The Color of Light (73 page)

“According to the police, his name’s not even Blesser. It’s Gerritsen. He set up this conflict between you and Whit, and kept escalating it, to distract us from what he was doing with the books. We’re not the first school he’s cooked. The police said there was some place in Florida, a couple of years ago, and another one in Maryland before that.”

He leaned forward on his cane. “Rafe. I’m here, representing the board, in formally asking you to come back on as a full-time member.”

“Yes,” said Rafe, trying not to sound astonished. “Of course I will. Yes.”

“Good.” Levon was relieved. He had been a little uncertain of the form Rafe’s reply might take. “On another, personal matter. You’re going to have to find yourself a new Dean of Students for next year.”

“Oh,” he said, surprised. He tried to keep disappointment from coloring his voice. “Of course. I understand.”

Levon was bemused. “You understand what?”

“You’re quitting because of me. Because of what I’ve done. Because of what I am.”

Levon smiled. “No, that’s not why I’m leaving. I admit, it kind of freaked me out when I heard, but no, it’s not about you.” He massaged the back of his neck. “That old sports injury I told you about. It wasn’t an old sports injury, after all.”

“What do you mean?” said Rafe, puzzled. A chill went through him. “What is it?”

“Bone cancer,” he said.

“Oh.” Stunned, Rafe scrambled for words. “How long have you known?”

“Since Winter Break,” he said. “Maybe that’s why I was so rough with you. This school is my legacy, too. I want to know it will go on after I’m gone.”

“Come on, Levon.” he said lightly. “Don’t talk like that. Years from now, you’ll still be calling me into your office, trying to get me to behave.”

“Listen. Let me save you a bunch of awkward questions. It’s pretty far advanced. I’ve tried everything. Nothing has worked. The doctors give me till the end of the summer.”

Rafe sat back on the couch, shocked into silence. Levon looked around the Great Room, admiring the high red walls, the art, the polished oak trim, the antiquities, the vintage Mission furniture. “I’ve always liked your place,” he said affably. “It must have taken you years to collect all this stuff.”

“Half a century,” he said absentmindedly. “I started in 1940.”

“I bet a museum-quality Rembrandt was a lot more affordable back then.”

“You don’t know the half of it.”

“You know,” Levon said pensively. “If I was going to live forever, I’d do exactly the same things you’ve done. Buy a house. Collect art. Start my own art school. Find a nice girl.” He scratched his beard. “Maybe I’d learn how to play the saxophone.”

Rafe’s eyebrows drew together; hesitantly, he leaned forward. “Levon,” he said carefully. “If you’re asking me to…if you’re asking if I’ll…Levon, I can’t. I won’t do that to you.”

Levon frowned at him, confused. And then rocked back in his chair and guffawed.

“You think I want you to make me a vampire?”

Rafe nodded.

“No, man. I just wanted you to know,” he said, with a wry smile. “You’re a friend.”

He stood up to leave, leaning heavily on his cane. Rafe rose to his feet. “Let me call you a car.”

“That’s all right. I’ve got one waiting downstairs.”

He accompanied him through the Great Room, down the double stairs. Now Rafe noticed how gaunt Levon’s face had grown, how much gray had entered the grizzle of beard, how his clothing swam loosely around his limbs when he moved.

Levon paused at the door. “You love her, don’t you,” he said. It was a statement, not a question.

“More than my own life,” said Rafe. “You’re going to tell me to give her up.”

Levon, gazing up at the drawing of the Madonna and Child over the fireplace, didn’t answer right away.

“Is that a real Raphael?” he said, turning to Rafe.

“No,” he said. “It’s a copy. Made by my beloved, Sofia Wizotsky, when we were both art students in Paris. She probably died in Auschwitz.” He jammed his hands into the pockets of his robe. “Tessa’s grandmother.”

Levon’s eyebrows lifted. He turned to look up at the drawing. The serene, loving mother. The capering child.

“I believe that life is short,” he said finally, his deep brown eyes meeting Rafe’s. “And that we must cherish love, whoever we are, however we find it.”

They shook hands. “There’s a strategy meeting tonight,” Levon said over his shoulder as he treaded carefully down the stone steps. “Eight o’clock in the Cast Hall. See you then. And Rafe. Don’t forget that shower.”

17

A
s it turned out, a museum-quality Rembrandt brought considerably more in 1993 than it would have in 1940.

Rafe had to sell the Vermeer as well to get the school back on its feet. And then he disappeared.

A week later, he was back, no explanation forthcoming. Not long after that, there was a story in some of the papers about the body of a Queens man that had been dragged out of a river in Uruguay. It was eventually identified as that of Eldon Bernhard Gerritsen, known con artist, most recently sought for bilking the American Academy of Classical Art out of millions of dollars. The article went on to say that the police down there were baffled. Though there were no gunshot or stab wounds, the body had been completely drained of blood.

The arrangements were almost finished for the Nudes and Naked Ladies Benefit and Auction. It was scheduled to take place at the end of April, after Spring Break. Wylie Slaughter had been surprisingly helpful, coaxing many of his artist friends into donating something, a drawing, a sketch, a painting, to be auctioned off to benefit the Academy. Giselle was in her element, calling caterers, florists, scenic designers.

The school hired a new chief financial officer. This one came with excellent references. Levon called every single one.

The first time Rafe encountered Turner in the hallway, he pretended not to see him. Carrying a Styrofoam cup of coffee, he was staring at his clipboard and scurrying along close to the wall, on his way to his office.
Rafe stepped in front of him. Forced to stop, he looked up at him with fear in his eyes.

“You’re going to fire me, aren’t you.” he said miserably.
Or worse.

“No,” said Rafe.

Whit’s mouth dropped open.

“I know you tried to steal the school from me,” he continued levelly. “I’m not an idiot. But it’s hard to find people who can do the things we do. You’re a good teacher, Whit,” he said.

Then he had drawn close to him, so close he could feel Turner’s breath on his face. To Whit’s eternal horror, the irises of his eyes morphed to a clear, icy blue. The whites flamed a bloody red.

“Just don’t do it again.” he whispered in his ear. And smiled.

Life returned to something like normal. Rafe went to parties with Giselle. He went to meetings with Levon. He chatted up the board members. He flirted with the lovelies. He even made a visit to the offices of
Anastasia.
But late at night, he sat on the steps of St. Xavier, gazing at the darkened ground floor windows of a certain apartment building, waiting for the lights to come on.

The second-year art students of the American Academy of Classical Art were hard at work. Most of them stayed on through Spring Break as they struggled to complete their thesis projects in time for the Graduate Exhibition. Simultaneously, they were putting their hearts and souls into creating masterworks for the auction.

Tessa’s side of the studio remained empty, her mosaic of postcards and sketches an increasingly ghostly reminder of someone who wasn’t there anymore. The jars of linseed oil and painting mediums, the coffee cans bristling with pencils, the mason jars of up-ended brushes, remained undisturbed on her table, gradually becoming coated with a fine layer of plaster dust. The painting of the grandmother standing before a table full of memorial candles stood half-finished on her lyre-shaped easel. The completed painting of the mother and child waited against the wall. All that existed of the cyclone of bodies whirling apart into ashes was a pencil drawing.

With her return still in doubt, Gracie stacked Tessa’s things into a corner. She needed the extra room.

The date set for the Nudes and Naked Ladies Benefit and Auction was a Thursday at the end of April. It was a mild evening. As Rafe stepped down the stone stairs to the street, the sky overhead was deepening to a rich royal blue. The pink double tulips and white narcissus nodded their stately heads over pools of purple grape hyacinths in the gated park. A serious little boy in a navy blue coat stared at him from between the bars, a uniformed nanny hovering suspiciously behind him. The boy smiled at him. Rafe smiled back.

The party’s theme was the color white. The color of a fresh sheet of drawing paper, the color of a blank canvas. The
fin-de-siècle
chandeliers were swathed in white tulle. Through the netting, tiny white lights twinkled like stars. Candles, tucked into gold mesh votives that twisted upwards like flames, were tucked into nooks and crannies wherever there was room. White cotton fabric, hundreds and hundreds and yards of it, was gathered and draped across the ceiling, the walls, and the fluted Doric columns. Battalions of framed artwork hung in neat rows from floor to ceiling around the room.

It was Gracie’s idea to paint the waiters gold. Gilded leaves were arranged in their gold-painted hair. Their bikini tops and loincloths were gold. Even their skin was painted gold.

The story of how the Academy had been bilked out of millions had been covered exhaustively in the news, had made the front section of all the papers. It made for great free publicity.

The invitation called the party for six o’clock. Even at $150 per couple, hundreds of guests poured through the doors. They wandered through the Cast Hall like tourists, awed by the art hung salon-style almost all the way to the ceiling; they stopped to gape in front of a copy of a Leonardo
Holy Family,
unable to believe that a modern artist had the skills to recreate it; they stood in front of a first-year student’s version of Raphael Sanzio’s
Leda and the Swan,
sketched with a crow quill pen, arguing over which one of them would be taking it home; no one could pass David’s exquisitely rendered charcoal drawing of a reclining Sivan without stopping and sighing.

Raphael Sinclair moved through the crowd, his progress slowed by the numbers of people who recognized him from one place or another
stopping to congratulate him on the beauty of the room, on the glorious art, on his students’ prodigious abilities, on coming up with the idea of a classical art school in this day and age.

Wylie Slaughter was there, with a group of his supercool postmodern artist friends. There was a smattering of local celebrities from the worlds of stage and screen. Art critics from the
Times.
Sawyer Ballard came to see what all the fuss was about. Anastasia attended on Leo Lubitsch’s arm, Ram and Gaby trailing in their wake.

During a rare moment when he wasn’t being besieged by well-wishers, Rafe saw Tessa’s legation of friends lounging through the hall. The Seven Dwarfs, he had called them. He averted his gaze. It was too painful to look upon them, knowing what he had done, knowing what they must think of him, knowing she wasn’t there.

The auction began an hour later, with Giselle holding the gavel.

The resulting tumult was astounding. Bids escalated quickly into the thousands. And they bid on
everything.
From paintings contributed by famous artists, to a pen and ink sketch made by the rawest new student. A fight broke out over the charcoal drawing of Sivan. One of the writhing figurines Ben sculpted for his
Gates of Hell
sold for five figures. Two people were under the impression that they had purchased the same sketch that Gracie had drawn of the voluptuous model Rachel playing languorously with her hair. Every piece sold, down to the bare walls.

Near
Dawn,
Sawyer Ballard stepped closer to the sensitively drawn portrait of a child to read the name of the artist, and saw his granddaughter’s name on the plaque. He put his hand on Rafe’s shoulder, smiled tearily, told him how proud his father would have been, and that he could expect the Ballard Foundation’s support from now on.

The school was saved.

Rafe felt a kind of peace flow through his body, knowing that this place, this sanctuary for artists that he had created, could continue on without him. He wasn’t exactly happy; happy would have entailed different circumstances, and Tessa by his side; but he allowed himself a smile of satisfaction.

A pretty, dark-haired woman was looking at him a certain way, he noticed. Then, just beyond her, he caught a glimpse of a small, familiar
figure with a cascade of unruly hair, not red, not blond, not brown, falling down her back.

Then he lost her; there were so many people, she was swallowed up by the crowd. Or he might have been mistaken.

He sought out her friends. There they were, massed in front of a large painting of fancy layer cakes, contributed by the painter Wayne Thiebaud. Something was going on. Portia was grinning with delight, while luscious Gracie was elatedly jouncing someone in a hug, blocking his view. In the dull roar reverberating through the high-ceilinged room, it was impossible to hear what they were saying.

And then, there she was, her bright head emerging in the middle of the circle. She wore a sleeveless dress with a low, round neck, printed all over with old-fashioned cabbage roses. The dress had a full skirt that swished and swirled when she moved. When she walked, she may have been favoring her left side.

There was a fire burning in his chest now. Though he longed to be at her side, he contined to smile, to shake hands, to endure the myriads of well-wishers, clapping his shoulder in congratulation.

He circled the room, trying to catch her eye. Every time he thought he had it, she glanced off in another direction. After half an hour of this cat-and-mouse game, the realization that she was avoiding him came stealing over him, and his heart sank.

“How are you, my friend?” Anastasia was beside him.

Now Ram was in her circle, wearing that stupid aqua cocktail jacket with the ridiculously wide lapels, hugging her, goosing her with a pelvic thrust or two, doubtlessly saying something outrageous.