine down from the upper floors. Gaslight lamps flickered wanly in small gardens, casting shadows over stairways leading down to cellar apartments. The crouching trees spreading their branches around the square must have tapped into the sewer system, because they grew lush and high here, blocking out the light from the streetlamps, making it seem darker.

  “Which one is it?”

  Gracie pointed to a mansion at the southeastern corner. It was almost hidden by a trio of London plane trees, their mottled gray and silver trunks looking like bleached bones in the moonlight. A dense thicket of wisteria grew in knotty gnarled bundles over the mullioned windows and colonnaded portico, almost completely cloaking the chiseled facade of the brownstone. Behind a decorative iron gate was a heavy old door with long brass hinges that splayed over the grooved oak like scythes.

  “Okay, that’s kind of spooky,” conceded Tessa.

  “See? Vampire.”

  The iron gate was bolted open. Gracie rang the doorbell, pushed open the door. Inside, the walls were a deep Moroccan red. A fire was burning in a huge marble fireplace, big enough to stand in, with fat putti sculptured in relief on either end of the mantle.

  Over the fireplace hung a small drawing of a serene, smiling Madonna and a laughing baby in a wide, ornately carved gold frame. Tessa approached it, studied its impossibly graceful lines. “Is that a real Raphael?” she asked, dumbfounded.

  There was a statue of a winged angel, gazing beatifically down at them from a pedestal, her cool white arms open in welcome. Behind her, two intricately carved Gothic stairways circled gracefully up to another level.

  “This way,” said Gracie, and led her up the stairs.

  5

  Sofia was sitting on top of him, rocking. His eyes closed, he thrust upwards, cried out her name, tangled his fingers in her hair, pulled her face down to his. She ground a kiss from his lips, lashed up, fell back down upon him, exhausted.

  He held her close, kissed her again. Her hair brushed against his face. Morning light was streaming in the windows, warming his skin.

  She straightened back up, rested her hands on his chest, smiled at him with eyes full of love, the sun behind her making the outlines of her hair blaze red.

  Rafe slid his hands from her back down to her hips. He gazed at her, wanting to keep her there forever. “I love you,” he told her again.

  She raised her arms high over her head, stretching, the straps of her silky white slip falling down her shoulders, her upturned breasts bouncing jauntily.

  He closed his eyes. Happy. So happy.

  She plunged a stake into his heart.

  He gasped, his eyes opened wide, searching for explanation.

  “They asked me to give you this,” she said. “Everybody wanted to say thanks.”

  Rafe jolted awake. Next to him, a woman slept on, clad only in the black garter belt and stockings she had on from last night. He swung his feet onto the floor, sat at the edge of the mattress, passed his fingers through his hair. His throat felt sore and parched. Just a dream. Just another damn dream. He didn’t recall much of last night. His guest, wearing a skinny black thong with a pink bow on the back that made her beautiful ass look like a present. Something else, slippery and wet.

  She stretched like a lazy cat, pointing her toes and arching her body.

  “Wakey, wakey, eggs and bakey.”

  Her reply was muffled by pillows.

  “How do you feel?” he said, reaching for his robe.

  “Fine,” she yawned, rolling over onto her side, tracing circles on his back with one long nail. “What’s your hurry? I could use a bite.”

  Janina, he remembered. Her name is Janina. “Sorry, darling. I’ve got a thing.”

  “Yes, I know all about your thing.” She gave him a sleepy secret smile. He stood, pulled on a brocaded silk robe with burgundy satin lapels. Janina flicked her lustrous dark hair back, exposing the graceful curve from her neck to her shoulder, pouted.

  “Not even one teensy bite?”

  The smell rising off of her long, languid body was potent, irresistible, inebriating. He brought his face close to her neck, inhaled her musky scent. The call for blood went thundering through his chest, rising up to his brain.

  Her skin, the color of milk, fractions of an inch from his mouth. He brushed his lips softly against the arc of her neck. She sucked in her breath, waiting. He touched his tongue to the spot where it was pulsating. Salty. He bared his fangs, sharp and triangular, pressed them to her skin. She gasped, buried her hands in his hair as if she were going to pull him close or force him away, and then he bore down, driving them into her throat. She gave out a strangulated cry and thrust her hips into the air. He clasped her naked body to his bare chest to feel her heart racing, ba-boom, ba-boom, ba-boom, pounding inside of him, making it feel as though he had a heartbeat. Hot, living blood spilled down his throat. Heat radiated through him, warmed him, lulled the throbbing beast that had overtaken his brain. Made him feel alive.

  And then he let go.

  “Are you all right?” he asked gently.

  She opened her
eyes, blinked, looked at him hazily. Slurred something in Ukrainian.

  He laid her back down on the bed, wrapped the covers around her. Pulling on his robe, he went to the kitchen to get her some orange juice and cookies, as if she had just given at a blood drive.

  The caterer was already there, busily loading trays of hors d’ouevres into the hulking old Viking range. Two uniformed waitresses were billowing a black and gold damask tablecloth over what would be a buffet table.

  “How’s it going?” he asked rhetorically. The caterer uttered something dire about prosciutto and melon balls and something compensatory about goat cheese and endive in rapidfire Irish brogue. He nodded politely and headed back up to the girl in his bedroom. The guests would be arriving within the hour. He had to get the girl into a cab, then shower and dress.

  Janina was lying where he had left her, eyes closed. The marks on her neck were blackening into a hematoma. “Hey,” he said, sitting at the edge of the bed. “Here you go. Bottoms up, now.”

  She opened her eyes, sat up. “Orange juice.” she wrinkled her nose in distaste. “Cookies. Don’t you have anything for grownups? A Bellini, perhaps?”

  “This is better for you after you’ve…lost blood.”

  She shrugged, took the glass, tossed it down. Picked up a cookie, nibbled at it because he was watching.

  Apologetically, he said, “I’m sorry, but I’m in a bit of a hurry.”

  “Oh, I see.” She rose to her feet. Last night he hadn’t noticed, but now he could see that she was nearly six feet tall, built like a dancer. “May I call my agency?”

  “I’ve already called them.”

  They would send a cab. While she scrounged for her clothes, he wrote her a check, which she tucked in a small satin bag. Then he handed her a folded bill. “And this is for you.” She unfolded it, smiled at him, tucked it behind the lace of her black brassiere. Sauntered over to him, slid her hand beneath his lapel.

  “I will see you again sometime? You will tell the agency I make you happy?” Between her long, lacquered fingernails was a business card. It smelled of jasmine.

  “Very happy.”

  She slipped on her stilettos, stuffed the tiny dress she had worn to his house the night before into the bag with the check, threw her coat on over her underthings. The coat was a luxuriant, floor-sweeping black fox, with a wide shawl collar that she flipped up to hide the bite marks.

  He led her down the medieval staircase, past the open-mouthed caterer holding a tray of bruschetta, past the black-clad waitresses stealing a smoke. She strode by them like a model on a runway, fur flying open to expose her magnificent body. He smiled at her audacity. She showed them everything but the holes in the side of her neck.

  Her heels clicked across the floor of the foyer, laid with white marble veined in black. Unlocking the front door, he swung open the ornate iron gate twisted with wisteria vines. “I will wait outside,” she announced. Only then did she wrap her fur around herself and swish out, leaving him alone.

  Now he would have to hurry. Leaving the front door unbolted so that his guests could let themselves in, he went back past the aghast caterer and the waitstaff and up to his room. He untied his robe, let it drop to the floor, walked naked into the bathroom. Turning the knobs in the shower, he watched the steam rise and cloud over the mirror, obscuring the image of the white-tiled walls, the pristine porcelain toilet, the potted orchid, the claw-footed tub, the old-fashioned brass shower fixtures. No matter how many times he’d seen it before, it was jarring not to find himself reflected in the mirror. From time to time he would catch a glimpse of himself in the polished blade of a knife, or a jagged shard of glass. But only a tantalizing fragment, as if he had just passed.

  The water beat on his chest, made him feel warm for a while. He was always cold. One of the lesser-known curses of being a vampire. Unless, of course, he had just fed, or was, like now, under a hot shower.

  Finished, he stepped out, toweled off, patted cologne on his face, ran a comb through his hair. He stood before his closet, chose a chalk-striped charcoal gray double-breasted suit with a bright crimson lining, the best materials and tailoring New York City had to offer. The buttonholes on the sleeves actually worked.

  The girl. She was coming tonight.

  Tonight was the annual welcome party for new students. They would wander through his brownstone fondling the statues and getting too close to the paintings, exclaiming anew over each object they found that they had seen somewhere before in an art history textbook. They would gape at the Raphael drawing and crowd around the Botticelli, the Vermeer, the Rembrandt and the Klimt. They would sit on his antique furniture and Persian carpets and eat canapés and play the old Steinway that had belonged to the movie star from the Twenties who had lived in the townhouse on Gramercy Park before him.

  In his capacity as Dean of Admissions, Levon would give a little how-we-doing-so-far talk. Giselle Warburg, the Dean of Student Affairs, would tell them about upcoming parties, guest lectures, and demonstrations by famous artists whose work she collected. Turner had some news he wanted to share with them as well, though he was keeping it very hush hush. And Rafe would say something about the history of the school.

  Two work-study students were coming early to help out. One of the work-study volunteers would be pretty Graciela. He had seen to that.

  So far, his meetings with the cannoli had brought no new information about the elusive studio partner. Apparently, they shared a space, nothing more. Surprisingly, she had proved to be a passionate and articulate advocate for her fellow art students. There were two other tidbits on the liaison committee; a boy Gracie’s age, and a young man with a spectacular Roman profile who went by the improbable name of Clayton El Greco. The boy sat there doodling, and the young man with the profile spun tall tales about his Southern boyhood in a deep Mississippi drawl, while Graciela argued for better ventilation and lighting in the classrooms.

  Rafe smoothed the collar of his cream-colored shirt, clipped on his tie bar, straightened his gold silk tie, secured onyx cufflinks through the buttonholes in his cuffs, made sure no more than a quarter of an inch of cuff was showing. Buttoning his suit jacket, he glanced at the clock. Six-thirty. A flutter of nervous anticipation in the pit of his stomach.

  The doorbell rang. He was ready.

  6

  Tessa swiped a wine glass off of the Stickley sideboard before it could leave a ring, then pulled a smoldering cigarette out of a very old looking green urn. “Harker!” she hissed. “Use an ashtray! Not antiquities.”

  Graciela passed by with a tray of spinach puffs. Harker Miller, balancing a battered electric guitar on his lap, pushed his lanky hair back behind his ears, crossed his long legs, commenced rolling another cigarette. He stuck it between his lips, lit it. “Bella, bella,” he mumbled in Texas-flavored Italian.

  “Tutta bella,” said DJ, sprawled over an Arts and Crafts leather recliner, absently drawing Clayton’s dramatic profile.

  “Bella luna.” said Ben.

  “Molto bella,” added David. He‘d gotten a fresh haircut on his way over, which somehow made his eyes look very blue.

  “Bela Lugosi,” drawled Clayton. “I vant to suck your bloooooood. Could you roll me one, my brother?”

  “Shhh,” said Portia. Her long body was stretched out on an elaborately patterned signed Isfahan rug. “That’s not very gracious, Clayton,” she said softly. “I’ll bet he doesn’t find those rumors so funny.”

  Clayton had wrestled in college, and now he shifted his formidable body on the couch, crossed his legs, tipped his head, acknowledged her sensitivity. “Sorry, Sister Portia. You know, I don’t know why people are so afraid of making enemies. It keeps life interesting. Hey, did y’all see the Botticelli nude?” he went on, reclining with one arm behind his head and making kissing noises. “Grazie, buddy,” he saluted Harker, who handed him a hand rolled cigarette. “Say, what’s up with the leather pants?”

  Harker blew smoke rings into the air over hi
s head. “Got a gig later. Everyone’s invited, naturally. Some hole on Houston. There’s no cover, but there is a two beer minimum.”

  Clayton tried to float smoke rings through Harker’s. “All’s I’m saying is, if he really is a vampire, where’s he getting all the money from? This is a pretty nice place. And if that drawing downstairs is a bona fide Raphael, he’s got to have some righteous bucks. Where do you suppose he sleeps? Think there’s a coffin here somewhere filled with dirt from the motherland? My theory, if you want to know, is he cozies up to rich orphaned heiresses, makes them his demon brides, then takes over their bank accounts.” He took a thoughtful drag on his cigarette, let it slowly drift out. “It’s a good plan.”

  “Are you done with that?” Tessa indicated Clayton’s wine glass, sweating on an inlaid ebony and mother-of-pearl chess table.

  “Yes, darlin’, I believe I am. Would you mind getting me a refill? There’s something extra in it for you.” He winked.

  She took his glass, headed to the table that served as the bar. For the hundredth time, she wondered if Lucian had called her, if he was sitting alone in his loft trying desperately to reach her. It was so quiet and lonesome at night. I should find a phone. At least I can check my answering machine.

  Gracie was filling wineglasses, white on the right, red on the left, as fast as she could. There were also tumblers filled with Diet Coke, but they didn’t seem to be moving.

  “Red. It’s for Clayton, and I think he’s had more than enough, so only halfway.”

  Levon was leaning against the bar. He gave Tessa a big happy smile through his grizzled beard. “Look at that, my two favorite people in the whole wide world. Hey, Tessa, how you doing? Glad you could make it. You decide on an adviser yet?”

  “Yes.” Reluctantly, she tore herself away from thoughts of Lucian. “I’m going to ask Josephine. I really like her style.”

  Levon opened his mouth as if he were about to say something, then changed his mind. He looked at her speculatively. “I think that’s a great idea,” he said thoughtfully. “You can learn a lot from her.”