The Color of Light

by Helen Maryles Shankman

  “But Rafe hasn’t been around much lately. So I’m asking for your cooperation. Matter of fact, I need you to be seen around town with someone else, to throw Turner and his minions off the scent. David, maybe. He already has the hots for you.”

  The quirky eyebrows drew together, the dark eyes marked and measured. She turned away from him, towards the window, surveying the water tanks and rooftops of the East Village. There was a look on her face that was too wise for her years, as old as the forests, as old as time. Levon watched the play of love and loyalty chasing each other across her face. It was no wonder Rafe wouldn’t give her up; if she were his, he wouldn’t give her up, either.

  “Look, Tessa,” he went on, his deep voice compassionate. “I know you’ve had a rough year. And I’m glad you’ve found yourself this little patch of happiness, even though I’m worried about how it’s all going to end. I’m not saying forever. Just till graduation. What is that, three and a half months away? Three and a half months to save the school.”

  He gripped her shoulder as he got to his feet, and she was struck by the odd sensation that it was more for his support than for her comfort. He paused at the door. “Look at the bright side,” he said affably. “Think of what all that frustrated sexual energy will do for your paintings.”

  Tessa pressed her cheek against the cool surface of the table, folded her arms over her head. She wondered how she would begin each morning without the promise that Rafe was her reward at the end of the day, how she would pick up a brush without the shivery certainty that each stroke was for him.

  The hairs on the back of her neck prickled to attention. She lifted her head to find Rafe watching her, his strange eyes full of sorrow. “How long have you been here?” she asked miserably.

  “Long enough,” he said.

  “So you heard?”

  He nodded, came slowly forward. Put a hand out to touch her, jerked it back, buried both hands in his pockets. “This is all my fault,” he muttered. “If I had been more careful. If I hadn’t missed all those bloody meetings. This never would happened.”

  “I’ll quit school,” she said suddenly. “The heck with my stupid thesis project.”

  “Absolutely not,” he said. “You are the reason I created this school in the first place.”

  “Who wrote that stupid law, anyway?”

  “I did,” he asserted glumly. “Board members were always hanging around, trying to talk pretty girls into bed. Seemed like a good idea at the time.”

  Everywhere, the cheerful noises of the art studio. Hammering from the sculptors’ grotto. REM wailing on the radio in Graham’s nook across the way. First-year students slamming locker doors, shouting to each other, laughing. But in Tessa’s studio, there was a painful silence, growing like a bubble, taking up all the air in the room.

  “So I guess…” Tessa was going to say, this is goodbye, but the words stuck in her throat. She hid her face in her hands.

  Swiftly, Rafe went to her, went down on his knees, kissed her wet eyes. “No, no, sweet girl,” he whispered passionately. “Never goodbye.” He kissed the palm of her hand, held it to his cheek. “I’ve been reckless, it’s true; visiting your studio in the middle of the day, all those meetings and galas I missed…we can’t afford to give Turner any more ammunition.”

  He sighed, interweaving his fingers with hers. “So we’re going to do exactly what Levon said we should. I’m going to show up at every last gig with some prattling debutante on my arm. You’re going to work very hard on your painting and be seen all around town with that damned David.” For a moment, his eyes took on a pale, frosty hue. It faded. “I’ll come when I can, after midnight. I’ll knock on your window.”

  She climbed into his lap and rested her heated forehead in the cool curve between his shoulder and his neck. He put his arms around her.

  “I can’t do this,” she said miserably. “How am I going to get through the next three months without you?”

  “My sweet girl.” He smoothed the hair out of her eyes. “Everywhere you look, you’ll see me. Everywhere you go, I’ll already be there. You won’t be able to get rid of me.” He took her hand, slipped it under his jacket, held it over his heart. There was a radiant blue light in his eyes. “What’s three months,” he said, “when we have a lifetime ahead of us?”

  She slid her arms into his coat, leaned her bright head against his shirtfront. He inhaled deeply, memorizing the blackberry fragrance of her. “I love you,” he whispered into the untamed depths of her curls. Love you, love you, love you.

  Outside, he strode purposefully down Lafayette Street. Halfway down the block, he slowed to a stop in the middle of the sidewalk. His body was wracked by a single dry sob; he covered his mouth and leaned against a building, overcome with grief.

  All his courage had been for her. Inside, he was dying. How he was going to get by without the constant reassuring touch of her hand, the steadying comfort of her softly rounded body, he could not begin to imagine.

  6

  Ready?” said David. Tessa pushed away the uneaten half of her bean and cheese burrito and nodded.

  It had been almost a month since Rafe and Tessa agreed to separate. Portia had been kind, sympathetic, but Tessa knew she was secretly relieved. The other artists showed remarkable understanding, pledging to look in on Rafe from time to time. Harker went right to work on a rock history mix tape, delivering it to the townhouse with his own Walkman in case the founder of the school didn’t own a tape deck.

  Levon was right, all that sexual frustration made for better art. She was already finished with the painting of the mother and child, and had already drawn the outlines for the other two paintings onto the canvas.

  Ram had taken her out for drinks down the street at the Royalton, nodding understandingly through the entire story. The next day, there was an enormous box of Godiva chocolate and a bottle of Cristal champagne sitting on her desk.

  “The chocolate is for now,” he explained. “The champagne is for your first night back together again. Ay, Mamacita!” he cried, heedless of the passing editors’ incredulous stares. “Ay! Ay! Aieeeeeeeee!”

  David stepped seamlessly into his role as Tessa’s boyfriend, without so much as a hiccup of hesitation. “But what about Sara?” she asked cautiously. “Won’t she be jealous?”

  “I broke up with Sara over winter vacation,” he answered.

  In truth, it hadn’t been as onerous as she’d thought it would be. Classes kept her busy in the morning, the magazine kept her busy in the afternoons, and the rest of the time was spent hard at work on her thesis project.

  It was not exactly a chore to meet David for dinner, or a movie, or a visit to a museum. He was smart and funny, easy to be with. It was no secret that he thought he had a chance with her if he just stuck around long enough. The other students already treated them like they were a couple.

  She learned that he had a married sister living in Brooklyn Heights, a dog named Roxy, a niece and nephew he liked to babysit. That his favorite book was Catcher in the Rye. That his favorite artist was Rembrandt. That he could play piano. That he still listened to Cat Stevens.

  That he always held the door open for her. That he liked to rest his hand lightly on her elbow, guiding her out of a movie, out of a restaurant, walking her home. That when he stood back from his easel, he always crossed his arms and tilted his head a certain way. That when the light fell on him in the late afternoon, he was really very handsome. Sometimes she enjoyed herself so much she felt a little guilty.

  True to his word, Rafe was everywhere. Never had his presence been more felt in the hallways of the school. He would catch Tessa’s eye while conversing with Levon near the office, while querying teachers about student progress outside their classrooms, taking donors on tours of the studio floor.

  As he said he would, he came to her when he could, only twice so far, long after midnight. Their meetings were brief and intense. There were few words; mostly, they clung to one other.

&nb
sp; Tonight, after dinner, Tessa and David were attending the opening of a new exhibition at the Met. Tessa knew very little about Lucian Freud, only that he was the celebrated grandson of that Freud. The instructors all seemed to be very excited. The whole school was going.

  “Tell me, Tess,” said David, bringing her back to the present, his hands—nice brown hands, the fingers well-shaped, she noticed once again—wrapped around a cup of café con leche. “How is it that you’re so careful to keep kosher, but you’re dating a goy?”

  Tessa raised one eyebrow, stirred her coffee. “A goy who also happens to be a vampire.” He was wearing that chambray shirt that made his eyes look very blue, and the way he looked at her, she knew he would be hers if she just gave him a sign. “I think it would be a problem if he were actually alive. I don’t know what the rabbis say about dating the undead.”

  He leaned back in his chair, signaled the waitress for the check, leaned forward again. “I’m not just saying this because I’m jealous. Truth is, I’m jealous as all hell. Of course you’re in love with him. Who wouldn’t be? He’s rich, he’s gorgeous, he’s got the great suits, that great accent…” He’d been drawing her face in his sketchbook. Now he slapped it shut with more force than he’d intended, making them both jump. “Look. I don’t believe in all this supernatural crap. To me, it looks like an eccentric British rich guy way to score babes. But if he really was a vampire, I’d be asking myself these questions.”

  “Like what?”

  “Like this. What kind of future can you have with him? Are you going to marry him? Have his vampire babies?”

  Tessa sighed. “I’m not thinking about the future right now, David. I’m so behind on my painting that I can’t think past next week.”

  “Then you won’t want to think about this, either. Does he love you? Or are you just a convenient replacement for Sofia?”

  She scowled at him, irritated. But David wasn’t done yet. He spread his fingers on the table, leaned closer.

  “One last thing. What does he eat?”

  “He’s a wealthy man,” she muttered, defending him. “He can buy anything he wants.”

  But her eyes were clouded with doubt. David entertained a small thrill of victory. “Ask yourself this, Tess,” he said, slipping the tip under a water glass. “What does he buy? Does it come in a can? Or does it come from a real live girl?”

  They paid the waitress, took the subway uptown to the Met. Ascending the wide white limestone stairway, Tessa was overcome by a feeling of almost religious awe. Lit up like a Greek temple, the pillars and pediments stood out in yellow relief against the black New York night.

  “I should bring you on a Saturday night,” he said. “There’s live classical music playing as you go through the galleries.”

  The show was in the American Wing. They passed a table selling books, calendars and posters, went through the double doors.

  “Oh my God,” she whispered, and stopped there.

  All around them, average, lumpy bodies sat heavily on chairs, lay draped across beds, sofas, and lovers. Ordinary faces stared back at her from monumental canvases, freighted with believable life. A man lay on a couch, his face turned away, touchingly vulnerable in his nakedness. A sleeping baby was dressed all in white, with cheeks so full and round that Tessa wanted to touch them. A blond woman leaned ecstatically into a mountain of discarded painting rags, the pinks and ochres of her skin contrasting with the gray folds. Two sisters, dressed warmly against the London chill, gazed at her as if they were in possession of a nasty little secret.

  She’d never seen anything like it, the living humanity in the expressions, the broken rainbow of pigments making up the fleshtones. The texture of the oil paint, thick with lead, ropy, twisted, clotted.

  They made their way slowly through the gallery, passing other Academy students, similarly bedazzled. In the next room, they joined Portia and Graham in staring up at a painting of the monolithic back of the performance artist Leigh Bowery, almost bursting from its frame.

  “He’s made figurative art relevant again,” Graham said in awe.

  Across the room, Rafe stood with Anastasia before a painting of a woman with a greyhound, holding a forgotten glass of red wine.

  “This is very good,” said Anastasia, looking at the painting. She sounded surprised.

  His heart in turmoil, Rafe didn’t reply, preoccupied with Tessa’s progress around the gallery.

  The past month had been a misery to him. He was trying, he really was. He went to the meetings, he went to the parties, he smiled at the pretties, he charmed the donors.

  But everything was different now. Before Tessa, women had all been the same to him. Oh, he would appreciate a pair of pretty eyes, another girl’s lissome figure. He would remember a pair of voluptuous lips, or a spectacular set of legs. But that’s all they were to him, almost indistinguishable from one another; seduce one, seduce them all.

  Now all he could think of was her. Dressed or undressed, in her studio, on her couch, across the room, across his lap, in his bedroom, in the moonlight. He longed for the touch of her hand, the steady warmth of her presence in the night.

  Seeing her with David drove him nearly mad. Hidden in the doorway of a nearby building, Rafe tormented himself watching another man buy her dinner, another man making her laugh, another man walking her home.

  They looked so natural together, it made his heart ache. Some part of him whispered let her go. What was he doing with a girl like Tessa Moss, anyway? What could he possibly bring her besides sorrow, degradation, an untimely death at his own hands? In the deepest, darkest recesses of the night, as he watched over her from the steps of St. Xavier, the voice whispered on.

  “Hi, Mr. Sinclair,” said a voice to his left. He tore his gaze away from Tessa and looked down.

  “Oh, yes, hello, ah—”Andy? Amy? Alice? Annie?

  “Allison,” she said. Ah, yes. Long dark hair, sad shapeless mouth. She had been thin at the New Students party. She had lost weight since then. Her desperation sang to him.

  “Right.” He said. “Sorry. Allison, Anastasia deCroix.”

  Reading the gargantuan neediness that lay just beneath the surface of the girl’s skin, Anastasia’s lips stretched out in a greedy smile.

  “One of my students,” he reminded her.

  “D’accord,” she said graciously, putting out her hand. “Nice to meet you. That pin,” she said, reaching forward to examine a large, bejeweled cross on the girl’s sweater. “Where did you get it?”

  “I made it,” she said.

  “Really,” said Anastasia, interested now.

  Tessa and David had joined Portia and Graham, and here were Clayton and Ben, all of them clustered together before a painting of a man in a tan raincoat, holding a cigarette and standing near a potted palm. Someone must have said something funny, they were all laughing. It wasn’t fair, he thought. He should be with them.

  Anastasia was writing Allison’s phone number down. “My assistant will be calling you,” she promised.

  Now the group of students were joined by Levon and Turner. Whit was gesturing at the potted palm and explaining something, maybe about the composition, maybe about the meaning of the cigarette. David, playing the role of Tessa’s boyfriend to the hilt, slid his arm around her waist.

  Feeling sick, Rafe turned away. Weaving through the crowd of enthusiastic opening night guests, he made for the far end of the gallery, positioning himself in front of a painting as if he were carefully scrutinizing it, when in reality, he was just getting as far away from the swarm of art students as he possibly could.

  “What did I tell you? Blows the lid off of modern painting.” Sawyer Ballard came to stand beside him.

  “Nice show,” Rafe said politely, though the truth was, he had barely noticed the art.

  “Nice? There’s nothing nice about Lucian Freud. Everyone should see this. He’s what the twentieth century has been waiting for. ”

  A tall blond woman in a Chanel suit
came to claim him. “Your father would have loved it,” he called over his shoulder as she piloted him away.

  He studied the painting before him. A man and a woman, side by side in a single bed. Behind them, the vertical pipes of an old-fashioned radiator. The man snuggled cozily around his partner, his arm draped around her waist. There was a look of bliss upon their sleeping faces.

  A fierce throb in his heart; and then he was surrounded by his students.

  “Hey, there, Mr. Sinclair,” said Clayton. “Looked like you could use some company.”

  Ben and Clayton, Harker and Portia, Gracie and Graham, all circled around him, forming a wall, and a hand came seeking his in the crush of bodies.

  Tessa stood beside him, shielded from view by the barrier of burly sculptors. Something tightened in his chest; he could feel his eyes stinging with tears. His fingers curled around hers and squeezed.

  As quickly as it had begun, it was over. She melted back into the pack of art students, and they lounged on to the next painting.

  “So sweet,” said Anastasia, coming to stand beside him. She had felt his anguish two rooms over. “Leo adores her. He calls her his petite jeune fille. They have a little crush on each other. Just last week she presented him with a little watercolor portrait. He was enchanted.” She reached out and smoothed his lapel. “Did I tell you how she nearly gave her life rescuing the 69 Ways to Better Sex layout from a ledge outside the twentieth floor?” She frowned, pursed her lips. “Then again, perhaps there are some things it is better you do not know.”

  “She needs to spend more time working on her paintings,” he said grimly. “And less time with you.”

  “My dear Raphael,” Anastasia said firmly. “In a few months, she will graduate. And this dream of being a painter will have to face the reality of the market. She will need a job. Why shouldn’t she work at my magazine?”

  Rafe felt his lip lifting in a snarl. They watched Tessa drift from painting to painting, David in tow. “They are so cute together,” Anastasia said affably.