The Color of Light (61 page)

He studied the painting before him. A man and a woman, side by side in a single bed. Behind them, the vertical pipes of an old-fashioned radiator. The man snuggled cozily around his partner, his arm draped around her waist. There was a look of bliss upon their sleeping faces.

A fierce throb in his heart; and then he was surrounded by his students.

“Hey, there, Mr. Sinclair,” said Clayton. “Looked like you could use some company.”

Ben and Clayton, Harker and Portia, Gracie and Graham, all circled around him, forming a wall, and a hand came seeking his in the crush of bodies.

Tessa stood beside him, shielded from view by the barrier of burly sculptors. Something tightened in his chest; he could feel his eyes stinging with tears. His fingers curled around hers and squeezed.

As quickly as it had begun, it was over. She melted back into the pack of art students, and they lounged on to the next painting.

“So sweet,” said Anastasia, coming to stand beside him. She had felt his anguish two rooms over. “Leo adores her. He calls her his
petite jeune fille.
They have a little crush on each other. Just last week she presented him with a little watercolor portrait. He was enchanted.” She reached out and smoothed his lapel. “Did I tell you how she nearly gave her life rescuing the
69 Ways to Better Sex
layout from a ledge outside the twentieth floor?”
She frowned, pursed her lips. “Then again, perhaps there are some things it is better you do not know.”

“She needs to spend more time working on her paintings,” he said grimly. “And less time with you.”

“My dear Raphael,” Anastasia said firmly. “In a few months, she will graduate. And this dream of being a painter will have to face the reality of the market. She will need a job. Why shouldn’t she work at my magazine?”

Rafe felt his lip lifting in a snarl. They watched Tessa drift from painting to painting, David in tow. “They are so cute together,” Anastasia said affably.

Her words brought an accusatory flash to his eyes, an arrow of pain to his heart. “Oh, come on, my darling, such an orgy of
tristesse,”
she teased. “Always so much
sturm und drang.
You are doing the right thing here. Letting her go, letting her have a chance at a normal life.” She waited for a moment before giving him the
coup de grâce.
“It’s what Sofia would have wanted, don’t you think?”

Shooting her a look of pure hatred, Rafe plunged into the crowd.

It was wrong, it was stupid, it was reckless, he knew it, and still he charged forward. Snapshots of David Atwood with his arm around her waist replicated in his brain like a virus. What else did they do together, in the name of saving his school?

“Rafe,” said Levon. Rafe barely acknowledged him, plowing through the throng of downtown artists and Upper East Side elite. Giselle loomed before him, in a pair of brown stirrup pants and a tweed jacket. She must have come directly from riding, he smelled polished leather; she kept a Tennessee Walking horse at Claremont Stables over on Eighty-ninth Street. She was accompanied by a well-preserved dowager, also in horsey dress. As he passed, she put her hand on his arm.

“Rafe,” she chortled in her throaty voice. “There you are! I’d like to introduce you to
—
”

With a sinking feeling, Levon watched him pull away from her.

“What is it?” said Turner.

“Nothing,” he replied. “Someone I used to know.”

Tessa and David were stopped in front of a painting of a rather grotty-looking studio sink.

“It’s obscene,” he said. “And I’m not even talking about the genitalia.”

“Don’t you see it?” she said, incredulous. “The unconventional way he uses space? The way he uses paint?”

He shrugged. “It’s all just another way of saying ugly. Like Van Gogh before he got to Paris. All these soupy grays and browns and lumpy paint and bad drawing.”

Tessa felt a kind of turbulence disturb the rarefied air in the gallery, tipped like chimes into motion around her. She turned to see Rafe slicing towards her through the crowd.

Their eyes met; he looked as if he had something important to tell her, something that couldn’t wait. With ten feet left between them, he slowed to a stop.

He was wearing her favorite suit, a double-breasted chalk-striped gray with baggy pants and peaked lapels, lined in crimson, all very 1940s, and she smiled at him, understanding that he had donned it as a signal, a kind of discreet love letter. But his face, his beautiful face…he was pale and ashen, as if there were a shadow moving under the surface of his skin. Some crisis was happening inside him, some private agony she did not know about and did not share. His eyes fastened on her as if he were drowning and she was a faraway shore; his lips parted, as if he were going to speak; and then he changed direction and stalked out the front door of the gallery.

Tessa had already taken an automatic step forward when a hand locked around her wrist. “Don’t,” David said quietly. “Turner’s over there, watching.”

Tessa turned her head. David was right. She closed her eyes, took deep breaths, counted to ten, put on a smile and took his hand.

Outside in the corridor, Rafe slammed open the door marked Emergency Exit. Shaking, he leaned against the wall of a decidedly unglamorous cinder-block stairwell and put his head between his hands. The bright lights were hurting his eyes. He reached out and snapped off the light switch, waited for the madness to go away.

The steel fire door yawned open, admitting two more people. Hidden in the shadows halfway up to the next landing, they didn’t notice him.

For one ghastly moment, he thought it was David and Tessa. There followed the sounds of giggling, the papery rustle of clothing being removed. A girl’s voice saying,
no, no, no,
giggling louder.

Not Tessa, thank God. He rolled his eyes, trapped. What was the best way to escape? He could head up the stairwell, which exited on the second floor, or he could wait quietly until it was over and they left.

No, no, no,
the girl was squealing, but her voice had changed, the giggling was nervous now, the
no no nos
evolving into frantic protest.

He reached out and flipped on the light switch.

A man in a tight iridescent suit was grinding himself against a waif of a girl he had pushed up against the wall. Allison, half-dressed, red lipstick smeared across her pale face.

“Are you all right, Allison?” he asked.

“Oh, hi Mr. Sinclair,” she said in a tiny voice. She was very frightened, he could feel it coming off of her in great wide waves.

“Do you need help?” he said, his eyes meeting hers.

“Yes,” she said, and began to cry.

He started down the stairs. “Let her go,” he said. “Find someone else who wants to do all those naughty things you’ve been dreaming up since you were ten.”

“I have another idea,” the young man said in a bored Teutonic voice. “Why don’t you fuck off.”

“Let her go,” Rafe said.

The young man turned to face him, then tilted his head in recognition. “I know you. I was at your Halloween Party. What was it? The Naked Masquerade? You’re the vampire. The Phantom of the Art School. Look here, Mr. Vampire. You just fly away now, and tomorrow morning I’ll send you a big fat check so that all the little artists in your school can go on making potholders and leather wallets for the rest of the year. All right? Now,
fuck off.”

Rafe grabbed him by the throat and hurled him up the flight of stairs. There was a horrible clang as his head hit the metal railing. His body slumped into an awkward pile on the landing.

Allison stared at Rafe as he came down the stairs. He smiled reassuringly as his fangs receded into his mouth, his eyes returned to their usual smoky gray. “You might want to fix your lipstick,” he reminded her. Then he opened the door and stepped back out into the corridor.

7

A
re they going to sue us?” asked the baby powder magnate. The board was furious. One man, the heir to a pharmaceutical fortune, implied that it would have been best for all parties involved if the girl had just kept quiet and taken it like a man. There was a silence in the room as the other members contemplated the implications of the mixed metaphors.

Rafe hadn’t said a word in his own defense. As a matter of fact, he hadn’t said anything at all, sitting on a folding chair in the Cast Hall, still wearing his coat, toying with the brim of his hat.

“I think it’s been withdrawn, now that we have Allison’s story.” said Levon. “This wasn’t his first time, either. Last year, his family paid a girl a million dollars over something that happened at the Limelight.”

“Well, that’s a relief,” said the heir to the cough drop fortune. “Bernard, will this present any foreseeable problem with the Corning Institute?”

Blesser made a rueful face. “We’ll see. They haven’t called. I’ve got my fingers crossed.” He consulted his notes. “They did want to know if we’d made any progress towards hiring someone who could head up our video art program.”

“Tell them we’re working on it,” Turner instructed him.

Levon looked at Rafe; had the words “our video art program” really just come out of Bernard Blesser’s mouth?
Say something,
he urged him silently.
Just smile at them.
But Rafe said nothing, continuing to stare out the window at the rain.

“Anything you want to add, Rafe?” he prodded, bewildered. The board members were looking to him for guidance. Giselle was staring at him, too.

“I’m sorry,” said Rafe, stirring himself. “Were you talking to me?”

Levon looked at him strangely. There was a moment of awkward silence, and then the meeting adjourned. There was coffee in a silver pot and lovely little cakes and petits fours from a new catering place in Tribeca. While the members of the board rose from their chairs and made their way towards the refreshments, Blesser found Rafe and took him aside.

“There’s a problem,” he said.

The dream was coming every night now. The shadowy child, the fiery furnace, the host of demons chasing him through the house, sinking their teeth into his flesh. Today there had been a frightening twist; he woke to find himself outside on the balcony, scant minutes before the sun would have risen and turned him into a heap of ashes.

Pay attention.
He trained his eyes on Blesser, willed himself to listen. Smiled politely. “What is it, Bernard?”

Blesser dropped his gaze. “It’s the new ventilation system. Turns out it cost twice what they quoted us. We can’t meet payroll this week.”

“Oh.” He tried to think of what to do, but now the only thing that came to mind were pictures of Tessa and David on a sunny beach, rolling around in the surf while U2 wailed
With Or Without You.
Soundtrack courtesy of Harker’s rock history mix tape.

He couldn’t process this right now. Patting his pockets, he found a business card, jotted something down. “Here. Call my banker at Barclays. Give him these numbers. Tell him what you need, he’ll take care of you.”

Blesser took the card, then whispered, “I think you did the right thing with that Austrian fellow. So what if his father’s a diplomat. Anyone with an ounce of decency would have done the same.”

Rafe smiled at him. “Thank you, Bernard. I appreciate that.”

He could see Levon was working his way over to him, holding a little glass plate bearing a pink petit four, laughing at something the cough drop magnate had said. Rafe could see what was coming. First, Levon would ask if he could see him in his office. Then he would lash into him.

Rafe almost growled. He was not feeling very fond of Levon lately. Turning on his heel, he skulked off through the back door of the Cast Hall.

In the stairwell, he thought,
I wonder what Tessa is doing right now?
He was already on his way up to the studio floor when he remembered that it
was off limits. In a rage, he grabbed the pay phone and smashed it against the metal receiver. It made a deafening clamor before shattering in his hand.

He paused on the sidewalk outside the building to collect himself. It was evening, the lights had twinkled on. New York was magical at this hour. People leaving work, their glad footsteps echoing down the streets. Friends meeting friends for a drink, or dinner, a club, the movies. Lovers hurrying towards each other in a heightened state of anticipation under a deepening blue sky. But Raphael Sinclair had nothing to do, nowhere to go, and no one who was waiting for him. He might as well go home.

He cut through Washington Square Park, his footsteps echoing on the pavement. The sulphur lamps bathed the benches and the sidewalks and the dead grass in a yellow glare. There was not another living being as far as the eye could see. Except for a girl with dull brown hair, making slow, aimless circles on the swing.

He stopped in front of her. “Hello,” he said.

“Spare any change?” she said in a flat, colorless voice.

“How old are you?”

“Old enough.”

Her pupils were fully dilated, like black holes. She was seventeen, maybe eighteen, he guessed. The girl put her arms around herself and shivered, her teeth rattling, though it was not a cold night. Something in his chest began to swell and thicken, his eyes began to change, his fangs to lower.

“Come with me,” he said. His voice shimmered with every color of the rainbow, an angel’s song. “Let me take you somewhere warm.”

8

H
ello, my dear,” Leo greeted her warmly as he glided through the art department into Ram’s office.

Tessa looked up from the layout she was working on. Ram thought she should try her hand at designing. On the table before her were three columns of type and a few photographs. Under Gaby’s deft fingers, it would already have been a witty front-of-book page juggling a story about blush, a hot new diet trend, and a Swiss anti-aging treatment. In Tessa’s hands, it looked like the bottom of a birdcage.

“Tessa!”

Gaby was beckoning her towards the office. She had to find Ram and Anastasia, she didn’t want to leave Leo by himself. Could Tessa babysit him for a few minutes? Gladly, she left the layout on her desk.