And then there was John’s voice, playing like a soundtrack to that awful scene: He feeds on us, Izzy.
I don’t know how, but it has something to do with the way he destroys the paintings that call us over.
And then mixed into that already disturbing stew of memories was a disjointed recollection of how she’d been assaulted in the lane outside the studio, the faces of her assailants all wearing Rushkin’s features again, instead of those from the mug books she’d gone through at the precinct.
Her fingers found the tattered bracelet of woven cloth that she still wore on her wrist. She looked around the studio at the paintings of her numena—the ones she hadn’t put up for sale yet, the ones she never would and the new ones that she was still working on. She had the sudden urge to hide them all.
To call Alan and ask him to meet her downstairs with his car so that she could stack the paintings on its backseat and he could ferry them away. Her and the paintings. Out of Rushkin’s sight. Away from the possibility of his discovering that they even existed in the first place. Away to safety. Oh, why had she ever let anyone convince her that he wasn’t dangerous?
She forced herself to calm down and take a few steadying breaths.
Lighten up, she told herself. You don’t even know what the letter says.
But she did and she knew she wasn’t wrong. The lion-girl numena Kathy had seen was a harbinger of what this letter was about to tell her. She could feel Rushkin’s return in the rough texture of the envelope that rubbed against the pads of her fingers, in the ink that spelled out her name and the studio’s address.
Slowly she worked a finger under the flap, tore the envelope open and pulled out a single sheet of thick paper the color of old parchment. Unfolding it, she read: Isabelle,
I hope this finds you well and productive. I will be returning to my studio in Newford on February 17th. You are, of course, welcome to stay on and share the space with me, but I will understand your reluctance to do so should you choose to seek other arrangements.
In any event, no matter what you decide, I hope you will still allow us the opportunity at some point to exchange a few words and catch up on each other’s news.
Yours, in anticipation, Vincent
Izzy read the letter through twice before laying it down on the table beside the easel that held her paints and palette. She tried to think of what the date was, but her mind was a blank. She went downstairs, planning to call Kathy to ask her, when her gaze fell upon the Perry’s Diner calendar that she’d tacked up there in December. Her finger tracked across the dates to settle on the sixteenth.
Rushkin would be here tomorrow.
Her earlier panic returned. This time she did call Alan and arranged to have him come by at midafternoon to help her transport her work back to the Waterhouse Street apartment. The rest of the morning she spent taking her paintings down from the walls and stacking them by the door, bundling up her sketches and value studies into manageable packages, dusting, sweeping, scrubbing the floor—especially around her easel—and generally acting and feeling like a teenager who’d had a huge open house while her parents were out of town for the weekend and was still madly trying to clean up while their ETA drew ever closer.
She was standing at the worktable with a cardboard box, trying to decide what brushes, paints and other art supplies she could honestly consider her own, when she heard Alan knock at the door.
Sweeping her arm across the top of the table, she dumped everything she hadn’t been able to make her mind up about into the box on top of what she had decided was hers and hurried to let Alan in.
One of the things Izzy liked best about Alan was how he never seemed to feel obliged to question the inherent chaos that represented the lives of so many of his friends. Instead of trying to make sense of what often even they couldn’t rationalize, he simply went with the flow, listened when they wanted him to, or could, explain, and was generally there for them when they needed him, absent when they needed to be alone.
“This is a lot of stuff;” he said as he surveyed everything Izzy felt she had to bring with her. “I think it’s going to take a couple of trips.”
“That’s okay. Just so long as we can get it all away this afternoon. Rushkin’s back, you see, or at least he will be here by tomorrow, so it’s all got to go.”
Alan regarded her for a moment. “I thought he was letting you use the studio.”
“He is. He was. I still could, it’s just that—oh, it’s too complicated to explain, Alan.”
Alan smiled. “So what do you want to take first?”
The move took three trips all told, because only so many canvases could fit in the back of the car at a time, but they were finished well before six. Once everything was safely stowed away in her bedroom, Izzy fetched them both a beer from the fridge.
“I love this piece,” Alan said, picking up a small oil pastel portrait. “She sort of reminds me of Kathy.”
“It’s the red hair,” Izzy said.
Alan laughed. “Izzy, almost all the women you paint have red hair.”
“This is true. And I have no idea why.”
“Maybe it’s because Kathy has red hair,” Alan said.
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Nothing,” Alan told her. “It’s just that a lot of artists tend to use their own features, or those of their friends, because they know them so well. I thought you were doing the same.”
Put like that, Izzy thought, there might well be something to what Alan was saying. She certainly knew Kathy’s features better than those of anyone else in her life—better even than her own.
“But it’s not just the hair that reminds me of Kathy with this one,” Alan went on. “It’s more just a—oh, I don’t know. A Kathyish expression, I suppose.”
“I call it Annie Nin.”
“After Anaïs Nin?”
“Who?”
Alan smiled. “She’s a writer. You’d probably like her work.”
“I’ve never heard of her before. ‘Annie Nin’ just popped into my head the day I finished it.”
“Well, it’s beautiful. You know I like all your work, but I really love the movement of your brush strokes on this one—they’re so free and loose.”
“Actually, I did that with oil pastels. What you’re admiring is the marks of the pastel stick on the board.”
“Whatever. I still really like it.”
As he start to put it down, Izzy pushed it toward him. “Take it,” she said. “I’d like to see her go someplace where she’ll be appreciated.”
And besides, she thought, Alan’s apartment was the closest thing to a library without actually being one that Izzy could think of Annie would love it there. “I couldn’t just take it,” Alan said. “It must be worth a fortune.”
“Oh right. Like you haven’t seen what my work goes for in the gallery.”
“Not nearly what it’s worth,” Alan told her.
Izzy smiled, relaxing for the first time since the mail had arrived at the coach-house studio that morning.
“You’re being sweet,” she said, and then refused to accept no for an answer from him. It didn’t take much more convincing, and by the time they’d finished their beers and he was leaving, the painting was tucked in under his arm and went with him.
Later, Izzy had cause to be grateful for that moment of generosity, for that was how Annie Nin’s numena survived all the deaths that were to come, following Rushkin’s return to the city.