To the Bone (6 page)

A
fternoon sunlight filtered through the tall windows of Julia D'Anton's studio, illuminating slowly drifting particles of limestone that settled onto the dusty old hardwood floor. Her strong fingers worked at the stone with a wooden mallet and the hand-forged iron chisels she had brought back from Tuscany more than twenty years ago.

The block was one-quarter life size. Julia had started by sketching a live model, then roughing out the sculpture in clay. Now the model was back, to lend living nuance to the flow of the stone. Her name was Anna somebody, a softly pretty and somewhat sulky girl in her late teens, full-bodied and large-breasted. In the past, Julia had preferred working with marble, and women with lean, well-defined musculatures, but now she did not want to look at either—maybe ever again.

She had been shaping the face with small tooth chisels, trying to render expression from the blank oval. It was not going well. Her hands were getting tired. When that happened, they started to tremble and lose control. Anna was posed nude, sitting up, with her legs curled beside her. Her face was turned in profile and down, as if she were contemplating a flower in the garden where the sculpture would probably end up. She looked like she was almost asleep.

Julia gave the chisel a delicate tap along the bridge of the nose. A hairline crack appeared, a tiny fault in the stone that she had not seen. She pressed a fingertip over it, but she knew already that it could not be repaired. She thrust the clawed chisel in and gouged out a chip the size of a small nailhead. It would mean a restructuring of the entire face. Hands shaking now with anger, she slammed down the tools on the workbench.

Anna's body jerked with the sound, her eyes flicking open.

“Is something wrong?” she said.

“It's
all
wrong. All this work I've gone to, and it's just getting worse.
You
are wrong. Your bones might be all right, but everything from there out is impossible.”

The girl's mouth twisted in a little grimace of resentment.

“Is there anything I can do?”

“Try to look a little less bovine.”

Anna's face turned suspicious. “I don't know what that means.”

“Like a cow, darling.”

Anna's mouth opened, then her eyes went teary. “You have—no right,” she blurted out. She stood, grasping for her robe and flinging it around her shoulders, trying to look dignified but without the necessary presence.

“It's no use going knock-kneed trying to hide your bush,” Julia said coldly. “It only makes your thighs look fatter.”

Anna turned away with a flounce and started toward the studio's changing room.

“I didn't say the session was over,” Julia said.

“You can't keep me if I don't want—”

“If you leave here without my permission, you will never come back. Do you understand?”

Their gazes met, but only for a second. This was no contest of wills. Slowly, Anna took her seat again.

“The robe,” Julia said.

Eyes downcast, she shrugged it back off her shoulders and laid it aside.

Julia walked to stand behind her. She caressed Anna's neck lightly, feeling her shiver in response. Julia's fingers moved on in slow exploration, feeling the lack of tone in the deltoid muscle, tracing the flaccid triceps down the back of the arm, then moving across the smooth padded rib cage and up, to cup one full soft breast. She squeezed the nipple gently, tugging it erect. The girl relaxed a little, settling back against Julia's thighs.

Then, suddenly, Julia pinched hard with her nails. Anna flinched and gasped, tried to rise, but Julia's other hand on her shoulder held her where she was. Julia could feel her panting. She held the pressure of her fingernails steady, just short of drawing blood.

“Did I say cow?” Julia said softly. “I meant
sow.
” She released her grip and gave the breast a contemptuous slap. “Get out.”

The girl hurried across the room, almost running, the robe left lying on the floor. Julia watched her, breathing hard with anger. But it was not really at Anna—she was only a place to put it.

Julia closed her eyes, remembering the alluring innocence of Eden's face, the restless energy in her finely shaped limbs. The dark fire that came into her eyes when she was caressed.

Julia had thought it would help, having another young woman here today. But after Eden, mere creatures like Anna were intolerable.

Outside, a car started and pulled away with a spray of gravel. Anna might never come back—or she might come back pleading. Either way, there were always others.

Julia walked through the studio, her gaze moving restlessly, looking for a project to interest her. But all her fine stone looked bleak and without promise now.

Then the door into the main house opened, and her husband stepped through. She was surprised, and not pleasantly. She could not remember the last time he had been in her studio—years ago, surely. It had been that long since they had shared much of anything.

“I was almost run over by a young woman driving out of here,” D'Anton said. He was stiff, formal, still dressed in the business suit he had worn at the clinic this morning.

“She was modeling for me.”

“Yes, I assumed so. She looked very upset. What happened?”

Julia shrugged. “She was unsatisfactory. Since when are you so interested in my work?”

“This isn't about your work. It's about your losing control of yourself.”

“I have a temperament, Welles,” she said haughtily. “It comes from having warm blood in my veins, instead of ice water.”

D'Anton walked farther into the room, toward her. His face was concerned, understanding—the kind of look he used with his patients.

“I know you were in love with Eden,” he said. “And that you're very, very angry.”

“
Don't
you patronize me,” she snapped back. D'Anton flinched a little. She began to step slowly around him, circling.

“Yes, I gave her love,” Julia said. “But she went with you, because you promised her candy. You don't have any love to
give
.”

“I didn't try to take her love from you. I saw what I could do with her.”

“With her? Or to her? Your idea of beauty goes as deep as a magazine cover. You've never understood the first thing about real art. It
celebrates
flaws.”

D'Anton grimaced impatiently. “Let's not forget who has the world-class reputation.”

“Thanks to
my
family's influence. Your steel mill worker father didn't help much, did he?”

“What a shame your family's influence couldn't buy you any talent,” D'Anton said, with cold pity. “All that schooling in Europe, and still the only people who'll buy your work are your friends.”

“And you've never dared risk pushing for something more than nice tits and a pretty smile.” She slapped her trembling palm down flat on a workbench.

D'Anton moved toward her again. His face had gone rigid, his eyes very intense.

“Julia,” he said, speaking very quietly now. “Did you—interfere with Eden somehow? After the surgery?”

Her eyes widened in outrage. “What are you saying?”

“Out of jealousy? Revenge, because she left you?”

Her hand scuttled across the workbench and tightened around an iron mallet. D'Anton stopped walking.

“I have ignored—certain things,” he said, almost whispering. “But I can't continue. You'll destroy us both.”

He turned abruptly and hurried out of the studio, fumbling to close the door behind him.

Julia stood with the mallet clenched in her shaking hand, aware of his fading footsteps, then the silence around her. A sudden spasm wracked her body, chattering her teeth and bending her over, with her muscles clenching in spastic contortions.

Panting, she walked swiftly to a large, canvas-draped marble in the studio's far corner. She yanked off the cover and raised the mallet, willing herself to smash it, to exorcise Eden Hale from her memory.

But her arm dropped to her side. This was all there was left of that passion.

She let the cover fall back into place and put down the mallet.

There would be others, she told herself again. There were always plenty of others.

M
onks pulled the Bronco into his own driveway just after five
P.M.
, sweaty and gritty. His place was in the coastal mountains of Marin County—a few acres of redwoods with a cabin that he had bought in the '70s and ended up with after his divorce. It was still rudimentary, with woodstove heat and plank floors. But it was quiet, private, and you could glimpse the Pacific on clear days.

He cut the Bronco's engine, got out, and walked to one of the giant redwoods. He squatted down with his back against it, then leaned his head back, too, and closed his eyes. It was something he had learned to do years ago, when he was feeling drained. Here, the afternoon sunlight was dappled through the thick foliage, a friendly warmth instead of a glaring blast. The tree's shaggy bark was sun-warm, too, and he imagined that a deeper healing force radiated from within its thick trunk. Monks basked in between, like a baby wrapped in a comforting blanket, until he heard the house's screen door open and close.

Martine Rostanov came out onto the deck. She was a slight woman with a mop of dark hair and a metal-braced left leg, the result of a childhood horse-riding accident, which she swung from the hip when she walked.

“You all right?” she called. Her forehead was creased with worry.

Monks nodded. He got to his feet and climbed the deck stairs into her embrace. Now her warmth flowed into him, strong and sweet.

“Did something happen?” she said.

“I lost a patient last night.”

“Oh, hon. I'm so sorry.” She pressed harder against him. “Can I get you a drink?”

“I'm going to work out for a few minutes,” Monks said. “After that, I'd kill for one.”

“I'll have it ready.”

He changed quickly into sweats, assessing his physical condition for the first time in a long while. He had the coloration of the black Irish, green eyes and wiry black hair that was starting to gray, but was still mostly there. His face was craggy and pitted with old acne scars, his once aquiline nose getting thicker. Wild bushy eyebrows had earned him the nickname Rasp, for Rasputin, in the navy. Officially he stood six foot one, although he suspected that he was starting to shrink. But his wind was good, and his chest and gut were tight. After almost getting hamstrung by a psychopath with a grape-picker's knife, he had never let himself get badly out of shape again.

He walked to the old garage that he had outfitted as a gym. It was one of the original structures on the place, good-sized—intended for working on vehicles, not just housing them—with bare frame walls and roof. Monks had rebuilt the floor with pressure-treated two-by-ten joists and plywood. He had installed a Vitamax weight machine in one corner and hung a heavy bag in the room's center Most days, he spent fifteen minutes doing sit-ups and weights, then another twenty of hammering the bag. It was not a thorough workout, but it kept his body toned, and on a day like this it offered release.

The room was hot, with the faint good smell of the redwood it had been built from, back when that was cheap lumber. He went through a quick routine on the machine—fifty sit-ups with a ten-pound weight behind his head, sets of bench and military presses, butterflies, and pull-downs—then put on his bag gloves. Usually he started by standing still, throwing controlled left jabs at the bag to get his distance, then stepping in with right crosses and follow-up left hooks. Soon, his feet would start moving by themselves, and he would circle the bag, gathering speed and force.

But today, for no reason he was aware of, he unhooked the bag and set it aside. He started doing footwork, very slowly at first—the gliding step of the left moving forward with the jab, then the right catching up and planting itself to give power to the cross. The left foot stayed put but pivoted with the hook, the third punch in the classic combination, hip reversing at the moment of impact to give it extra snap. The importance of footwork could not be overestimated; placement of inches could make the difference. Rocky Marciano had been one of the all-time great punchers, but his trainers had to tie his ankles together with string to keep him from extending his left foot too far and losing power from his right.

Monks kept his hands at his sides, his gaze on the center of his invisible opponent's chest, concentrating just on his feet. A step forward with the left, quick catch-up with the right, left pivoting on the ball, hip swinging with it, then snapping back. Again, a little faster. Then again, and again. He shuffled his way around the room's perimeter as if it were a ring and the walls were the ropes.

But you could not always advance. The other man in the ring was going to punch you back. Retreating, with minimum damage to yourself, was the other half of footwork. Monks reversed his direction—not with the same steps, but more with side-to-side dancing, as if he were jitterbugging or skating backward. Now he raised his hands defensively, fists protecting his face but just low enough to see over, elbows close in to his ribs.

Monks started circling, combining advance and retreat with unplanted pivots, either foot leaving the floor to gain him a quarter or half turn. He concentrated on moving to his left, trying to herd his spectral partner into a right cross. But the partner had other ideas, and Monks swung the other way, spinning to his right, leaping clear of the swift straight blows coming at him. He changed directions again and again, ducking, weaving, his feet dancing across the floor in a dizzying intricate pattern that could only ever make sense during the few moments it existed.

He slowed, like a toy with its battery running down. He stopped, and let his hands fall to his waist. He was panting and streaming with sweat. Outside, a Steller's jay screeched, nervous from the commotion, or maybe mocking him.

He pulled off the gloves and set them on the sill of the garage's single crude window so they would dry. He pulled off his sweatshirt, too, then kicked off shoes and socks and stepped out of his sweatpants and jock. Barefoot, naked, he walked along the hard dirt path back to the house, inside, and down the hall to the shower.

Martine, standing in the kitchen, watched him pass, without saying a word.