The Colorman (25 page)

She'd forgotten about it, though it was a little less club-kid now that she'd taken out the blue. “Thanks,” Rain said, scrubbing a hand through it carelessly.

“Did you…did you get all the boxes I sent? Was everything there?”

“Even the canned food, yeah,” Rain said smiling. “Everything. Stuff you probably should have kept.”

“I just wanted to be clean and fair.”

“Yeah,” Rain said, allowing herself an eyebrow raise as she looked down at her coffee.

“I heard about Ben,” Karl said. “I told him he was a prick.”

Rain looked up at Karl with a wry smile. “Really?” she said, ready to accept that he actually hadn't, but Karl looked back at her sincerely. In a strange way their splitting up made Rain believe him capable of defending her like that. In reality he probably just contradicted himself to his old roommate Ben, setting up her punishment and then refusing credit or blame for it. “No,” Rain said. “No he's not.”

“I didn't want him to do that.”

“I know,” Rain said, knowing.

“I wouldn't have.”

“It's okay, Karl. I know.”

Karl's coffee was called and he went to retrieve it.

He came back, this time approaching with the more appropriate degree of newly minted unfamiliarity and hesitation. He fiddled with the top on his cup. Rain began to smile slowly, realizing maybe she had been headed there on purpose after all.

“You reclaiming your youth?” Karl asked, gesturing with his chin.

Rain looked behind her.

“The hair,” Karl said shyly.

“It really doesn't mean anything,” Rain said pleasantly.

“I'm sorry,” Karl said.

Rain let that sit for just a moment and then said, “That's alright, Karl. I think everything is going to be alright now.” Rain smiled at him again. He wasn't looking at her. “You know, it's funny,” she said, “but I think the things you're sorry for are not the same things I'm sorry for.”

Karl looked up at her. “I'm not sure I even want to do this Rain. You caught me by surprise here.”

“Okay,” Rain said. “It's okay. No need for the free-psychoanalytical-profile thing.”

“One per customer, no refunds,” Karl said ruefully. Rain laughed, remembering that there had been good things between them. Shared wit and interests.

“I could try talking to Ben again,” Karl suggested quietly.

Rain shook her head. “No. No, he was right. I did those paintings just for him. And maybe for you. And I think it showed. They were okay, but they just weren't what I needed to be doing.”

“I just wish I…” Karl began.

“…could give me something?”

“…could help…”

“Yeah, well we're getting into the free profile area there, so let's just skip that,” Rain said gently. “Okay?”

“Yeah,” Karl said, and he brought his gaze up to her, one of those open, connected and hopeful looks. He was stripped suddenly of the veiled resentment, criticism and disappointment he had piled up in recent years, just fresh and present and honest. A zing passed between them, and though she knew they both felt it, she laughed again, thinking that it just didn't matter. Just because you could make that connection didn't mean you should make it. It was all too late. She looked back up at him, shook her head lightly, a whole long silent conversation having passed between them. We could, but where would that leave us, you're right, I'm sorry, so am I, you meant everything to me once, yeah me too, and I thank you for all that, thank you too, goodbye, goodbye.

“I guess you'd better get to your office, huh? They're probably five thick in the hall by now,” Rain said.

“Yeah,” Karl agreed meekly.

Rain smiled genuinely at him again as Karl rose. “Maybe we could…” he began.

“Nah. I don't think so Karl.”

Karl nodded. He left Rain and she watched him disappear toward 4th Street.

so much depends
upon
a red wheel
barrow
glazed with rain
water
beside the white
chickens.

—W
ILLIAM
C
ARLOS
W
ILLIAMS

R
ed is the top of the rainbow out at the edge of the spectrum, the limit of our ability to see energy. Heat itself. Both love and war, humiliation and excitement, red is intensity, royalty, a Valentine, the pope, the devil, rouged lips, the bullfighter's cape, the can-can dancer's petticoats, Roxanne's red light, a stop sign, a child's fire-truck, blood, the red red rose, red red wine, Christmas and hell.

Reds were easy to come by in antiquity in the form of red earth clays, though the pure bluer tones were more difficult to master and maintain. Earth, flora and fauna—colormen found sources for reds in all creation.

First, the earths. Clay, crystal and stone. Red Ochre, a clay from Cyprus. Vermillion, from the crystalline cinnabar mined in the Almaden region in southern Spain is composed of mercury and sulfur. And finally hematite, the opaque, stony iron oxide, found mainly in Cyprus—all three types of mineral give warm brownish earthy reds.

The root of the madder plant could be made to yield a combination of alizarine and purpurin, though the purpurin was fugitive. When laked, the madder dye became a highly desirable bluish-tinged red. Roots of the madder plant—a weedy-looking spiky-leaved thing with nothing red about its growth—are dried, crushed, hulled and boiled in a weak acid and then fermented to create a dye, which is then extracted or
laked
by binding to an alum, drying in large trays in a low-heat kiln, ground again into the pure pigment before finally being incorporated into its support of oil.

Those are some of the mineral and vegetable sources of red, but by far the most entertaining of sources was the Carmine or crimson red from the cochineal beetle. That last word is, not surprisingly, left off most descriptions of the pigment source for fear that consumers might find the wearing and eating of insect blood repulsive. The source was referred to as a grain, likely because the tiny beetles look like seeds when gathered in large numbers from cacti where they live. But they yield a bright, clean, indelible red when processed with alum, which was responsible for the red of the British red coats, the blush on ladies' cheeks and lips and the cheery red in many processed foods still being made today. Crimson is a key primary in any color scheme. Red, green, blue or RGB in light. Red yellow and blue in paints. Even cyan, magenta, yellow, black or CMYK, the printers' basics, that magenta being a bluish, red-like crimson.

Red represents fire—fire itself and everything related to fire; power, heat, energy. Early alchemists, sorting through the workings of the world, attempted to name relationships and origins of what they saw as elemental. A hunk of wood, when burned, appears to release fire from inside itself like leaking sap. Thus, the alchemists concluded, fire like sap existed within the wood, only to be released under the right conditions. Here might be why the imagery of the soul as a fire or an inner light came to be.

The details of the final stages were worked out with Samuel Dickerson from the Vanderkill Eternal Rest Parlor. James called Alvaro to his office to witness the signing of documents covering the trickier legal maneuvers required under such unusual circumstances. Dickerson and James' lawyer looked uncomfortable as they sorted out the details. Both men were used to choosing their words very carefully, but they still stumbled over some of the terminology of the transference. Alvaro was unruffled. He took his cues from James who was solidly assured in the details and in the project.

James hadn't been leaving his office during the day, and Alvaro suspected he hadn't been leaving at night either. Crumpled blankets on the couch and a smal bathroom with no shower off the back of the office would al ow for it. James cal ed Alvaro to the office each morning and walked him through elaborate steps, some of which would have to be performed at Dickerson's. Bones in a metal tank for the crematorium, vital organs discarded except for the heart. Washed in river waters (from the Hudson in this case). Covered in Natron—a combination of salt and soda ash—for forty days, washed again, filled with resin-soaked linens, local Hudson Valley-grown herbs and sawdust from certain wooden pieces from the house. Oiled and painted with resin, scented with myrrh, juniper and thyme. Then laid out in the kiln for forty more days. Ground first in the large chipper, redried in the kiln and final y ground and incorporated into special y prepared oils. This last stage and the preparation of the bone black and white would be performed at the factory, the lawyer having worked a particularly limber legal feat regarding the transformation of decedent into artifact.

Alvaro put his hand on James' arm when he'd finished going over his carefully detailed instructions.

“I will do this for you. But I want you to know,” Alvaro began plainly and bravely. He hesitated, “I just…” he faltered, less assured.

“I know, Alvaro,” James said, not looking at him. “I hope you understand what this means to me…” he added quietly.

Alvaro let go of Morrow's arm, straightened and stood. “I do understand, James,” he said.

James didn't stand, just wiped down his face. “Thank you,” he said finally, and he held a quivering hand up toward Alvaro. Alvaro shook it formally. Morrow's hand was thin and papery in the younger man's thick ropey one.

Rain began with the Internet. This time doing something she had knowingly avoided in the months since her father's death. On the plain front page of Google, a simple plane branding ease and pretending simplicity, its primary colors promising completeness, Rain slowly typed j-o-h-n
space
r-a-y
space
m-o-rt-o-n and began what would be days worth of searching, taking her from university sites to fan sites to off-hand mentions in odd blogs to old newspaper articles.

There were over seven million pages, according to the good robot Google, though dozens of pages in, the results began breaking up her father's name and giving relatively random results. In quotes, his name still brought an impossible several million supposed hits.

He was of another generation. A time before every vicissitude in one's personal life, especially one owned by the public, was as thoroughly documented as overwrought thesis papers on which years of expensive credits relied. In all, Rain found one mention of Alice. It was as though she hadn't existed.

“I told you everything I know, Rain, I'm sorry,” Gwen said. Rain was making an effort to call her more frequently, though every time she did Gwen asked mechanically, “When are you coming?” and Rain had either to make up an excuse or name a date.

“Why don't you go talk to Morrow?” Gwen asked her. “Hadn't you struck up a bit of a rapport with him?”

“Oh, I don't know,” Rain said vaguely.

“Why not?”

“He gave me…” Rain started, somehow not wanting to disclose this to Gwen. “He gave me some paints and a letter,” she said, just finally spitting it out.

“There you go. I'm sure he'd be able to tell you all about her,” Gwen said, unruffled.

“Uh…I don't know, he's kind of intense. I must be something terrible to him,” Rain said. “He can't have been happy with how things turned out. I must represent betrayal, jealousy. Who knows?”

“You're, what, thirty?” Gwen asked patiently.

“Thirty-one.”

“This thing happened over thirty years ago. He knows who you are. You should talk to him.”

“I can't!” Rain said plunging her face into her free hand to rub away a rogue smile.

“Rain?” Gwen said, like she was changing the subject. “Rain?”

“Yes?” Rain cleared her throat.

“Don't think too much. Just go see him. You need to brave this. Sometimes you don't get a second chance.”

“Okay,” Rain said, muffling her voice with her hand still over her mouth.

“Rain, darling, I have to go—when were you coming?”

“How's Thursday?”

“Good. I'll see you at six.”

It was pouring rain, a dark, late December Saturday when Rain decided it had been long enough, that she had to face him and that she might never work up the nerve to do it if she waited for the courage to come to her.

Wrapped in bright yellow rubber and Gore-Tex against the cold and sleet, Rain trundled down the slick, muddy road to the factory. She saw that James' office lights were on as she approached, glowing against the dark skies that blotted out the daylight. She took the short-cut across the lawn and went in through an unlocked side door.

As she entered, she could hear voices in the clean echoey space. A woman's voice along with James'. Rain hesitated, not sure whether she might have been intruding, but before she could decide to flee, a small woman emerged at the top of the spiral staircase of James' office, bundling herself in a black, swing coat and a red-and-orange scarf, which set off her bright grey curls fetchingly. She trotted down the spiral staircase and stopped short when she caught sight of Rain.

“I'm sorry,” Rain said impulsively.

The woman smiled curiously. “Not at all. You don't work here. Are you a friend of James?”

“No,” Rain said. “Yes. I mean, I'm just here to see him. Is he here?”

“I'm Lucy,” the woman said with a knowing expression. Rain wasn't sure why this woman was looking so threatening. She wondered whether this might be the lady-friend Anne had mentioned.

“James' girlfriend?” Rain asked quickly. This was the reassurance the woman was looking for, evidently, since the bluster seemed to evaporate from her all at once.

“Friend,” Lucy said gravely. “Friend, yes.” She took Rain by the arm and guided her a few steps away from the stairs. “Are you his friend?”

“Not in that way,” Rain said. “I don't know him very well. He knew my father.”