The Color of Light (38 page)

She whipped the drawing board off of her easel, reached for a canvas. Holding a pencil in her hand as if it were a sword, she stared at him for a
moment. Then she dropped her gaze to the blank white surface and started to sketch.

Her eyes were black, burning with fierce energy. He watched her mark each detail, bringing him to life. It was as if she were running her hands over him from across the room, and he grew flushed, heated, feeling his body begin to respond.

Yes,
she thought.
Now.
She threw down the pencil and reached for her paints. The sharp resinous tang of turpentine impregnated the air. With a large bristle brush, she laid in a dark, transparent background. Choosing a different brush, she modeled the creases of his trousers, the swags of his suspenders. Next, she reached for a soft rag, balling it up to rub clean areas of light. A figure began to emerge from the gloom on the canvas.

Using the tip of the brush the way someone else would use a pencil, she traced the fine line of his profile, the mass of his upper body, bringing them forward from the shadowy background. Abandoning tools altogether, she used her fingers to blend the edges around his hips, his legs, merging them with the darkness.

She stepped back from the easel. It was all there, in the tilt of the hat, the U-shaped neckline of the undershirt, the corresponding curve where it tucked into the waistband of his trousers. The insouciant slant of his shoulders. The way his hip bones jutted forward. She had captured him more truthfully than any camera could; the beauty, the sensuality, the razor’s edge of danger.

She eased back into her chair, exhausted. Leaning her elbow on one of the padded armrests, she closed her eyes, just for a minute.

It was too quiet. He broke out of the pose, glanced behind the canvas. There she was, her chin resting in the palm of her hand, asleep in her chair. He smiled, turned to look at her painting. The pain in his heart took him by surprise. Another girl, another time, another drawing of him in his undershirt and braces.

He touched her shoulder. “Tessa.”

She started to her feet. She blinked at the light, looking confused, rumpled, adorable. There was a smear of paint along the line of her jaw.

“What time is it?”

He looked at his watch. “It’s four-thirty.”

Maybe it was the time, maybe it was the amount of turpentine dissolved in the air of the small room. She was swaying on her feet. He moved to catch her. He pulled her up into his arms, carried her to the bed, shoved his coat aside.

The raw sexuality of him, so close to her. Nothing more between them than his ribbed cotton undershirt. The smoothness of his skin, the play of hard muscles under the skin. Words swam into her head, stung her lips. She couldn’t believe she wanted to say them. She fought them back down.

Holding her, he felt a dizzying sensation. He wanted to pull her against his chest, to feel the rhythm of her heart pound through his body again. He wanted to climb into bed with her, part her knees, pour himself out into her.

He steadied himself, kissed her slowly, luxuriously. There was nowhere to go, nowhere he had to be. They had all the time in the world.

“Tell me,” he whispered. “Where did you get that photograph that you gave to Clayton?”

He could feel her smiling against his lips. “Who wants to know? Raphael Sinclair, the founder of the school? Or Raphael Sinclair, in my room without his shirt on?”

“That one.”

“Lucian’s loft.”

“You are a naughty, naughty girl.”

“I know. I feel just terrible about it.”

Now she saw it, a thin gold chain around his neck. From it hung a gold ring, plain, cylindrical in shape, like a small yellow machine part. It caught the light from the reflector lamp as it revolved slowly in a circle.

Self-consciously, his hand curled over the ring. He looked down into her pale, serious face, grave brown eyes full of questions she was afraid to ask.

In the semi-darkness, he took her right hand, the one she used for drawing. Kissed the fingers one by one, placed them over his heart.

“Tessa,” he said quietly. “There’s no one but you.”

He kissed her then, the brim of his hat blotting out the light.

That week, everywhere Tessa went, Raphael Sinclair was already there.

At Pearl Paint, where she went searching for General’s charcoal pencils, he was drifting towards her through Fine Papers. At Elephant and Castle, where she ordered coffee and toast, he was already seated at a table in a lightless corner with the Times. At Porto Rico Coffee Roasters on Bleecker Street, where he suggested she try Peter’s Blend. At Sherwin Williams, where she was hovering indecisively near the paint chips trying to decide what color to paint her kitchen, he helped her choose between Moroccan Red and a glossy Merlot.

At the MoMA, she wandered through the Matisse exhibition, rolling her eyes at crayon-colored paintings of fruit and women that looked like they had been dashed off between lunch and dinner, and wondered what the world saw in them. He was there, of course, standing before an enormous red painting, hands clasped behind his back. He smiled at her approach.

“Fancy meeting you here,” he said.

She joined him, turned her gaze to the canvas. A golden-haired woman was setting down a bowl of apples on a carmine-covered table in a carmine-painted room. Cobalt blue vines seemed to climb from the tablecloth to the walls. To the left, a dream landscape, seen through a window. It seemed eerily familiar, and then she remembered she had seen it on a postcard, tacked up on David’s wall.

“I like this one,” she said.

Surprisingly, he reached for her hand. Her heart gave a little flutter.

Friday night, New Year’s Eve, 1992.

Though he had plans with Anastasia later that evening, Rafe found himself heading towards Sixteenth Street, as he did most nights, to take his place on the steps of St. Xavier, to watch over her.

He approached her window, peered through the chink in the blinds. There she was, wearing an orchid-colored jalabiya shot through with gold threads, her hair hanging down her back in damp curls. One plate, one wine glass. He tapped on the glass. She turned her head towards the window. When she saw who it was, she smiled blissfully, as happy as a little girl.

“Happy New Year, Tessa Moss,” he said through the glass.

“Happy New Year, Mr. Sinclair.”

She let him in. The hand-painted plate on the table, blue vines winding across a white background, held the remains of her dinner. Chicken bones, lemon peel, a few olive pits. Sweet, sour, savory, salty. Rafe identified the aromatics of coriander, cumin, saffron, olives, preserved lemon.

Marrakech, 1944. A man muttering his last bitter words in a foreign language, sinking against blue shutters in an alleyway, Rafe’s teeth tearing open his throat.

“Moroccan chicken,” he said. “Where did you learn how to cook like this?”

“My roommate,” she said. “French Moroccan. From Paris.”

She took his coat. To his surprise, she buried her nose in its folds. She smiled. “Mmm,” she said. “Smells like you.”

“Let me show you something else that smells like me,” he said, pulling her to him. He kissed her, then, her mouth, her hair, perfumed with memory.

Outside, New York City accelerated in its orgy of preparatory celebration as the temperature dropped to twenty degrees. The clatter of pedestrian footsteps echoed down the street in a continual parade out of the subway. The hale shouts of friends meeting on the corner before heading up to the madness at Times Square rang through the frigid air. But inside her apartment, the TV was off, the radio silent. The
Times
lay open on the table. A paperback novel awaited her attention on the arm of the sofa. An otherworldly quiet.

“Not watching the ball drop?”

“It’s Friday night,” she explained. “Sabbath. I don’t turn anything electrical on and off until tomorrow night.”

“Shabbos,” he said.

“Yes,” she said, her eyebrows coming together, “You never told me. How did you know that?”

He looked at her, said nothing. She saw a nameless sorrow pass over his face. He turned away. Took an extra moment to balance his hat on top of the coat tree. When he turned around again, the expression was gone.

He flopped onto her couch. “Looking forward to Intersession?”

She came to sit next to him, curled her legs under her, cat-like. “I guess. Do you know Wylie Slaughter?”

He shrugged. “No. Whit recruited him.”

She moved, playfully straddling his lap. Raising herself up on her knees, she laid her hands on his chest and kissed him.

“Are you allowed to do this on Shabbos?”

“It’s actually encouraged,” she said. “Well. If you’re married.”

He leaned back on the couch, rested his hands on her thighs. “And why aren’t you married, Tessa Moss?” he murmured. “A nice Jewish girl like you.”

She lowered her gaze, fingered his tie. “You know, I’ve been out with dozens of boys,” she said. “Back home, in Chicago. Doctors. Lawyers. Businessmen. I would sit across from them at some restaurant, thinking, what’s wrong with me? They were all perfectly nice, perfectly eligible… something was missing. Something was always missing. Maybe it was missing in me.

“Late at night, alone in my bed, I’d hear the train whistle, on its way from somewhere to somewhere else.” She smiled apologetically. “I know. Oldest cliché in the world. But I’d say to myself, someday…”

“…someday, I’m going to be on that train.” He finished the sentence for her, then kissed her, thinking of ten-year-old Titian leaving his small alpine village for Venice, of seventeen-year-old Raphael Sanzio leaving Urbino for the big city of Florence, of a beautiful black-haired girl leaving a forgotten town on the far edge of the Polish border for the City of Light. He whispered into her hair, “It’s always been that way for people like us.”

She pulled his shirttails up out of his trousers, tentatively slipped her hands under his white undershirt. He made himself perfectly still as she explored, moving her fingers over his abdominals, his ribs, following the line of hair that ran down from his chest like an arrow to his groin. He had no breath, but something made him gasp when she leaned over and kissed his belly.

He was charmed, amazed, that the simple act of pushing up his shirt was all it took to arouse him. With Tessa, the smallest gesture returned intense pleasure. He was alternately thrilled and fearful of the way she made him feel; hungry, naked, unsure of himself, vulnerable.

He trapped her face in his hands. He didn’t want her doing things for him. On the contrary. She was owed.

She rose up on her knees. She was above him now; he could feel the tips of her hair tickling his face, the unevenness of her breath on his forehead. Her nipples, taut under the thin cotton of her dress. He brushed them with his lips, reached out with his tongue. He felt her back stiffen, heard the hiss of her breath.

She pulled his head close, dug her fingers into his hair. He could hear her heart beat double time,
boomboomboomboomboom
and he found it curiously moving; he hesitated, wanting just for a moment to hold her, to be held by her.

The labored sounds of her breathing excited him. He slid his hands under her dress, wrapped his arms around the smooth skin of her bare bottom, crushed the length of her body against his. Her breathing quickened, grew rough. He reached for her hair, her face, her mouth.

That night, Anastasia’s party forgotten, they walked to Central Park, where a steadfast group of runners in fancy dress gathered for the annual 5K run. One intrepid athlete was dressed as a sumo wrestler. Another wore the flowing saffron robes of a Buddhist monk. A third came as Yosemite Sam. And one wore a dark suit and a rubber Bill Clinton mask.

At the sound of the starting pistol, the crowd gathered in the cold cheered. Lovers embraced. The waiters at Tavern on the Green handed out paper cups of champagne. A man in a pink bunny suit took the lead.

Rafe slipped his arms around Tessa and kissed her, as red and gold and green fireworks arced overhead through the starry sky.

26

T
essa put down her brush, stepped respectfully away from her easel. Wylie Slaughter plowed his fingers through his signature shock of coal-black hair, put on a pair of glasses with black plastic frames, and came in for a closer look.

On Monday, the students had gathered in the Cast Hall, straining in their folding chairs for a better view of the famous artist. He stood at the front, holding a blue Ty Nant bottled water, pacing slowly back and forth in front of Michelangelo’s
Pietà,
laconic to the point of comedy.

“Why,” he finally said, “In this time of cameras and instant photography, do we still paint the human body?” The students settled down, quieted, waiting for his answer. Minutes ticked by. None was forthcoming. “Your assignment,” he continued, “will be to give me the answer.”

They were to give him a scene taken from a dream. The students participating in the Intersession project were to expect a visit from the great man once a week, in their studios. Due to understandable time constraints on his part, they would not know when these meetings were to take place. It was in their best interest to be in their studios as much as possible between the hours of ten-thirty and five, Mondays through Thursdays.

Tessa was already halfway done. The canvas showed her hiding under a bed, staring at a pair of highly polished jackboots.

“My grandparents are Holocaust survivors,” she explained. “I have these recurring dreams that I’m being chased by Nazis.”

He nodded sagely, tilted his head. “Well. Who hasn’t had that one. Got anything else?”

She opened her sketchbook. He took it from her, began flipping through it.

Tessa rubbed her eyes. She was tired. At four in the morning, she had been sitting on a stool at the counter at Lox Around the Clock, listening dreamily to the up-and-down notes of Rafe’s supple voice as he told her a story from his student days in Paris, something about trying to concoct Vermeer’s legendary lost painting medium, a complicated recipe that included melting beeswax into Venice turpentine. When he’d tried to cook it on an electric burner, the whole thing caught fire.