By habit, Tessa followed him obediently through the doorway to his studio. Black-and-white movie stills were scattered across every work surface in the large, airy room. He picked up some quick pencil sketches on plain white paper that were lying on his drawing table. “First, I thought I could do The Wizard of Oz. You know, icon of American culture, stay in your own backyard, don’t mess with the order of things, blah, blah, blah.”
“I thought The Wizard of Oz was about looking inside yourself to find happiness.”
He patted her shoulder patronizingly. “Tessa, Tessa, Tessa, sometimes you are so naive. You’ve got to get above 14th Street once in a while. It’s about the class system. Keeping the little people exactly where they belong. Find me something big and iconic that I can swoosh all over with ironic little doodles, we get into the Whitney Biennial, and Bob’s your uncle.”
He moved some pencils around on his drawing board, as if the next thing he was going to say was difficult for him. “Then, I thought, I’m always doing classic movies,” and here he took a deep breath, “why not something from a classic naughty movie? You know, Deep Throat, or The Devil and Miss Jones.” He put the pencils down. “So, what do you think?”
Tessa was still trying to grasp the notion that he had summoned her to work. She thought he had asked her to dinner.
“I think…” she said slowly.
A woman sauntered into the studio, dressed to go out in a mannish white shirt and fitted black pants, all sleek dark hair and red lipstick. She sidled up to Lucian and twined her arm around his.
“I think it’s a wonderful idea, don’t you? I think a little porn will really get our boy here to loosen up.”
To his credit, Lucian looked embarrassed, maybe even a little pained. “Tessa, this is April Huffman.”
Tessa knew the name. She was an artist best known for making paintings of blowjobs in the style of the impressionists, using car paint.
“This is the assistant that I was telling you about. My Tess.”
April put her hand out, shook firmly and confidently. “I’ve heard a lot about you,” she exclaimed enthusiastically. “The way Lucian tells it, you saved his life! I wish my assistants were that loyal.”
“Why don’t you wait in the other room,” he said to her. “I just need to tell Tessa what to work on while we’re at our meeting.”
“Really, help yourself.” said April, slinking back through the doorway. “The veggie Chinese food was delicious. Who would have thought.”
Lucian’s eyes followed her as she glided out. “Mm, mm, mm,” he murmured. “Is there anything sexier on a woman than dark hair, red lipstick, and a white shirt?”
Tessa felt herself go numb with shock.
Lucian noticed her expression. “Oh, come on,” he chuckled. “You know I’m not allowed to get into a relationship during the first year. She’s just someone I know from my Monday meeting.” He ran his hand over his hair, rubbed the back of his neck. “She comes on a little strong, but she’s all right. She’s been sober two years. I hope you get to know her. You’d like her.”
“I guess I’m a little confused,” she said slowly. “I thought we were going out for your birthday tonight.”
The look on his face told her all that needed to be said. It was like someone kicking the chair she was standing on out from under her.
“You know I have to get to a meeting every night,” he reminded her. “We’re trying a new one over at Saint-Martin’s-in-the-Fields. April says there’s a lot of recovery in that room.”
Tessa struggled desperately on. “How about after the meeting? A meeting is what, an hour and a half? I could work till then, and then we could have dinner.”
“Sorry, sweetheart, sometimes the gang goes out for coffee afterwards.” He was saying no as gently as he knew how. He thought for a moment, brightened up. “I know. How’s about you take me to the Cupping Room tomorrow morning?”
A storm of tears was weltering behind her eyelids. She didn’t want to cry in front of him, so she nodded her head.
He gave her instructions; she was to sort through his picture files and movie books and see if he had anything useful from The Wizard of Oz. Deep Throat and The Devil and Miss Jones would have to be ordered from an agency. And there were some dishes in the sink.
“Right then.” He clapped her on the shoulder, gave her a smile. “See you in the morning.”
“Lucian,” she said to his departing back. “Is that what you tell people about me? That I’m your assistant?”
“Only the greatest assistant in the world!” He answered with cheerful belligerence, as if someone were challenging her standing.
“Is that all I am to you?” she went on huskily.
“Of course not.” he said quietly. “You know that. I don’t know what I’d do without you. And someday, a year from now, or two, things may be different.”
She nodded, furtively wiped away a tear. It would have to do. Suddenly, she remembered. “Wait. I can’t make breakfast. I have class in the mornings.”
“Oh, come on. How important is class?” He gave her a dazzling smile, seducing her. “Come to the Cupping Room with me.”
“Sorry. I’m working this one.”
“All right then, I owe you one breakfast. Hold me to it. I’m a man of my word.”
She heard the door slam, heard him charming April all the way down the stairs. He was using his date voice. She recognized it, because he used to use it when he was with her.
3
May I take your coat, sir?”
The man in 5A flicked his eyes up at her and smiled. “I’m rather chilly. I think I’ll keep it on.”
He was disgracefully handsome, the flight attendant decided, with the kind of face you saw in old black-and-white Hollywood movies. And, oh, that British accent! Even better. Nadia loved British accents. He was so courteous, such a gentleman, that she wondered if he might somehow be connected to the royal family. Just thinking about it made her pizda tingle. “Then perhaps I can fetch you a blanket.”
“A glass of wine, if you have it.”
“Of course, sir. Red or white?”
“Always red.”
Rafe watched the shapely bottom swing pertly away toward the galley. With blue baby-doll eyes and wide pouty lips, she was an adolescent wet dream of a sexy stewardess, long-legged and busty, extravagantly curvy in all the right places under the snug red Aeroflot uniform.
He was seated in an otherwise empty row on the redeye from St. Petersburg to Frankfurt. Except for him, the passengers scattered sparsely around the first-class cabin were asleep. Outside his window the world rushed by, cold and black but for a glittery network of fairy lights outlining streets, farms, factories, refineries, roads.
He’d informed Turner that he was flying to St. Petersburg to interview an instructor at the Repin Institute of Arts, and that was partly true, but the real purpose of this trip was to chase down a promising new lead. Miraculously, one of Sofia’s drawings had turned up at a museum in Israel. God knows where they’d gotten it, but surely they would have information about the artist Sofia Wizotsky, who for a short while in 1939, lived and worked in Paris.
The exhibition was called “Art of the Holocaust.” In the small pen and ink sketch, barely larger than a cocktail napkin, a solemn little boy sat on his mother’s lap, the figures modeled on a Raphael Holy Family that hung in the Louvre. “Sofia Wizotsky,” read the plaque. “Last known location, Poland, 1942. Artist’s fate, unknown.” He’d stood before the drawing for a long, long time, switching his hat from one hand to the other and resisting the overwhelming desire to reach up and stroke the black lines. When he finally worked up the courage to query the pretty young thing staffing the visitors’ desk for more information, she shook her head. It had come in as part of a collection. That was all she knew.
Alone in his hotel room overlooking the old walled city of Jerusalem, he grieved. The following day, he continued with his mission to St. Petersburg. The professor at the Re
pin didn’t speak English, but Rafe was fairly certain he’d engaged his services for the fall semester.
The flight attendant returned with his drink. Leaning over to set it on his tray table, she spilled a few drops on his shirt. Apologizing effusively, her lips twisted into a rueful red shape as she dabbed at the stain with a towel. For a prolonged moment, her breast pressed against his arm. Could it have been an accident? But then the hand wielding the towel slid delicately into his lap.
When he glanced up at her, the glint in her eye was unambiguous. “Clumsy me,” she apologized in her sultry Russian burr. “Turbulence, you see. The seat belt light has been turned on. But if you just follow me back to the galley, I can take care of you with greater efficiency.”
He checked his watch. Still an hour before they landed in Frankfurt. Plenty of time. He rose from his seat and padded after her. In the dark, he counted ten or twelve passengers stretched across empty seats, sleeping. Even the flight attendants were napping, their heads bobbing in unison with the movements of the plane.
Right there, in the greenish light of the galley she pounced. After exchanging a frenzy of kisses, she skipped her fingers down his chest, then down the front of his trousers.
Rafe fitted his hands around her ass and hoisted her up onto the narrow counter. Skimming his hands under the tight fabric of her uniform, he shimmied her skirt up to expose long white thighs, sliding his fingers between them until she opened for him like the pages of a book.
He undid her uniform one button at a time. “Yes, oh yes,” she exhaled, adding a string of Russian endearments, or perhaps they were only dirty words. Whisking the thick chestnut hair from her neck, he tightened his arms around her, pressing his lips here, and then there, along the length of her white throat. Her mouth opened and her eyes closed. As she flexed back in pleasure, his fangs locked around her larynx.
Between his jaws, he could feel her trying to form a scream, but it was too late for that. Her feet drummed against the stainless steel cabinets, the bulkhead, but this sound, like the others, was drowned out by the steady roar of the engines. However, this concerned him. Going by his vast catalogue of human experience, she should have lost consciousness by now. But Russian girls were tough. The way she fought and churned in his arms, it almost felt like love.
He detached himself just long enough to look into her face. She couldn’t talk anymore—he had seen to that—but the wide baby-doll eyes were bewildered and clouded with pain.
He smoothed the hair back from her forehead. “Don’t fight it,” he said gently. The sympathy in his voice was genuine. “It only hurts more when you fight.”
Then he fastened his teeth in her throat a second time. Her long red nails scrabbled uselessly against his chest, his back. It didn’t matter. Nothing mattered but her bright briny blood pumping down his throat, filling him with life.
Under his teeth, he felt something give. The flight attendant—the pin on her uniform said, “Hello, my name is Nadia”—shuddered violently and slumped into his arms. He pulled her body into his, wanting to feel her last heartbeats vibrate against his sternum, her last breath warm his cheek.
Beneath the belly of the plane, he felt the landing gear shift and whine. He was running out of time. Levering up a ceiling panel, he maneuvered her long, lovely limbs into the empty space above the galley. Before returning to his seat, he remembered to wash her blood from the corners of his mouth.
It would be a full day before the flight attendant’s body was discovered by a traumatized cleaning crew. By then, Raphael Sinclair was striding through passport control at JFK, humming snatches of Mozart’s Requiem. He had a board meeting at noon.
4
Josephine was late to class. She was often late, which would not have been such a big deal if she weren’t the teacher.
Tessa liked Josephine. She was a broad hipped, long-legged woman, with honey blond hair and a honey smooth Texas accent, who, not surprisingly, called everyone “honey.”
She was teaching them grisaille. They had begun by making monochromatic gray paintings. In the next step, they would be glazed over with translucent layers of bright colors. Artworks created in this way had a glow to them, as if they were lit from within.
This was Day One of color. The easels were in a semicircle around the small stage, the canvases dry and ready, paint tubes lined up on work tables. Tessa hung the drapery, posed and lit the model. And then the students sat down to wait. And wait. And wait some more.
After forty-five minutes passed, Tessa went down to the office and made a call to the instructor’s home. The voice on the answering machine assured her that no one was available to take her call, but that they would return it as soon as possible. Tessa shrugged her shoulders, returned to class, reported that she was on her way.
Just as she was about to call it a day, Josephine blew in like a hurricane, bellowing instructions before she was fully through the door. “Sorry,” she muttered as she threw her coat and bag down on a chair behind her. “Kid’s sick. Had to wait for the babysitter. F train took forever.”
It took only five minutes for Tessa to realize that she had found her painting style. The brush glided over the surface of the canvas, the sable hairs leaving delicate marks in the Naples yellow, letting light shine through from underneath. The color slipped on like a veil over the grisaille, revealing just enough gray to make it look like flesh. “I think I’m having an orgasm,” she heard David whisper to Portia.
At the end of the day, when they propped their paintings up on the model stand for the critique, a hush fell over the classroom. All around them, the gray figures on the canvases had sprung to three-dimensional life.
“It’s like magic,” Tessa said in wonder.
“It is magic.” Josephine corrected her. “Secrets of the Old Masters, honey. Remember, you saw it here first.”
“I think I’m going to ask her to be my adviser.” said Tessa later, as they cleaned their brushes in the trough sink.
“I don’t know. She’s been late an awful lot.”
“I’ve been looking for this all of my life. Plus, she’s a woman. She’ll take me seriously as an artist.”
Portia sounded doubtful. “All I’m saying is, look around a little first. You want someone you can depend on.”
“I’ll be your adviser,” David offered as he reshaped the ends of his sable brushes into points. “I have all kinds of useful advice. Like, right now I advise you to change into something low-cut and black for tonight.”
“Hey, that reminds me,” exclaimed Portia. “How’s it going with Lucian?”
Tessa had managed not to think about it all day. An awful queasiness gnawed at her insides. She looked down at her brushes. “Um…fine.”
Portia and David exchanged a private look.
“Uh…I have to get this stuff to the office. You know. My job.” She gathered up the drapes and the space heaters, hurried out of the room.
“I can’t stand it,” he said between gritted teeth. “She doesn’t deserve this.”
“It can’t be true,” whispered Portia fiercely. “After all she’s done for him? What if you’re wrong? Maybe it was just someone who just looked like Lucian Swain.”
“With a British accent. Who’s a painter. At a downtown AA meeting. Who said, ‘Hello, my name is Lucian.’”
“I bet that describes ten different guys. Come on. Until you know for sure.”
Tessa was back, spilling her brushes and paints into her art box. “Going to the new student thing tonight?” said David.
“I don’t know. Lucian might need me.”
This was met with a lengthy and uncomfortable silence. “You know what—I’ll come back for my stuff later.” She snatched up her bag and escaped to the stairwell.
Up two flights of stairs and down the corridor she ran, seeking refuge in the privacy of her studio. On the other side of the curtain, she dropped to her knees and rested her forehead on the cold floor.
She’d stayed at Lucian’s
till eleven the previous night, hoping he might come home early, maybe go out for a bite. For three long hours, she had looked out of his windows onto the streets below, watching all the hip and happy couples head arm in arm down Church to Odeon, or up across Canal Street to LaGamelle or Lucky Strike.
Slowly, it had dawned on her. He didn’t really need her to work at night, he just wanted to impress his new girlfriend. And if she didn’t want to be hurt, she should get the hell out of there before he returned. So she had hurried home, afraid of what she might see, feeling like a fool.
Gracie was perched at the top of her ladder, putting the finishing touches on the giant drawing of her own ass.
“Are you all right?” she called from ten feet off the ground. ”What’s the matter?”
“Oh, I’m just tired.” Tessa said, embarrassed, getting to her feet, brushing off her knees. She had to remember not to do that again; the floors were really dirty. “I worked late last night.”
“Me too!” exclaimed Gracie. “The coolest thing happened!” She put down her charcoal pencil and climbed down, her eyes glistening. “I waitress at Ferrara’s, you know it, down on Mulberry Street? It’s a nice night, lots of people out on dates, leaving big tips. Guess who walks in and sits at one of my tables. Lucian Swain!”
“Really.” Tessa tore off a sheet of Bounty, rubbed dust off of her forehead where she had pressed it to the floor.
“He’s pretty hot for an older guy. Not as hot as Nicky, but you know, that British accent. I told him that I was an artist, too, and he left me a twenty-dollar tip for two cannolis.”
“Wow.” She turned around, looking for somewhere to throw the used paper towel, made a mental note that she needed to bring a garbage bag from home. Gracie’s words registered. Two cannolis? He was supposed to be watching his weight, now that he had stopped drinking.
The Color of Light Page 4
