Alchemystic (5 page)

I couldn’t let my anger go. Whether it was with myself or the professor, I really wasn’t sure. Well, that wasn’t true, now, was it? I was both tired and pissed at being dressed down by
him. I wanted to kick him in the teeth with my purple Docs—my only remaining nod to my own fashion style—but I worried too much about the possibility of ruining the expensive dark gray suit I wore with them. I let my mind wander off onto that dark, gory tangent. Maybe the long white smock covering most of my jacket and skirt would catch the blood—

Jesus.
Perhaps Rory had been right in giving me this gift. Maybe the real estate-ing day job
was
stressing me out more than just a little bit.

I pushed the artist-in-residence out of my thoughts and stared at my sketch on the easel before me. The rest of the Y’s art studio faded into the distance as I concentrated on the mismatch of charcoal lines before me. I stared at them, hoping they would resolve into something meaningful, but the longer I stared, the less sense there seemed to be in them. I swore under my breath, running my hands through my long, dark curls of hair, not caring about the charcoal that coated the tips of my fingers. They had left gray smudges all over the Y-logoed smock, but I wasn’t worried about my hair so much as I was my sketch.

Fighting against my own artistic instincts, I gave up, relaxed, and tried to focus on applying his damned rules. Letting creativity be harnessed felt so counterintuitive to me when my heart screamed that it
had
to be free-form, but for now I forced myself to let go of that mentality.

I snatched up another stick of charcoal in my hand and began adding strokes, focusing on the rules of perspective, all lines leading off into one distant point on the horizon. My mind opened as pieces of the world within the sketch began to form. I smiled when I recognized what was unfolding—a picture I must have remembered from one of my great-great-grandfather’s architectural sketchbooks up in the family library.

Over time, the image resolved in front of me, the arch of a church rooftop fading into the background as I continued. In the foreground, I added a figure, the new lines forming a twisted face and muscular body, all in stone, terrifying bat wings rising up behind it. A gargoyle, like the one on top of
our very building, just one of many of the architectural details Alexander had been known for. My heart raced as the elements of it all came together, becoming clearer with each stroke. It was all starting to make some kind of sense, even though I was loath to admit that perhaps a little application of rules had been the right call. I was so lost in the drawing that I hadn’t realized class was officially over.

“Hey, Lexi!” a familiar voice called out. I jumped, losing my concentration on my work and looking over to find Rory standing at the art studio’s door, her short sometimes-blond hair now dyed Cookie Monster blue. Her striking eyes of a lighter version of that color were partly hidden behind her black-rimmed cat’s-eye glasses, but they showed concern. At her side stood Marshall in all his tallness and sporting an
Avengers
T-shirt, black scruffy hair and a similar look of concern in his brown, gentle eyes.

“Hey, guys,” I said.

Rory started over, her five-inch Frankenstein boots clopping loudly across the art studio floor, before stopping and looking me up and down.

“Nice suit,” she said. “The white coat makes you look a bit Muppet Labs, though, and I’d peg you as Beaker, judging by your twitchiness.” Her eyes met mine. “You okay, doll?”

“Yeah,” I said with a slim smile, and pointed to the easel. “Was having a little bit of a breakthrough, actually. Well, first a fight with the teacher, then everyone staring at me, but
then
a bit of a breakthrough.”

Rory looked around the art space. To my delight, the other remaining students were all busy working on their own stuff, and thankfully no one seemed to be taking any notice of me. “Glad to see that my birthday gift to you is really helping you make friends,” Rory said, giving me a thumbs-up. “No fighting, though, okay? The idea was to help you
relax
from the day job, remember? Now, let’s get you out of that lab coat and jet.”

“It’s a smock,” I corrected. “It’s for the doing of the art, and the saving of the grown-up clothes. Duh.”

Marshall clapped me on the shoulder with a light touch. “Your bosses would be so proud,” he said, mock sniffling.

“Parents,”
I reminded him. “Humping real estate on behalf of my family from one group of people to another is not my idea of my dream job, okay?” I turned to Rory. “And while I appreciate the gift, Ror,
nothing
is going to help me relax from the day job. I know I decided not to abandon them, and I don’t think my mom could take it right now. But it doesn’t mean I have to like it. “

“I don’t get it,” she said. “HGTV makes real estate look so easy.”

“It probably is,” I countered, “but most people probably don’t answer to their parents as their bosses in that profession, do they?”

“Fair point,” she said.

“They grow up so fast,” Marshall said, continuing with his melodramatic crying. He put his hand on my back and started rubbing between my shoulders.

I squirmed away from his touch, agitated. “Hands off, Marsh,” I said, and he pulled away like I was on fire, just the reaction I was hoping for. I let out a long sigh, letting go of the mounting tension I didn’t know I was even carrying until that moment.

“You’re a good daughter,” Rory said, without a bit of snark to it whatsoever. “You turned out well, despite the fact that your parents always thought I got you into Goth in our teens because I wanted you to worship Satan.”

“I wish!” I said, raising my hand like I was Dracula trying to mesmerize someone. “At least then I could hex some of the contractors I’m dealing with, get them to fall in line. Under budget and on time. Maybe give them boils, make their hair fall out…” I trailed off. Two of the Real Housewives were staring and rolling their eyes at me, one whispering to the other behind her hand.

“That’s great, Lexi,” Marshall said, disappointment in his voice. “I’m pretty sure that’s how the Donald got ahead, too.”

“One problem, though,” Rory added, holding up a finger.

I kept my eyes on the women as they sat chatting at their respective easels off across the art space. “Which is…?”

“We aren’t fifteen anymore, dressing Goth, or sneaking
into the Harry Potter movies hoping that magic might actually be a real thing.”

My face sank and I turned my powerless hand toward me, looking at it. There was no fantastical magic there, only chipped nails and torn cuticles. “Crap.” I grabbed up one of the thicker paintbrushes at my station and waved it like a wand. “Still, I bet it would be pretty ‘magical’ to see how far I could shove this up their—”

“Lex!” Rory shouted, grabbing the paintbrush away from me.

I spun back around to my easel, staring at the gargoyle on the page. “Sorry,” I said. “At least I was on my way toward getting a little sketch therapy out. It’s just so frustrating to work so hard and feel like I’m failing. I mean, the Belarus family tree has at least one great artist in it, so it’s got to be somewhere in my blood, right? I
should
be able to do this!”

Rory gave me a condescending pat on the back. “I’m not sure art’s really a genetic thing, doll.”

“I wish it was. My great-great-grandfather built huge swaths of this city when he came over from Lithuania. He laid stone back when it was still an art craft, not just bricklaying. The sketchbooks, the statues…All right, I’m letting it go,” I said, forcing myself to relax. “Besides, this really
was
a thoughtful gift, and I don’t want to waste it lamenting my life as artist—crowded out by my new life as a real estate tycoon—even if I do blow at the job. My bosses/parents have been stressing me out with all the running around to appointments. This time in this art class is
supposed
to help me get to my happy place, right?”

Rory put her hand on my shoulder and gave it a squeeze. “Well, we’re here now, your portable happy place. Feel the love?”

I smiled at that. “Yeah, thanks,” I said. I leaned over and grabbed my thick plastic art tube—complete with straps—sitting on the floor next to me and popped off one end of it. “Let me just pack up my stuff so I can get the hell out of here.” I rolled up the sketch from my easel, first placing a thin sheet of vellum over it to keep it from smudging, then slid it into
the tube, capping it. When I looked back up at my friends, Marshall looked a bit like he might pass out.

“Marshall…?” I asked, worried.

“Can I have a minute here before we leave?” he asked. I followed his eyes across the room to the two blond ladies-who-lunch who had been talking about me.

“Oh, no, sweetie,” Rory said, like she was his mom and not his roommate. “You don’t want to crash and burn on something like that.”

He nodded, not taking his eyes off of them. “Yeah, I do. Older women might just be my thing. I mean, women my age certainly don’t seem to be my thing.”

“Maybe Marshall just likes fine leather,” I said, half-catty and half-joking.

“Shush,” he said, his breathing rapid now as he worked up his courage.

“Trust me. Nothing good will come of talking to them. Give up while you’re ahead, Marsh.”

“They might be nice,” he countered, sounding like he was trying to convince himself more than either of us.

“What are you talking about?” I said. “Bravo TV dedicates ninety percent of their whole network to programs about women who look like them. Nice doesn’t even enter their vocabulary.”

“We shall see,” he said, and started off across the room before I could talk him out of it.

“It’s so cute when he tries so hard,” Rory said. “Bless his little heart!”

I hopped down off my stool, starting after him.

“Don’t,” Rory said, grabbing me by the arm. “Let him go.”

“Why?”

“He can’t help himself,” she said. “That man needs to learn some of life’s harsh lessons. He’s too nice. He’s got the strictest moral compass of anyone I’ve ever known. You should have seen him handing out fliers for Roll for Initiative over near the Manhattan Conservatory—”

I winced at the mention of the school, unable to stop my knee-jerk reaction.
“Alexandra,”
Rory said, scolding.

“I can’t help it,” I said, hating how whiny I sounded to myself. “I’m jealous, okay? You get to hang out with the graduate school crowd. Look at me. I’m dressed up in a fancy pantsuit and talk square footage and utilities with people all day.”

Rory rolled her eyes. “Poor you,” she said. “Heiress apparent to the Belarus family real estate holdings…”

“All because of a building collapse that
killed
Devon,” I reminded her. “As wonderful as you think
heiress
sounds, the price paid for it was too high, if you ask me. God rest Devon’s soul. This is not the life I planned on. These classes are the first time in
months
that I’ve remotely felt alive. So screw your whole ‘Lexi’s princess of the real estate kingdom’ thing, okay? Everything has its own special way of sucking, believe me.”

“Anyway,”
Rory said, ignoring me and jerking a thumb across the room toward Marshall before turning back to me by my now-empty easel. “His funeral.”

She looked at the plastic art tube in my hands. “About that picture,” she said. “Totally hideous. But in a good way.”

“Thanks,” I said. “I think. I remembered these sketches that my great-great-grandfather did. There’s a whole volume of them. They should be in an actual museum, but my parents—hoarders that they are—won’t let them leave their building. I think he called them his
grotesques
. They’re an architectural detail that he used—something to do with redirecting rainwater to keep his buildings from collapsing. They’re haunting but I love them.”

“You’re creepy like that,” Rory said.

“I’ll take that as a compliment.”

“As you should,” she said.

“My sketch tonight,” I said with a little frustration in my tone. “It’s at least something more than what I’ve been doing lately, but there’s no life to them. They’re copies of his works from my memory, but that’s all they are—copies, not
real
art.”

“Don’t say that, Lex.”

“Did you ever hear about Van Gogh and his doctor?” I asked.

Rory shook her head.

“Van Gogh struck an agreement with his doctor that he
would pay him with art, which the doctor accepted. For the rest of their lives after that, the doctor and his children labored at re-creating those works. They even showed them at the Met here in the city a few years back. I went to see them. Those Van Gogh reproductions were the same quality as what I’m doing here.
Lousy.
They vaguely
looked
like Van Gogh’s work, but they lacked…I don’t know…I guess soul. Maybe at heart I’m just a copycat, too.”

“Alexandra…” Rory said, exasperation in her voice. She would have gone on, but Marshall had just about made his way back to us. “Well? How did it go?”

His eyes held a little bit of sad puppy dog in them and he gave Rory and me a halfhearted smile. “I thought it was going good,” he said.

“Yeah?” I said, hopeful.

“It was,” he insisted, “until they filled my hood with paint.” He turned around slowly. The hood hanging out over the back of his jacket was wet from the inside, a hint of red seeping through it, running down the back of his jacket.

Rory clapped him on the shoulder. “Glad you got that out of your system?”

Marshall nodded, then smiled, mustering as much pride as he could for a nerd who had just been shot down. “The end result didn’t matter, ladies. The important thing was the trying.”

“Tell that to your dry cleaner,” I said, packing up my materials.

“We’re headed to that new bar that opened up over on First Avenue, the one around Eighth,” Rory said. “You in?”

I checked my watch. “I don’t think so,” I said. “I need to get home to deal with the bosses. Update them about the meeting I cut short to get here and the closings I didn’t get set up today, all before hurrying down here for the art sessions. I have to at least put in an appearance as the dutiful future of their empire. Hopefully, they don’t fire me.”