The Color of Light (8 page)

“…Hallie over for dinner sometime.”

Levon chuckled and his eyebrows went up. “Yeah, let’s do that. So. What’s up?”

“Do you know what Turner’s big surprise is?”

“Yeah. He filled that open studio painting position.”

“I didn’t hear anything about that,” he said, pulling closer to him, his eyebrows drawing together. “I’m supposed to be notified when there’s a new hire.”

“Well, this woman’s an adjunct. Temporary. She’s here for the semester. If we’re happy, she gets to come on board full time, with your blessings, of course. If not
, vaya con Dios,
we look for somebody else. We’re in a bind. The semester’s well along, and we’re still short an instructor. It’s hard to find people who teach the kind of stuff we do.”

Rafe shook his head, bewildered. “Why don’t we just hire one of our graduates?”

Levon put up his hands. “Not my policy. Whit thinks it’s too incestuous.”

He nodded, stifling his impatience. “All right. Where did she train? What’s her experience?”

Involuntarily, Levon rubbed the back of his neck. “Um…she has an MFA in painting from Yale.”

“Well, then. We know she can
talk
about painting.”

“She has lots of experience. She taught at NYU and exhibited all through the Eighties. You’ve probably heard of her. April Huffman.”

Rafe was incredulous. “The same April Huffman who does blow jobs in car paint? She’s going to be teaching at my Academy?”

“Whit wanted a name.”

“They’re not even very good blow jobs. She can barely draw. We’re betraying the students. Tell me, Levon. Are we that desperate?”

There was real anguish in his eyes. Levon rested his hand on his shoulder. “Hey. I know this school is your baby. You know, the monitor will set up the model, and she’ll walk around giving them suggestions. Which they can take or leave. It’s Painting 101, very basic stuff. It’s not like she’s teaching Anatomy. The chairman of painting at NYU gave her a big thumbs up. And she seems really excited about teaching here.”

Rafe was furious. Turner had, as promised, brought an artist on board who could hardly draw. The men and women filling his townhouse today had come to the Academy to learn how to paint like Rubens and Rembrandt. Most of them were already better than April Huffman. He could think of nothing she could add to their skills. He felt as if he were putting one over on the students. On
his
students.

Levon changed the subject. Rafe had a crazy look in his eyes. “Say, how are the student committee meetings going?”

“Graciela had some good suggestions. The two young men, well…”

He let his restless gaze sift through the hundred or so people drinking wine, talking art and hitting on each other throughout his Great Room, thinking of Gracie’s amber skin glowing through the translucent material of her blouse. A month ago he would have had her without giving it a second’s thought. But after she guided his hand to her thigh to feel the fabric of her stretch pants
—
and they were indeed tactile, just as promised—he hadn’t so much as touched her. It was the girl. She wandered through his thoughts like a crooked river, filling him with fear and wonder.

At this moment Graciela was refilling wineglasses at the bar at a furious rate. Clayton, the loquacious Southerner with the Roman profile, was holding forth to a cadre of painters and sculpting students staked out on a couch he’d had shipped from a shuttered Parisian café. The girl circled around them collecting empty glasses, her long titian curls glimmering in the warm yellow light cast by dozens of candles placed around the room.

“Beautiful, isn’t she.”

Rafe agreed. “Yes. She is.”

“Gracie is more exotic, but I’ve always had a soft spot for redheads. I’m a happily married man, and I still want to die in that hair. She making you just a wee bit sorry you passed that bylaw about dating students?”

He smiled politely, said nothing.

“Her name is Tessa Moss. She works for Lucian Swain.” Levon lowered his voice before he went on. “He says she saved his life.”

Rafe turned to him, intrigued. “That’s the girl?”

“Last year he had some kind of breakdown. He lost everything when the market crashed. When yuppies stopped ordering paintings to go over their sofas, he lost his house in Amagansett, his assistants, his gallery, his girlfriend. Even the art magazines were slamming him. People said he tried to kill himself. She kissed his boo-boos, got him into rehab, took care of business, got him back on his feet. He called her his angel.”

They watched her glide around, removing glasses, furtively wiping wet rings from his furniture and retrieving cigarette butts from Chinese porcelain. “And now?”

“I hear he’s screwed his way through the Soho AA meeting and now he’s working his way through the West Village.”

“Good God. After all that.”

Levon nodded. “After all that.”

“How do you know this?”

Levon sighed. “Ten years sober, baby. But I still go to meetings once a week.” He was silent for a while. “Lucian Swain,” he mused. “That was me. When I was using, I nailed anything with two legs. My wife threw me out, my kids hated me, I lost my job at the advertising agency. When I got sober, things changed. I realized I didn’t want to design ads for cars anymore, I wanted to go back to being an artist. So I got a job teaching at the Art Students League. I married Hallie a year later. I’ve never slipped, not once. I don’t mean with drugs. There was a joint at a Muddy Waters concert in ‘84, and the occasional glass of wine. Gives me something to talk about in meetings. But Hallie…she saw me at my worst and she loved me anyway. There’s never been another woman. But…that’s me.” He lightened his tone. “How about you? The papers are always putting you together with Anastasia deCroix.”

The expression on his face was partly a grimace, partly a smile. “Let’s just say we’ve been many different things to one another over time.”

There was a flash of scarlet as he raised his arm to smooth his hair, a nervous gesture. “Hey,” Levon said. “Is that jacket lined in
red?
Let me see.”

Rafe complied. Levon rolled the scarlet silk between his fingers. “Now, that is a fine suit. Where did you get it? No, don’t tell me. Look who I’m asking. Savile Row.”

He gave him a self-effacing smile. “Barney’s, actually.”

“I’m a sweater guy, myself, but if I was looking to buy a suit, it would be this one. Anyway, about half an hour ago, Inga asked me to fight my way through the crowd and bring her back a white wine.” He turned to go.

“The girl,” said Rafe.

“Tessa.” Levon corrected him.

“There’s a drawing on her wall.” He spoke very deliberately, as if it hurt him to get the words out. “A woman holding a child. Clothing from the thirties or forties. A suitcase. Do you know what it might be about?”

Levon studied Rafe’s expression, shook his head no. Thought for a moment, shrugged his shoulders up and down. “I can look into her file. Maybe her essay will give us some insight.” He plucked a potato pancake topped with crème fraîche and salmon roe from a silver tray carried by a
petite waitress in black and white with shapely calves who was also one of the school’s regular models. “Hi, Sivan. These any good?”

She tilted her hand back and forth.
Comme ci, comme ça.

“Don’t worry about April Huffman. I’m sure it will work out just fine. And I’ll look into that thing for you. I’m going to find a seat. It was nice talking with you.” And he looked him squarely in the eye, grinned. “Really.”

He wouldn’t allow himself to dwell on what Levon had just told him, not now. Heading for the bar, he reached behind it for the ‘87 Rothschild Bordeaux he had secreted earlier.

“Is anybody drinking the wine?” he said dryly to the lovely Graciela.

She laughed her merry laugh. “Allow me. I actually used to work as a bartender.” He handed her the bottle, and with one fluid move she deftly pulled the cork and poured it into his glass.

He downed it all at once. It coursed through him, giving him fleeting warmth and taking the edge off of his emotions. Not as powerful as the hit from living blood, but there were times it got the job done.

He started to make his way to the focal point of the room, a massive fireplace with an Art Nouveau mantle, rescued from some defunct tycoon’s Roaring Twenties North Shore palace, all chubby angels and nymphs and grapevines. On impulse, he changed directions, headed for his office. He would be the second to speak tonight, right after Giselle. But before he went on, he needed to make a phone call.

“Hi, guys.”

Giselle Warburg was the heiress to a banking fortune, and she looked it, every inch the aristocrat, with her long thoroughbred body, her casually expensive clothing, her narrow patrician face, the easy confidence in her throaty voice. Right now, she was standing in front of the central fireplace, trying to get their attention. “Guys, if you could find a seat.”

Gracie and Tessa had set out all the folding chairs in the closet, but there weren’t nearly enough. Some students perched on the carved staircase leading to the second floor. Others leaned against anything upright, the squared oak columns, the lacquered walls, the display cases, the piano.

“On behalf of the board, I just want to tell you how proud we are of you. Just from the stuff we’ve been seeing in your studios and the things in the cases, I want you to know, everybody is very impressed. You’re the most talented group of students we’ve had at the Academy to date. I can see it’s going to be very hard to choose a winner of the Prix de Paris this year.”

There was thunderous applause. She smoothed a strand of straight ash-blond hair back behind her ear and glanced at her notes before she went on.

“The Naked Masquerade is in two weeks. For you first-years, that’s the annual American Academy Halloween party. There will be prizes for the most creative costumes, so get cracking. On the job front, Dreamland mural studio is looking for painters. And Clarice Runyon, some of you know her work, is looking for an assistant to answer phones and do light office work. Come see me if you’re interested.”

“Now, I want to introduce you to the man throwing this party, the man whose home you are trashing and whose wine you are guzzling. The man with the vision. The man who founded this school. I give you Raphael Sinclair.”

There was a surge of murmuring as Giselle stepped back out of the spotlight.
The vampire, it’s the vampire! Did you notice any mirrors in this whole house? Did you see him eat anything? Don’t let him look you in the eye! So why does he wear that hat all the time?

I hear he’s a vampire.

The area in front of the fireplace remained empty. The restless muttering grew louder. Giselle’s expression grew puzzled, then concerned.

And then, there he was.

Somewhere, someone must have opened a window or a door, or perhaps it was only the evening breeze wafting in, because suddenly the curtain draping the window gusted in and then out again. The candles flickered and guttered, sending a series of shadows rippling across his face. There was a wagon wheel chandelier over their heads, studded with twelve white pillar candles, and the light from above threw his eyes into deep shadow. From somewhere outside, they could hear the sound of chimes ride in on the wind.

He stood there with his hands in his pockets, gazing down at the floor, collecting his thoughts. When he finally glanced up, there was an audible intake of breath.

“Hello,” he said. “I’m Raphael Sinclair. Welcome to my home.”

The pitch of the murmuring rose, then died away.

“The other day, someone said to me, ‘What’s a board member?’” There was a flutter of laughter. “And I thought, yes, what is a board member? What do we do? What do we create?”

Rafe looked around the room as he spoke, his eyes alighting briefly on one face and then another. Those under his thrall felt a shiver of warmth followed by the hairs prickling up on their neck, though they could not say why.

“The first and more pedestrian thing we do is make money. It is our job to bring in the funds that pay the instructors, pay the water company, pay for electricity and garbage pickup and stopped-up sinks and leaky roofs and broken window panes and the broken boiler and repainting the walls and changing the light bulbs and the custodians and the bookkeeper and the secretary and the scholarships. And we bring in that money by leaning on our rich friends, throwing parties, and courting wealthy patrons. Giselle is actually in speaks right now with a member of the royal family who likes to dabble in painting.” He arched his eyebrows meaningfully. A buzz of whispered speculation. He raised a pale hand, wagged a finger. “No, no, I can’t say who it is. That would be telling, and a gentleman never tells. But he is a very civil fellow married to a very pretty girl who may be in a position of great power someday if his mother ever gives him the chance.”

Excited oohing and ahhing. He waited for it to quiet down.

“Our second, and far more important task, is to spearhead the direction of the school. Whether you are here to pursue your demons or to exorcise them, our aim is to give you the tools you need to bring them to life. Every time we consider a new instructor, we debate whether he or she will bring you a missing piece of the puzzle. When modernism triumphed after World War II, the world rejected realism. Too many associations with Third Reich art and architecture. So many skills were lost. Finding a teacher with the old knowledge is like a treasure hunt. It’s slow and time-consuming and sometimes we go up blind alleyways.”

His voice was irresistible, gentle and forceful all at the same time. It held out the sincere promise that he was completely on your side and would never, ever, lie to you. It whispered in your ear other, darker promises. The students, the faculty, the alumni and the other members of the board listened, hypnotized, enraptured.

“There are artists out there who call themselves realists. They put a photograph in a projector and trace it onto a canvas. Or they snap a picture and hand it to their assistants to draw up. The poseurs, the pretenders, the usurpers of figurative art. They are not welcome here. We seek only those who can tell you how to build a painting from the inside out, not those who are out to sell you cheap shortcuts to the Whitney Biennial.