Christabel

by Karin Kallmaker

  She was looking at me now. I saw why Leo was so pleased with himself. He saw her light, and I was going to be used to bend the light to his way. If her light wouldn’t bend, he would extinguish it. Darkness was his specialty.

  She was walking toward me, Leo having said something about not being able to show me around the town tonight and putting her in the awkward position of agreeing to show me the sights. We’d been here several days; I hardly needed an escort. Our schedule was also very tight and none of the models had much in the way of social time. Apparently, I was expected to make time for Ms. Rowland.

  I didn’t protest. It was pointless—Leo would have his way. And I found myself wanting her light closer to me.

  I don’t believe in holy things anymore. I don’t think I ever did, but if I’d clung to any belief in divine aid, Leo had driven it out of me.

  Leo had proven to me how powerless holy things are. And she was not a holy being; it was not a saint who asked me if I liked museums. But her light came from some source that Leo could never tap, a place I would never go. I could only nourish the hope that she wasn’t harmed by my selfish desire to warm myself near her.

  I turned from the dark cold of the building, from Leo’s disdain and Gerrard’s disgust, and followed her into the watery light of early evening.

  Chapter 3

  “I like art,” I assured Dina. As we got farther from the building, Dina’s light faded until she was just a woman trying to stay dry under an umbrella not quite broad enough to protect both of us. Her head tipped toward me as she listened, but her gaze was fixed on the street. “Especially modern art. I was hoping to go to the Museum of Modern Art while I am here.”

  “I love MOMA.” Her voice was like bells on the wind. “Have you eaten?”

  “I’m a model,” I said, laughing. “What do you think?”

  She grinned as she tried yet again to hail a cab. “I think that’s sad.”

  “So do I. And I’m hungry.” Abruptly, it was true. Being near her had already nourished me enough to care about the persistent gnaw in my stomach. It wasn’t just her, I told myself. Spending time with any woman was like water in the desert. Leo knows that I crave the company of women, and so he surrounds me with men or other models, whose competitive bitchiness leaves me just as drained.

  “The food at the museum restaurant is expensive enough to keep us thin,” she said, then blushed.

  “Dina.” I felt a strange thrill when I said her name. “I don’t count enjoyment by how much it costs.” I wanted to say I was not a bimbo. I wanted to say that most models are shrewd businesswomen, just as she appeared to be. I had certainly made my share of bargains. Best not mention that—some had turned out very bad in the end.

  She looked relieved. “I’m sorry, that was a rude assumption on my part. And I didn’t mean to sound like a cheapskate. I’m still a starving student at heart, I guess. I was taught the value of money by my mother.” Her voice dropped slightly with tenderness. Plainly, she loved her mother. “Money is only good for the good you can do with it.”

  “Do you fight about how to use money? There—a cab.” We simultaneously signaled, and the taxi screeched to a halt. A man tried to get there before us, but Dina made it to the door a split second before him, then I did...it. The slow blink into his bemused gaze, one shoulder back, and one hip rolling toward him so he inevitably glanced down at my legs—like nine men out of ten, his jaw went slack.

  “Pardon me,” he said, and he held the door, closing it after watching me hungrily into my seat.

  Dina was trying to look lighthearted, but failed as she asked, “Does that happen to you all the time?”

  “Usually when I want it to. Does that shock your sensibilities?”

  She was serious now, and not looking at me. Damn Leo. I was already under her skin and already hating myself for the distress I would surely bring her. There was no other possible outcome. “That depends. I guess my mother would have said that looks like yours are only good for the good they can do.”

  “Your mother was a wise woman, but she didn’t live in my world.” Dina’s light was too strong to have been exposed to anything in my world.

  “If you mean she wasn’t beautiful, you’re wrong. My mother was an incredibly beautiful woman.”

  Like her daughter, I wanted to say. Green eyes like a summer lake were framed by dark lashes. Braided black hair that was no miracle of a salon, features that would age with character and strength, a long throat that would always be elegant but never haughty—she held herself with natural grace. No model could copy it. Like me, and it was ironic to think we had something in common, much of what she was had come to her from her mother. Unlike me, her beauty would strengthen into old age, instead of fading into limpness like an overblown hothouse flower.

  “Actually, I meant the place I grew up. A little bit of nowhere in the middle of miles and miles of one-story nothing—Los Angeles. Ever been there?”

  Dina shook her head. “My mother grew up on the Lower East Side. Not miles and miles of nothing, but block after block of it, sometimes forty stories high. But she stayed and cared and tried to bring in some fresh air. I grew up in that part of the city. I didn’t move until I went to college.”

  Nothing I’d seen in New York compared to the desolation and hopelessness of the Los Angeles wasteland. “Did she use her looks for good?”

  Dina’s voice grew tight. “She didn’t...use them.”

  “Of course she did. Everyone uses their birthright. Looks, brains, brawn, name.” I managed to catch her gaze and hold it before she retreated behind her lashes.

  “Do you use yours for good?”

  “No,” I said, flatly. “Leo uses them. I’m just the brain they’re attached to.”

  Her opinion of me as a jaded jet-setter was solidifying. Until I met Leo I had never left the arid and dead-end streets of the ineptly named City of Industry where movie studios and costume houses dotted the landscape with their dilapidated facades. There was nothing glamorous about the movies except what an audience paid to see. I’d wasted several years trying to break into the biz, but the closer I got the more sordid it seemed. Leo had appeared the better choice.

  I had been so wrong. But given the history of the women in my family, there were no right choices. Leo had taken me to London, Singapore, Brazil, and I’d seen them through a fog of darkness. I was the reason he had decided to design clothing for women, in addition to men. My body inspired him, he said, inspired his creativity. It inspired his cruelty, too.

  I didn’t want the first person who made my inner darkness lift just a little to think I was a spoiled and pampered brat, that my soul was as shallow as my blusher compact. Damn Leo, damn him. He had already made her wary of me.

  The museum’s coffee shop wasn’t crowded. We went down the line to acquire sandwiches and coffee. Dina set the tray on a small table in the corner while I hung her umbrella from a spare chair to help it dry.

  After slipping my coat onto the back of my chair I took my seat and realized she had frozen in the act of moving the sandwiches from the tray to the table.

  “Sorry,” she said quickly. She finished the task and sat down, her cheeks slightly tinged with pink.

  “What?”

  She shook her head as if it was nothing and I realized she was forcing herself not to look at me. I’d forgotten—Leo had said we were going to a cocktail party. The little black dress he’d designed for such occasions combined a high collar that looked demure with a keyhole bodice that was anything but. I hadn’t realized how out of place I would look.

  “I’ll put my coat on.”

  “Don’t—you don’t have to. Silly of me.” Dina’s flush deepened. “I’ve never been this close to a model before, and I’ve always wondered how much was real.” Her gaze flicked over me as if she couldn’t help herself.

  “All real,” I said. “As real as anything can be with around-the-clock application of skin products, muscle toners, hair tints, body make-up—you
name it. I’m covered with layers of fake.”

  “I don’t believe you.” She started to say the words lightly but it didn’t end up that way.

  A flirtatious answer—an invitation to find out, perhaps—died on my lips. Maybe I couldn’t help my yearning to be near her, but given that I knew Leo had reasons for wanting us to spend time together, my actively seeking it out made me his accomplice. I would not be that to her. She had that look, almost bruised, that said I was disturbing her composure well beyond her comfort level.

  She wasn’t blaming me for it, yet. I did not want to give her cause to blame me, either.

  We ate and talked of nothing important, deliberately on her part I think, and then took the elevator to the museum’s third floor. I realized that while the brightness that came from Dina had faded, it still allowed me to see more clearly than I had since I was very young. It was as if I’d come out of a train tunnel, or had dark contacts rinsed from my eyes.

  “This is my favorite room,” Dina was saying, as she led me into a small chamber on the third floor. “I always like to start here.”

  I was shocked into surprised silence, not just by the beauty of the art, but by the way her taste mirrored my own. She had finally stopped looking at me from the corners of her eyes, and instead was raptly studying a vibrant Chagall she had probably seen a hundred times before. I liked that something so familiar could capture her attention so completely.

  The only Chagalls I’d ever seen were in art books at the library. And here was The Circus Rider—the blue hurt my eyes. I could feel the yellow in my blood, while the red danced in my stomach. And the green was like...sanctuary.

  The last words my mother had said to me before she died were, “Maybe you’ll be the one to find green.” That night, while I was asleep, she had hung herself. I was seventeen at the time, and her words had haunted me for the last eight years.

  I studied the Chagall and drank in the vibrant, living green. The green was the color of Dina’s eyes.

  It was impossible not to watch Christa. Dina knew Christa was used to being stared at, used to be objectified and flattered, and the last thing Dina wanted was to join a queue of admirers.

  “Around here.” She led the way to the next gallery and paused just inside the door. “Another favorite.”

  “Oh my word.” Christa took tiny steps forward, her lips parted in an almost childlike wonder as she gazed at The Starry Night. “You see pictures in books and it’s nothing like this.”

  With Christa focused on the Van Gogh, Dina studied the open expression and the shimmer of amber light playing across Christa’s brown eyes. A photograph in a magazine had little to do with reality in Christa’s case as well. This was no empty-headed, body-obsessed socialite. Why was she tied up with a man like Goranson? Surely a dozen designers would vie for her talents. “You studied art in school?” Christa’s expression stiffened slightly and she pushed her hands into the pockets of her coat. “No, at the library.” She added, reluctantly, “I never finished high school. I was supporting myself from a pretty early age, and barely had enough money for rent, let alone television, books or movies. So I spent a lot of time at the library. I would study art or design or architecture—anything I liked.”

  “I’m glad to show you the real thing, then.” Hadn’t finished high school? Dina was willing to believe that Goranson made Christa feel ignorant and dependent. He’d tried to make her feel that way and Dina had no feelings of inferiority he could tweak. With a gesture at the painting, she said, “I love the color bursts against the deep blue.”

  “He was crazy—wonderfully crazy.” Christa took another step closer. “Who knows what demons drove the poor man, but he produced such beauty.”

  She might have been describing Goranson and not Van Gogh, Dina realized. “He had a very troubled life and never rose above obscurity.”

  “Immortality often comes after death.” Christa glanced over her shoulder at Dina, her face going into shadows. “Ironic, isn’t it?”

  “To say the least.”

  “But it’s still immortality. Here we stand, admiring his work, and we know his name. In spite of the suffering in his life, we know his name.” Christa went back to studying the painting, taking advantage of the shifting crowd around it to move forward until only a man and woman were between her and the canvas.

  The man must have caught a glimpse of her out of the corner of his eye. He wasn’t the first male Dina had watched go glassy-eyed and slack-jawed. She sincerely hoped she didn’t have that expression on her face as well. She wanted to tell him he was lucky Christa had put her coat back on. He shifted out of Christa’s way, pulling the woman at his side with him. “I’m not done,” the woman said, and when he still nudged her, she gave him a dirty look to which he was utterly oblivious. Following his line of sight, the woman finally saw Christa, who seemed not to notice any of the interplay going on around her. Dina wasn’t surprised when the woman gave her companion another dirty look. But she was startled when that look transferred to Christa with a spiteful edge.

  “Fine,” the woman snapped, turning on her heel. They were not out of earshot when Dina clearly heard her say, “Bitch.”

  She couldn’t tell from Christa’s expression if she had heard it. Christa’d done nothing, said nothing—hadn’t even looked at either of the other people. Obviously, the other woman held Christa to blame for her boyfriend’s tongue hanging out. For heaven’s sake, what would the woman have done if Christa had actually smiled or flirted?

  “It happens more often than you think,” Christa said quietly. “What am I supposed to do, wear a garbage sack and dye my hair greasy gray? Put on fifty pounds and break my nose in a couple of places?”

  “Of course not. I don’t understand that kind of reaction.”

  “I do. If you believe beauty is a limited commodity, then you resent someone who seems to have more than their fair share. Jealousy and insecurity can turn anyone into a viper.” Christa sighed. “Truth—all women are beautiful.”

  “Amen, sister,” Dina said lustfully.

  Christa smiled at that, as Dina had hoped she would. “I can’t be a waitress. All it took was one guy who didn’t like how I said no. Something always happened. I tried to work in offices, but they’re filled with women like that one. It’s my fault when married men hit on me, and so forth.” The smile deepened. “Or married women. I tried to work in day care, hospices—places that are always hiring. It never worked out. Modeling is the only job I’ve ever had where the way I looked was an asset.”

  “The burden of a beautiful woman.”

  Christa drew back. “That’s not funny.”

  “I’m sorry,” Dina said quickly. “I’m not belittling your experience.”

  “It’s not what most people would describe as tragic.” Christa turned from the painting, her head down and hands still in her pockets. “Nobody’s life is what it appears from the outside.”

  Dina was silent for a moment, then said softly, “I really didn’t mean that the way it sounded.”

  Christa lifted her head then, and their gazes locked. “No, I don’t believe you did.”

  Later, trying to sleep, Dina analyzed over and over that long, shared look. Her heart had been beating so loudly her vision pulsed. Christa’s eyes seemed to say Go away and Stay at the same time. Then, in response to whatever had shown in Dina’s expression, Christa had given her a desperate, pleading look. Was it simply Not you too or the far more likely You don’t have a chance, so don’t even start?

  Her own reactions had made no sense, and even now, sleepless and strangely anxious, Dina couldn’t sort out her feelings. Attraction, definitely, and she wasn’t used to being so drawn to a woman, just like that. Maybe that was all it was, attraction to a supermodel and finding out she was no better than any red-blooded male. It was humbling to think she couldn’t control her libido.

  She finally took her mother’s dreamcatcher off the peg next to her bed. It never failed to comfort her and, sure
enough, within a few minutes she was yawning. An encounter with a celestial being, she murmured to herself, a creature of elusive beauty, was bound to be disturbing.

  All in all, it was a good thing she was unlikely to see Christa again.

  Chapter 4

  The Great Mother was calling.

  Her own mother had often, and with great weariness, pointed out that Rahdonee could hear the Great Mother beckoning from the farthest points of the island, but not hear a simple request that she clean up her latest concoction.

  She missed her mother for all the reasons she had fought with her. After she passed her three nights with the spirit guide, she understood her mother’s overprotectiveness and nagging for what they were—love and concern.

  If her mother were still alive, she would be concerned that Rahdonee was undertaking a journey of several miles in the middle of a freezing winter night. Rahdonee would tell her not to worry, and they would fight. It would be so nice to walk that path one more time.

  But since her mother’s passing to the new circle, Rahdonee’s path had been new and always changing. Tonight, she woke from deep sleep to hear the Great Mother calling her to the Sacred Tree. She gathered her bodeb, wrapped herself warmly, and set off at a sustainable trot.

  Her tightly wrapped feet flew over the ground with the lightness of a deer. She kept to the sides of the trail where the mud would not be as deep and turned unerringly at each fork to the path that led to the Sacred Tree.

  If nothing came of her journey, she could always gather the leech plants that grew near the tree. Their medicine was useful for blistered skin and burns. But there was something there. The Great Mother wouldn’t get her up in the middle of a night like this for nothing.