The Color of Light

by Helen Maryles Shankman

“Well. Lucian couldn’t organize breakfast. If you could organize him, you can organize anything.”

  There was a soft knock at the door. An elderly man in a gray suit entered the room, shuffling slowly forward, a sheaf of black-and-white photos in his hand. Though he was advanced in years, his eyes were sharp, he was freshly shaven, his nails were filed and buffed, and each silver hair on his head was pomaded and combed sleekly into place.

  A change came over Anastasia. She leapt from behind the desk, coy, girlish, chattering animatedly in French. The old man looked at Tessa, a light like dawn breaking over his face. When he replied to Anastasia, also in French, his voice stammered with amazement.

  Tessa rose to her feet. He took her hand, held it in both of his, fastened his watery blue eyes on hers. Tessa couldn’t help but notice that his hands shook, slight but constant.

  “Tessa,” Anastasia said quickly in English. “This is Leo Lubitsch.”

  With a little shock of recognition, Tessa realized who he was. She took an involuntary step back.

  “Hello, my dear,” he said. She had never heard a voice like his; smooth, courtly, aristocratic, continental. “Anastasia tells me you’ll be joining us for a while.”

  There was a flicker of something sad behind his eyes. She offered him a sympathetic smile. The gray mustache trembled.

  “Sofia Wizotsky,” he said. “To hear her name again, after all these years. Who would have thought.” He patted her hand, let it go. “Welcome, my dear. Welcome to Anastasia. Do give my regards to Sinclair.” With a little wave, he shuffled slowly back out of the room. The door closed silently behind him.

  Tessa turned to Anastasia, who looked thoughtful. “You should have known him when he was young,” she said reflectively. “He was a lion.”

  The severe little woman poked her head in the door. “Ram is here, with the 69 Ways to Better Sex layout.”

  “Good. Send him in.” she said. The interview was over. She was already poring over something on her desk. “Bon soir, my dear,” she said in dismissal. “Monday at five.”

  The door opened for her. Only when she was sure it had closed firmly behind her did she take a deep breath, slowly exhale. Relieved, she headed for the elevators. As she stabbed the down button, she realized that she not spoken a single word the entire time she was there.

  Thursday evening at six p.m., Portia Ballard approached Tessa’s studio on her way back from class. Portia bowed her head as she hurried past; she felt partly responsible somehow, as if she should have known, should have been there. The office wouldn’t give her Raphael Sinclair’s phone number, no matter how reasonable she seemed. And when she finally summoned up the courage to ring his doorbell, no one answered.

  Portia and Gracie had spent hours sorting through the shambles of Tessa’s belongings, stapling her butchered canvases back onto the jumble of stretchers, pinning the mosaic of scattered postcards back up on the wall. Wild rumors were circulating. Tessa was carrying Raphael Sinclair’s vampire baby, and it was slowly sucking the life out of her; Tessa was already dead, buried in Gramercy Park, while Rafe waited for her to rise from the dead to join him as a creature of the night. As the owner of a townhouse facing the park, he would surely be a key holder.

  But worst of all was the last rumor, more frightening than the others because it was the most plausible; Tessa had cracked under the pressure.

  Graham, who had overheard snatches of the conversation with Whit on Sunday evening, reported hearing about two C’s, a lost scholarship. For Portia, recreating Tessa’s wall of inspiration became an act of almost religious belief; some higher power would see to it that she returned.

  Something stirred the air behind the curtain; it was drawn aside, and there she was, in a t-shirt and faded jeans, whole, healthy, smiling. Startled, Portia dropped her paint box with a bang.

  “Did I miss anything?” said Tessa.

  “Oh, not much,” said Portia. “The founder of the school disappeared off the face of the earth with one of the students. But that was days ago.”

  Gracie came in, whooped ecstatically, hugged them both, jounced off to tell the sculptors.

  “It’s true, isn’t it,” said Portia. “He really is a vampire.”

  Tessa looked as if she were going to say something, and then the sculptors were cramming into the small space, filling it with their big voices and their big bodies, knocking pencils and drawing pads and canvases off of the tables and onto the floor.

  “Hey, Tessa,” David said casually, but concern tightened his face, his voice. “Good to have you back.”

  Abruptly, the atmosphere in the room changed. Goosebumps prickled, hairs stood on end as if there were an electric charge sizzling the air. The art students turned as one. Raphael Sinclair stood framed in the doorway. He was staring at Tessa with his extraordinary eyes as if they were alone, as if the nearest living being was a thousand miles away.

  Something was happening to Tessa. It was as if a furnace had whooshed to life inside of her, burning just under the surface of her skin. Standing next to her, Portia thought she could feel the temperature in the room rise several degrees.

  “Hello, Tessa,” he said, a world of tender knowledge conveyed in the two words.

  “Hello, Mr. Sinclair,” she replied, with a long, slow smile.

  For a long moment, they regarded each other from across the room in a way that made the others feel first like they were intruding, and then as if they needed a shower. Raphael Sinclair glided forward. Stopping scant inches away, he gazed down at her. His lips parted slightly, as if he were going to kiss her.

  “How are you?” he said.

  “It’s good to be back,” she said.

  He reached forward for her. Suddenly he came to himself, remembered the gaggle of open-mouthed observers, glancing around at them as if he had just woken up.

  “Well then. Good luck with your thesis project. All of you.” He took a reluctant step back, then another. The curtain swooshed closed behind him.

  This performance was followed by a moment of unbroken, unbelieving silence.

  Portia glanced at Tessa. The fiery heat had banked with his departure; still, she glowed like an ember. Tessa met her gaze, shrugged ruefully.

  “Come for Shabbos dinner tomorrow night,” she said. “It’s a long story.”

  The following Monday, Tessa reported for work. An assistant in a short black skirt pointed the way to a door just past the reception area.

  The art department was a large square room, painted bright white like everything else at the magazine, designed around an enormous blacktopped table at its heart.

  Two women faced each other around the table, staring fixedly down at the work in front of her. The first was thin, birdlike, barely wider than a child; her otter-brown hair was cropped short, standing up like a little boy’s. She wore a short black and white leather skirt that looked like it had been sewed together from the skins of soccer balls, and over that, a long, fitted navy jacket. Long red and white striped ruffles poured out of the sleeves. Tessa watched as the designer deftly sliced photographs and bits of xeroxed type with an exacto knife, slid them through the rollers of an adhesive wax machine, always managing to keep her ruffled cuffs out of harms way.

  The second woman was equally startling. She was dressed as if it was still morning in the 1960s, a neat cotton blouse with a Peter Pan collar in a tiny flowered print, a pleated skirt, black Mary Janes. But her face was pure club kid; flawless white skin, Chanel red lipstick. Deep kohl eyeliner stroked around her eyes, angling up at the corners. She wore her hair cut high on the back of her neck and swinging low in the front, like a China doll.

  At one end of the room was a small office, a series of long black countertops augmented by a phone and some cabinets, connected to the art department by a large interior window. At the far end hung a large bulletin board. Painstakingly ruled in black were many rows of carefully spaced numbered rectangles. Tiny layouts, reduced to a few inches in width, were accumulating over ma
ny of the rectangles. At the top of the bulletin board was pinned the word May.

  In front of this board stood Anastasia, deeply absorbed, contemplating the miniaturized layouts. She was accompanied by a young man in a brick-colored suit, pleated trousers pegged at the ankles and pinstriped in cream. Butter yellow pleats spilled out between the lapels of his jacket. He wore his hair shorn very close to his head, the top of it dyed almost yellow. Long, sharp sideburns pierced his cheeks, stopping at the corners of his mouth. Tessa stared. She had never seen anyone so artfully composed in her entire life. It was like he had stepped out of a Toulouse-Lautrec painting.

  Anastasia seemed to sense Tessa’s presence; she turned to face her, a smile painted across her red lips. “Right on time,” she said. “You can put your things down on that desk. Ram,” The young man looked up from the mini-board. “This is Tessa Moss. She will be taking Elle’s place. And be nice. She is Raphael’s special friend. One of his art students.”

  “Oh, sure,” he said. “Hi.” He turned to Anastasia, addressing her confidentially. “Does she know that he’s just a great big homo?”

  “Ram,” Anastasia chided him, but then she broke into a laugh.

  Wordlessly, Ram looked her up and down, assessing her clothes, her dusty Western boots, her hair. Suddenly, Tessa felt shy, self-conscious, embarrassed. At school, she fit in with the rest of the painters. Next to these exotic creatures, she was as plain as a sparrow.

  “So you’re Raphael Sinclair’s little bit of crumpet,” he said. She flushed pink. He smiled, his eyes crinkled merrily, inviting her to laugh along with him. “Welcome to Anastasia. We can really use your help.”

  They put her to work immediately, xeroxing the fashion photos, headlines, and copy for half a dozen different stories. It’s a Wrap! was the food story. The New Nudes was about lipstick. Hillary for President was an interview with the wife of the Democratic Presidential candidate. We Rate the Lubricants was self-explanatory.

  The work was eye-glazingly dull, but it did take a certain amount of organization to keep the stories separate from each other, and as a bonus, she got to eavesdrop on other conversations as she punched buttons on the copy machine.

  She learned that Gabriela, the small one with the dark hair, had known Ram since middle school. That Thea’s mother was an artist, one of Warhol’s crowd in the Sixties. That one editor’s father was a respected television news reporter, and that another editor’s mother was a former Miss America. That a certain fashion editor ate a big lunch and regurgitated it every day at two-thirty, so regularly you could set your watch by it. That the absent Elle was very likely going to be fired.

  At six-thirty, Gabriela put on her coat. “Go home,” she addressed Tessa cheerfully. “Don’t worry. We’ll have lots more xeroxing for you tomorrow.”

  Behind her, Leo glided into the art department. An electrifying change came over Gabriela’s exquisite face. She tore off her coat, hurled down her bag. “Get Anastasia!” she snapped at Tessa over her shoulder as she bolted for the office. Tessa hurried down the long hallway, spooked by the quiet; the phones had stopped ringing, the editors had all gone home.

  The stern assistant was on the phone. Tessa waited. The conversation ended. She flipped the pages of a date book, filled something in. Tessa waited some more. Eventually, Anthea glanced impatiently up at her.

  “What is it?”

  “Gabriela asked me to get Anastasia.”

  “Well, you can tell Gaby that Anastasia is very busy.”

  Tessa shifted from one foot to the other. “Um. I think it had something to do with Mr. Lubitsch. He’s in the art department.”

  As it had with Gabriela, an electrifying change transformed Anastasia’s dry little assistant. She leapt out from behind her desk. “Leo? Why didn’t you say so?” She pounded a button on her phone set, barked, “Leo is in the art department!”

  Before she’d finished the sentence, Anastasia was charging through the door and down the hallway. Tessa had a hard time keeping up with her stride. At the end of the corridor, Anastasia made a beeline into Ram’s office and shut the door behind her.

  Through the interior window, Tessa could see the editorial director, the editor-in-chief, and the art director deep in discussion. Only Gaby moved, bustling around them, taking scissors, colored paper, and what looked like a sheet of white oak tag out of various drawers. A moment later, Ram opened the door a crack and hissed “Lubricant!”

  Tessa tiptoed through the door, discreetly slipped the folder with the photographs and headlines to Gaby. Leo smiled warmly at her. Tessa smiled shyly back, turned to go. Anastasia’s wise eyes went back and forth from the old man to the girl.

  “Why don’t you stay, my dear,” she suggested. “Stand over here, next to me. You can see how we do things.”

  A flimsy white cardboard sheet lay flat on the counter. A long rectangle was ruled across it in cyan blue. A line down the middle divided the rectangle in two. Left page, right page. A single magazine spread.

  Leo sorted through the various photographs, selected a large black-and-white xerox of a man and a woman in the throes of passion. This, he laid it down on the left. On the right, he put down a block of copy three columns wide; took it away, tried it in a different typeface, smiled in satisfaction. Now he scanned the headlines, spread across the counter in various fonts and sizes.

  “This head. We Rate the Lubricants. It’s not very clever. Can we do better?”

  “How about Slip and Slide?” suggested Anastasia.

  Leo shook his head no.

  “Gentle glide,” said Gaby.

  Anastasia dismissed it. “Sounds like an advertisement for a new brand of tampon.”

  “Jiffy Lube?” suggested Ram.

  Leo raised his eyebrows. He turned to Tessa. “How about you, my dear?” he said courteously. “Any thoughts?”

  “Um…Smooth moves?”

  He nodded, smiled. “Very good. Smooth Moves it is.”

  Leo took up one of the lines of type Tessa had xeroxed, tore off the extra words to approximate the length of the new title, laid them across the photograph. Stood back to view his work.

  “Yes,” said Anastasia nodding. “Perfect. Frame,” she said. Gaby took a flat black plastic frame from a drawer, set it down around Leo’s layout. Without the distraction of the extra lengths of paper fluttering off the edges, the intelligence of the design sprang forth.

  “Tape,” said Ram.

  Gaby held up her hands. A piece of scotch tape was stuck to the end of each of her ten fingers. Ram peeled off the pieces one by one, taped down the collage of paper and photographs while Leo and Anastasia chatted amiably in French. When it was all secured, he handed it to Gaby, who whisked it away to the production department, where the fake copy would be replaced with real words.

  “Thank you all for staying so late to indulge an old man,” said Leo self-deprecatingly, inclining his head. “Now go home! There is always tomorrow.” He directed a particular smile at Tessa, then floated back out of the art department like a gray ghost.

  The moment he was gone, the electricity seemed to go out of the air. Tessa was surprised to find that her heart had been racing. Watching Leo lay down a magazine page had been akin to the magic of watching Lucian paint.

  “You are right,” said Anastasia, as if she could hear her thoughts, her dark eyes fastened on Tessa. “He is extraordinary. There is no one else like him. A genius, a legend in his time.” She sighed. “But now, that time is passing. I don’t know how much longer he has left. The shaking is new.”

  Then she smiled. “Did you know? He had a little crush on Sofia. Nothing like our Raphael—that was the stuff of epic romance—but still, enough to give Margaux some restless nights.”

  She was quiet for a moment, almost sad, recollecting something in their shared past; and then she brusquely shook it off, smiled in a way that was friendly and condescending all at the same time, and said, “But I despise nostalgia; that was all a long time ago.”

>   “You were marvelous, my dear,” she added. “He is quite impressed with you.”

  “Me? What did I do?”

  “The way you came up with that title,” she said. “You are a natural.”

  “Jiffy Lube would have made a fierce headline,” grumbled Ram. “I even had a subhead. When a quickie just isn’t quick enough.” Anastasia burst into laughter. “Smooth moves. Crumpet, you little slut. Oh, don’t look at me like that. I know all about you. You’re a big slut. You even have slut hair.”

  Tessa froze, stupefied. For her part, Anastasia was delighted. “Ram, you are shocking her,” she admonished him, in a reprimand that wasn’t really a reprimand. “Sweet little Tessa,” she cooed persuasively. “We are just having some fun. Let us make it up to you. Why don’t you join us for dinner tonight?”

  She was moving forward now, a crimson light leaping and dancing in her eyes. The hairs prickled up on the back of Tessa’s neck.

  “I have to get to my studio,” she said guardedly, taking a step backwards, out of the narrow office. “Lot of catching up to do.”

  To her immense relief, Anastasia halted at the doorway. “Just like Raphael,” she said, bemused. “Always running off to his little atelier.” A Gallic shrug. “All right, my dear. This time we will let you get away. But next time, you are ours. Tory!” she snapped. Behind Tessa, an assistant editor hurrying by on her way to the elevator stopped dead. “A double cappuccino, please. Tell them it’s for me. They know how I like it. Vite, vite!” she snapped. Tessa forgotten, she turned on her Manolo Blahnik heel and shut the door behind her.

  2

  What the fuck, man,” said Levon, and that was just for openers. Rafe tensed, bracing for the rest of it. God knows, he deserved it. “Is it possible you just didn’t hear me all the times I told you to stay away from her? There weren’t enough women in New York City?”

  “She needed me,” he said. They were in Levon’s office. It was early in the evening; the remains of a red sunset seethed on the horizon.

  “Your school needs you, Rafe. She needed a doctor.”