“I didn’t,” Izzy said.
“No,” Kathy said. “This lion girl was definitely real and not human.”
But Izzy was still shaking her head. “What I mean is, she’s not one of mine.”
“But you’re the only one who makes these creatures,” Kathy said. “You’re forgetting Rushkin.”
Except, Izzy added to herself, he wasn’t supposed to be able to bring them across anymore—at least that was what he’d told her before he’d disappeared. “That’s right,” Kathy said. “He must be back.”
A faint buzzing hummed in Izzy’s ears, making her feel light-headed. Hard on its heels she got an odd sensation that was like, but was not quite, nausea. It started in the pit of her stomach and ascended into her chest, tightening all the muscles as it rose.
“I guess he must be,” she said slowly.
She couldn’t begin to explain the feeling of anxiety that filled her at the realization that her mentor had returned—not to Kathy, not even to herself.
XIII
February 1978
The only mail that ever arrived at the coach-house studio was flyers or junk mail addressed to
“occupant.” Izzy simply threw it all out. But a week after the day that Kathy told her about seeing the lion-girl numena by the Grasso Street subway station, Izzy spied her own name on an envelope just as she was about to toss the morning’s offerings into the wastepaper basket. She tugged it out of the handful of flyers and recognized Rushkin’s handwriting immediately. As she was about to open the envelope, the last few lines from the note he’d sent to her just before he’d disappeared returned to her.
I can’t say how long I will be, but I promise to contact you before I return so that, should you wish, you will not have to see me. If this should be the case, I will understand. My behavior has been unforgivable.
And then she could see what she’d let herself forget. She saw it as clearly as though she’d physically stepped back through the years, to that winter night, the snowstorm in her dream that echoed the storm outside her bedroom, and there was the hooded figure, Rushkin, the bolt from his crossbow piercing the body of her winged cat ...
And then there was John’s voice, playing like a soundtrack to that awful scene: He feeds on us, Izzy.
I don’t know how, but it has something to do with the way he destroys the paintings that call us over.
And then mixed into that already disturbing stew of memories was a disjointed recollection of how she’d been assaulted in the lane outside the studio, the faces of her assailants all wearing Rushkin’s features again, instead of those from the mug books she’d gone through at the precinct.
Her fingers found the tattered bracelet of woven cloth that she still wore on her wrist. She looked around the studio at the paintings of her numena—the ones she hadn’t put up for sale yet, the ones she never would and the new ones that she was still working on. She had the sudden urge to hide them all.
To call Alan and ask him to meet her downstairs with his car so that she could stack the paintings on its backseat and he could ferry them away. Her and the paintings. Out of Rushkin’s sight. Away from the possibility of his discovering that they even existed in the first place. Away to safety. Oh, why had she ever let anyone convince her that he wasn’t dangerous?
She forced herself to calm down and take a few steadying breaths.
Lighten up, she told herself. You don’t even know what the letter says.
But she did and she knew she wasn’t wrong. The lion-girl numena Kathy had seen was a harbinger of what this letter was about to tell her. She could feel Rushkin’s return in the rough texture of the envelope that rubbed against the pads of her fingers, in the ink that spelled out her name and the studio’s address.
Slowly she worked a finger under the flap, tore the envelope open and pulled out a single sheet of thick paper the color of old parchment. Unfolding it, she read: Isabelle,
I hope this finds you well and productive. I will be returning to my studio in Newford on February 17th. You are, of course, welcome to stay on and share the space with me, but I will understand your reluctance to do so should you choose to seek other arrangements.
In any event, no matter what you decide, I hope you will still allow us the opportunity at some point to exchange a few words and catch up on each other’s news.
Yours, in anticipation, Vincent
Izzy read the letter through twice before laying it down on the table beside the easel that held her paints and palette. She tried to think of what the date was, but her mind was a blank. She went downstairs, planning to call Kathy to ask her, when her gaze fell upon the Perry’s Diner calendar that she’d tacked up there in December. Her finger tracked across the dates to settle on the sixteenth.
Rushkin would be here tomorrow.
Her earlier panic returned. This time she did call Alan and arranged to have him come by at midafternoon to help her transport her work back to the Waterhouse Street apartment. The rest of the morning she spent taking her paintings down from the walls and stacking them by the door, bundling up her sketches and value studies into manageable packages, dusting, sweeping, scrubbing the floor—especially around her easel—and generally acting and feeling like a teenager who’d had a huge open house while her parents were out of town for the weekend and was still madly trying to clean up while their ETA drew ever closer.
She was standing at the worktable with a cardboard box, trying to decide what brushes, paints and other art supplies she could honestly consider her own, when she heard Alan knock at the door.
Sweeping her arm across the top of the table, she dumped everything she hadn’t been able to make her mind up about into the box on top of what she had decided was hers and hurried to let Alan in.
One of the things Izzy liked best about Alan was how he never seemed to feel obliged to question the inherent chaos that represented the lives of so many of his friends. Instead of trying to make sense of what often even they couldn’t rationalize, he simply went with the flow, listened when they wanted him to, or could, explain, and was generally there for them when they needed him, absent when they needed to be alone.
“This is a lot of stuff;” he said as he surveyed everything Izzy felt she had to bring with her. “I think it’s going to take a couple of trips.”
“That’s okay. Just so long as we can get it all away this afternoon. Rushkin’s back, you see, or at least he will be here by tomorrow, so it’s all got to go.”
Alan regarded her for a moment. “I thought he was letting you use the studio.”
“He is. He was. I still could, it’s just that—oh, it’s too complicated to explain, Alan.”
Alan smiled. “So what do you want to take first?”
The move took three trips all told, because only so many canvases could fit in the back of the car at a time, but they were finished well before six. Once everything was safely stowed away in her bedroom, Izzy fetched them both a beer from the fridge.
“I love this piece,” Alan said, picking up a small oil pastel portrait. “She sort of reminds me of Kathy.”
“It’s the red hair,” Izzy said.
Alan laughed. “Izzy, almost all the women you paint have red hair.”
“This is true. And I have no idea why.”
“Maybe it’s because Kathy has red hair,” Alan said.
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Nothing,” Alan told her. “It’s just that a lot of artists tend to use their own features, or those of their friends, because they know them so well. I thought you were doing the same.”
Put like that, Izzy thought, there might well be something to what Alan was saying. She certainly knew Kathy’s features better than those of anyone else in her life—better even than her own.
“But it’s not just the hair that reminds me of Kathy with this one,” Alan went on. “It’s more just a—oh, I don’t know. A Kathyish expression, I suppose.”
“I call it Annie Nin.”
“After Anaïs Nin?”
“Who?”
Alan smiled. “She’s a writer. You’d probably like her work.”
“I’ve never heard of her before. ‘Annie Nin’ just popped into my head the day I finished it.”
“Well, it’s beautiful. You know I like all your work, but I really love the movement of your brush strokes on this one—they’re so free and loose.”
“Actually, I did that with oil pastels. What you’re admiring is the marks of the pastel stick on the board.”
“Whatever. I still really like it.”
As he start to put it down, Izzy pushed it toward him. “Take it,” she said. “I’d like to see her go someplace where she’ll be appreciated.”
And besides, she thought, Alan’s apartment was the closest thing to a library without actually being one that Izzy could think of Annie would love it there. “I couldn’t just take it,” Alan said. “It must be worth a fortune.”
“Oh right. Like you haven’t seen what my work goes for in the gallery.”
“Not nearly what it’s worth,” Alan told her.
Izzy smiled, relaxing for the first time since the mail had arrived at the coach-house studio that morning.
“You’re being sweet,” she said, and then refused to accept no for an answer from him. It didn’t take much more convincing, and by the time they’d finished their beers and he was leaving, the painting was tucked in under his arm and went with him.
Later, Izzy had cause to be grateful for that moment of generosity, for that was how Annie Nin’s numena survived all the deaths that were to come, following Rushkin’s return to the city.
XIV
March 1978
Izzy was determined to ignore Rushkin’s presence in the city, but in the end she couldn’t stay away.
Because her numena were still unharmed and the awful dreams she used to have about them being hurt hadn’t returned, she let the old arguments convince her again that he meant neither her nor her numena any harm.
She thought of the helpful letters he’d sent, critiquing her shows. Of all she’d learned from him. Of all the good times they’d had, talking about art and all the strange and wonderful places he’d been. Of how he’d provided her with art supplies when she had nothing. Of how he’d allowed her the use of his studio for all the years he’d been away. It was easier to simply forget his towering rages. His need to control.
The fact that he really might be the monster that John insisted he was.
She remembered him with uneasiness and affection, both emotions milling about inside her in equal doses, until she knew she had to go see him to judge which was the most true.
She didn’t return to the coach house immediately. At first she mooned about the apartment, looked into getting a new studio, ran about the city with Kathy and visited all those friends she’d never seemed to have enough time to visit because the call of the studio was stronger. But eventually two weeks had gone by and she found herself trudging through a new Ell of snow that littered the lane running from Stanton Street to Rushkin’s studio.
It was a gloomy, cold morning, the sky overhung with clouds, her breath frosting the air, her feet already going numb in her thin boots. She’d left the apartment at eight, planning to get to the studio before Rushkin started work for the day, but instead she’d taken about as indirect a route as she could have managed, walking all the way downtown and then back up Yoors Street before finally finding herself on Stanton. It was going on nine-thirty when she turned into the lane.
Ahead of her, the lights spilling from the studio’s windows were warm and inviting, a golden glow that promised safe haven, a sanctuary from the bitter cold. But that promise was a lie, wasn’t it? She remembered trying to explain it to Kathy when Kathy got home that night after Alan had helped her move all her things back to the apartment.
“What happened?” Kathy asked, looking at the claustrophobic closet that Izzy’s bedroom had become with the addition of the stacks of paintings and boxes. “You get evicted?”
Izzy shook her head. “No. It’s Rushkin. I got a letter from him telling me he’d be back tomorrow.”
“So?” Kathy said, echoing Alan’s response earlier. “I thought he said you could use the place when he was gone?”
“He did. It’s just ... you know ....”
Izzy shrugged, wanting to leave it at that, but unlike Alan, Kathy wasn’t one to be easily put off once she had her mind set on knowing something. “Know what?” she asked.
Izzy sighed. “It’s my numena. I had to get them out of there before he came back.”
“You really think he’s after them?”
Izzy had never told Kathy about the death of the winged cat in her dream, or how Rushkin had tried to kill Paddyjack—would have killed him, if it hadn’t been for John. She hadn’t told her about Rushkin trying to buy one of her numena paintings for five thousand dollars from her first show at The Green Man Gallery. She hadn’t told her about how Rushkin seemed to have changed after she first met him, from troll to a normal man. There were so many things she’d never told anyone about Rushkin.
She shrugged. “You know what John said, that they keep him young. That they’re like a kind of food for him.”
He feeds on us, Izzy.
“Do you believe it?” Kathy asked.
“I don’t know. But why take a chance, right?”
Kathy nodded. “If you’re that uncertain,” she said, “then you did the right thing. And maybe you should keep on doing the right thing: stay away from him.”
“I will,” Izzy had promised.
Except here she was where she’d said she wouldn’t be, climbing the stairs to the studio, knocking on the familiar door. She’d left a key to the new lock in an envelope that she’d slipped into the mail slot of the apartment downstairs, but she still had a key to that door in her pocket, she realized. She should give it back to Rushkin. That would be her excuse for coming, she decided. To return the key and thank him for the use of the studio and then just go, because she really shouldn’t be here, she’d promised herself as much as Kathy that she would keep her distance from Rushkin. But then the door opened and all her good intentions were swept away.
“Isabelle!” Rushkin cried, his whole face lit up with pleasure at seeing her. “It’s so good to see you.
Come in, come in. You look frozen.”
He seemed different again, Izzy thought as she let him usher her inside. Not the grotesque troll she’d caricatured in that sketch at St. Paul’s Cathedral all those years ago, but not the quirky, stoop-backed man not much taller than herself that she remembered from just before he went away, either. The man who met her at the door was far more ordinary than that—he was still Rushkin, still unmistakably the odd bird with his too-bright eyes and his outdated wardrobe, but there was nothing either threatening or senile about him. He hadn’t grown any taller and he remained as broad in the shoulders as ever, but the power he exuded still came from within, rather than from any physical attribute.
“How ... how was your trip?” Izzy asked.
“Trip?” Rushkin repeated in a tone of amusement. “You make it sound as though I was on a holiday.”
“I didn’t know what you were doing.”
“Lecturing, Isabelle. Lecturing and touring and studying the masters, when I had the time, because one can never learn too much from those gifted ones who went before us.”
He led her across the studio to the window seat and sat her down where the air from the heat vent rose up and warmed her. Without waiting to ask her, he fetched her a mug of tea from the thermos he kept on the worktable and brought it back to where she was sitting. Izzy gratefully cradled it in her hands and let the warm steam rise up to tickle her cheeks.
“I got your letters,” she said after she’d taken a sip. “I found them really helpful.”
“Then it was worth the time I took to write them.”
“I couldn’t tell where you were when you mailed them
—the postmarks were all smudged.”
Rushkin shrugged. “Here and there—who can remember?”
“I was surprised that you even had a chance to see the shows.”
“What? And miss such important moments in the life of my only and best student?”
Izzy couldn’t help but bask in the warmth of his praise. When she looked about the studio, she saw that it was full of paintings and sketches again, only they were all unfamiliar. Some looked as thought they’d been painted in Greece or Italy or southern Spain. Others reminded her of the Middle East, Africa, northern Europe, the Far East. Landscapes and portraits and every sort of combination of the two.
“I only wish I could have been in town for the openings,” Rushkin went on, “but my schedule being what it was, I was lucky to be able to fly in and see the shows at all.”
Izzy wanted to ask why he hadn’t stopped by the studio, but the question made her feel uneasy because she wasn’t sure she wanted to hear the answer. She didn’t fear Rushkin simply for the sake of her numena or because of his temper. There was a darker undercurrent to her fear that she couldn’t quite pinpoint. Whenever she reached for it, it sidled away into the shadowed corners of her mind that she could never quite clear away.
“You’ve been busy,” she said instead, indicating the new paintings. “Indeed I have. And you?”
“I suppose. But not like this.”
She felt warmer now. Still holding her mug, she walked about the studio, admiring the new work. It never ceased to amaze her how, after all the years Rushkin had been painting—and especially when you considered the sheer quantity of superior work he’d produced—he never failed to find a fresh perspective, the outlook that other artists invariably missed. No matter how prosaic his subject matter might appear at an initial glance, he had a gift for instilling in it a universal relevance. His use of light was as astounding as ever, and looking at this new work, Izzy felt the inspiration for a dozen paintings come bubbling up inside her.
“I’d like to see some of your current projects,” Rushkin said. “Perhaps I could come by your studio one afternoon.”
“I’m kind of in between studios at the moment,” Izzy told him. “Well, when you get settled into a new place then.”
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