Dancing with a Ghost

by Angela Pepper

  “Katie Mills! Good of you to join us,” Marco said, sounding like a professor.

  He'd changed clothes in the last hour since he'd held her hand over breakfast. Instead of his usual loose corduroy pants and ironic T-shirt, he wore a button-down shirt with slacks that were either brand new or recently ironed. His crisp clothes magically transformed his schlubbiness into a bulky build that looked almost muscular.

  Katie dropped her gaze to the top of a desk. Her emotional rawness felt particularly pronounced now, after a session of sobbing tears. The storm clouds of self-pity swept away in a flash, and she was suddenly struck by another emotion. One that made her hands sweat and her legs feel rubbery.

  She looked at Marco's face, focusing on his eyes, but she kept getting distracted by his movements. He'd rolled his shirtsleeves up to his elbows, and was kneading a ball of earthy red sculpting clay on the table before him. The way he gripped the clay and forced it into shapes was captivating, like watching a talented juggler toss batons of fire and make it look easy.

  She took a seat at a desk two spots over from Lee. She could feel Lee's eyes on her, but she couldn't look at him. She couldn't look away from Marco. Her cheeks felt hot. How could she be looking at Marco that way, considering how things were between her and Lee? Did she really need the attention of every man? She was becoming more like Darlene every day. She swallowed a lump in her throat and realized something horrifying.

  Maybe she hadn't been seeing Darlene's ghost lately because Katie was becoming Darlene, giving her another chance at life, in her body. That would explain why Katie had borrowed the dead girl's clothes. It would also explain some of her recent outgoing behavior, such as flirting with the young men around her.

  Marco dropped a lump of earthy red material on her desk.

  She made a startled noise and jerked in alarm. Her eyes were wide open, yet she hadn't even seen him walking toward her. She was under a spell, or something. This was uncharted territory.

  She heard a voice in her head. Darlene's. “Kitty, what will it take to finally break you out of your shell?” Darlene loved to call her Kitty. She said she missed her three cats back at home—Inky, Dasher, and Max—so Katie could be their substitute. Darlene teased Katie whenever she went out on her own to a party, joking about how she'd leave a big bowl of kibble out to make sure Katie had enough food in her absence.

  Katie had forgotten about that detail. Sometimes there had literally been a bowl of food—a plastic bowl of cookies, or nacho chips. Darlene could be thoughtless sometimes, even cruel, but she could also be sweet.

  “Did you hear me?” Marco was staring down at her, waiting for an answer. They were in the student classroom. At least he was, along with Katie's body and a part of her mind.

  She smiled up at him. He was being so serious now, not as flirtatious as he'd been at breakfast. “Sorry. What did you say?”

  Marco poked his thick index finger into the red clay ball in front of her, leaving a sizable crater. “Make a lizard,” he said.

  She heard herself answer in an imitation of Darlene's flirtatious voice. “How about a kitty? That's my nickname, by the way.”

  “Sure,” Marco said. “Make a kitty. As long as it looks exactly like a lizard.”

  “Oh.” She palmed the ball and immediately dropped it. “It's warm,” she said.

  “It was next to the radiator,” he said, chuckling. “Don't you like it warm? The clay feels more fleshy that way, more like something living.”

  Katie poked at the clay. She looked over at Lee's desk, at his lizard in progress. She started shaping her lump of clay into a rough approximation of what Lee was making.

  “Not like that,” Marco said. “Here, I'll go through the kiddie demo again, just for you.” He grabbed another lump of clay and pulled up a chair in front of her.

  Once they started working, Katie lost herself in the flow of making art.

  Sculpture wasn't her specialty, so she didn't care about the outcome, which made the process fun.

  Creating art was never better than when it was like this, a dance between the materials and the hands. One would lead, the other would follow, and they'd switch back and forth like perfect partners.

  * * *

  They had moved past lizards and started working with texture, building furry bison with big, blocky heads, when Tilda entered the student art room.

  Tilda had recently showered. Her red hair was still wet, darker at the drippy tips of her symmetrical bob. She was back in her trademark black leggings and oversized painting shirt, blue with paint spatters. Her sunglasses were gone, revealing bright-green eyes with dark circles beneath them.

  She took a cursory look over their work and left as quietly as she'd arrived.

  After the artist had left, Lee looked at her son and asked, “Is she coming back? Was that it?”

  Marco used a wire stretched between two chunks of wood to slice off another chunk of the red clay. “Short and sweet,” he said. “If she didn't say anything, it means she approves of what you're doing. And your bison is coming along nicely.”

  Lee sneered as he picked clay out from under his fingernails. “I didn't come here to make children's toys.”

  Marco chuckled. “Because you're too special, right? A special snowflake? Too good for commercial work?”

  “If I wanted to do commercial work, I would have taken industrial design. I'm an artist.”

  Marco glanced over at Katie. “Sure, you are,” he said. “And with that attitude, you'll be a starving artist.”

  Katie looked down at her bison and worked the texturing tool to create a random appearance on its fur.

  After a moment, she asked Marco, “What about you? Is this your career? Making models of animals for children's toys?”

  “Not exactly,” he said slowly. He cleared his throat and deftly changed the subject. “Hey, if you two really want to cheer up my mother, you should offer to pose for some photos.”

  Lee asked, “You mean pose for a painting? Reference photos?”

  Katie snorted. “Tilda doesn't paint people. Just landscapes, nature, and abstract forms.”

  Marco gave them an amused smile. “Oh, I guess you wouldn't know about my mother's secret new project. For the last year, she's been taking”—he made air quotes with his fingers—“tasteful nude photographs in her studio.”

  Katie dropped her texturing tool. “Really?”

  Marco nodded. “Really and truly.”

  “You're an artist,” Lee said. “Why would you make air quotes when you say tasteful? Don't tell me you're one of those uptight guys who claims he can't tell the difference between art and pornography.”

  Marco chuckled, breathing the laughter inwardly. “Oh, I know all about pornography,” he said. “I'm a sculptor who makes a living sculpting. Do you know how much steady work there is out there for sculptors? Not very much. That's why I've got a regular gig creating”—he made the air quotes again—“tasteful objects to be produced in high-grade silicone.”

  Lee's jaw dropped open. It took him nearly a minute to recover and ask, “You make adult toys?”

  Katie looked down at her lump of clay and texturing tools, seeing them in a whole new light.

  “Making a living is not something they teach you at fancy art colleges,” Marco said. “They'd rather send you kids on your way with a portfolio full of still lifes and a heart full of dreams. Nobody wants to tell you the truth. But I will.” He extended his arms out wide. “This is what kind of teacher I'm going to be. The one who tells you the truth.”

  “That's cool,” Lee said. “You're an all-right guy, Marco.”

  “Thanks.” Marco looked pointedly at Katie.

  She picked up a texturing tool and asked, “You use these tools to make...” She couldn't even say the words.

  “The key is verisimilitude,” Marco said. “You don't want realism, but the appearance of realism.”

  “Oh.” She tilted her head and looked at her clay bison and lizard through new ey
es.

  “And beauty,” Marco said. “Even in this world of ugliness, even when the end product is packaged in shining plastic, consumers still respond to aesthetic beauty. Nature never disappoints, even when replicated in plastic.”

  “That's cool,” Lee said again. “I wish I'd known before now. You should have told us.”

  Marco shrugged. “Clive always made me feel bad about my work, like I was a pervert or something.”

  Lee laughed under his breath. “Projection,” he said. “What we hate in others is the shadow within ourselves.”

  Lee's words resonated in Katie's mind. What we hate in others is the shadow within ourselves. It was similar to something she'd heard her mother say.

  “I bet you're glad he's gone,” Lee said to Marco.

  “I'll be too busy to celebrate,” Marco said. “Now that Clive is gone, I'll be taking over management of the Onassis family resources. We're going to get enrollment up, and I'll plug whatever holes Clive was allowing all the money to rush out through. I already have plans for another building, adjacent to this one, with modern amenities and a hot tub.” He turned and looked out the window, at the red rocky mountains beyond. “I've always wanted a hot tub, but Clive said no.”

  Tilda, who'd entered the room unnoticed, spoke with a gravelly voice. “Darling, the man's not even in the ground.” She walked over to her son and yanked a cucumber-shaped piece of clay from his hands. “Good Lord! Don't tell me you're making my art babies do your dirty work?”

  Marco's cheeks reddened. “Tha-tha-that was the body for a salamander,” he stammered.

  She deftly sculpted the end of the piece into something suggestive. “Sure it was,” she said. “Now it's a dinosaur willy.”

  Marco tried to grab the piece away from his mother, but she yanked it out of reach and ran to the far side of the room, waving the object in the air. Marco gave chase, and soon Tilda was squealing with laughter as she raced around the desks. Lee started laughing, and soon Katie was giggling as well.

  The chase ended with a splat—that of the alleged dinosaur willy hitting the ground and flattening under Marco's shoe.

  Once the four of them had regained their composure, Tilda wiped at the corner of her eyes and said, “It feels good to have laughter in this house again.”

  Lee replied, “That's what we're here for, Ms. Onassis. To cheer you up.”

  “Hmm,” she said, grabbing a chunk of clay from the teacher's desk at the front and rolling it into a ball between her small hands. “Careful what you wish for, my art babies. I could use some cheering up, especially now that I've smoked all the menthols.”

  Marco looked up from the floor, where he was scraping clay up with a metal putty knife. “You already smoked the whole carton?”

  “The fireplace smoked some of them,” Tilda said. “Now, who's going to be my favorite student and volunteer to come pose for me?” She waggled her pale-red eyebrows. “It could be a tie for first place. I do love having two subjects, two bodies to bounce the light off of.”

  Lee asked, “Are you really doing photographs now? Of human subjects?”

  “If that's what my son told you, then it's true. My Marco doesn't lie.”

  Lee shrugged. “I'll gladly pose for you.”

  Tilda looked at Katie, eyebrows raised.

  “Lee can take all the glory,” Katie said. “I'm tired. I might have a nap, if that's okay.”

  Tilda made a disappointed noise.

  Lee asked their teacher, “Can you give us a minute?” He nodded for Katie to come with him into the hallway to talk.

  She followed him out, saying, “I really could use a nap. But you should go, Lee. You'll finally get to see her studio without having to try eleven pounds of house keys.”

  “Come with me,” he pleaded.

  “The whole thing sounds a bit too naked for my comfort level.”

  “Don't do it for me,” he said. “Do it for your career.”

  “How's this supposed to help my career?”

  “Favors build trust,” Lee said.

  “No, thanks.”

  He took her hand. “Fine. Do it for me,” he whispered. “Once we get inside her studio, you find a way to distract Tilda so I can search through her stuff for those photos that she and Clive were arguing about. I bet they're juicy.”

  “I don't know how much more juiciness I can handle today.”

  “Then I'll distract her while you look for the photos. Don't you want to know what Clive was upset about?”

  “Yes and no. This isn't a game, Lee. We came here to learn about painting, not snoop around.”

  He growled in frustration. “Don't you see? This is our chance to bond with one of the greatest artists of her generation. Don't you want to make it as an artist, Katie? Or do you want to join your buddy Marco, carving molds for sex toys? Some future that is.”

  “He seems happy enough.”

  Lee squeezed her hand and looked into her eyes. “Katie. Baby. You're so hot,” he said. “You'll never be this young and this beautiful again.”

  “Thanks, I guess.”

  “Okay, you're going to get more beautiful over time. You've got one of those faces. But you'll never be twenty again. This could be amazing. And it's Tilda working the camera, so you know the result is going to be stunning.”

  “You'll never be twenty again.” She heard Lee's words in Darlene's voice. “Come on, Kitty! You're young, and your beauty is intoxicating. I get drunk just looking at you. Come out with me.”

  But Katie had always refused. She didn't know about any of the young students—or professors—Darlene saw outside of their dorm room. She didn't have any names to give the detectives. She didn't have any memories of doing scandalous things, either.

  “Live a little while you're alive,” Lee pleaded.

  “Okay,” Katie said. “I'll go to the studio, but if it gets too weird, I'm out of there.”

  Lee kissed her. They went back into the student art room to let Tilda Onassis know they would be her subjects.

  “Lovely,” she said, clapping her hands.

  Behind her, Marco frowned as he mashed together chunks of red clay with a closed fist.

  Chapter 24

  “Warm enough?” Tilda stood at the room's thermostat. Unlike the main ranch house, with its wood fireplace, Tilda's personal art studio was equipped with an efficient heating and cooling system. The whole building was less than ten years old, and had an expensive-looking commercial sheen inside, from the polished concrete floors to the many skylights on the angled roof. It appeared to be a two-story building from the outside, but it was actually an open, lofted space inside. Large fans along the ceiling line rotated lazily, circulating the heat.

  “I think I should be warm enough,” Katie said. She was sweating underneath the robe, but it was more from nerves than the room's temperature.

  Lee Elliot took off his robe and stretched his arms high, moving languidly, as though he always posed nude for a world-famous artist's new foray into photography.

  Emboldened by Lee's actions—not to mention not wanting to be outdone by him—Katie shrugged out of her robe as well. It wasn't the first time she'd posed nude in an art studio. One of her teachers encouraged the students to take turns posing for live model sessions. It was cheaper, and easier than hiring someone and getting them to show up on the right day and time, plus the teacher said it would give them invaluable insight. Katie had been the first to pose.

  Her roommate had been shocked. “You posed naked? My shy little Kitty? How much did they chip in to pay you?” But they hadn't paid anything. Darlene was incredulous. She was an artist herself, yet she didn't understand that nudity for art was completely different from indiscriminately flashing your breasts at truckers on the highway, or letting them be fondled in the dark by drunken frat boys. To her, it was all the same thing. Life. Art. Love. Everything was a dance of material and movement, eyes and hands, heart and mind.

  Now here she was in the studio of Tilda Onassis. H
er body was the raw material. The artist was now the subject.

  Katie stood next to Lee, her eyes and ears focused on Tilda. Lee was nothing more than raw material, the same as her.

  “You two are a lovely pair,” Tilda said. “Like babies in the Garden of Eden. So innocent.”

  Lee asked, “Have you photographed many subjects so far?”

  Tilda stood very still, her arms pinned to her stomach. “A few.”

  “Other students?” Lee rocked back and forth on his bare feet.

  “Models should be seen and not”—her voice cracked—“heard.” She pulled a roll of antacids from the pocket of her paint-splattered loose shirt and crunched two tablets.

  Lee asked, “Ms. Onassis, is everything okay?”

  “Call me Tilda.” She waved a hand, her pointed fingers slicing through the air, and then adjusted her collar up and down, up and down. “You've been calling me Tilda since you got here. What's changed now?”

  Lee shrugged. “I guess I haven't been naked in front of you before now.”

  Her mouth quivered into a thin smile. “No. You haven't.” She glanced over at Katie. “Let's take some beautiful photos before I lose my nerve. Unless perhaps you'd prefer to pose in the Sky Room, instead?”

  Lee let out a high-pitched laugh and covered himself with both hands. “Out in the cold? No way.”

  The lights around them flashed, and a camera clicked. Tilda had everything on a remote control.

  “Very nice,” she said soothingly. “That was a fun reaction to capture.” She began to pace, adjusting her collar up and down once more. “Now, let's get you two standing closer together. Connected but not connected. Like a glossy magazine ad for an expensive perfume.”

  They moved into position facing each other. Katie looked at the position of the camera lens and imagined the frame around them. She angled her body and adjusted her forearms to give the photographer some interesting angles.

  “Lee, look at what Katie is doing,” Tilda said. “She knows how to turn her body into art.”

  “I'll say,” he growled.

  “Naughty boy,” Tilda barked. “Don't look too closely. Think about something unsexy.” The lights flashed a few more times.