Masque of Moonlight and Shadows by Darragh Metzger SMASHWORDS EDITION * * * PUBLISHED BY: TFA Press on Smashwords Masque of Moonlight and Shadows Copyright © 2005, 2011 by Darragh Metzger Lyrics from Easy To Love used with permission from the Cole Porter Estate, 2006 Smashwords Edition License Notes This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with. If you're reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then you should return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the author's work. * * * Masque of Moonlight and Shadows Conrad rubbed the side of his nose with one callused knuckle. "Eh...not terribly certain that's quite the look you're going for, Tiff." Tiffany's gaze flickered from her own reflection — or, rather, that of the exotic black and silver mask she held in front of her face in her dressing table mirror — to his, without moving her head. "I haven't decided what look I'm going for, yet. I am a work in progress." Dylan, lounging on her bed with a proprietary ease that, under the circumstances, Tiffany thought a bit presumptuous, laughed. "Conrad, old boy, our Tiff must be properly packaged and presented. Personally, I approve of moving away from the ingénue look. Something a bit more sultry, a touch of Jean Harlow. I haven't painted her that way yet." Conrad scowled and bit the end of his finger, sitting on the very edge of the lounge chair as if afraid of being ensnared by its comfort. His cuticles would be a mess by the time they arrived at the masque, and his manicurist would have a fit tomorrow. Really, Tiffany didn't know why he bothered. "Everyone tries to look like Jean Harlow," he said around a well-gnawed fingertip, "including Jean Harlow, and frankly the world is becoming overpopulated with slightly tarnished sirens. Your own look is far more appealing, and it's what everyone will expect. The girl they see in all Dylan's paintings." Tiffany dimpled at him in the mirror, laid down the black and silver mask, and held the rose-pink rhinestone mask with the fringe of dyed marabou feathers in front of her face. It made her eyes look much larger, and almost indigo blue. Summer evening eyes. Then, of course, Conrad had to ruin it. "Anyway, you'd still look more like Mary Pickford playing Jean Harlow." That made Dylan laugh again, and Tiffany slapped the mask down in exasperation. She glared at his reflection, then at her own. Her platinum blonde hair, carefully crimped into the latest style, gleamed like metal in the soft, pink light of the dresser lamp. Her earlier niggling doubt resurfaced; the style really didn't belong with her face. It made her look like a kewpie-doll with a helmet. Try as she might, she could never see the ethereal, luminous creature Dylan captured on canvas so well. She'd seen herself disguised as Persephone, Gwenivere, Maid Marian, a nymph, an angel, a fairy, and any number of strange, unearthly, half-girl-half-animal or half-tree or half-flower creatures — even once as a reflection of a sunrise cast on a cloud formation — but she'd never seen herself the way Dylan seemed to. The girl in the paintings that had catapulted Dylan to his current level of fame and fortune, and bestowed upon her a certain amount of celebrity of her own, was nothing like the girl in the mirror. But then, it wasn't as if she knew the girl in the mirror particularly well, either. She grimaced to herself and picked up the masks again. Best to get on with the task of picking one and hiding behind it for the evening. Spring in Venice was for laughter, for wild parties, hot jazz, and cold champagne, but it was really not well suited to introspection. A gust of laughter mixed with the distant whine of a clarinet drifted to her from outside; she'd left the French doors to the balcony open, and the sounds of Venice at play already rode the evening air. Orange blossoms and a dizzying array of cooking herbs and spices competed with the normal essence-de-sewáge of the canals. She wrinkled her small nose and looked over at the doors with a sigh. "Oh, dear, it's getting late. I suppose I have to decide on something." She threw a hopeful look at Dylan. "I don't suppose I can just skip this one, can I?" "Absolutely not." Dylan sat up and cocked a stern eyebrow at her — playfully, of course, because Dylan was never serious about anything but his art, and even that only sometimes — and smoothed his already immaculate dark hair. "Everyone who's anyone will be there. They've all been to my show, and they've all bought paintings, and the ones that haven't, will after tonight — if my lovely muse is on my arm. Anyway, the Porters will be there, and the Berlins, and you know that means Cole and Irv will be playing everything they've ever written, trying to outperform one another all night. You'll love that." "As long as they let other people sing for them." Tiffany pouted at him and picked up the black and silver mask with a sigh. "I know, I know: it's all part of the game. It's my task to make you fabulously rich and famous, so you can make me fabulously rich and famous, and Conrad—" "I'm already fabulously rich." Conrad rose and tugged his jacket into place. "And fame will just have to continue to elude me." He smiled, a genial curve of girlishly full lips, but it didn't entirely warm the cool depths of his pale eyes. "Face it, my darlings, you're doomed to being fashionable. Enjoy it while it lasts. Anyway, Mussolini will probably outlaw you eventually." Dylan chuckled and rose, dropping his hands on Tiffany's shoulders as he moved behind her. Tiffany pretended great interest in the contested masks. Poor Conrad; he'd slipped from the center of Dylan's universe to a sort of elliptical orbit, and he still didn't know quite how, or what to do about it. Poor Tiffany is in no better position, of course, she admitted. She and Conrad: the two of them spun around Dylan, hopelessly caught up in his orbit and bound by the power of his talent. She the poor nobody he'd made into an icon, Conrad the wealthy nobody he'd used to open the doors of the even wealthier. Well, it could be worse. She could still be penniless, stranded and adrift in Paris, Conrad could be his father's greatest disappointment, and Dylan...Dylan could still be Conrad's beautiful, talented house pet, his strange landscapes and fantastic creatures decorating the walls of their bedroom. She glanced up through her lashes at Dylan's reflection, hovering above hers in the mirror, his large, heavy-lidded eyes studying her with focused intensity, already seeing, not her, but the she-image he would project onto canvas. She chastised herself for her uncharitable thoughts. Dylan's talent would surely have brought him to the notice of the critics by now, even without her image to give his art theme and form. And what would happen to her when he realized that? Dylan squeezed her shoulders and lowered his head until it was level with hers to smile at her reflection. "Wear the black and silver," he said, his eyes, bright and blue as a spring morning, dancing with mischief. "Everyone will be expecting my peach blossom and sunlight girl. Instead, they'll see you all in moonlight and shadows, black leaves and winter frost, and wonder who you are and will spend all night until the unmasking ogling you trying to figure it out. It will be a sensation." She raised her carefully plucked eyebrows. "And what will you be wearing?" Dylan straightened and placed one hand on his breast. "I shall be Pierrot, of course. I look positively dashing in white." Tiffany glanced in confusion at the black and silver confection of beaded silk hanging on the door of her wardrobe, beside the salmon-pink ruffled satin Dylan had just officially rejected. "But...no one is going to recognize that as Columbine. Or even Pierrette." "Say you're Brighella," suggested Conrad. Tiffany eyed his reflection; blond, broad-shouldered, baby-faced, never looking quite comfortable in dinner jackets. Or anything else. "And you? What does that leave you?" "Arlechino, of course. I think the white ruffled collar will suit him." Dylan cast his wicked smile over his shoulder at his long-time lover. "Or would you rather be Scaramouche?" Conrad reddened. Tiffany took pity on him. Or maybe it was simply the mental picture of Conrad in clown white with a ruff. "I think Scaramouche is a better fit. And I just replaced the plume on the hat." Conrad gave her one of those odd, Conrad-y sort of looks she could never quite interpret. "Your wish is my command, O lady of moonlight and shadows." Dylan grinned and dropped a kiss on her shoulder; it warmed her skin through the thin silk of her dressing gown. "We'll leave you to it, Tiff, and go make ourselves worthy to be seen with you. Will half-an-hour do?" "I'll have a boat waiting," Conrad said over his shoulder as the two swept out the door. Tiffany picked up the black and silver mask and turned it around to study it. It was beautifully wrought; a delicate frieze of black fabric leaves edged in lacey silver frost. Dead leaves, winter-killed. She shivered, wondering what had made her buy it in the first place. She and Dylan and Conrad lived in a world of eternal summer; why on earth bring up the ugly reality that summers always ended, leaves always withered, and flowers always died? From outside, the clarinet's plaintive lament rose in volume, underscored by a moaning saxophone. She could just hear a man's voice through the instrumental cover; something Gershwin-ish. A somewhat loose interpretation of the melody, but that was to be expected. She rose and crossed to the French doors, peering out over the canal. A boat filled with musicians, a short, rather swarthy young man in a white suit, and a grinning boatman approached, the prow gently slicing the thick, brownish water into manageable chunks. From the balcony next door, a bevy of lovely socialites laughed and toasted the singer with raised glasses as he passed beneath them. He returned their smiles with a flash of brilliantly white teeth and a graceful salute as he ended his song. Then he glanced up and saw her; at once, the instruments softened, falling into a new melody. It took Tiffany a moment to recognize the opening stanzas of Cole Porter’s Easy to Love, sung in only slightly accented English. She stopped her automatic recoil and pulled her lips into a smile of positively diabetic sweetness. There was, after all, no need to be churlish in the face of slavish adoration. Even if it was becoming more than a little tiresome. She blew her latest admirer a kiss, then stepped back and pulled the curtains together with a sniff. This was probably Dylan's doing anyway. He'd gleefully seized on the song when it appeared last year, treating it like a private joke between them. Think of it as our song, Tiff. Our anthem. She had no idea how to tell him it wasn't really funny. She returned to her dressing table and picked up her cake of mascara. One more coat should do it. She didn't usually wear much, but the dress called for it. She had to hurry; half an hour really wasn't much time, and, virtually alone among her peers, Conrad actually meant thirty minutes when he said half-an hour. The song drifted through the gauze of the curtains. "...You'd be so easy to love So easy to idolize all others above..." The boat must have stopped beneath her balcony. She pressed her lips together and concentrated on getting her eyelashes to attain the consistency of cardboard. No time to dally. Thankfully, she already had her stockings on. "...So sweet to awaken with So nice to sit down to eggs and bacon with..." Time for the dress. She'd have to be careful not to snag her hair on— "...That it does seem a shame That you can't see your future with me 'Cause you'd be oh, so easy to love..." Finally: the last line. She breathed a sigh of relief, even though she was really trying very hard not to listen. But the clarinet, repeating the last verse, sent notes floating hopefully behind her, begging for her attention like a puppy while the dark and alien dress slithered down over her skin. It finally gave up just as she slid her feet into the matching shoes, but the saxophone took up the refrain with smoky enthusiasm as she donned the mask. "This is really much too much," she said to herself, to Dylan, to no one. She turned toward the balcony, intending to convince the serenaders to move on. Across the room, a woman swathed in swirling darkness stepped toward her, stopping her. "Oh," she gasped, hand flying to her face in surprise. Only as the other woman did the same did Tiffany realize the wardrobe door had swung open, putting the mirror almost in her path. She lowered her hand and took a step closer, then another. She knew she should feel foolish, letting herself be surprised like that, staring at herself this way, but she could not take her eyes from the image facing her. Garbed in winter midnight, the woman in the mirror moved in a halo of stars. Hoarfrost glittered in her hair, her skin, edged the blackened leaves that seemed less a mask than something revealed, the captured expression of an elemental. She paused in mid-step, made a graceful pirouette ending in silent stillness, while wisps of black silk floated around her, drifting into place like the strands of a spider web, frost-touched. The saxophone coaxed from beneath the balcony, the words forming beneath the notes in Tiffany's mind. …so easy to idolize all others above… "I see now," Tiffany breathed, and the woman in the mirror mouthed the words back at her, a secret smile lurking at the corner of her lips. They sang the last line to each other. "'Cause you'd be oh, so easy to love" Dylan would paint this woman, many times and in many forms. The woman in the paintings was eternal, and eternally her. "Let the masque begin," she said, and turned toward the knock on her door. * * * Author's Note: Every year, the Fairwood Writers Group has a "Christmas/Holliday Challenge," where all members come up with a short story to be read aloud at the Christmas party. The length is anywhere from 1500-2000 words, and we randomly select 2 or 3 characteristics that the stories all have to have in common. Eventually, we added a Halloween Challenge. In 2005, the 3 elements were: a mask, dead leaves, and music. If you enjoyed this story, you might also enjoy other works by Darragh Metzger at: www.TFAPress.com