The Color of Light (41 page)

Turner was dressed in a light blue button-down shirt with a thin tan stripe, khakis. He was holding, as usual, his clipboard.

“You’re here on the last Sunday night of Intersession? Very dedicated.”

“I’m a little behind on my thesis project,” she admitted.

There was a smirky little half-smile on his pale, doughy face. “Josephine’s your adviser, isn’t she?” He put the clipboard behind his back, strolled around her space. “How’s that going?”

“She’s great. It’s just that, well…she doesn’t have a lot of spare time.”

He was looking appreciatively at Gracie’s drawings. “Well, you know. That’s how it goes with women artists sometimes. They get married, they have a couple of kids, art goes
poof.”
He turned to face her, clipboard in hand. “So, these are your thesis sketches? Mind if I have a look?”

She was perspiring. Was it warm in the studio? He parked his squat body in front of her wall, looked from one to the next, then back again.

“Hmmm. Kind of illustration-ey, aren’t they,” he mused. “You know what the problem is, Moss,” he confided, turning towards her. “They’re too generic. Anybody could have done this. You’re not bringing anything new to the table.”

She stared fearfully at her drawings. He was right. Anyone could have done them. Suddenly, her face was burning, she felt sick to her stomach.

“But that’s not why I’m here,” he said. He consulted his clipboard. “I have your grades from last semester.” He hesitated, tapping it with a pen. “It looks like you got a C in Studio Painting.”

“I did?” She was sweating, the world was spinning. She brushed her hand across her forehead.
So hot.
“But that was with April. You can’t count that.”

“Well, maybe.” He checked his clipboard again as if he didn’t already know what was there, looked at her with all sympathy. “But there was also this C+ in Perspective. I’m sorry, Tessa.”

Baffled, she looked at him, not understanding.

“Your scholarship. You have to keep up a B average, or you lose your scholarship,” he explained.

“But…but I didn’t know that.”

“You should have. It was in the contract you signed.” He thumbed through a xeroxed form. There was her signature, on an application she’d filled out last June. “See?”

Slowly it dawned on her, the import of what he was saying.

“Of course, if you can pay for this semester up front,” and he spread his arms out, as if to say it was no big deal. “That will be seven and a half thousand dollars.”

“I don’t have any money,” she said.

“What about your family?” he asked helpfully.

Her heart was hammering. “No.”

“Friends? Grandparents? A favorite aunt?” Wordlessly, she shook her head, kept shaking it.

“Well,” he said, sounding genuinely contrite. “I’m sorry to be the one to say this. You’re going to have to clear out your studio.”

She wondered if it were possible for her heart to stop inside her body, for her to die right in front of him.

He glanced around the crowded room. He actually felt excited. “Take all the time you need,” he insisted. “It doesn’t have to be tonight. Tomorrow is fine.” Her face was very white, she was standing perfectly still. With satisfaction, he noted a faint sheen of perspiration over her forehead. “Now, listen,” he said firmly. “Don’t take this too hard. You’ll find the money somewhere, it’ll just take a little time. You can always reapply next year.”

His job here was done. He pushed aside the curtain, paused on the threshold, turned back as if he had just remembered something. “Oh, hey,” he said conversationally. “How about April Huffman and Lucian Swain getting married at City Hall on Friday? Who saw
that
coming? Took us all by surprise.” A faint predatory smile, and then he was gone.

She was very cold and very hot at the same time. She maneuvered herself into a chair, trapped her freezing hands between her knees. God, it was so hot. Was it always this hot in the studios? She pushed open the window. Frigid air rushed in. She doubled over, put her head between her knees, tried to breathe.

I’m nothing. I’m nothing. I’m nothing.

Alone in her studio, she bent her head into her hands. She couldn’t bear the thought of showing up tomorrow morning, clearing out her things with all her friends surrounding her, pitying her, trying to help. She would do it right now. Where to start? She cast her unseeing gaze around
the room, taking in the bordello couch, the Moroccan table, the Persian rug, the accoutrements of art. So warm. So inviting.

The wall. She would start with the wall. Slowly, she started unpinning the postcards and sketches, the Exquisite Corpse games she’d saved because they were so funny. One by one, she put them on the work table, dropping the pushpins into an empty coffee cup. Faster and faster she worked. In a frenzy, she made one pile, then another, and another. The first pile tipped over, taking the others with it. She took no notice when they spilled onto the floor. She would get it later.

Next, she turned to her canvases. There was one for every day of school so far, and class had commenced way back in September. She laid the first canvas on the floor
—
a real beauty, Sivan, laying on her side on the model stand, the light following the curves of her languorous figure
—
then laid another flat on top of it. In this way, she made three precarious heaps in the middle of the dusty floor. The stacks teetered over the top of the makeshift wall separating the studios.

Well. She couldn’t take them all home, not like that.
So hot.
She brushed her arm across her forehead, went to the studio one over, the studio across the way, opened those windows as well.
There.
Returning to her work table, she selected an xacto knife out of a coffee can. The light glinted off of the razor-like blade.

She took a canvas from the top of the pile. With four measured strokes, she cut it out of the stretchers. It lay like a corpse on the dusty floor. And then she selected another. And another. And another.

Hours later, she had flayed every canvas free of its wooden supports. They lay around her like fallen leaves. The joints in her fingers ached. Her back throbbed, her knees were sore from kneeling on the hard wooden planks. For the first time, she wondered if she was coming down with something. She went to the window to cool her burning face, watched her breath disappear into the night as gusts of frozen vapor. Glancing at her watch, she saw the hands pointing to three in the morning. Morning creeping up on her, and still so much to do.

Morning.
What would she do the next morning? And the next day? And the day after that, and the day after that, and the day after that? The thought of classes starting tomorrow without her, the thought of walking
out the front door never to return, was a knife in her heart. Worse; with no money and no job prospects in sight, would she have to give up her apartment? Go back to Chicago? She knew what they would say to her upon her return. Enough with the art
narishkeit.
Settle down already.

April Huffman’s pale-skinned back, her straight dark hair, her bony knees, her small flat ass, her legs straddling her partner’s sides as she mounted him, the famous painter Lucian Swain.

The pain exploded inside of her then.

I’m nothing. I’m nothing. I’m nothing. I’m nothing. I’m nothing.

Her gaze fell on the last item on her wall, now a sea of white. The finely textured charcoal drawing of a naked woman seated at the edge of a bed, her whole body yearning towards a man hidden in the shadows.

The temperature in the studio had dropped precipitously; she could see her breath as she stepped over the canvases littering the floor, and pulled out the four pushpins in the corners of the paper.

Savagely, she ripped the drawing in half, then in half again. Again and again, into smaller and smaller pieces, until it was nothing but tiny bits of very expensive imported four-ply confetti, scattered across the floor.

She was dizzy. Swaying on her feet, she put her hand across her eyes until the sensation passed.
I should lie down for a little while,
she thought to herself. But the couch was so far away.
You know, right here is good. Just for a few minutes.
She went down on her knees then, folded herself over until her head touched the floor. Her last conscious thought was that it felt good on her burning forehead. And then she passed out.

At eight-thirty Monday morning, Levon walked out of the elevator on the second floor with the
Times
under his arm, waved hello at Arletta, continued down the corridor to his office.

The lounge was packed with students, the comfortable jumble of backpacks and portfolios, dozing on the makeshift couches, or excitedly exchanging news of the winter break. It was good to have them back. He found Intersession lonely, with its deserted classrooms and empty halls.

He unlocked his door, placed his cane in the umbrella stand, took off his coat. Just as he was about to sit, a first-year student burst through the door with urgent news.

Levon ran down the hall, flew up the stairs two steps at a time, the pain in his knee be damned.

The first thing he noticed was the temperature. It was so cold he could see his breath. A crowd was gathered around the second studio from the front, and he made his way down the corridor, pushing through the curious onlookers.

He shouldered aside the curtain. And there he stopped.

Some catastrophe had occurred during the night. Scattered around the floor were a tangle of distended stretcher bars bent at odd angles, picture postcards, drawings, drifts of studio paintings hacked free of their supports, all dusted over with a blizzard of torn paper. In the middle of it all, Tessa Moss, huddled in a heap on the floor.

He looked to her friends, David, Ben, Clayton, Portia, Gracie. They all wore the same pale, frightened expression. “Go get Raphael Sinclair,” he said.

But he was already there.

Conversation ceased as if it had been shut off with a switch. He stood framed in the doorway, his voluminous coat stirred by the cold breeze blowing in through the open windows, calmly taking in the situation. And then he strode into the studio.

He squatted down beside the motionless girl, tilted his head to hers. She whispered. He listened. For a minute, nothing happened. Then he swooped her up in his arms, turned, and swept out of the studio, his coattails billowing out behind him. A path opened up for him, then closed after he passed. No one said a word.

Portia caught his gaze as he went by. For a moment, their eyes locked. Her blood ran cold. For suddenly she knew, without a doubt, felt it in the marrow of her bones, that the rumors were true, he was exactly what Clayton had said he was. A vampire.

27

T
essa dreamed. She was flying, swooping up and down above the narrow twisting streets of lower Manhattan, above the fire escapes, the water towers, the chimney pots. Coming slowly back down to earth, she floated through the colonnaded portico of a townhouse on the corner of a pretty little square. Strong arms carried her up a flight of stairs. Ghostly figures passed back and forth, touching her and whispering. She had vague recollections of being undressed, a warm bath. A voice like a lullaby. The world’s softest bed, and then sinking down into deep, dreamless sleep.

She woke up in a strange bedroom. She had no idea where she was; what time it was, what day of the week, or for that matter, whether it was night or day. The walls were painted a glossy brown, the moldings a contrasting creamy white. The room contained a desk, a lamp, a bed, a bureau, all Mission, all very good. There were blush-colored roses in a green Depression-era urn, set in front of an antique mirror oxidizing with age. A door that might lead to a bathroom. Floor length velvet curtains suggested a terrace. Pillar candles splashed the surfaces all around with yellow light.

Raphael Sinclair was in the armchair next to the bed. He leaned forward, took her hand in both of his.

“My sweet girl.”

“Where am I?”

“My home,” he said. “My bedroom, actually. Your friends found you on the floor of your studio Monday morning. You passed out. ”

Oh, yes. Two C’s. Lost my scholarship. Kicked out of school. Lucian and April.
Her whole body crumpled with the impact of the memory.

“Listen,” he said quickly. “Yesterday, a new scholarship was endowed. The Sofia Wizotsky Memorial Scholarship, to be awarded annually to a gifted student. You are the first recipient. I should have done it years ago.” She opened her mouth to protest. He put up his hand to stop her;
not yet.
“Secondly. Levon will be your new adviser. Josephine is a wonderful painter, but it sounds like she has a bit much on her palette right now. Third. I’ve spoken with a friend of mine. You can start working at
Anastasia
as soon as you’re ready.”

“What day is it?”

“Wednesday,” he said. “Three in the afternoon.”

Her mouth dropped open. “I’ve been asleep for
three days?
What happened?”

“A virus, accompanied by high fever. A touch of whatever’s going around.” He leaned closer. “I’m so sorry,” he said earnestly. “Sorry I wasn’t there for you.”

For three days she’d laid in his bed, small and white and vulnerable. Outside of a few hours spent making arrangements, he’d hovered over her, holding her hand, watching her breathe, reliving the moments of his life that had brought him to this point, this girl.

He turned it over in his head a hundred different ways, but always, it came down to this:
she has been returned to me.
And also this. How could he. How
dare
he. And this.
Run away. Run as fast as you can.

Still…Tessa’s bare skin by the light of the moon. Tessa smiling down on him, a Pre-Raphaelite apparition. Her raspberry lips, her lithe, little, welcoming body. The informed innocence of her touch.

The doctor had clocked her temperature at 104 degrees, then scribbled a prescription. Keep her cool, he said. Give her this, twice a day. Soup. Tea. Let her sleep. After he left, Rafe stood over her motionless body and thought.
You can suck the life out of someone without ever touching a drop of their blood.