The Colorman (19 page)

—F
RANK
O'H
ARA

F
all leaves and pumpkins. Work zone. Browns and clays, desert earth. Ceratine, a bad fake tan and the usual alert level these days.

Though orange is a large and important part of the spectrum, and the key to most flesh tones, rarely does it figure solitarily on the palette. Orange darkened is a good chocolate brown, rich and deep. Lighter, it is creamy-pale flesh, pushed this way to yellowish, that way to a greenish undertone. Mixing a decent flesh tone usually begins with the orangey brown of Burnt Sienna, opened out by Titanium White, lightly for darker skin tones, more thickly for the lighter ones. The reddish undertone is more conspicuous at this stage, and a warm yellow needs to come in and soften that. Depending on the tone of skin you're looking to match, some version of orange needs to bring it to life. A crimson mixed with cool-lemon yellow yields a bright reflective area; any of the Cadmiums, even a straight-from-the-tube Cadmium Orange, gives deeper shadows their warmth. Human skin has been called almost every color, from white to yellow to red to brown to black, but unless you're drinking colloidal silver, it actually leans some way toward orange. Orange: everything that is not blue. Blue's complement.

Morrow crushed, distilled and incorporated remnants of the matter he'd gathered, from ashes to crushed bits, to scrapings of soot left from flames, to poundings of gold and powdered stones. It was important that a pigment stayed true and intense, that it retained its luminosity and hue and not damage pigments next to it or mixed into it. He tested, adjusted and retested this quality repeatedly with washes on small cards. James was working on this project now with Alvaro's overtime help. Morrow relied on Alvaro's availability, and his unique ability to be present and helpful, yet somehow invisible and non-judging. The two transformed the sundry materials he had gathered into pigments, dyes and lakes, incorporating them into the various supports, glues, and gessoes he had created. They filled tubes and bottles and boxes. The project was nearly finished.

The portable speakers resting on the passenger side seat were cranked all the way up. Rain drove a rental van alongside the railroad tracks and river views on her way in to the city.

Karl hadn't seen or said anything about the paintings she'd hung for the dinner party. He had been so involved in his own drama that he had overlooked them entirely. But at least the timing of his collapse had not been too disruptive to her project—she'd been able to finish them. Twelve canvasses, all large, fully rendered. And she was fairly certain she wouldn't have had it in her to complete them had he come while she was still working on them.

Still, her mind reran the same thoughts like an animal licking its wounds. She wondered why she had married him; she felt the anger at his betrayal; she questioned her own emotion—whether she was angry only because she was so deeply insulted by his wanting someone else, or whether this really was heartbreak.

Rain was too angry at him to be sad, too insulted to be sorry and too disgusted to know whether she was just relieved to be rid of him. After all, his affair had given her the perfect out. Had she just waited around for him to give her this free pass? No amount of impatient bad treatment could have released her from him, as long as he kept to the letter of their vows. She had always thought she was stuck with his unkindness and stingy affections. But shouldn't she have left him earlier? Shouldn't she have fought him, demanded better treatment, threatened divorce?

As she drove, Rain realized she was passing cars right and left, weaving around the Westchester traffic like an emergency vehicle. Approaching the little Henry Hudson Bridge at Manhattan's northern tip, Rain consciously slowed down and reigned in her driving, not wanting to cut short this second chance, this wide-open vista of whatever was going to be the rest of her life.

The van rolled along the Henry Hudson Parkway as it sloped down under the George Washington bridge and slid along the river, chasing joggers along the quay, passing little moored sailboats, yachts and fishing boats.

But the wound licking persisted. Why had she been such a stooge in her marriage? Why had she let him treat her rudely and never balked at it? Why had she enabled his tantrums and selfishness? She hadn't wanted to work it out with him. She hadn't wanted it to work. She had made an effort in the beginning, fighting with him, much to her uncomfortable surprise. Being wrecked by little arguments as much as big ones and being shocked to find him cozy and happy after having vented all of his frustrations on her. As their marriage went on and he seemed to get happier and happier, Rain now realized that she had wanted out, but that she wanted it to end decisively and blamelessly.

She didn't put him into bed with someone else though. That was his own doing.

It was him. His fault. She wouldn't have wanted out if he hadn't been so difficult. She would have continued on that way forever if he hadn't rent it open as he did, letting her walk away so easily.

Still, she couldn't help it. It made her giddy—this freedom, this secret exit off the long straight highway she thought was her life.

A parking spot right in front of Shuldenfrei on Greene and Canal could only be a good omen. Most of the big-name galleries had already defected up to Chelsea, and the back blocks of Soho were crammed with chain boutiques—sleek furniture stores, fine gardening supplies, faux hippie frocks, and high-end bedand-bath shops filled with 600-count Egyptian cotton, organic lavender and calendula oils. Ben Shuldenfrei had inherited his father's Soho gallery and had kept it in the same white-washed space during the decade he'd run it.

The gallery sitter was the usual skinny young thing, coiffed and dressed like a caricature of the women she saw coming in to buy art. She studiously ignored Rain who stood right in front of her at the high front desk.

The girl deliberately continued to stuff envelopes while Rain shuffled and cleared her throat. Just as Rain began to seriously consider reaching over and snatching an envelope out of her hands, the girl looked up, eyes only reluctantly following her chin's lift and said, “How can I help you?” in a polished apathy.

Rain plastered on an equally insincere smile. “Right. Is Ben around?”

“I'll see,” the girl said. She actually stuffed another envelope before getting up slowly, and adjusted her very tight skirt as she minced back to Ben's office.

She returned. “Mr. Shuldenfrei will see you now,” she chimed.

Rain swiveled past her, muttering,“Mr. Shuldenfrei…”

Heading into his office, she cried, “Ben! Great to see you!”

Ben had always been a little grouchy and odd—overly direct perhaps, unadorned in the way he delivered his opinions. But Rain felt they shared a sensibility. She felt unintimidated by him, despite his being a mover in the art world.

He seemed to wince as she entered his office.

“I've got them,” Rain told him jovially.

“Rain, I…” Ben said.

“They're right out front in a rental van.”

“You can…” Ben began again. “Yeah, yeah. Bring 'em in to the viewing room. Give me a minute, okay? I'll meet you in there.”

As Rain headed back to the van, the girl at the desk averted her gaze. Rain didn't bother to make her help. Soon enough for that.

“Gee!” Rain heard the familiar hoot coming from down the sidewalk. It was Quinn. She had left a message for him as she took off in the morning, hoping he'd come down and help her unload. “Gee, kid!” he hooted. He was on one of those tiny aluminum stick scooters, hat tipped back revealing his lengthening forehead, the thick strap of his satchel digging into his blazer.

“Quinn!” Rain yelled back. He flicked his scooter closed and popped it into his messenger bag, hugging her around one of her canvasses.

“This is huge Rain. Let me get that.” Quinn took three paintings into the gallery.

One by one, they unwrapped the canvasses, all twelve of them, and leaned them around the back room. The vestibule to the inner office was decorated as a sparse, well-lit living-room with Eameses, a Le Corbusier coffee table, one Noguchi lamp in the corner and plenty of wall space. Once the paintings were inside the back office, Quinn gave Rain a chuck to her shoulder and said, “I'll wait out there.”

She could hear Ben before he got into the room “…because if they can't wait for the Jenkinses, then Cincinnati's gonna end up with it. And Michael, tell Steph if she doesn't get that ad on my desk by three o'clock, I can't use it. She is not doing this to me again.” Ben barked instructions to his directors who followed him with pads and scribbled as he spoke. “Hold it,” he said, parading into the back room. “I'll be back with you in five.” The directors retreated silently. Rain was suddenly aware that his usual curmudgeonliness with her had been flattened to a strained politeness. “Yes, Rain,” he blurted.

He looked at her canvasses, turning his back to her. Rain regarded them nervously. She dared a glance at Ben, but he didn't really look like he was seeing the paintings. He was snapping his phone with one finger—a nervous tick she hadn't noticed in him before.

Finally Rain ventured, “Sooo… They're in the same vein as the ones you saw in the summer…and liked…and wanted to show… Remember?”

“Yeah, they're…” Ben said. “They're very accomplished, Rain. Great work.”

Rain wasn't sure where this kind of feigned enthusiasm was coming from. Politeness wasn't Ben's usual card.

“You remember we talked about this,” Rain said, slowly creeping up on the idea things were not going well.

“Yeah, Rain. I do remember that, but I'm afraid…” Ben said, keeping his back to her. Again, not the Ben she knew.

Suddenly it was clear. Very suddenly. And her face flushed bright with that vertiginous, teetering feeling she got when the worst kind of news hit her. Worse than Karl's revelation. Far worse. How she could have been this stupid? How could she have gone through with this farce? She had been set up and had underestimated her husband's cruelty and quick work.

Her self-pity threatening to turn to anger, Rain asked, “He called you already?”

“He came on Friday, Rain,” Ben said, putting a hand up to his brow. “Late. Didn't have anywhere to stay, I think was what he said.” Ben gave her a wry look.

Rain was aghast. “He went straight to you to take this from me?”

“Rain, I'm in a really bad position here,” Ben said, turning away again to avoid her gaze.

Rain's face was hot and her throat was closing, but her rage was more than the humiliation crashing down on her.

She walked over and plunked down into the black Eames. “That's just…it's low! I think it's low.”

“This is very awkward for me, Rain. Karl and I go way back. Where was he supposed to stay? The renters have another week at his apartment. Uh, I mean—your apartment…whatever.” Ben shook his head and turned away again. “I had no idea you were planning on coming in today.”

“We said after the beginning of November, remember? You even said a Tuesday. You said just come in and bring them…”

“You know Rain, I was willing to help you out. I like these pictures. I have no doubt you'll do very well with them. It's just that I feel…I feel…”

“Did he give you an ultimatum?”

“He didn't…” Ben said, pressing his palms against his temples. “I'm not going to… I can't… I just can't.”

“You know, I never thought of you as the loyal type, Ben.”

“Yeah, well, thanks,” Ben said. “I think.”

Rain got up and began stacking her canvases. This was more than just a matter of showing up and getting a humiliating rejection. This was carting your children with you on that rejection holiday. They were not easy to move. They were not gracefully going to disappear when you needed them to. They were needy and beginning to make their boisterous and inconvenient presence known. They were embarrassing you and your humiliation was burning into them.

“Rain,” Ben said, standing limply by the Noguchi like a crooked lamp himself. “Rain, it's not that I don't think they're good. You've got to understand. Come on, you work with Gwen, you know how it is! It's not a rejection. It's just that I probably wouldn't have been showing them in the first place, right?!”

This casual toss landed like a grenade in Rain's brain. She plugged it. Reinserted its key. She knew it would go off, anyway, but she had to block it for just as long as it took to carefully remove every single one of these canvasses.

“I didn't think you… I'm surprised. That's all.” Rain barely managed to push out something coherent.

“Didn't think I what? We're still early in the process with each other. You have to find the right fit for you, Rain. You know that. It's about so much more than the quality of the work. I think there are lots of galleries that could make something of John Ray Morton's daughter. That sort of thing could be very interesting to some people.”

Rain had never purposefully benefitted from her surname. Literary stars' kids seldom merit entrée to the hot clubs or events or swag, anyway. But somehow, watching the present generation of offspring-to-the-stars run their media circuses created in her a crushing dread of appearing to be anything similar. Some of them, coming from show families, she knew were playing out their own true callings. They were in the can't-help-it category, but the ones who made empty media presence out of their names, they were the ones Rain focused on and dreaded.

At a moment like this, she felt like a fraud. Even though she had liked her work. She had thought it would do well in a gallery. This gallery. “I worked really hard on these. Focussed on them for this.”

Ben took hold of his mouth with his large hand. “Mmmm. Maybe…”

“What?”

“Look I don't want to say anything Rain. I just know we're not a fit right now. Someone else would be able to take much better…”