Tessa studied Levon’s clothing. He was in a baggy three-piece suit and a Panama hat. “You’re Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera,” she guessed.
Still chuckling, he nodded confirmation. “Say, Tessa. Long as I have you here. Have you met with Josephine about your thesis project yet?”
A flush of guilt. “No. I was supposed to meet with her last week, but there was some crisis with her babysitter and she couldn’t make it.” She shrugged. “Just as well. I’ve been so busy that I don’t have anything new to show her.”
“Don’t let her get away with it,” he advised her. “You’d better get started. You don’t want to fall behind.”
She nodded. He turned his attention back to Portia. “And just so you know, Ballard, because I know that’s what you’re going to ask me, we’re going to put exhaust fans in all the studios. Well…I’ve got to be getting back to Hallie. See you later, girls.” He popped the pastry in his mouth and moved off in the direction of the bar.
“Is he all right?” Portia frowned. “He’s walking kind of funny.”
Tessa squinted after him, but there were too many people for her to get a good look. They located Auden talking with Ben and David. He was easy to find, standing next to Gracie. Graham was nearby, shoveling hors d’ouevres onto his plate with both hands.
Clayton ambled over, beaming. Next to him was a fragile, birdlike girl. He looked slightly dazed, as if he couldn’t believe his luck. “This is Gioia. She’s in art history at NYU. Doesn’t speaka da English, but luckily, I am fluent in the mother tongue.”
“I thought you were coming as Dracula,” said Graham.
Clayton fished something out of his pocket, put it in his mouth, then growled, showing off dimestore glow-in-the-dark vampire teeth.
“You’re not even trying.” David said.
“Hey. Who says vampires have to wear capes and dinner jackets? I think if Dracula was here today, he might look just like anybody else. Even you, David.”
A flawless Jackie O went by in a pink and black Chanel suit with a pillbox hat, sporting a somewhat incongruous five o’clock shadow. Suddenly, Gracie darted away from them, disappearing in the flow of costumed party guests. The crowd parted for a moment, and they could see her with Raphael Sinclair in a pocket of space between the churning waves of humanity.
“Hey, Mr. Sinclair!” Clayton hollered to the founder of the school. “How are you, sir? May I say what a lovely party this is,” and here he hollered even louder for Tessa and Portia’s benefit, “—and I want to personally thank you for creating this place. There’s nothing else like it in the entire U S of A, God bless it, and I think I speak for everybody when I say we’ve all been looking for this art school our whole lives.”
The founder of the school’s eyebrows shot up, and he smiled his gorgeous smile, encompassing them all.
“Hi,” said Portia, extending her hand. “I’m Portia Ballard. I don’t think we’ve met.”
“Portia,” he said, his voice smooth as silk, taking her hand. “What a beautiful name.”
His hand was so cold she almost gasped. His eyes were a strange color, she thought, looking directly into them. Gray? Brown? Green? Blue? Indefinable, like the color of a shadow. With a guilty flutter, she realized that she found him shockingly attractive. He exuded a varnished sexuality, promising that whatever price she paid for her weakness, he was worth it. He was remarkable to look at, high cheekbones angling out of his handsome face, soft-looking sensuous lips. Impossible to guess his age, thirty or forty. His skin was youthful and smooth, but the lines that formed around his mouth when he smiled went deep. His eyes looked as if they knew every last one of her secrets, everything she thought, everything she feared. They looked as if they knew what she had in her underwear drawer, as if they knew what she looked like without her clothes on, and what she liked for breakfast. Portia couldn’t stop staring into them.
“Ballard?” he inquired courteously. “I used to know a Ballard. Where are your people from?”
“Boston,” she said. She thought she saw him flinch, though she couldn’t be sure.
“Her grandfather is Sawyer Ballard,” added a young man who wasn’t in costume. “You know. Head honcho at the Met.” He seemed to be giving her a sly prod, for she broke her gaze to give him an annoyed look.
“Is that true?”
“Yes,” she smiled abashedly, clearly embarrassed. “You can’t pick your family, huh?”
Tessa was standing slightly apart from them, dressed in a fetching beribboned camisole and layers of crinoline, like a black wedding cake. Her glorious hair, not red, not blond, not brown, spilled down from a slouchy velvet hat with a feather in it.
“Hello, Tessa,” he said.
“Hi, Mr. Sinclair.” she said.
Later, whoever was there would remember the way he had stood there looking at her, and she at him; but with the low lighting, with the noise and music and commotion floating like physical entities through the air, it went unremarked.
“And who’s this?” he said to Clayton, stirring himself.
“Oh, I’m sorry. This is Gioia.”
At this, the girl exploded into impassioned Italian, her voice taking on a frantic beseeching tone. Clayton’s eyebrows knotted together with his efforts to follow her rapid colloquial dialect.
“Well…” Raphael touched Gracie on her blue shoulder, took a step backwards out of their circle. “I’ve got to be going. This is a work night for me. Have fun.” He rejoined the current of costumed revelers flowing towards the back of the room, disappeared.
Words were still pouring out of Gioia. Clayton was shaking his head, not understanding. Finally she lifted her right hand, made a fist with her pinky and forefinger raised into horns. She thrust it in the air, brandished it in the general direction of the founder of the school.
There was an excited burst of noise from the door, another flurry of activity.
“Oh my stars and garters, we must really rate. It’s Lucian Swain.” said Graham, excitement stirring his laconic voice.
Tessa’s heart turned over like a car engine, knocked hard against her chest. “Where?” she said in an offhanded way.
“Over there. He is cute.”
She followed the direction of his pointing finger. He was lingering at the edge of the dance floor, looking a little lost and out of place, wearing the sweater she had given him for his birthday. He had come after all. Maybe it was over with April. Maybe he did love her. A smile lifted the corners of her lips.
She dived into the crowd, her excitement mounting. Frantically, she fought her way through the undulating masses, losing sight of him, finding him again, then losing him once more. Finally she was standing at the pool of light where she had first seen him; but he was nowhere to be found, and her shoulders drooped in dejection.
“Hullo,” he said, tapping her shoulder.
Startled, she spun around. He was behind her, grinning waggishly.
“Lucian!” Weightless with joy, she launched herself into his arms. “I can’t believe it!”
“Thought I’d come see this school of yours.” He gave her a little hug, grinned jovially, gently but surely letting her back down.
“Come,” she said, reaching for his hand. “Let me introduce you to everyone.”
“Tessa!” April appeared from behind him, where she had been conversing with a man with his head in a cage made out of light bulbs. She took Lucian’s hand, confidently twined her fingers through his. “Wow, the place looks amazing! Are you working here tonight?”
“Flights are all cancelled.” Lucian explained. “Just as well. Storm unleashed hell all over the Cape.”
“So here we are!” exclaimed April, smiling brightly. “Eric Fischl says this is the best party of the year!”
Tessa stood still, a stony smile pasted to her lips.
“Ooh, honey, Julian’s over there.” April exclaimed, looking to the left over Tessa’s shoulder, in the direction of the crepe table. “Come on, baby, let’s dance.
”
Lucian waggled his eyebrows at Tessa. “Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do,” he said cheerily, and followed April around and past his assistant.
Across the room, floating in Anastasia’s wake, Raphael Sinclair turned around, feeling a seismic rift in the atmosphere. He let his eyes roam over the crowd, but it was useless; there were already hundreds of people, and more were arriving every minute. Bernard would have good news for them Monday morning after he’d totted up the receipts.
His pulse, or whatever he had instead of a pulse, was slowing now to whatever it did normally. Seeing the girl attired like that had roused a gush of emotion that left him shaking.
The dreams were coming on almost every night now. Last night he’d been with Sofia again. It had begun as pure pleasure; she was on top of him, slowly rocking; but suddenly he was sinking, sucked into the feather mattress. The bed was swallowing him, and he was falling down, down, down, clawing for purchase. When he finally slowed, came to a stop, he was surrounded by bodies, buried alive in an undulating mountain of corpses.
Anastasia stopped and turned around, her eyes gleaming. “What a fantastic crowd! I should have come last year. Look at that girl painted blue. She is so fabulous, I want to eat her all up. Has Leo ever come to your little Halloween fete?”
“No, of course not. He’s a diehard modernist. He thinks we’re a collection of reactionary realists.”
Rafe was restless, his eyes roving over the partygoers. Something was in the air, something he couldn’t quite get a grip on, but he could sense it, like a water moccasin snaking through murky water. “I’ll catch up with you later,” Rafe told her. “I have to go chat up the paying customers.”
He moved out into the crowd. Pretty girls like fireflies brushed up against him unselfconsciously as they flitted to their friends, to the bar, to the sushi. Something inside him thrummed at their touch. He was buffeted by their exhilaration, their expectations, their disappointments, their desperation, sharp as an insect’s sting.
The room looked well, he was happy to see. The chandeliers he’d dragged back from a ruined fin-de-siècle café in Budapest were studded with tiny orange string lights and wrapped in gauze. Dozens of burning pillar candles pooled wax on every free surface. Forests of tapers occupied entire tables. Votive candles cupped in copper mesh were wedged anywhere there was space. Fake medieval torches mounted along the walls rippled fake flames. The design firm he hired had done a bang-up job of balancing Halloween kitsch with downtown sophistication.
A girl detached herself from a circle of young men and trotted alongside, matching his stride. “Hey!” she said, trying to catch his eye. “Remember me?”
“Of course,” he replied, slowing down, searching for a name. Damn. The girl with the greedy eyes at the newcomer’s party. “Ann? Andrea?”
“Allison,” she said helpfully. “You can call me Ally. Well, what do you think?”
She was in a floor-length red satin dress that was threatening to slip off her thin shoulders. Long black opera gloves ruched up her bony arms. Her exposed skin was coated in heavy white makeup, except for her lost-looking mouth, which was painted a deep, dark crimson and outlined in black. Two drops of cosmetic blood dribbled out of one side of her mouth. “Look,” she said, showing off plastic fangs. “Vampire teeth.”
“Very authentic,” he told her politely.
The synthesizer knocked out honkytonk chords. People were dancing now, in a circle of light in front of the stage. A woman with a crystal chandelier on her head did the Monkey with a man wearing a duckling costume made from real yellow feathers. There were excited exclamations from one side of the room, and the student Rafe knew as Clayton, the one with the Roman face, pumped his fist in the air and shouted, “Sonic Death Monkeys rock!” A blue girl broke through the crowd in front of the band and started to dance. Rafe recognized Gracie, and a smile broke over his face in appreciation of her nerve.
“You look happy,” said someone behind him. “Hey, Allison.”
Rafe glanced around, found Levon making his way through the throng.
“Oh. Hi, Mr. Penfield.” She flashed him an unhappy smile, disappointed at the intrusion. “Wow, you look really great. Van Gogh, right?”
He planted himself next to Rafe. “Love your costume, honey. Why don’t you go help yourself to some caviar? Rafe’s paying.”
The girl looked torn, unwilling to give up. “Go on,” Levon urged her. “Don’t feel bad. He’s loaded.”
Her shoulders slumped. She raised woeful eyes to him. “I guess I’ll see you later, Mr. Sinclair.” She slinked away into the sea of humanity herding towards the dance floor.
Levon chuckled. “Van Gogh. I’ve been getting that a lot. I think it’s the beard.”
Rafe smiled, relieved. “Thanks for the save.”
He shrugged. “De nada. She’s a nice girl, but she comes on a little…” he searched for the appropriate word. “Pathetic.” Levon looked him up and down. “Okay, I give up. What are you supposed to be?”
Rafe gave him a sly smile. “A vampire, of course.”
Levon threw his head back and laughed.
“Place looks great.”
“Robbins and Weill did a nice job.”
Together, they surveyed the room. Suddenly, Levon did a double take. “Is that Anastasia?”
Rafe followed his gaze. Sure enough, Anastasia was on the dance floor. She was dancing with a pretty boy in a tuxedo. He was imitating her, move for move. She pulled him to her, and now they were cheek to cheek, their bodies glued together. Suddenly, she was kissing him, bending him over backwards in a graceful curve. Then they broke apart, laughing.
Levon glanced at him, too shocked to say anything.
“Look again,” he said, enjoying his discomfort.
The boy was too short, his body too rounded, feminine. It was a girl, her short shining hair slicked back against her head.
“So…at the risk of you punching me in the face; what’s the deal? Did she have to pay to get in?”
Rafe raised his eyebrows, smiled, replied, “No. She’s my guest.”
“Damn!” Levon said to himself. Then, “I gotta know, man. Is that a costume? Or is she in the altogether?”
“She’s covered in paint from head to toe. She had three airbrush artists with her all day. Not a centimeter of skin is showing. ”
“Wow. You weren’t kidding. Worth the price of admission.”
The band downshifted into a slower beat. The singer moved to the front of the stage, planted his legs apart and leaned back, his hips jutting forward. His voice dropped, became sultry and insinuating as the band slewed into a new song. Couples on the dance floor now parted or moved closer together for a slow dance. The cocktail chatter ebbed away. The music swelled louder, the singer’s voice throbbed with passion.
Dangerous things that love will make you do,
My heart was on fire, and all I saw was you.
Fate and desire, breaking my heart in two…
At the opposite end of the room, Auden pulled a protesting Portia by the hand onto the dance floor. Sargent and his subject slipped their arms around each other and began to sway in time to the music. Near the stage, Gracie laid her blue head on Nick’s shoulder and slipped her fingers into the back pockets of his jeans. David coaxed a reluctant Sara into the edge of the crowd. In another part of the room, Clayton was dancing in front of Gioia, a joyful little two-step of sheer happiness.
Alone, Tessa remained rooted to the spot near the dance floor, her arms wrapped around herself as if that were the only thing keeping her from falling to pieces. Auden and Portia swayed in place, barely moving, their foreheads touching. Giselle twirled by with her husband, her sky-blue skirts billowing out like a bell as they glided by.
Just for a moment, the swathes of costumed revelers parted, revealing Lucian and April. His hands rested surely on her waist, her arms were hooked around his neck. They were gazing into each other’s eyes, sharing an intimate smile. Her fingers pl
ayed with the hair on the back of his neck as they moved slowly back and forth in time to the beat.
Tessa clapped her hands over her eyes to shut out the sight. A hot flush of shock and humiliation crept across her face. Opening her eyes just a crack, unable to tear her gaze away, she fixed on Lucian’s hands, so familiar to her that she could almost feel their heat. Hands she had held so faithfully, and for so long, as she had reassured him day after day of her love and of his importance in the art-world firmament. Those same hands slid down April’s hips, cupped her trim ass.
“Oh, get a room.” she heard Graham mutter. He had come to stand next to her. Lucian slid his arms around April’s shoulders, bowed his head a little lower, and then they were kissing. She took his handsome face in her hands, the long manicured fingernails like claws against his skin.
…why did you let me fall for you?
You swore you felt the same.
Why did you let me dream of you?
Part of your twisted game.
Gracie looked up from Nick’s shoulder to find Lucian Swain and April Huffman right in front of her. She prodded his chest. “Look! It’s Lucian Swain!” she told him excitedly. Her delight was followed by a plummeting feeling in her stomach. “Oh my God!” she said, covering her mouth with her hand. “Where’s Tessa?”
On the other side of the dance floor, something made Portia turn her head. To her left, a well-dressed middle-aged man was embracing a younger woman as they danced, their gym-toned bodies pressed close together. The man was in his forties, but still held onto the cocksure good looks of his youth. The woman looked familiar. Out of context, it took her a moment to recognize them.
“Oh no,” she whispered as the final notes of the song sounded through the room. “Where’s Tess?”
Halfway across the room, making small talk with an aeronautics heiress wearing her mother’s coming-out dress and a beehive hairdo, Raphael Sinclair felt it like a physical blow. He turned around in mid-sentence, his eyes searching the room, anguish calling to him like a beacon.
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