Corpus Christmas

“Of course you have. It’s hanging over that Spanish chest next to your door. I know it’s not a literal representation, but still-”

Nauman shook his head and his white hair gleamed in the candlelight. “That painting is a purely abstract construction generated from sets of inverse Cassinian ovals. That’s all there is to it.”

“It’s also-” She fell silent as their waiter approached.

“Everything all right? ” he asked.

Nauman handed him their empty wine bottle. “Another one of these, please.”

“It’s also a portrait of Francesca Leeds,” Sigrid said as the waiter left them. “The way her hair fells away from her face when she tilts her head back and laughs. All that orange and gold and brown. And those big canvasses in your studio up in Co

He started to deny it, then looked at Sigrid with perplexed admiration. “I’ll be damned, Siga. You’re right.”

Nauman never tried to analyze why he painted as he did. Let others theorize after the fact; when things were working, he only knew that they felt right. Nevertheless, it was interesting to catch his subconscious off guard. He had enjoyed Francesca, her beauty, her sophistication, her body. But she was more uptown than he, more interested in the right social circles. It had exasperated her that he wouldn’t capitalize on his fame, so they had parted as amicably as they’d begun and he hadn’t realized that she’d affected his palette.

Now he remembered that violent purple-and-black study Francesca had pulled from the back of his storage racks up in Co

Lila.

His mind shied at the thought of Lila, locked away all these years; and he willed himself to consider instead the vivid, almost garish colors he’d used during those exuberant postwar years with Susan; or those serene pastels that had echoed Cassandra’s quiet blond loveliness. Odd that he hadn’t seen-hadn’t let himself see?

Four women. All different.

And what would Sigrid bring?

“Don’t!” she said sharply, and gold sequins shimmered like moonbeams on water as she flinched from his gaze.

“What?” he asked, bewildered.

“You look at me sometimes as if I’m a-I don’t know. As if I were a thing, not a person.”

The waiter arrived with more wine, filled their glasses, and departed.

Nauman lifted his glass in tribute. “Oh no, my dear. Never that,” he said, and was glad to realize that their fight seemed to have ended before it ever began.

A clock was chiming nine-thirty when Roger Shambley came downstairs to use the telephone on Hope Ruffton’s desk. The caterers had long since gone and the rooms were dark and silent. He called information for the number he wanted, dialed and, when an answering machine beeped at the other end of the wire, spoke the cryptic words he’d rehearsed, then hung up.

He crossed the echoing hall to unlock the front door and as he returned, a figure appeared in the doorway of the darkened library.

“Gesù e Maria!” he exclaimed. “You startled me. I thought you left hours ago.”

In the warm snug Hobbit-hole room, the last tape had come to an end and Rick Evans was enjoying the comfortable silence when he suddenly stiffened like a burrowing animal that hears the dogs above him.

“What’s wrong, Rick?” Pascal Grant asked sleepily.

“Sh! I thought I heard a noise out there.”

Pascal raised himself to a kneeling position beside Rick. The only light in the room was a small amber lamp shaped like an owl near the door and both held their breath, listening. Rick looked around for a weapon of some sort. “You have a stick or something, Pasc?”

“Like my softball bat? Sure.”

Rick slipped off the mattress and pulled on his trousers. “Where is it?”

“Behind that chair.” Then realizing what Evans meant to do, Pascal Grant clutched at his leg. “No, Rick. Don’t go out there. Please!” His voice grew louder as he became more agitated. “I don’t like Dr. Shambley. He scares me.”

Of course, Rick thought, Shambley. That dirty little coward. What gives him the right to sneak around down here? Was he hoping to find Pasc alone? He thinks he knows what Pasc and I are, but we know what he is and he’s not going to wreck things.

With angry, confused thoughts ru

Rick grasped the bat, unlocked the door, and stepped out into the kitchenette.

“Who’s there?” he called, suddenly caught by conflicting emotions.

In the dim warmth behind the half-closed door, Pascal Grant huddled uneasily on the bed, wishing Rick would come back and lock the door and they could talk some more and listen to the old Louis Armstrong tape Rick had brought and forget about Dr. Shambley. Before yesterday was bad enough, Pascal thought unhappily, but ever since last night when he put his hand on my face- And today, he keeps looking at me and he makes me feel dirty, like Mr. Gere at the training center-

Pascal shivered and tried not to think of Mr. Gere and what Mr. Gere had wanted him to do.

There was a thump and clatter out in the main kitchen and Pascal sprang from the bed and ran to the door. “Rick?”

An icy draft of air met him at the kitchenette and he glanced across the dim stretches of the main kitchen to the passageway that wound out to his spiderweb door.

A forty-watt security light burned over the stairs off to his left and something dark lay crumpled at the bottom. Half whimpering with terror, Pascal edged closer. “Rick?”

A moment later, with the bat clutched in his hand, Rick emerged from the dark hallway into the main kitchen and found Pascal shivering over a twisted bundle at the foot of the stairs.

“Dr. Shambley,” Pascal whispered.

Rick drew near. The ugly little man lay face up on the tiles, his eyes stared unblinkingly at the light, his lips were drawn back almost in a snarl.

“Is he dead?” asked Pascal.

It reminded Rick of finding a dead snake in the road. Neither wanted to touch him. Rick nudged Shambley’s head with the bat. It flopped to one side and they saw that his shaggy brown hair was matted with blood. Rick knelt down then. There was no pulse in the man’s lifeless wrist.

“Did you hit him?” asked Pascal. “I heard the bat.”

“No,” Rick said sharply. “Someone else was here, too-in the hallway. I ran after them but the bat banged into the wall and I dropped it. Whoever it was must have pushed him down the stairs and then run away.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know,” Rick said grimly, “but we can’t leave him here.”

“Why, Rick?”

“Because they might think you pushed him. Or me.”

“But we’ll just tell them we didn’t. I’ll call Mrs. Beardsley. Or Dr. Peake. They’ll know what to do.”

“No!” Rick looked at Pascal’s beautiful i

“You’re my friend.”

“I know, but most people would think that was wrong.”

“Wrong to have a friend?”

“Wrong to let him sleep over with you. They’d make something dirty out of it. They think everything is sex.”

“Oh,” said Pascal. He caught his lower lip between his teeth and nodded.

“We’ll take him up to the third floor and leave him at the bottom of the attic stairs. Those steps are steeper. They’ll think he tripped and fell up there.”

Still shivering, Pascal reluctantly agreed to Rick’s plan. Even though Shambley’s body was small, neither youth was strong enough to carry him very far. Instead, they rolled him onto one of the blue rag scatter rugs, loaded him inside the dumbwaiter, and hoisted him aloft.