ALL FIVE heads leaned in, focusing intently on the uncovered precious blank sheet.
Nathan’s eyes narrowed possessively.
Professor Angeli pressed back a gasp.
Christine leaned closer, her jaw slack.
“It’s… beautiful.” Amanda had never seen pristine, unmarked paper of such quality or age.
“Theyare beautiful,” Wilde said, pulling aside the top one and revealing three smaller pieces of vellum. “They are over four hundred years old and I want you each to have one.”
With a flourish, he presented the first. “Professor, the largest one is for you, our brightest and best.” He pressed the heavy sheet into the stunned professor’s hand.
“I have had several of these sheets for years.” Wilde was enjoying himself hugely. “As you know, I have been waiting for the most propitious moment to share these final ones with my friends. I have another which I shall present to our esteemed instructor when he has recovered. It seems only fair.”
Nathan’s jaw tensed. “Final ones?”
Christine took the letter-size piece of paper passed to her with the same sense of awe she would finger a piece of Paloma Picasso jewelry. Her total attention fastened on the slightly textured, cream-colored stock. Carefully she stroked it, reveling in its texture and history.
Even though Amanda knew Christine was a fine draftsman, she had never before seen her flip, brittle friend so unconsciously reveal her artistic sensitivity.
Amanda could barely accept the sheet Wilde proffered her, she was so overwhelmed with the weight of its history. Here was something made during one of the greatest art ages in history, hundreds of years old. Who had it been produced for, why hadn’t it been used, where had it been all these years, and how had it come, by such astonishing luck, through its convoluted history into her hands here and now?
She beamed up at Antonio, who was looking at Amanda with the same undisguised admiration.
Nathan shook his head. “Un-nh.” Putting his hands up, he backed away from the offered sheet as though it might burst into flame. “No,” he muttered, looking around, his chest heaving, “don’t do this. Don’t give the stuff away. Damn, man, don’t do that.”
The startled artist’s tone was placating as he pressed the sheet forward. “But you deserve the best, my boy. You must never underestimate your God-given talent.”
“I said no, dammit,” Nathan yelled. “I don’t want it! Keep it, use it, then give it to me! When it’s got something on it.” His outburst echoed off the high glass skylights of the large studio.
Everyone stared in shock. “I…” He glanced around and quickly reassumed his oft-used Brando nonchalance. “What the hell, I guess I don’t think I’m ready yet. And don’t kid yourself, Christine, you’re not either.” He snatched the sheet from her and forced it back to Wilde.
Christine’s surprised look instantly contracted into anger. “Maybe not, but it’s mine to keep or give back as I choose. Right, Wilde?” Her eyes remained fastened on Nathan.
“Of course, my dear,” the concerned artist answered, returning the paper to her. “I’m sorry, my boy, I had no intention of upsetting you with what I hoped would be construed as a generous gesture. I wanted us all to partake of a bit of a fantasy tonight. One I have been looking forward to for some time.”
“I’m sure Nathan didn’t mean to rebuke your generous gift.” Professor Angeli put his arm protectively around the tense, young man who roughly shrugged him away. “I think we’re all totally overwhelmed, Wilde,” he said, flatly. “You’ve truly outdone yourself.”
Amanda glanced at Marc who was watching Nathan carefully. Nathan’s clamped jaw throbbed. His fists roughly ironed the short skirt of the belted, velvet tunic over his thighs. No one expected him to apologize. He remained quiet. And with that gesture of non-confrontation, seemed to be making an effort to appease.
Professor Angeli was the first to break the tense silence. “Wilde, what is this foolish fantasy you mention?” He swept his sheet of ancient drawing stock around at the costumed group. “Surely, you’ve outdone yourself already.”
Wilde placed his hand on Antonio’s shoulder. “It has to do with this extraordinary young man.” He directed his remarks to the model. “When I saw what you were able to achieve at our last class, the dream of a lifetime- which I must admit I had always thought could never be accomplished- forced itself to the forefront of my brain and told me to…” He paused for effect.“Go for it. And, so, indeed, I… we… go.”
They all smiled at his convoluted speech. Even Nathan’s grim look relaxed.
“Specifics, Wilde,” Professor Angeli urged, “specifics.”
“Yeah, get on with it, Wild-man.” Nathan returned to his usual arrogant self.
“Very well.” Wilde’s eyes darted excitedly from one to the other. “Imagine yourselves artists in l5th century Florence. You are anxious to expand your clientele, to garner new commissions, to do something extraordinary.”
“I don’t think there were too many ofus looking for commissions,” Christine stated as she indicated Amanda and herself, resettling her long velvet robe over her crossed legs. “I think we would have been good Italian housewives taking care of the babies or some other Godawful thing.”
“There were several very famous female artists. Daughters of artists and noblewomen with time on their hands who weren’t all that concerned with making good alliances.”
“Ah, alliances. I can relate to that,” Christine acknowledged with a grunt. She turned to Amanda. “You can be one of those delicate young things, who simply had to draw because your artistic soul depended on it. Especially if some hot Italian model had turned you on.” She gave a sly sidelong glance to Antonio.
“I can relate to that,” Amanda returned, tartly. “Especially if I were one of the Medicis and had seen their private commission of Donatello’s David. Very hot stuff for the time.”
“Perfect,” Wilde announced. “Then we’re all ready.”
“For what?” Nathan was getting annoyed.
“A contest has been announced. The town council of Florence wants a statue to represent the city and all it stands for and they want the sculptor to use a huge vertical slab of marble on which a previous sculptor had begun work and then abandoned.”
“You want us to be Michelangelo?” Amanda’s voice was filled with disbelief. Had Marc mentioned her love of the David statue to Wilde?
“Yes, in effect. I want us to accept the challenge. We all know what Buonarroti came up with: his David. But do we know where his inspiration came from? I posit there must have been an extraordinary young man, whether a professional model or no, in which he saw the possibilities of the marble. He must have made innumerable sketches. And now, we,” he paused and looked around dramatically, “can recreate that moment.”
He moved to a small, inlaid cabinet. “You have paper of the period.” He extracted small stoppered bottles and handed them out. “And, through the kind generosity of a chemist friend, you now have ink of the period, and…” He pulled out a handful of pens and brushes which he also offered the group, “instruments of the period.”
Wilde looked around with benevolent satisfaction at the astonished artists. “Now we, by the grace of Heaven, have been given this extraordinary young man.” He swept his hand toward Marc who was as caught up as the rest with Wilde’s fantasy.
“Antonio,” he instructed as he offered the model a strap of leather and a round glass paperweight, “give us David.”
Amanda looked at Marc. She felt the small hairs on the back of her neck rise and could see a similar elevation of excitement in the private investigator’s eyes. This was the moment he had prepared for, more dramatically set than he possibly could have done himself. If anything could, this moment should flush the forger.
Marc went to the front of the room, turned on the modeling lights, removed his robe, took a moment to concentrate his thoughts, threw the strap over his left shoulder, settled his weight on his right foot, held the paperweight in his relaxed right hand and became… David. His entire being concentrated on slinging the rock in his hand to slay the enemy of his people. He was powerful, sure, filled with the concentrated determination of youth.
The room was silent. Only the sound of distant street traffic invaded.
Professor Angeli pressed his fingers to his lips, blinking to sharpen his sight. Suddenly, with a sense of urgency that the apparition might vanish, he chose a pen, dipped it in the deep brown liquid, stared for a moment at the naked young man in front of him and then, after four hundred years, began to indelibly stain the precious paper with definitive strokes.
Wilde, who had watched mesmerized as Marc became the ancient Hebrew hero, released a held breath and attacked his paper with the same sureness.
Amanda pulled a sheet of ordinary drawing paper from her portfolio and laid it on top of the antique stock. “I have to at least practice first,” she explained to no one in particular. “Get used to the nibs.”
Christine stood frozen behind her easel, arms folded, clasping her elbows. She shook her head, staring at the ancient paper awaiting her stroke. Her eyes were moist.
“I told you you weren’t ready.” Nathan snatched the ancient paper resting on her drawing pad and stuffed it in his portfolio.
The older woman offered no resistance. After a moment she huffed a lung full of air and reached for a charcoal stick. “But I can still draw,” she announced, “and I sure as hell know a great naked man when I see one. Kid,” she called out, “you’re terrific!” And she began to sketch with gusto.
“He’s wrong,” Nathan commented, watching the others busy at their drawings. “He’s too big to be David.”
“Yes, yes, dear boy,” Wilde said, as he worked away, “obviously so. The statue itself is incorrect as we all know. The head is too large as are the hands and feet. We assume the master made those choices in order to emphasize the youthfulness of the body. One must make choices. It’s not merely a matter of reproducing what one sees.”
Amanda felt a stab in the center of her chest as she contemplated the magnificent man in front of her.
Professor Angeli hardly took his eyes from his work. “Art is all choice.”
Amanda began to draw but not on the four-hundred-year-old paper. Soon, everyone was immersed in their work except Nathan, who wandered about the room watching what the others were doing and occasionally staring at the model.
After a quarter of an hour they took a break. Hardly anyone spoke and they all remained near their easels. Nathan wandered out of the studio and returned with bottles of mineral water for the group.
He seemed to have relaxed, it appeared to Amanda. And from the creeping up of his lips and his knowing glances in the model’s direction, seemed to have discovered something that amused him in his attitude toward Antonio.
Perhaps he had realized the handsome, naked man was no threat to his affair with Christine, Amanda thought, as Nathan settled at his easel and began to sketch. She was grateful she could now dismiss her concern and concentrate on her drawing.
As the artists’ concentration intensified, costume hats were laid aside and doublets loosened. Amanda removed her over-robe, untied her sleeves and pushed them up. Everyone was intent on the work at hand.
Antonio offered to execute different poses but everyone agreed the David was the touchstone of the evening. Wilde mildly tried to keep the concept of the competition for the Florentine burghers going but finally succumbed, as had they all, to the palpable connection that had been established between the pose and each individual artist.
After a couple of more breaks, only reluctantly agreed to, in order to give Antonio a needed rest, the extraordinary session drew to a close. The four working artists began to finalize their efforts.
Wilde applied a contouring wash of reddish-brown ocher. “There,” he gave a snap of his brush to scatter minute drops of color over the paper. “I think I’m rather pleased.”
Almost reluctant to leave their own work, they all gathered round to look. A full-length figure in the familiar pose was in the center of the paper. To the side, one of the feet had been reworked, overdrawn in several positions. Other studies of various parts of the body- a hand, a profile, a shaded section of curls- gave the impression of a working drawing, quickly sketched over the space of a few hours, that could easily have come from the studio of Michelangelo.
Amanda felt breathless. Her mind whirled. It seemed as if she were back under Athenian skies, flown forward to a Roman temple, bent over an illuminated manuscript. Through her stinging eyes she glanced at Antonio.
Antonio, not “Marc.” Her magnificent creator of dreams and fantasies not the real flesh and blood, hard-working private investigator who excited her senses and drugged her hard-won self-assurance.
Marc focused on the drawing blankly, slowly raising his look to the man who had produced it. She could see it in the private investigator’s eyes. The case was solved. He seemed filled with the same mixture of admiration and sadness as she.
He looked at Amanda, his eyes hard. He turned and left the admiring group and sat apart. His broad shoulders hunched and his head slumped.
Amanda knelt in front of the naked man.
“Why would he do such a thing?” he quietly asked. “He doesn’t need the money. It’s not going to gain him any fame. He rants and raves but that’s just bluster. His ego is as solid as a rock. It makes no sense.” He shrugged, focusing intently on Amanda but thinking of the rash, foolish determination that had brought his brother down.
Amanda felt as if all emotion had been drained from her.
Poor Marc. He had broken the first commandment of a private investigator. He had gotten involved with his suspects. He cared. About her. About Wilde. About them all. And one of them had betrayed him.
As well as she knew her own, she was at a total loss to comprehend the mind of her beloved Wilde. Now they all knew what he was capable of. Did he mean to drag them all into the sordid mess when it would surely finally come to light? To make them accomplices to his sick joke?
He made her mad. He gives away his work. To the staff, for God’s sake. Heaven only knows to whom else. Sooner or later someone, somewhere would make the connection. It was almost as if he wanted to be discovered.
Her light-weight, detailed costume felt like suffocating, dragging sackcloth. She was grateful Marc seemed not to have caught the look of utter desolation in her eyes. She would be supportive, by his side until it was done.
And then they both would be gone from each other.
Amanda crossed her arms on Marc’s knee and rested her aching head. Even his perfect nakedness seemed foreign now. As if a glass wall had formed out of the very air between her and the rest of the world cutting her off from all feeling.
A whoop of delight shocked her back.
Christine came rushing at them waving Wilde’s sketch, her Renaissance skirts swirling around her. “Me! He gave it to me!”
She spun ecstatically, sending up clouds of chalk dust from the salon’s floor, then rushed back to the beaming artist to hug him tightly. She whooped, “Wilde, you are the best buddy in the world! This will go over my bed. The highest place of honor!”
As Marc and Amanda heavily stood to congratulate the chortling Christine, a furious, scowling Nathan stalked toward her and snatched the drawing.
“It’s mine,” he snarled through gritted teeth. He turned viciously on a quaking Professor Angeli, wide-eyed with fear. “I warned you, you old crock. I told you to tell the old bastard not to give the stuff away.” He shoved the drawing quickly but carefully into his backpack and spun to spray the group with a mad-dog look.
A look that had no effect on Christine. “What the hell are you doing, you little twerp? Have you gone nuts? That’smy drawing. Give it back!” She grabbed the backpack.
Without a moment’s hesitation, Nathan swept his arm across his chest and snapped it back, hitting Christine in the face with the back of his hand. With a gasp, she sprawled backwards into Marc who had instantly lunged for Nathan. They fell in a tangle of fabric.
“I warned you. I warned you all!” Nathan wrenched the door open. “This is my drawing!”
The door slammed thunderously behind him.