The Reincarnationist

Chapter 52

New York City-Tuesday, 5:50 p.m.

Alex cut a branch off the miniature ficus tree. The bonsai had been another passion that her uncle and aunt had shared. Now the care and feeding of the dozen ancient trees scattered through the duplex was left to him alone and he treated it with the sacredness of a visit to his wife’s grave.

Rachel stood in the doorway to the living room, not wanting to interrupt her uncle, but he’d said he’d wanted to leave at six. She watched him minister to the one-hundred-and-twenty-year-old tree that stood only eighteen inches high and, as she did so often when she was with him, wished there was some way she could help ease his grief over losing his wife.

Putting down the pruning scissors, Alex stepped back and inspected the tree’s silhouette and, satisfied, set to picking up the clippings and tiny leaves he’d just cut off.

“Uncle Alex?” she called out softly.

He turned. The sadness etched on his face only lasted a few seconds before he pulled the curtain on his emotions and his expression returned to the equanimity he usually exhibited. Her aunt had once told her that Alex was so successful in business because he was a master of deception. “He can hide everything he’s thinking so no one knows what he’s doing. Even me. And I must say it’s very disconcerting.”

“Is it time to go?” he asked. “I’m very much looking forward to this.”

Fifteen minutes later, as they walked around the Albert Rand gallery, Rachel was glad she’d agreed to come. It would have been a shame to miss this private showing of master drawings that included a Tintoretto, a Raphael and the prize: a Michelangelo sketch.

Even the sophisticated upper echelons of the art world who often paid little attention to what hung on the walls at an opening were swooning over these rare finds that had come from an estate and were being seen by the public for the first time in more than a hundred years.

She stood in front of the Michelangelo, studying the rough drawing of a hunched-over naked man, his back to the artist in a pose that seemed a premonition of one of the slave sculptures.

“It’s amazing, isn’t it?” Harrison said, coming up behind her, putting his arm around her waist and pulling her into him. She hadn’t known he was going to be there, and now shivering with erotic tension, she leaned back against him, feeling that conflicting excitement and fear that he produced in her.

“Treasures like this, which have been hidden away for so long, have a special aura surrounding them. It’s almost as if they are animated, they know that finally they are being seen and they shine-like you do. What a pleasant surprise to see you here, Rachel.”

She turned around and smiled at him. “I didn’t know you’d be here, either.”

“Did you come by yourself?”

“No, I’m with my uncle.”

She wasn’t sure but she thought that Harrison’s eyes narrowed slightly at her uncle’s name. That didn’t really surprise her. Despite the pleasantries they’d shown each other the first time she saw them together at the Metropolitan Museum of Art that first night, both men, in private, had made it clear to her how much they disliked and distrusted the other. It was yet one more complication that troubled her.

Harrison looked at the drawing again, not aware of her consternation. His sensitivity and devotion to art was one of the reasons she found him attractive.

“Think about it, before tonight, for more than a hundred years this drawing was a secret that almost no one knew existed.”

Rachel felt the first stirring of friction as the humming began and the terra cotta of the artist’s crayon spiked into oranges and yellows and reds and crimson curls that fanned out into an arc of colors that pulled her into its current. The noises in the room faded away. She felt as if she were getting smaller and smaller, almost disappearing. Nothing here was translating into there, except for one feeling, the pressure of his arm around her waist.