[This is a completed five-chapter novellete, with chapters posting twice a week and the work completed posting by the end of the third week in February 2011]
It surprised me later that I'd seen the white Bentley convertible with the tan leather top before I focused on him. When I did see him standing there, smiling at me, trying to get a good look at the canvas on my easel, all I could think was "Nice coat." I don't know when I'd last seen a man wearing a full-length mink coat before—or even woman—but he wore it well—naturally, as if by right, which I guess it was, since he was probably one of the richest men in Virginia.
I'd come up to Ravens Roost to be alone. The Sunday Washington Post's Travel Section had said that the leaves on the Skyline Drive would be starting their peak period on Wednesday, so I knew if I was going to get any painting done without tourists at my elbows I needed to get up here by today, Tuesday. Thankfully, the weather had cooperated. The sun was shining and the temperature wasn't too cold or humid to mess with my paints.
I figured if I drove up to the top of the Blue Ridge at Afton from Waynesboro and headed south on the Blue Ridge Parkway rather than north on the Skyline Drive, I'd avoid nearly all of the early leaf spotters coming down from Washington on the drive. And until the man in the mink coat rolled up in his Bentley at the Ravens Roost overlook looking west through the Torrey Ridge and down into the Shenandoah Valley, I'd been right.
It was one of my favorite spots, especially since it presented me with a conundrum. I could get the landscape, which changed dramatically by season up here, just right whenever I came up here. But I couldn't capture the birds. They were ever in motion, and that's the way I liked them—the ravens and hawks soaring on the updrafts and nesting in the nooks and crannies of the sheer lichen-covered gray cliff faces under the overlook and behind it and beyond the asphalt of the parkway. It was the soaring motion of the birds that I wanted to capture. But thus far it had eluded me. And I still found myself telling anyone at the art fairs asking me about the canvases painted up here that I appreciated their kind comments about capturing the Blue Ridge mountain scapes just right, but that I still hadn't managed to capture the soaring of the birds here at Ravens Roost.
"Yes," I heard him speak softly from behind me in a well-modulated, educated voice—something foreign in Virginia anywhere but here at the western edge of the Piedmont, where the old families of Central Virginia still did the European tour and brought home British spouses.
I turned and raised my eyebrow. My paint brush, loaded with just the right mix of red and orange and yellow, hovered over the canvas.
"Oh, I'm sorry, I didn't mean to disturb you. But I stopped at the overlook because the way the sun hit the trees on the slope over there made them shimmer with fiery earth tones. And I see here that you have captured them perfectly on canvas."
"Thank you," I said and turned back to the canvas, trying to remember just where I had wanted to apply the paint. I wanted to be irritated by his snapping of my concentration, but I found that my mind was torn between capturing the perfect play of the light before it flitted away and wanting to concentrate on him. I would have thought that a man in a fur coat and a Bentley would be entirely out of his element up here at the top of Blue Ridge, but he seemed in complete comfort and control, as if he was the proprietor and perhaps it was I who was the interloper. This despite this having been a special spot for me for the two years since I had descended from New York, where the business of life had been stifling and sucking the very life out of my creativity. I had thought I was a cityscape artist. But I had been wrong. I found myself entirely at home in the quiet elegance of the Shenandoah Valley.
With a sigh, as a cloud floated across the sun, changing the light on the slope of the Torrey Ridge to something as interesting as what I was painting—but something far different from what I was painting—I lowered the paintbrush and covered the paint-loaded tip with an oil rag.
"I am mortified," he said in a voice that sounded genuinely contrite. "I have ruined your painting. I see that the light has changed."
"No matter," I answered. "It's in my memory. Some artists work from photographs. I find I need the dimensions of working from real life—and that I can retain that in my mind."
I surprised myself. I normally would, in fact, have been quite angry with the interruption. I had purposely chosen my day for optimum landscape color and minimum interference. But he intrigued me. I liked men. And he was quite an engaging specimen. He was tall and thin and what anyone would call distinguished looking, patrician even. I may have been swayed toward that from the Bentley and the fur coat anyway, but I imagine he'd convey the same impression in a business suit—although even there I couldn't think of anything less than Armani—or even jeans and a wool shirt. Ageless in appearance, he could be anything from his mid-to-late fifties, but would be described as very well preserved anywhere in this age range. If I had to peg a career, I'd guess men's high-fashion clothes designer. It was possible he was from inherited wealth and hadn't worked a day in his life, but there was something more substantial about his look that belied that assessment.
Then he was moving toward me, to position himself for a closer look at the painting, and the realization hit me by the way that he moved that he liked men. I don't know why, but that sent a chill of interest up my spine.
"Are you sure you can capture the light still?" he asked. I was touched that he seemed to be worried about that.
"Yes, I'm sure," I answered.
"Either way, please give me the privilege of first refusal on the painting when it's done. Are you from Charlottesville?"
"No, I live in the valley. There, just down there in Waynesboro. I like it. It's less like New York than Charlottesville."
"That's a surprise," he answered. "I don't find Charlottesville anything like New York."
"Not much," I admitted, and laughed. "But people, you know. Charlottesville is too popular. I can go over there for showings, but there already are too many people."
