The Color of Light

by Helen Maryles Shankman

  A dark figure in a tailored suit materialized at the other end of the room, slender and tall, with wide shoulders. His neatly clipped hair came to a peak over his forehead, and in the low light his eyes were hidden in shadow. With a sharp little thrill, Tessa recognized the man who’d been waiting in her studio.

  He lingered at the edge of the scene, surveying the crowd. He seemed to be looking for someone. When his gaze fell upon her, she felt a sudden flush of heat, as if someone had breathed on her neck. She stood rooted to the spot, unable to move, as he came straight towards her, shouldering through the throng of people milling around the bar. And then he went right past her, greeted Levon like an old friend, took his arm and steered him away. The spell was broken. Tessa swung around and headed back with Clayton’s wine.

  Ben, David, Harker and Clayton were hunched forward conspiratorially, their heads almost touching. “He’s not drinking. I told you so.” Clayton stated triumphantly.

  “Who are we looking at?”

  “The vampire! Look, he’s the only person in the room without a glass.”

  Clayton was pointing at the man in the suit. Portia, still stretched out on the rug, was rolling her eyes.

  “Him? He’s not a vampire. He’s just the founder of this whole school.”

  They were too far away to eavesdrop on any conversation. The alleged vampire spoke earnestly to Levon. Listened thoughtfully as Levon responded and rested a hand on his shoulder. Vampire, very passionate about something. Levon, the voice of reason, even if they couldn’t hear him. Finally, they came to some kind of agreement and Levon moved off, carrying a single glass of white wine. The man in the suit turned to Gracie, smiled, said something. She nodded, stepped back. He reached around her, pulled out a green glass bottle that had been hidden under the table. He handed it to her. She uncorked it, poured out something red into a wine glass, which he drank down and set back on the bar.

  “Blood.” Clayton whispered.

  “Definitely.”

  “Oh yeah, it’s gotta be blood.”

  Gracie returned, shoehorned herself in between Clayton and David on the weathered leather couch. “Ooh.” she said, wiggling her luscious tush just a little. “Comfy.”

  “So tell us, Graciela,” said Harker, brushing ash off of his black leather pants, “what was in that bottle.”

  Cautiously, she peered around, then hissed, “Blood, just like you guys thought.”

  “I knew it!” said Clayton, striking his fist on his knee.

  “I’m kidding,” she said, settling back into the kilim pillows. “Some fancy wine. A nice Chianti, I think.”

  “Hey, Portia,” said David. “Auden coming down for a visit any time soon?”

  She propped herself up on her elbows. “Yeah. He’s going to be here for the Halloween Ball. It’s a Friday night, so we get a whole weekend together.” Auden was Portia’s boyfriend, finishing a graduate degree in art history in Philadelphia.

  “I guess we won’t be seeing much of you that weekend,” said Clayton, giving her a wink.

  “No, you won’t.” she said emphatically. “David, how about Sara? When are we going to meet her?”

  “I plan to keep her away from you people for as long as I can,” he replied. “I can barely stand you myself.”

  “Tessa,” said Harker, picking tobacco off of his lower lip, “I hear you work for Lucian Swain.”

  “Yes, I do.” Her mind had been wandering back to the loft on Walker Street.

  “I hear some girl rang his bell once, and when he answered the door, she ripped open her shirt to show him his initials, painted on her breasts.”

  It had, in fact, happened twice. She smiled, remembering his face when he told her the story over darts at the Brewery. “The Eighties were rock star time for artists.”

  Harker played the signature riff from Smoke On the Water. Since he was toting an electric guitar, it didn’t sound like much. “Does he get as much poontang as they say he does? I mean, he’s only one man. If he’s done as many ladies as they say, where did he find the time to paint?”

  Before she could answer, David said, “I hear his assistants do most of his work.” He looked straight at Tessa. “My mom works for the Thoroughgood Gallery. She hears a lot of things.”

  “Well…she heard wrong. I just pull the pictures together and sketch it out on the canvas and do the underpainting.”

  There were raised eyebrows all around.

  “Here’s to having an assistant like Tessa,” Clayton said solemnly. They clinked their glasses together and drank them down.

  Rafe stood apart from the art students spilling through his Great Room, scanning the crowd for Levon.

  It had come as something of a shock that Gracie brought Tessa to help her set up. Unnerved, he’d made himself busy in the room he used as an office until more people arrived.

  Behind him, someone said, “I want to do both of them together.”

  “Yeah, the contrast is fantastic. Look at her hair! I’m thinking Venetian red. Some golden ochre. Burnt sienna.”

  “Who said anything about paint? I want to die with it wrapped around my naked body.”

  He turned to see who was talking. First-year students under the influence of his wine, slavering like hungry dogs at Tessa and Graciela. Levon, where was Levon?

  He found him at the bar. To his dismay, the girl was standing right next to him. She had a coffee-colored glass bead strung on a brown leather thong tied around her neck, looking for all the world like a sucking candy. And though she was meeting Levon’s eyes and nodding in agreement, she was somewhere else, somewhere deep inside herself.

  She must have felt his gaze upon her, because suddenly she was looking at him. A flash of heat sicced his body like the onset of fever. For a brief moment, he considered taking the coward’s way out, escaping to the loft until everyone was gone.

  Just as he was about to cut into the crowd, a thin girl with long dark hair stepped into his path, blocking his way. Though it was a chilly evening in the middle of October, her shoulders were bare. She was attended by a pair of young men, each eyeing him warily, obviously hoping she would go home with them tonight. She stopped him with a hand on his arm. “Hey, I love your house! Is that a real Raphael downstairs?” She had a wide helpless mouth and grasping, needy eyes. She put a bony hand out. “Allison.”

  He gave it a polite, generic shake. “Yes, it is. Lovely, isn’t it?” He gazed fondly at the claret silk walls, hung with art he had collected over the past six decades, the rich wood paneling, the high coffered ceiling, the genteelly threadbare velvet curtain he had acquired from the old Ziegfeld Theater drawn over the soaring three-storey window. “I like my house, too. It took me a long time to get it just right.”

  When he glanced back down at her, she was giving him a trembling smile, one that offered all the wrong solutions to her own problems. “Have you tried the smoked salmon? Help yourself to some more wine,” he said, and eased away from her.

  Just a little further. He moved through the last dozen people between himself and Levon. With a sidelong glance at the girl, Rafe steered Levon away from the bar.

  “Hey, Rafe, you decided to show up.”

  “I was in the middle of something. Personal business.”

  “Hell of a place you have here.”

  “Haven’t you been here before?”

  “No, last year we did this in the Cast Hall. This is my first time.”

  “Oh.” Rafe liked Levon. He was the only person on the Academy staff who didn’t treat him as if he were…well, as if he were a vampire. “I should have you and…” he knew Levon was married, but he didn’t know her name.

  “Hallie.”

  “…Hallie over for dinner sometime.”

  Levon chuckled and his eyebrows went up. “Yeah, let’s do that. So. What’s up?”

  “Do you know what Turner’s big surprise is?”

  “Yeah. He filled that open studio painting position.”

  “I didn’t hear
anything about that,” he said, pulling closer to him, his eyebrows drawing together. “I’m supposed to be notified when there’s a new hire.”

  “Well, this woman’s an adjunct. Temporary. She’s here for the semester. If we’re happy, she gets to come on board full time, with your blessings, of course. If not, vaya con Dios, we look for somebody else. We’re in a bind. The semester’s well along, and we’re still short an instructor. It’s hard to find people who teach the kind of stuff we do.”

  Rafe shook his head, bewildered. “Why don’t we just hire one of our graduates?”

  Levon put up his hands. “Not my policy. Whit thinks it’s too incestuous.”

  He nodded, stifling his impatience. “All right. Where did she train? What’s her experience?”

  Involuntarily, Levon rubbed the back of his neck. “Um…she has an MFA in painting from Yale.”

  “Well, then. We know she can talk about painting.”

  “She has lots of experience. She taught at NYU and exhibited all through the Eighties. You’ve probably heard of her. April Huffman.”

  Rafe was incredulous. “The same April Huffman who does blow jobs in car paint? She’s going to be teaching at my Academy?”

  “Whit wanted a name.”

  “They’re not even very good blow jobs. She can barely draw. We’re betraying the students. Tell me, Levon. Are we that desperate?”

  There was real anguish in his eyes. Levon rested his hand on his shoulder. “Hey. I know this school is your baby. You know, the monitor will set up the model, and she’ll walk around giving them suggestions. Which they can take or leave. It’s Painting 101, very basic stuff. It’s not like she’s teaching Anatomy. The chairman of painting at NYU gave her a big thumbs up. And she seems really excited about teaching here.”

  Rafe was furious. Turner had, as promised, brought an artist on board who could hardly draw. The men and women filling his townhouse today had come to the Academy to learn how to paint like Rubens and Rembrandt. Most of them were already better than April Huffman. He could think of nothing she could add to their skills. He felt as if he were putting one over on the students. On his students.

  Levon changed the subject. Rafe had a crazy look in his eyes. “Say, how are the student committee meetings going?”

  “Graciela had some good suggestions. The two young men, well…”

  He let his restless gaze sift through the hundred or so people drinking wine, talking art and hitting on each other throughout his Great Room, thinking of Gracie’s amber skin glowing through the translucent material of her blouse. A month ago he would have had her without giving it a second’s thought. But after she guided his hand to her thigh to feel the fabric of her stretch pants—and they were indeed tactile, just as promised—he hadn’t so much as touched her. It was the girl. She wandered through his thoughts like a crooked river, filling him with fear and wonder.

  At this moment Graciela was refilling wineglasses at the bar at a furious rate. Clayton, the loquacious Southerner with the Roman profile, was holding forth to a cadre of painters and sculpting students staked out on a couch he’d had shipped from a shuttered Parisian café. The girl circled around them collecting empty glasses, her long titian curls glimmering in the warm yellow light cast by dozens of candles placed around the room.

  “Beautiful, isn’t she.”

  Rafe agreed. “Yes. She is.”

  “Gracie is more exotic, but I’ve always had a soft spot for redheads. I’m a happily married man, and I still want to die in that hair. She making you just a wee bit sorry you passed that bylaw about dating students?”

  He smiled politely, said nothing.

  “Her name is Tessa Moss. She works for Lucian Swain.” Levon lowered his voice before he went on. “He says she saved his life.”

  Rafe turned to him, intrigued. “That’s the girl?”

  “Last year he had some kind of breakdown. He lost everything when the market crashed. When yuppies stopped ordering paintings to go over their sofas, he lost his house in Amagansett, his assistants, his gallery, his girlfriend. Even the art magazines were slamming him. People said he tried to kill himself. She kissed his boo-boos, got him into rehab, took care of business, got him back on his feet. He called her his angel.”

  They watched her glide around, removing glasses, furtively wiping wet rings from his furniture and retrieving cigarette butts from Chinese porcelain. “And now?”

  “I hear he’s screwed his way through the Soho AA meeting and now he’s working his way through the West Village.”

  “Good God. After all that.”

  Levon nodded. “After all that.”

  “How do you know this?”

  Levon sighed. “Ten years sober, baby. But I still go to meetings once a week.” He was silent for a while. “Lucian Swain,” he mused. “That was me. When I was using, I nailed anything with two legs. My wife threw me out, my kids hated me, I lost my job at the advertising agency. When I got sober, things changed. I realized I didn’t want to design ads for cars anymore, I wanted to go back to being an artist. So I got a job teaching at the Art Students League. I married Hallie a year later. I’ve never slipped, not once. I don’t mean with drugs. There was a joint at a Muddy Waters concert in ‘84, and the occasional glass of wine. Gives me something to talk about in meetings. But Hallie…she saw me at my worst and she loved me anyway. There’s never been another woman. But…that’s me.” He lightened his tone. “How about you? The papers are always putting you together with Anastasia deCroix.”

  The expression on his face was partly a grimace, partly a smile. “Let’s just say we’ve been many different things to one another over time.”

  There was a flash of scarlet as he raised his arm to smooth his hair, a nervous gesture. “Hey,” Levon said. “Is that jacket lined in red? Let me see.”

  Rafe complied. Levon rolled the scarlet silk between his fingers. “Now, that is a fine suit. Where did you get it? No, don’t tell me. Look who I’m asking. Savile Row.”

  He gave him a self-effacing smile. “Barney’s, actually.”

  “I’m a sweater guy, myself, but if I was looking to buy a suit, it would be this one. Anyway, about half an hour ago, Inga asked me to fight my way through the crowd and bring her back a white wine.” He turned to go.

  “The girl,” said Rafe.

  “Tessa.” Levon corrected him.

  “There’s a drawing on her wall.” He spoke very deliberately, as if it hurt him to get the words out. “A woman holding a child. Clothing from the thirties or forties. A suitcase. Do you know what it might be about?”

  Levon studied Rafe’s expression, shook his head no. Thought for a moment, shrugged his shoulders up and down. “I can look into her file. Maybe her essay will give us some insight.” He plucked a potato pancake topped with crème fraîche and salmon roe from a silver tray carried by a petite waitress in black and white with shapely calves who was also one of the school’s regular models. “Hi, Sivan. These any good?”

  She tilted her hand back and forth. Comme ci, comme ça.

  “Don’t worry about April Huffman. I’m sure it will work out just fine. And I’ll look into that thing for you. I’m going to find a seat. It was nice talking with you.” And he looked him squarely in the eye, grinned. “Really.”

  He wouldn’t allow himself to dwell on what Levon had just told him, not now. Heading for the bar, he reached behind it for the ‘87 Rothschild Bordeaux he had secreted earlier.

  “Is anybody drinking the wine?” he said dryly to the lovely Graciela.

  She laughed her merry laugh. “Allow me. I actually used to work as a bartender.” He handed her the bottle, and with one fluid move she deftly pulled the cork and poured it into his glass.

  He downed it all at once. It coursed through him, giving him fleeting warmth and taking the edge off of his emotions. Not as powerful as the hit from living blood, but there were times it got the job done.

  He started to make his way to the focal point of t
he room, a massive fireplace with an Art Nouveau mantle, rescued from some defunct tycoon’s Roaring Twenties North Shore palace, all chubby angels and nymphs and grapevines. On impulse, he changed directions, headed for his office. He would be the second to speak tonight, right after Giselle. But before he went on, he needed to make a phone call.

  “Hi, guys.”

  Giselle Warburg was the heiress to a banking fortune, and she looked it, every inch the aristocrat, with her long thoroughbred body, her casually expensive clothing, her narrow patrician face, the easy confidence in her throaty voice. Right now, she was standing in front of the central fireplace, trying to get their attention. “Guys, if you could find a seat.”

  Gracie and Tessa had set out all the folding chairs in the closet, but there weren’t nearly enough. Some students perched on the carved staircase leading to the second floor. Others leaned against anything upright, the squared oak columns, the lacquered walls, the display cases, the piano.

  “On behalf of the board, I just want to tell you how proud we are of you. Just from the stuff we’ve been seeing in your studios and the things in the cases, I want you to know, everybody is very impressed. You’re the most talented group of students we’ve had at the Academy to date. I can see it’s going to be very hard to choose a winner of the Prix de Paris this year.”

  There was thunderous applause. She smoothed a strand of straight ash-blond hair back behind her ear and glanced at her notes before she went on.

  “The Naked Masquerade is in two weeks. For you first-years, that’s the annual American Academy Halloween party. There will be prizes for the most creative costumes, so get cracking. On the job front, Dreamland mural studio is looking for painters. And Clarice Runyon, some of you know her work, is looking for an assistant to answer phones and do light office work. Come see me if you’re interested.”

  “Now, I want to introduce you to the man throwing this party, the man whose home you are trashing and whose wine you are guzzling. The man with the vision. The man who founded this school. I give you Raphael Sinclair.”