Son of a bitch, I thought, and it wasn’t just because August had won this round, too.
“Too bad.” Marie-Helene leaned against my chest. “If you’re ready to give up, I can introduce you to someone. My drawing professor’s here. He doesn’t do video installation the way you do”—Thank God, I thought, I couldn’t BS a professor—“but maybe he could talk to you about Sieben admissions for next year?”
August was silently racking the balls for another game.
“I’ll be right back,” I told him, because the person Marie-Helene was waving at was the man I’d deduced to be Nathaniel.
“Okay, Simon,” August said, and I remembered how not-simple any of this was.
THAT WAS HOW I FOUND MYSELF STARING AT A SET OF charcoals in an industrial loft five blocks away.
“Think about form,” Nathaniel was yelling. “Think about style.”
“I’m thinking about killing him,” I told Marie-Helene, who looked horrified. Holmes would have snickered, but Holmes wasn’t there.
After an interminable hour listening to him gas on about creating from your gut, really feeling the rawness of the world in your work, I sympathized a bit more with Holmes and her aversion to expressed emotion. Talking about your feelings was a lot different from talking about “feeling” in the abstract. If this is what being an artist or a writer was like, maybe I wasn’t one after all. Especially if it involved growing some neck-beard. Nathaniel’s was as lush and overgrown as moss.
I decided that if this was the guy that Leander had been kissing, he was doing some serious slumming.
But Marie-Helene and the rest of his coterie hung on his every word. I understood why—he listened to his students’ opinions, knew things about their lives. He teased Marie-Helene about her “new crush” within minutes of meeting me. I thought about Mr. Wheatley, my old creative writing teacher, and how good it felt when he’d taken an interest in my work last fall. (Even if he’d feigned that interest for his own messed-up, villainous reasons.)
So maybe Nathaniel was a blowhard. He seemed like a nice guy, underneath it, and I sort of felt bad knowing that I was the villain in this situation.
Unless he was a villain, too.
“You should come to Sieben next year,” Nathaniel had said to me back at the party. “You’re a nice kid. Smart. I can tell that you’re smart. As usual, these miscreants are having a late night Draw ’n’ Drink tonight and they’ve talked me into coming along. Why don’t you show me what you’ve got? I can put in a good word for you with the admissions committee.”
Hence, we’d gone a few blocks over to this industrial loft, which maybe belonged to Nathaniel—God only knew—and now I was holding a piece of charcoal the way I held a cigarette the one and only time I tried to smoke one. Which, for the record, isn’t how you hold a cigarette or a charcoal.
“Is that what you call it? A charcoal?” I asked Marie-Helene, as the students around us shuffled around to look at each other’s progress, beers in hand. Nathaniel was deeply engrossed in a girl’s work on the far side of the room. I had no idea how to approach him again, and people were beginning to put on their coats. The night was almost over.
“No.” Marie-Helene frowned at my sketchbook. “Simon, it’s been an hour. Everyone else has drawn the still life. . . .” She didn’t need to finish the thought. My page looked like it had developed chicken pox.
“It’s experimental,” I said, lifting my chin. “Very . . . Picasso-ian. My tutor always said my work was reminiscent of his Blue Period.”
Marie-Helene made a face. I couldn’t blame her, really. Simon was a pretty awful person.
SOS can you draw, I texted Holmes under the table. I’m about to be exposed as a fraud. Are you busy? Can you come?
The response was instantaneous. Not busy, she said. Have experienced abject failure. Auctioneer steadfastly denies any idea of stolen work bought/sold, even when persuaded to speak. (I didn’t want to know what sort of persuasion she meant.) Cannot draw but can fake it better than you. Address please.
She was there ten minutes later, leaning over my shoulder. “Simon,” she said, loud enough for everyone to hear, “are you still shy about drawing in front of people? He can be so self-conscious. Don’t tell me he fed you some line about making ‘experimental’ art.” With exaggerated slowness, Holmes shook her head at Marie-Helene. “Men. They’re such self-saboteurs. Can you show me where the wine is? I just had the worst night. . . .”
Nathaniel had been listening, because as Holmes led Marie-Helene away, he came over to me with a concerned expression. “Is that true, Simon? It’s okay—I know it’s a lot of pressure to work in front of more experienced artists. Do you want to talk about it?”
“Yes,” I said, “very much,” hating Holmes for fixing my whole FUBAR undercover op in about thirty seconds.
Nathaniel led me over to the corner kitchen. The loft was a giant, echoing space, brick walls and a concrete floor, but the kitchen only held a sink and a microwave. “Tea? I noticed you weren’t drinking.”
“I’m not much for it,” I said, as Simon. “I’m already a bit nervous. A pint never does much to help that, for me.”
“Odd. It’s usually the opposite.” He pulled a mug from an otherwise empty cabinet, filling it with water. “You’re a nice kid.”
“Am I?” I laughed. I sounded a bit insane.
“No, you are. But you seem a little sad. Is anything wrong?”
I shrugged. “Just feeling a little out of my element.”
“I’m happy to introduce you around.”
“Thanks,” I said, hating that I wanted to say yes. “I think I need to take my time with that.”
“Bad night, huh. Okay, I’ll take the hint,” he said. “So how’d you find out about the school here? We’re not very well known outside of the city.”
I decided to try for a direct approach. “My uncle lives here. I’m staying with him nearby. He couldn’t come out tonight, but the Old Met is his Saturday night place, and he told me to check it out. Maybe you know him? Tall? Dark hair? He wears it slicked back—”
With a sharp crash, Nathaniel dropped the mug. “Oh—oh, God, I’m sorry, shaky hands, long night. You know. I can’t believe—you’re David’s nephew? He never talked about his family.”
Hook, line, sinker. So much for FUBAR. As long as David was, in fact, Leander’s alias. “You know him?” I asked, as Nathaniel kicked the ceramic pieces into a pile.
“You could say that.” He was avoiding my eyes. “And he’s at home tonight? I didn’t think—well.”
“He is,” I said blithely. “You know him. Cooking up a storm. Arguing with the crossword puzzle answers.”
“That sounds like him,” he said, which was good, as I had no idea what “David” would do on a Saturday night in. Or who exactly Nathaniel was to him. All I’d had was his name, that he was one of Leander’s contacts. Maybe. Did that mean that he was under suspicion? Had he stolen paintings? Organized a forgery ring? Was he part of a drug cartel? Was he helping Leander out? Was he so surprised to hear about “David” because he knew he was being held somewhere or—awful thought—dead?
What the hell was I doing, and where was Holmes?
“I should get home, actually,” I said, forcing a yawn. I needed to talk to my father. I needed to get him to give me the details. “He worries if I’m out too late. I’m sure he’ll be glad to hear that I met you.”
“Yes. Yes of course.” Nathaniel squinted at me. I felt, suddenly, like an insect on a slide. “Tell him to meet me tomorrow night at East Side Gallery. Our usual corner, at the usual time.”
That didn’t sound sketchy or anything. “Yeah, okay.”
“It’s Simon, right?” His stare grew thornier.
“Right. See you!” Before he could ask for Simon’s last name, I was out the door.