The Color of Light

by Helen Maryles Shankman

  He skimmed his fingers over the pale wood of Levon’s desk. “Yes,” he admitted.

  “Well, what did they say?”

  Blesser wouldn’t meet his eye. His fingertips traced loops and whorls on the glossy surface. “Well, there’s good news and bad news. The good news is they’re very interested in our school, in what we’re teaching here. They’ve been thoroughly vetting us, and they think we’re perfectly positioned to ride the backlash against modernism. They think we’re going to train the next generation of artists who make history.”

  Rafe nodded impatiently. “And?”

  “The bad news is, they want to see more recognizable names on the faculty page of our catalogue. Art stars. As insurance. You know, there are some big people nowadays working with the figure, Rafe. If we just—”

  “No,” he said smoothly, brushing a speck of dust off of the gray felt on the crown.

  Turner hustled through the doorway, frowning at a paper on his clipboard. By habit, he stopped just short of Levon’s desk, laid two papers in his inbox.

  “Whit,” Rafe said civilly.

  Turner started and grabbed the desk for support, dropping his clipboard to the floor with a loud clatter.

  “God, I hate when you do that.” He straightened back up, trying to regain his dignity.

  “I was just telling Raphael that we’ve heard from Rockwell,” said Blesser cautiously.

  “And I was telling Bernard to find another rich family that’s desperately trying to give away their money,” said Rafe, looking Turner in the eye.

  “Well, we’re going to have to do something, ” Turner burst out angrily. “You can’t go on supporting us forever. Some rich, eccentric British guy underwriting an entire school. We look ridiculous. Or try this scenario. What if something happens to you? What if you run out of money? Someday it’s going to have to fly on its own, Rafe.”

  Turner wheeled and stalked back out. Blesser shut the accounting ledger that was open on Levon’s desk, gathered it under his arm and scurried after him.

  “You know he’s right,” said Levon.

  Rafe expelled a sigh, leaned forward, ran a hand through his hair. “I know, I know. Find another way, Levon. More parties. More patrons. More publicity. More foundations.”

  “We’re trying. But they’re all saying the same thing. You have to try, too. April Huffman is a good start. We just need a couple more like her.”

  He shook his sleek head. “It’s a slippery slide. I’m worried about diluting our message.”

  Levon said mildly, “If something doesn’t change soon, there might be no message to dilute. Turner’s right. What if something happened to you? We could lose the school.”

  “Is that why Blesser was here?”

  “We walk a thin line. He wanted to show me how thin.”

  There was an awkward silence between them for a moment. Levon shuffled some papers on his desk. “So,” he said, changing the subject. “Coming to the Naked Masquerade?”

  Rafe was relieved. “Yes. Anastasia’s never been.”

  “Hallie’s first time, too. We’re going as Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera. Are you dressing up? You know, admission is free to everyone who shows up nude.”

  He smiled. “Anastasia’s coming as Ingres’ Odalisque.”

  Levon frowned. “Doesn’t that mean she’s going to be naked except for a towel around her head?”

  “Worth the price of admission, I should think.”

  There was another awkward silence. Restlessly, Rafe drummed his fingers on his knee. “About that other thing,” he said, feigning carelessness.

  “Right,” he said, turning to take a manila folder from a table behind him. “I remember. Tessa Moss. Nice girl. Good artist. Got her file right here.” He thumbed through it, holding the sheaf of typewriter paper at arms length, squinting. “These days, my arms can’t get long enough.” He read rapidly through her application essay, his eyes moving at a measured pace back and forth, his lips pursed. In the silence, Rafe could hear the buzz of a fly beating its wings against the glass, trying desperately to find a way into the red slash of light on the horizon visible through the window.

  Levon was bobbing his head up and down. “Oh, yeah, I remember now. Originally from Chicago, transferred from Parsons, got a job working for Lucian Swain, you know that much. Hmm, this is interesting. Grandparents are Holocaust survivors, lost their families in World War II. She plans to do her thesis project around the Holocaust. Here. You can look for yourself.” He turned the typewritten sheet around and slid it across the desk to Rafe.

  “Does it say where they came from?” The paper remained on the desk where Levon had left it. Rafe sounded detached.

  Levon picked up the paper, scanned it. “Here it is. Poland. Town I’ve never heard of. Can’t even pronounce it. Wi-li-doh-wah? I can’t read those names. All consonants, no vowels. You’ll have to ask her.”

  Rafe seized the paper, scanned the neatly typed pages, found the right paragraph. No, no, anything but that.

  “Wlodawa,” he said in a distant, toneless voice, pushing the application away. “It’s pronounced, Vluh-duh-vuh.” The founder of the school suddenly looked tired, and he was rubbing his long fingers across his eyes as if they pained him.

  “You okay, Rafe? You don’t look so hot. I was just on my way out to meet Hallie. We’re headed over to Curry Hill for Indian food. Why don’t you join us?”

  He shook his head, unfolded himself from the armchair, stood up. “That’s very kind of you. It’s nothing. Too many meetings. It’s been a long day.”

  Levon nodded his head, believing him. “So, did it answer your question? You said something about the drawing on her wall. That’s why you wanted me to look at her essay.”

  He swept his hat back onto his head, adjusted it just so. “It opens the door to more questions.”

  “Like what?” Levon opened his drawer, dropped the file back in.

  “About someone I used to know a long time ago.”

  “Ooh,” he chuckled. “Well, keep me posted.” He turned his attention to neatening a scattered pile of papers on the table behind his desk. “Just…be careful.”

  Rafe drew closer, stared at him from beneath the brim of his hat in a way that made Levon uneasy. “What do you mean?”

  “I mean, she’s a very pretty girl. And vulnerable. You’re on the board, Rafe. Also, you’re a well-known man-about-town sort of guy. Your interest could look inappropriate. And this year, we need all the votes we can get.”

  Rafe felt a flush of anger. “My interest is my own business, Levon.” With that, he turned and stalked out of the office, his coattails billowing behind him.

  Levon sighed, straightened out a pile of grant applications knocked askew when Raphael surprised him earlier.

  “Don’t worry,” Rafe’s voice came floating back as his footsteps echoed down the hall. “I promise not to sleep with her until after graduation.”

  10

  Halloween morning dawned a raw, leaden gray. Wind and rain lashed the yellow leaves off the trees and beat remorselessly at the nineteenth-century windowpanes. It howled down the deserted downtown canyons, snaked itself around the old buildings and whistled disconsolately through cracks in windows and doors. The few stalwart pedestrians that could be seen on Lafayette Street were harried down the debris-strewn sidewalks by furious gusts of wind. Passersby huddled under umbrellas looked up to find their shelters blown inside out. Masking tape crisscrossed windows, making huge X’s in building facades up and down the street, like a crazy game of tic tac toe.

  The weatherman on 1010 WINS called it a nor’easter first, and then the Halloween Storm. Later on that night it came to be known as the Storm of the Century. But at the American Academy of Classical Art, it was just another Halloween. The skeleton in the anatomy room wore a pirate hat cocked at a jaunty angle. A petrified parrot was wired onto his bony clavicle, the cigarette still clamped between his yellowy teeth. Someone had broken into the case that held the cat
and the dog skeletons and dressed them as a bride and groom. A furry black and orange spider zipped up and down a wire suspended from the ceiling near the office, vibrating and emitting spooky electronic moans. First-year students swooped in and out of studios wearing capes and vampire teeth. Michelangelo’s David wore a Rastafarian cap and a mass of dreadlocks.

  The Naked Masquerade was held in the Great Hall, at street level, where they kept the Michelangelos. Party guests encountered The Dying Slave in the foyer as they entered the double doors leading in from Lafayette Street. For today, the statue sported a sequined gold Speedo.

  Inside, a row of fluted Doric columns marched along the borders of the cavernous space. Hundreds of yards of cream-colored fabric gathered in pleats across the ceiling and plunged in deep swags behind the massive statues. A full-scale replica of the Pietà was the focal point of the room, occupying its own coffered niche. Replicas of the recumbent figures decorating the tombs of the Medicis, Dusk, Dawn, Night and Day, were arranged in the four corners of the enormous hall.

  All day long, vans pulled up to the curb with deliveries for the Halloween Ball. Uniformed drivers, bent almost double in the driving rain, conveyed saran-wrapped platters of painstakingly styled hors d’ouevres, artisanal breads, meats, crudités, sushi, cheeses, fruits and pastries, then departed, their place at the curb taken almost immediately by the next van.

  Waiters and waitresses glided through the crowd, invisibly whisking away lipstick-kissed glasses and replacing empty platters. The men, hired for their physiques as much as their abilities, were stripped bare from the waist up. The waitresses wore bodystockings adorned with a few well-placed feathers and sequins, but as they hurried by hoisting platters over their heads, they looked as naked as artists’ models.

  Accustomed to seeing nudes on a daily basis, the students ignored the waiters and gathered in clumps to ooh and aah over the food. A table staggered under the weight of a giant brown sugar glazed turkey and a leg of prosciutto di Parma. Next to the prosciutto, a silver tureen filled with ice was topped with a crystal bowl of smoky gray caviar and all its customary accompaniments, chopped egg, chives, crème fraîche. Silver trays bore battalions of amuse-bouche, each bite an edible art object; a tiny cube of smoked salmon on a tiny cube of black bread, a strip of grilled chicken threaded in an S shape onto a bamboo skewer. One of the sculptors had spent all day carving the centerpiece, a tall pumpkin that glowed from within like a fiery furnace, bearing the skull-like face from Munch’s Scream.

  “I’m faced with having to choose between caviar with toast points and Kraft macaroni and cheese for dinner tonight,” said Graham, looking wise and inebriated under his wreath of laurel leaves. He was Bacchus. A bed sheet toga was slipping off one shoulder. “It’s one of those times when you just have to say, ‘What would Jesus do?’ Holy jet beads, Portia, did you rob the Costume Institute at the Met?”

  Portia was wearing a vintage Victorian dress with a striped skirt that swept the floor, a tight corseted bodice, and a long, low, scooped neckline that made her neck look as if it had a couple of extra vertebrae. Her hair was pulled back and piled up into a nineteenth-century bun, held together with jeweled combs. Auden was outfitted as John Singer Sargent, in a dark brown three-piece suit and beard, wearing a straw hat from a questionable time period. He was carrying around Portia’s palette and brushes for authenticity.

  “There are a million trunks in my grandfather’s attic,” she said abashedly. “We’ve got these great old clothes from my grandparents and my great-grandparents.”

  “To misquote Woody Allen,” Graham said dryly, “my Grammy would have saved me all of her museum-quality designer clothing too, but she was too busy being raped by Cossacks.”

  “Who are you supposed to be?” Harker asked curiously. David and Sara were wearing street clothes, toting glasses of white wine.

  “We’re dressed as a couple of art teachers from a small college upstate. Sara doesn’t like costume parties,” he added apologetically.

  There was a stir of activity, a flurry of commotion, at the front of the room. The party grew a little brighter, a little more frenetic. A statuesque voluptuary of a woman came gliding through the doorway, ostensibly naked but for an ankle bracelet, a gold turban, and a pair of dark glasses. Behind her was Raphael Sinclair.

  “Oh my Lord,” said Graham.

  “Who is that?” breathed Portia.

  They turned to see Giselle Warburg hurrying towards the door in a high, powdered wig and a sky-blue satin gown, voluminous petticoats flouncing behind her. She looked like a portrait by Gainsborough. “Anastasia!” she was calling in her throaty voice, and the woman stopped, embraced her on both cheeks.

  “That, children, is Anastasia deCroix, editor of Anastasia magazine. Perhaps you’ve heard of her,” said Graham, reverently.

  “Wow,” breathed Portia. “Tessa should be here. Has anyone seen her?”

  “I think I just bumped into Madonna!” said Gracie excitedly. Nobody had noticed her arrival, which said something about the power of Anastasia’s magnificent body, considering that their classmate was painted blue from her head down to her toes.

  Ben whistled. “Damn, girl. How did you do that?”

  “Poster paint,” she explained matter-of-factly. “And a body suit. Nicky helped me with all the hard-to-reach places.”

  “I would have helped you,” said Harker. “Hell, we all would’ve helped you.”

  “Are the Sonic Death Monkeys ready to rock?” said Portia hastily, changing the subject. Harker’s band had been hired to play the Halloween Ball.

  He pushed his hair back behind his ears. “Oh, yeah. We’ve got a whole Halloween party playlist worked out. Should be righteous.”

  Alone, unnoticed, Tessa came through the door.

  In the subdued light, the chandeliers sparkled like jeweled necklaces, the draped ceiling rippled with shadows. A random shaft of light would catch the side of a face and immortalize it before it turned away, or reveal a sculptured female back, turning it into a scene from an old black-and-white movie. Tessa stood at the entrance to the enormous hall filled with happy strangers, and for a fleeting moment, considered fighting her way back home through the storm and spending the night in bed with a good book.

  “Hey, there, girlfriend, I didn’t think you were going to make it!” Portia yelled at her. In a floor-length silk dress, with her hair swept off of her long, lean face, she was transformed, looking every inch the consummate American aristocrat, like the painting Sargent had made of her great-grandmother when she was an art student in Paris before the turn of the century. “So does this mean we’re finally going to meet Lucian tonight?”

  No, he’s going to Cape Cod with his new girlfriend. “He couldn’t make it.” she said abruptly. “Some other time.”

  “Who are you supposed to be?”

  She touched the brim of her hat, a swooping black velvet cap with a slouchy satin crown and an ostrich plume that quavered tremulously in the updraft. The hat had been an impulse buy, weeks ago, at an open air market in Soho. The very full, very stiff, black crinoline petticoat, she had picked up for five dollars at the Sixth Avenue flea market. The camisole, all black lace and ribbons, was leftover from a time when Lucian…well, from Lucian.

  “I kind of hoped it would make me look like I’m from a Rembrandt painting. What do you think?”

  “I think it makes you look like a Flemish hooker,” said Graham. “I don’t know if any of Rembrandt’s hooker paintings survived.”

  David was staring at her. With candlelight illuminating the right side of his face, he looked devastatingly romantic. “Hey,” he said shyly. “I, um.” And he stood looking blankly at her, as if he had forgotten why he was there.

  Tessa didn’t know the blond woman with the short haircut and the neat sweater set who was standing next to him, sticking her hand out to shake. “Hi,” she said. “I’m Sara.”

  At that moment, she sensed, more than felt, something like a hot breath on the bac
k of her neck. She turned around, just in time to see Anastasia deCroix striding by with the languid gait of a leopard on the savannah, slow and majestic.

  Anastasia inclined her head to look at her. Lowered her sunglasses. Smiled. The hairs on the back of Tessa’s neck tingled, stood up at attention.

  The editor was encircled by an intimidating cortege of young women, pale and cruelly thin, dressed in various shades of black. Following close behind was Raphael Sinclair. He wore a shawl-collared dinner jacket that looked like it had been sewed onto him, expressing the sensuality of his body in the strength of the shoulders and the narrowness of his hips. He smiled as he passed and she caught a whiff of sandalwood; her heartbeat quickened, went thump thump thump thump thump; then he turned his attention to someone else.

  “I’m thirsty,” she said abruptly. “Anybody else want a drink?”

  “I’ll come with you,” said Portia. Leaving Auden to bond with David and Sara, they drifted into the crowd.

  Harker’s band took the stage. The lead singer shouted, “Two, three, four,” and they charged into The Monster Mash. At the bar, a big black cauldron sat on a fake fire, boiling out clouds of steam. It was just punch and dry ice, but the waitress behind the table wore a pointy hat and insisted on calling it witches’ brew.

  Levon waved at them from the dessert table and came over to greet them, carrying a tiny tart filled with a dot of mascarpone and one perfect raspberry. “Hey, girls! Wow, Portia.” He whistled. “That’s amazing. You look just like that Sargent portrait in the Met.”

  “Well, it is the same dress,” she said.

  Tessa recognized Inga, the head of the drawing department, engaged in conversation with a dark-haired, pale-skinned woman wearing a colorful Mexican dress, her black hair braided and pinned up on top of her head. With a marker, she had drawn on a single thick eyebrow and the suggestion of a faint mustache.

  “Is that Hallie?” she asked.

  “Yeah,” said Levon, turning to look. He burst out laughing. “I’m really digging on the mustache.”