Immortal Muse

by Stephen Leigh

  “I told you I didn’t need a release. I trust you.”

  “A release protects both of us, not just you.” He sounded like he was reciting something he’d memorized.

  “Do you think you need protection from me? Do I look that frightening?”

  He chuckled at that. “Hardly. But I can’t afford to be sued. This is all I have, right here.”

  Camille smiled. “Then don’t do anything with the pictures without asking me first. And trust me.”

  His sigh was just louder than the outside traffic. “Helen checked with a law firm where she works, and they said—”

  “There’s nothing magical about forms,” she told him. “My signature on a line isn’t a talisman. It won’t ward off bad things or lend you any real protection at all, and it won’t stop me from doing whatever I want to do.” He was already shaking his head. “Fine,” she said. “Give me the damn release.”

  She signed the form without looking at the words there, handing it back to him. Their hands touched as he took the form, and she felt the warmth of his skin, the softness of his fingertips. She wondered what they might feel like on her face, or running along the length of her arm. “Thank you,” he said. “I’ll make you a copy before you leave.”

  She smiled at him. “Hope you and your lawyer feel better now. I don’t need a copy, though. I trust you, David.” She continued wandering around the studio, going to the large south-facing windows. She leaned against the wooden frame: chipped white paint, the window grimy and dusty. From the side, she heard the clicking of a motorized shutter.

  “That’s good,” he said. “Stay there, Camille; the light’s wonderful. Don’t try to pose. Just be yourself.”

  She could visualize what he was seeing in the camera’s viewfinder: a strong chiaroscuro with the sunlight streaming through the glass, the studio a darkness behind her. Her face would be almost a cameo, like the one around her neck. She cupped the pendant in her hand, the shutter continuing to click.

  The air around her was charged and electric—it was David that she felt: his energy, his passion, his promise. She let the atmosphere envelop her, inhaling it as if it were sweet oxygen. She looked at him from under lowered eyelids—at him, at the lens of the camera. “Yes, that’s right. Excellent,” she heard him say. The shutter continued its relentless, imperative beat: a mechanical heart.

  Click. Click. Click …

  She could sense him, staring at her through the viewfinder, all of his focus there. She was his world, all that he saw right now. She reached down, her hands crossed at her waist, and took the hem of the tee, pulling it slowly up. She heard him inhale, but he said nothing. He didn’t encourage her, but he also didn’t stop her.

  Click. Click. Click …

  She pulled the tee over her head and off, let it drop to the floor. Her head down, her hair a red-highlighted waterfall over her shoulders, she opened the front clasp of her bra. She slipped the straps down her shoulders, let them fall. She could feel the cold stone and metal of the pendant between her breasts. The entire time she looked up at him, at the camera, her expression almost defiant, her chin lifted.

  “Do you always leave that on?” David asked. She realized, almost belatedly, that he was talking about the pendant.

  “Yes,” she told him. “Always.”

  The single eye of the lens stared at her, hungrily. She had seen artists stare at her that way before. Before, she had nearly always also been their lovers.

  Click. Click. Click …

  She turned sideways to David again, looking through the window once more to the skyline outside. She could feel the sun, could feel the air moving across her breasts like the arousing caress of a ghost. It’s always like this, the first time. A frightened heat in your belly, a shivering anxiousness. He feels it, too. Listen to how his breath shivers …

  Click. Click. Click …

  His hand touched her bare shoulder. He still held the camera to his eye with his other hand. “I want you to turn—” he began. His hand slid toward her neck; she caught it between head and shoulder, trapping it there, luxuriating in the feel of his caress. She smiled up to him, hearing the click of the camera’s motor drive. She found his hand with hers, brought it down so it just touched the swell of her breast …

  “What the hell!” The voice—a woman’s voice—swept away the vitality and strength and heat in the room and stopped the heartbeat of the camera. David pulled his hand away. Camille’s head craned around as her own hands, instinctively, started to move to cover her breasts. She forced them to stay down, to look as calm as if she were fully dressed. The woman was attired in a business pants suit, the bangs of her hair, cut in a conservative bob, dark with sweat as if she’d just walked several blocks.

  “Helen? What are you doing here this early?” David lowered the camera as he took a step away from Camille. He looked from Helen to Camille and back.

  “Interrupting your afternoon fun, it looks like,” she answered. Helen glared at Camille her gaze dropping once to her exposed breasts and the sardonyx cameo there. “You—whoever you are—put your clothes on and get the hell out of here.”

  “David was photographing me, that’s all,” Camille said. “I’m just … just a model.”

  “I’m sure that’s all you are,” Helen answered, her voice low and angry. “Now, get out of here.”

  Camille put on her bra, slipped the tee over her head again. Helen stood in the doorway to the studio, watching her. “He’s much more talented than you think he is,” she said as she passed the woman. “You should open your eyes and see it. You should love him for his gift.”

  Helen sucked in her breath as if she were about to retort, but said nothing. Her blue eyes were searing, her hands were curled into fists with polished red fingernails digging into flesh. Camille kept walking.

  “You’re dragging street sluts in here behind my back?” she heard Helen shout at David as she descended the stairs and walked through the living area toward the door. Camille saw an expensive leather briefcase on the couch that hadn’t been there earlier. “Again? Christ, David, that one has to be ten years younger than you …”

  Camille opened the door. She shut away the rising argument and David’s answer as she closed it again behind her.

  *

  David didn’t call that day, nor the next. By the third day, she was certain that her decision had been made for her. She wasn’t going to call him—any further contact with her had to be his decision; she’d already made her own choice when she’d gone to see him, when she’d let him photograph her, when she’d let him touch her.

  The rest, she told herself, was up to him. It was fate telling her that going after him had been a mistake.

  On Sunday, she laid out the Tarot, but it told her nothing about David; the array was definitely concerned with her other quest, with Nicolas. Every card howled at his presence nearby. Both the Four of Swords and the Four of Wands showed in the array, both cards linked to hospitals and medical issues. She went down to the corner store and bought the Sunday paper; in the obituaries, there were four deaths listed where the person had been a patient at Mount Sinai Hospital, and the local section was screaming about another body found in Manhattan that appeared to be the work of the Black Fire killer.

  Camille went to the copies of the old manuscripts she kept in the closet; she read—as she had a hundred times before—the Finding spell, placing it within the sardonyx pendant as she always did. She went to the site of the latest Black Fire casualty: in Roosevelt Park. The crime tape was still up though the investigators had already left the scene. Standing outside the tape, Camille could see the outline of a blackened section of grass where the body had been. As she stared at it, the pendant throbbed on her chest—not as deeply as it would have had Nicolas been standing there, but the spell could feel the residue of his presence.

  Nicolas was responsible. She had no doubt of that now, none at all. She looked around, almost guiltily, as if she might see him watching her from ne
arby. She would find him; she had to find him, or guilt would consume her: these murders were at least partially her fault.

  Camille spent much of the rest of the afternoon walking around Mount Sinai, watching the doctors and nurses who were entering and leaving the hospital, searching for a familiar face, a familiar body shape.

  None of them were Nicolas. The Finding spell slowly evaporated from the pendant, and though she thought she could feel a faint tug of his presence around the building, it was far fainter than it had been around the site of the Black Fire murder. He’d been here, but not recently.

  Sunday evening, she went to the New York Aikikai, an aikido dojo she’d joined upon arriving in New York, and worked out. Over the last few decades, she’d become fascinated by the art and its concept of self-defense, and had studied it in several cities and under several instructors; she held the rank of Nidan, a second-degree black belt. The class left her breathless and gloriously sweating. She reveled in the throws and being thrown, letting the activity dissolve her tension and her uncertainty in the crystalline moment. A weapons class followed, and she stayed for that, letting the heft of the wooden bokken tire out her arms until there was only the thin shfftt of the blade through the humid air as she cut and cut and cut, imagining that it was his body that she was attacking.

  But after folding her hakama and putting her dogi in the gym bag and walking back out onto the streets, reality soon came back to her. She found herself watching the shadows in the street, ready if someone emerged from them. She kept her purse open, prepared to pull out the Ladysmith if someone attempted to accost her. But no one did.

  Monday morning, promptly at 9:00 AM, her cell phone rang. She looked at the screen, feeling a certain disappointment when she saw that it was, as promised, the detective Bob Walters calling. “Mr. Walters,” she said, accepting the call. “Any news?”

  She could hear his head shake before he spoke in that growling, too-early-in-the-morning voice. “I’m afraid not. Ms. Kenny, I can’t in good conscience continue working on this case when I think you’re most likely wasting your money. Without a name, without a current photograph …”

  “Money actually isn’t an issue for me.”

  He nearly laughed. “In this economy? You’re a rare one, then. Are you certain? Your bill’s already into five figures.”

  “I’ll stop by your office later today and pay you for your work up to now, and give you an advance for another week. I really want to find this man, Mr. Walters. It’s important to me, and I’m certain he’s here somewhere in the city.”

  “And you know this how?”

  “I can feel him.” That pronouncement was greeted by nothing more than a breathy silence on the other end of the line. Camille hurried into the quiet. “Can you tell me that you never listened to your gut when you were on the force, Mr. Walters? Didn’t you sometimes just know the truth?”

  He sniffed, and she heard what might have been a sip of coffee. At this time of the morning, at least, she hoped it was coffee. “I listened, sure,” he said. “Saved my butt a few times, too—and got it chewed on a few times as well, since my gut turned out to be wrong. Your gut might turn out to be a very expensive one.”

  Camille shrugged, even knowing he couldn’t see the gesture. “Not finding this guy might turn out to be more expensive, as far as I’m concerned,” she told him. “Please, keep working on this.”

  She heard a long inhalation rattle the earpiece. “It’s your money, Ms. Kenny, and my checking account it’s feeding. All right. I’ll keep the file open. I’ll e-mail you your bill right now, and I’ll see you this afternoon—if I’m not in, you can just shove the envelope under the door. Have a good day.”

  He hung up before she could respond.

  *

  Monday evening, after dropping off Bob Walters’ check, she listened to Kevin’s new band. She thought their music interesting—a blend of funk and progressive, with odd time signatures. She could tell that the group was tight and well-rehearsed, and Kevin, on drum set, was displaying chops that she hadn’t known he possessed, driving the band like a maniac. But after a set, she was ready to leave. She stayed for their last set, despite her edginess, and went back to Kevin’s apartment afterward for a drink, but declined to spend the night when he asked.

  Tuesday morning, she read Mercedes’ chapter with Verdette sitting and purring on her lap. She called Mercedes, who invited her over for lunch. Camille left her apartment early, putting another Finding spell in the pendant, packing the Ladysmith, and spending another fruitless hour in front of Mount Sinai before going to Mercedes’ apartment to discuss her book. She found that she needed the closeness and the comfort; they ended up in bed together. Later that evening, they went to the Bent Calliope and met with the group.

  Their laughter and their energy did little for her; their company seemed flat. The taste of their green hearts was thin gruel for her hunger. She found herself struggling to smile at their jokes or to respond to their flirtations, and left early that evening.

  On Wednesday morning, her cell phone buzzed on her nightstand. She looked at the display: David. She held her breath, the phone in her hand as it vibrated. Just before the call went to voicemail, she touched the button. “David,” she said.

  “Hey, Camille. I just wanted to say …” She heard his breath rasp in the speaker. “I’m really sorry about the other day. Helen shouldn’t have gone off on you like that. That wasn’t fair to you. What happened was entirely my fault.”

  Verdette hopped onto the bed, butting her head against Camille’s hand. She massaged the cat’s ear; purring, she curled into Camille’s lap. “I don’t blame Helen; I can understand her reaction,” she told him. “I’m sorry, too. It wasn’t just your wife; I shouldn’t have … well, you know. I can sympathize with how she must have felt and what she was thinking.”

  “Either way,” David answered, “it shouldn’t have happened. I told you—she and I, well, we’ve had some issues recently. This is just part of it. I’m just sorry you got dragged into my relationship problems.” Another pause; Camille wasn’t certain what to say. “Listen,” David continued just before the silence reached an uncomfortable length, “we’re having a party here tomorrow: some of my friends and clients, some of Helen’s. She understands now that nothing was going on between us, that I’d asked you to model for me, that’s all, and she agrees that she overreacted. Why don’t you come over tomorrow and let us both apologize in person.”

  Verdette gave an irritated cry, and Camille realized that she was pressing too hard on the cat’s spine. She forced her fingers to relax. “That’s really not necessary.”

  “Maybe not, but I’d appreciate the opportunity.”

  “Would Helen?”

  “I told her I was going to invite you.”

  Camille tried to laugh. “That’s not actually an answer, David.”

  “I promise you, Helen will be fine with you being here, and I’d like you to come. Say yes. Besides, I have a few pictures you might want to see.”

  “David, I really don’t need the drama.” Verdette arched her back in feline ecstasy, her paws kneading Camille’s legs through the coverlet. She remembered the session before Helen’s interruption, the connection with David, the feeling of being one with him. You want this. You know you do.

  “There won’t be any drama. I promise. Tell me you’ll be here. Camille, I’m not going to accept ‘no’ as an answer.”

  She did laugh then. “All right,” she told him. “No drama. I’ll be there.”

  *

  She dressed conservatively: a black, knee-length evening dress with a high neckline, her pendant sparkling outside it, conservative heels, a small leather purse, her hair pulled back and up. David had told her that the party would start around 8:00; she figured 9:00 was late enough—she didn’t want to be the first to arrive, certainly didn’t want to have to make awkward conversation with Helen and David until other guests arrived. She could hear several voices beyond thei
r apartment door; she could sense the other people as well, the tendrils of their presences reaching out for her, several of them with green soul-hearts but none of them nearly as strong as David.

  He was there as well; his soul-heart blazed.

  She checked her lipstick in the small mirror of her compact and knocked on the door.

  She didn’t know the person who opened the door. She smiled at the man anyway and stepped inside when he gestured to her. The babble of several conversations battled with bland smooth jazz from a speaker system in the corner. There were at least a dozen people in the living room and more in the kitchen, judging by the sound. Neither David nor Helen was visible. Camille felt alone and vulnerable, a polite smile frozen on her lips, the energy of the room confusing and unsettling.

  “You look familiar. Have we met?” One of the men had come up behind her, a glass of wine in his hand. He looked to be in his early forties, she guessed, his brown hair thinning on top and starting to gray at the temples, a middle-aged paunch bulging over the belt of his Dockers.

  “No,” Camille told him. “I’m a friend of David’s.”

  “Ah, so am I,” the man nodded, taking a sip of wine. He held out his hand. “I’m Jacob Prudhomme. I own Prudhomme Gallery over on Delancey. David exhibits there; I sell one or two prints a month for him.”

  Camille shook the proffered hand. “Camille Kenny.”

  “What is it that you do, Camille Kenny?”

  “I dabble. Paint a little, play music a little, do a few other things you’d probably call terribly New Age-y.”

  He smiled; it reminded her of the expression Verdette had when she was about to pounce on an insect. “Yes, but what do you do?” he persisted.

  “That is what I do,” she told him, with the same emphasis. “I have a small trust fund from my, uh, family for income.”