“What do you think?” he asked when he finally drew back.
Izzy took a long steadying breath. She couldn’t stop the smile that widened her lips. She didn’t want to.
“I don’t think it matters,” she told him. “I don’t think it matters one bit.” This time she was the one to initiate the kiss.
XIV
Newford, November 1974
Izzy didn’t go back to Rushkin’s studio the next day, or Friday, but by Monday morning she was itching to return. All her art supplies were there, all her paintings, and while Rushkin might be an odd bird, she knew that she’d learned more in the months she’d studied under him than she could have in years of working on her own. If he wanted to believe that some paintings could bring their subjects to literal life, that they could in effect create real physical representations of what appeared on the canvas, let him. She didn’t have to buy into the extremes of his eccentricity to keep learning from him. And one or two odd ideas certainly didn’t invalidate all she had learned, and could yet learn, from him.
But she was still nervous, returning to the studio. Not for fear of their continuing that weird discussion, nor even that Rushkin might really want her to start destroying certain paintings, but because of his temper. Since that awful day last December, he’d been true to his word and he hadn’t hit her again, but Izzy had gotten no better with confrontations and she could easily see this fueling more of them. But that Monday she returned, Rushkin kept his word once more. He didn’t bring up the subject again. The weeks went by and their conversations revolved around art, if they originated from Rushkin; anything else they talked about, Izzy had to bring up first. It got so that she forgot Rushkin had ever tried to convince her that she had brought John to life by painting him.
It was John who reminded her.
“Do me a favor, Isabelle,” he said when she was trying to decide where to store her painting of him,
“and keep it somewhere safe.”
At that time the painting was leaning against the wall of her bedroom, but her bedroom was so small and cluttered that she was afraid of inadvertently damaging the canvas by dropping something onto it, or putting her foot through it on her way to the bathroom in the middle of the night. It was too imposing to hang anywhere in their little apartment, and besides, she thought it was a little weird, the idea of having this huge portrait of her boyfriend up on her wall.
“What do you mean, keep it safe?” she’d asked him. “I thought you didn’t believe what Rushkin told me.”
John gave her a lopsided grin in response. “I just like it,” he said. “And there’s no harm in being careful, is there?”
And that was all he would say on the matter. When she tried to press him on it, he’d turn her questions aside. He was good at that. Whenever something came up in their conversation that he didn’t want to talk about, he’d steer them onto some other topic so skillfully that it wouldn’t be until she was at home in bed, or maybe even the next day working at her easel, that Izzy would realize she never had gotten a straight answer.
John liked to retain a sense of mystery about him, and Izzy learned to accept it. She knew he was staying with an aunt who “didn’t much like white girls”; that he worked at odd jobs; that he never seemed to have much of an appetite; that he had an unquenchable thirst to know about everything and anything so that he was never bored and, consequently, it was hard to be bored in his company, for his enthusiasm for the most mundane subject inevitably became catching; that he had a great treasure of the stories and history of his people that he would share, but very little to relate in terms of personal history except that he’d been in trouble a lot when he was younger and he didn’t like to talk about it anymore.
He was also the best lover Izzy had ever had. She knew she didn’t exactly have the world’s largest experience along those lines, having only taken three up to the time she’d met John, but each of those previous relationships had been disasters. For some reason, when it came to boyfriends, she was always attracted to men who treated her badly, or indifferently. John treated her as if she were made of gold.
She got the impression, from the little he talked about the trouble he used to get into, that he had a violent side to him, but it was never turned toward her. She had seen him angry, but it was always directed toward something or someone else, never at her.
If she had one real complaint in their relationship, it was that they were rarely a couple around her other friends. Somehow he was just never there when they were all getting together. He tended to call her at quiet times, or would simply show up when she was alone—returning from the studio or from the university—and then they went off on their own. It never seemed planned, but for all that most of her friends had met him, after three weeks, he was even more of a mystery to them than he was to her.
Talking about it with him never seemed to resolve anything because they always ended up talking about something else that was of far more immediate interest, and since it never appeared to bother any of her friends, eventually Izzy just let it go. Everyone was intrigued with him, but no one seemed to be insulted that he was rarely a part of the crowd.
Kathy was particularly happy with John’s appearance in Izzy’s life, having mother-henned her roommate through almost two and a half years of Izzy’s bad luck with men.
“You see?” she’d said after the first time she met John. “There are still good people around.”
“But I don’t know anything about him.”
“All you have to know is that he’s a good person,” Kathy replied, reversing their roles now that she’d met him. “You can see it in his eyes. This guy is seriously enamored with you, ma belle Izzy, and why shouldn’t he be?”
“Don’t start,” Izzy said, starting to feel embarrassed. She hated it when Kathy got into cataloguing all of what she felt were Izzy’s strong points.
“No,” Kathy told her. “Don’t you start. Give this relationship a chance to go where it’s going to go before you start making up your mind about where you think it’s headed.”
Over the past few months Kathy had gotten a lot more serious with her writing. She took to spending long evenings at the library, researching and writing, and always made a point of letting Izzy know when she’d be back. Izzy wasn’t so sure that Kathy actually needed to do so much research, and she certainly could have written at home, but it did allow Izzy some intimacy with John that they wouldn’t have otherwise been able to share since he didn’t have a place of his own.
“Where did you put the painting?” he asked one night when he came over. “It’s going to be in the show,” Izzy said. lily’s letting me store it at her studio until then.”
She’d been surprised, certainly more than a little self-conscious, but ultimately delighted when Albina had agreed to give her a solo show at The Green Man. It was going to be in January. She planned for The Spirit Is Strong to be the centerpiece.
“You’re going to sell it?” John asked.
Izzy shook her head. “Oh, no. Rushkin says it’s good to have a couple of NSF pieces hanging with the ones that are for sale—it supposedly gets people into the buying mood.
And besides, I think it’s one of my best pieces.”
“I’d feel you were selling a part of me, if you did sell it,” John told her.
Izzy knew what he meant. Though she’d painted it before she’d met him, she still thought of it the way people thought of the first time they met, or a first date.
“I could never sell it,” she assured him.
XV
From The Newford Sun, Thursday, November 28, 1974
POLICE HUNT VIGILANTES
by Maria Hill Newford Sun
Police have launched a manhunt for the killers of three Butler University students brutally beaten to death yesterday.
Robert Mandel, 19, John Collins, 19, and Darcy McClintock, 20, died after being savagely attacked in Lower Crowsea at approximately 11:30 P.M., police said.
Th
e bodies of the three students were discovered in a car parked in front of the Crowsea Precinct at 1:00 A.M. by Const. Craig Chavez. The car was registered to McClintock.
With the bodies was a note alleging that the three students were responsible for the brutal assault and rape last month of a female Butler University student.
Detectives have few details on the vigilantes and are appealing to the public to help provide information, said NPD spokesman, Sgt. Howard Benzies.
“We have no idea how many were involved in the attack,” said Benzies, adding that there was also no indication whether the fatal assault took place inside or outside the car.
Police had no comment when asked if there was any evidence that the victims had been involved in the assault last month.
An extensive search of the area by police officers failed to find the murder weapons.
Anyone with information is asked to call the Crowsea Precinct at 263—1112.
> Grief Hits Pals Hard as Victims Mourned: Page 5
> Rise of Violence on Campus: Page 5 > Editorial: Page 10
XVI
At first, all Izzy could do was stare at the frontpage headline of the newspaper that Kathy had left out for her to read. Then she began to read the piece. She forgot all about getting herself a coffee or making breakfast as she worked her way through the various articles and finally the editorial related to that headline.
“Weird, isn’t it?” Kathy said, coming into their little kitchen from the shower. “Justice is served.”
She had a towel wrapped around her wet hair, another wrapped around her torso. Filling a couple of mugs with coffee, she brought them over to the table and sat down across from Izzy.
“Do you think they really are the guys that attacked Rochelle?” Izzy asked. “God, I hope so. I don’t know who killed them, but they should get a medal for giving the scum what they deserved.”
Izzy wasn’t so sure. While she certainly didn’t want Rochelle’s attackers to remain at large, if these really were the same men, the punishment seemed too extreme. Jail, yes. Lock them up forever, even.
But to be beaten to death like this ...
“I take it you don’t agree,” Kathy said.
“It’s not that. It’s just ...”
“Excessive.”
“I guess.”
Kathy sighed. “Look. If they did it once, the odds are they’d do it again. Rochelle wasn’t necessarily the first woman they attacked, and she certainly wouldn’t have been the last.”
“We don’t know that.”
“Statistics bear me out on this one,” Kathy said. “It’s not something I want to be right about—believe me.”
“I know,” Izzy said.
But her mind wasn’t really on the conversation anymore. She was thinking instead of that night with John in Perry’s Diner, when she’d told him about what had happened to Rochelle. He’d looked so grim.
The ones who hurt her will receive their just reward, John had told her that night. This I can promise you.
John with his violent past.
John of whom she still really knew next to nothing.
John who’d also told her, I always keep my promises. My word’s the only currency I’ve got that’s of any real worth. I don’t spend it lightly.
John who, she’d discovered since, always did keep his word.
John who’d assured her that Rochelle’s attackers would pay for what they had done.
This I can promise you.
Her gaze drifted back to the newspaper. Phrases leapt up from the newsprint and went spinning through her mind.
‘‘... brutally beaten to death ...”
. savagely attacked ...”
. fatal assault ...”
The scary thing was that she could imagine John doing it. Gentle as he was with her, she knew how strong he was, how much he abhorred injustice, how he had no fear of breaking the law because they were “white man’s laws. We never agreed to them.”
What kind of a friend are you, she asked herself, that you’d even suspect such a thing of him?
This I can promise you.
And then she thought: Angels and monsters. Spirits called from beyond. Guardian spirits ... and vengeful ones as well?
She shook her head. This was crazy. But she couldn’t suppress a shiver all the same.
“You okay?” Kathy asked.
Izzy nodded. “I’m just a little creeped out, that’s all.” She let her gaze rove to the kitchen clock.
“God, look at the time. I’ve got to get to the studio.”
“What? Rushkin’s got you punching a time clock now?”
“No. It’s just that I’ve got a class at two, but I really wanted to finish off this painting I’ve been working on.”
She managed to make her retreat and leave their discussion finished without having to bring up the fear of John’s involvement in last night’s murders that had lodged inside her. But she couldn’t make it go away, either. It stayed with her all day, affecting her ability to paint, distracting her in class. She felt guilty for even thinking what she was thinking, but it loomed so large in her mind now that she knew she had to hear John’s innocence proclaimed from his own lips before she could let it go.
My word’s the only currency I’ve got that’s of any real worth. I don’t spend it lightly.
He wouldn’t lie to her. She trusted in that much. Even if he had killed those men last night, he wouldn’t lie to her when she asked him about it.
She felt like such a traitor when she spotted him cutting across the common to meet her after class.
He looked the picture of innocence as he ambled over the grass, hands thrust deep in his jeans; his hair the glossy black of raven feathers, swallowing the sunlight; the white of his T-shirt showing through his open coat even though everybody else was buttoned up and wearing scarves and hats and gloves. When he got close enough, he didn’t even say hello, just swept her into his arms and gave her a long kiss that left her happily breathless. But the question that had plagued her all day rose up between them and stole away her pleasure in the moment.
“Did you read in the paper about what happened to those guys that attacked Rochelle last month?”
she asked as they started to walk back across the common.
John shook his head. “No, but I heard about it. I told you retribution was waiting for them on the wheel that they’d chosen. It was only a matter of time.”
“Do you think they deserved to die?”
He paused and turned to look at her. “What you’re really asking is, did I do it?”
Izzy couldn’t read the expression in his features. He didn’t look sad, or even disappointed in her, but there was something new there all the same. “I guess I am,” she said.
“Maybe you should look at this first,” he said. He reached into the inside pocket of his jacket and brought out something wrapped in brown paper. “I was trying to think of how to bring this up, but I guess I might as well be as up front about it as you are.”
Izzy took the parcel. The blood drained from her features as she found herself looking at a corner of mounting frame with some canvas attached to it. The ends of the frame were charred, as was the edge of the canvas, but there was enough of the image left for her to recognize that it was all that was left of her painting Smither’s Oak. The rest was gone. Burned. Just as her paintings were in her dreams.
“Where ... where did you get this?” she asked.
“In the trash behind your studio.”
Not her studio, Izzy thought. Rushkin’s studio. Where Smither’s Oak was supposed to be in storage with the rest of her paintings that weren’t stacked up around her easel in the upstairs studio proper.
Her chest felt tight, but she didn’t feel the helplessness that always accompanied her dreams. Anger rose up inside her instead, unfamiliar, dark and over-powering.
“What do you want to do about it?” John asked.
“What do you think?” she said. “I’m
going to confront him with it. Right now.”
John fell in step beside her as she marched off, but she stopped and shook her head.
“I appreciate your wanting to help,” she said, “but I have to deal with this by myself “
“What if he gives you a hard time?”
“The only person that’s going to get a hard time is him,” Izzy said, her voice grim.
She looked down at all that was left of her painting. The sorrow at its loss would come, she knew, but all she felt now was the pure hot burn of her anger. Just let Rushkin try and raise a hand against her, she thought. Her gaze lifted to meet John’s.
“I just have to do this myself,” she repeated. “If you come it’s going to make everything more complicated.”
“I understand,” John told her.
He walked her as far as the bus stop, but when the bus came, he stayed behind. It wasn’t until she was almost at her stop that Izzy realized that once again she hadn’t gotten an answer to a question she’d asked John.
XVII
When Rushkin opened the downstairs door to the coach house, Izzy thrust what was left of her painting at him, poking him in the chest with one end. He backed up a step in surprise and she followed him inside, jabbing him again.
“It had spirit, did it?” she said. Her voice was so cold, she couldn’t recognize it as her own. “It couldn’t go to the gallery because you don’t sell paintings with spirit—right?”
“Isabelle, what are—”
“But burning them is fine.”
“I don’t—”
“How dare you do this to my work?”
Images from her dreams flashed before her eyes. They’d been horrible enough on their own, but to know that they’d been prescient warnings made them all that much worse. How many of her paintings had he destroyed?”
Memory and Dream n-5 Page 15
