Starry Nights (14 page)

“She dances in the galleries. Makes a beautiful Odette,” I say casually, then I realize my mistake.

“Dances in the galleries?”

I wave a hand to dismiss my gaffe, and now I'm the one whose ears are probably turning red. “After a while, the art seems to come alive,” I say, as if it's just one of life's many made-up things. “You spend a lot of time in one place, and, well, you know how it goes.”

She nods thoughtfully and takes another sip. Then she returns to the issue. “So really, Julien. How did you know her name?”

I improvise. “It must have been in one of the catalogues. The descriptions of the art, you know?”

“Sure.” My answer makes perfect sense, more sense than the truth.

“Sometimes I wish I wasn't related to her,” she says, and I hear the faintest notes of music again, like the time we were at the café in Montmartre. I glance around, looking for the sound.

“Why?”

“It's too much pressure. I'll never live up to it.”

“Do you hear that?”

“Hear what?”

“It sounds like flutes. You haven't heard them at all?” I point in the general direction of the ceiling, even though the music is, more precisely, surrounding Emilie.

“No, but is the music pretty at least?” She sounds amused.

“Very much so. Why do you think you won't live up to her?” I ask, and now the music starts to form a score I recognize from the many times my parents have played it. It's
Sleeping Beauty
. I could hunt for the source of the music, but I'm pretty sure I'll never find it, because Emilie is the source. “Because I'm awful. I'm rehearsing right now for—”

“
Sleeping Beauty,
” I answer, and as if lightning struck the sky, I understand why I hear music with her. It's like last night when I saw how Gustave could finish his piece. That's what he needed—a final touch of inspiration. With Emilie, she seems to need confidence. I only hear the music when she's feeling insecure. Like the day I met her in Montmartre, my words of encouragement seem to be what she needs. They're her inspiration. This must be how I
work
as a human muse. It's a heady thought and a humbling one too.

“How did you do that again? How did you know?”

“Just a guess,” I say.

“Really?” She narrows her eyes, in a faux inspectorly way, then wags a finger at me. “Or did you just know that's the next ballet on our calendar?”

“That must have been it. I'm sure I read it somewhere. I'd love to come see it. I bet you'll even win a solo,” I say, and the flutes stroll away.

“I'm trying out for one.” Emilie's shoulders relax, and she smiles. “And thank you for saying that. For some reason, I always feel so much better about my dancing after I talk to you.”

“I'm glad. You should feel good about your dancing.”

“Will you come to the performance?”

“Name the time. I'm there.”

She gives me a time and a date a few weeks from now. We finish our coffee and say good-bye. On the way back to the museum my phone rings. I answer, and Bonheur says hello in a cheery voice.

“Hey. What's going on?”

“Now, don't shoot the messenger here, but I'm only calling because the Muses want to know how everything is going with
The Girl in the Garden
.”

I scoff. “Really? The Muses want to know? Did they send you an e-mail? Or hire a skywriter?”

“I wish it were either of those options. But it's terribly prosaic. They just write on paper and leave it in the basement.”

“Oh, well of course,” I say as I head up the steps to the museum.

“So, the girl in it,” Bonheur presses on. “They want to know how she is.”

“Tell them she's fine,” I say as I wave to the guard at the reserved entrance. He lowers the ropes and lets me through. “Tell them she's great. Oh, and Bonheur?”

“Yes?”

“Tell them I appreciate their concern,” I say with a smile, because I'm getting a wicked kick out of the the things the Muses tell Bonheur and his sister.

I bound down the steps to the main floor, but then stop short when I smell that rose perfume, thick and heavy. I turn around, and I see Max walking to the door, slightly out of sync, as if he's hijacked his own body. I get a good look at his hands; they're
curled up again into the cuffs of a long-sleeved shirt. My chest tightens. I know the museum is open to the public, I know anyone can come in if he pays for a ticket, but I don't take any comfort in that knowledge. I doubt he is here to admire the art. He must have been casing the joint.

But I have no idea why.

My mother pulls the door to her office closed. She has tears in her eyes. She'll never let on in front of her coworkers that she cries. “It's Gabrielle. The sun damage. Her painting has it now too.”

My heart falls at the news.

“Her shawl,” she continues, a hitch in her throat. “And it's not just us now. The piano girls are fading even more at the Louvre. And I heard from Boston today.
Dance at Bougival
is having problems too. It's like the Renoirs are turning into faded knockoff prints hanging in malls.”

I wish I could say something calming, I wish I knew how to solve the problem with the art. I'm a muse. I should know what to do. But I haven't a clue. Could the curse on Clio's painting have brought this into the museum? I hope not. I can't stand the thought of losing her if her painting is somehow infecting others. But that can't be the case. The Renoirs started to fade several weeks ago, well before Clio arrived here. She can't be making the art sick, not the Renoirs, nor the pictures at the Louvre.

“You really didn't notice anything in
Gabrielle
?”

I take a deep breath and opt for the truth. “I thought the shawl
looked pale yesterday, but then Max came by with the claims about
The Girl in the Garden
and I honestly forgot about it. I'm sorry.”

She purses her lips together and nods, as if she's forgiving me for the slipup.

“I understand. But I need your eyes, Julien. I need you to conduct a thorough investigation of all the Renoirs now. You're the one who first noticed the problem with the piano girls several weeks ago, so please let me know if you see anything else like this in our other paintings.”

“I will,” I tell her, and head off on my latest mission, taking little comfort in finally understanding why I can see the outbreak before anyone else does. After I've combed the floors, I've found trouble brewing in another Renoir, and I alert my mother that another one of our masterpieces may be the next one to fade away.

She groans and drops her head into hands. I feel bad too, but mostly I feel selfish that I'm glad it's not happening to Clio's painting yet.

I'm free for the rest of the day, so I take off for the Louvre to see what's up with that lemon.

It is June, so there are crowds everywhere, and visitors are ogling the usual suspects, the Venus de Milo, works by Italian Renaissance Old Masters, and of course, the most popular resident of any museum anywhere. The
Mona Lisa
. It is a zoo every hour of every day by her frame. Flocks of visitors hold their phones high over their heads to take pictures of the woman behind the glass, the photographic evidence like some kind of hunting trophy to show their friends online that they were at the Louvre.

Truth be told, I'm not even a fan of that painting. It's small and it's ordinary and it's much ado about nothing. But none of those works are on my agenda. I head straight for the
Interiors
exhibit to check out the vanishing act conducted by de Heem's lemon.

Quickly, I locate the small frame that spit up its insides last night.

If you didn't know what you were looking for, you might miss
it in this pint-size postcard of a painting. But what I'm looking for is indeed gone, as advertised by Gustave's buddy. The lemon that's usually perched near the edge of a table, with a rind half peeled and the insides glistening tartly, is missing. It's as if it were never there at all, and now that space has been filled in by a blackish-brown paint, the same shade as the table.

The true test comes next.

I turn to an American pair of travelers standing next to me. Two sisters, I surmise, in their fifties or sixties. I shift to English. “Excuse me. This may seem like a strange question, but do you see a lemon right there?” I point to the spot the lemon used to occupy.

One of the ladies laughs. “Is that a trick question? There's no lemon in that painting at all.”

Something has changed in the last few days. I'm no longer the only one who can see the shifts in the art here. But I'm the only one who can see Clio; I'm the only one who can see any of the art coming alive at the Musée d'Orsay. So why can others now see these paintings here in their newer, stranger state, as well as the fading Renoirs?

I hurry to the other galleries. I find the Ingres first. The drooping feathers in the odalisque's peacock fan aren't hanging over the canvas anymore. Most are missing, like a rat burrowed into the feathers and gobbled some up, leaving behind a fan half the size. I locate the Titian next; the woman inside is checking out her reflection in a mirror that's cracked down the middle. The tiny fissure has now stretched its way across the entire mirror. I strike up a casual conversation with a couple next to me.
The woman has crazy, curly hair and I think she might be that singer Emilie told me about.

“Funny, how she's looking at herself in a cracked mirror, isn't it?” I say.

I hold my breath as I wait for a response. The woman cocks her head to the side. “You know, that
is
ironic, isn't it?” She grabs the guy's arm and shows him the mirror. “Look at that.”

I'm about to leave, but I have to ask. “Jane Black, right?”

She smiles and nods.

“Love your music.” Then I'm off.

Bathsheba is next on my itinerary, and she's morphed too. No longer is her belly pooching out over the frame. Instead, her stomach is smaller, as if a plastic surgeon stopped by and gave the fleshy figure a nip tuck.

“That's one sexy biblical figure.” The remark comes from a young German guy ogling the Rembrandt. “I don't remember her being such a babe, but she's got a rocking bod.”

I run both my hands through my hair, pushing my palms hard against my scalp. Bathsheba has a rocking bod?

Sure, most people aren't aware that the paintings are morphing, but for the first time, others can see what I see. The trouble is, we're gazing at art that's on the cusp of turning ill.

I start to leave when I spot a tiny Band-Aid on the floor of the gallery underneath Bathsheba's frame. I bend down to pick it up so I can toss it out, but I nearly recoil at its touch. It's not a Band-Aid. It's a sliver of dried flesh, a hardened bit from the belly of a work of art.

I suck in my breath and get the hell out.

When I'm mayor of this fine, fetid city someday, I'm going to pass an ordinance so there are dog bags on every corner,” Simon says as we sidestep a pile the owner of the miniature poodle in front of us should have cleaned up. It's later in the afternoon, and he's got his first field report.

“I'm totally voting for you. For that reason alone.”

“Really? You don't care about my economic or social platform? And all my great reforms planned?”

“Nah. You had me at dog bags. What else does a politician need to impress his constituents?”

We're walking down a narrow stretch of sidewalk, bound on one side by a boarded-up old bakery and on another by a store with red lights and black windows that's only open at night. This is Pigalle. The overly optimistic say it's an up-and-coming neighborhood. The realistic say it's trashy. All I care about is what
Simon says, and that's that Pigalle is where Max Broussard lives.

“So listen, Lucy keeps asking me about Emilie. She has this fantasy we're all going to be a foursome or something.”

“Ooh, a fantasy foursome. Hold me back.”

“You know how girls are. She wants us all to do something.”

“Maybe she just doesn't want to hang out with you alone.”

Simon stops and turns around. “You know, I think I'd be content to not show you where Broussard lives.”

“I'm kidding.” We keep walking. “Anyway, Emilie stopped by my tour this morning. Invited me to a performance.”

“See! I knew it. She's into you too. Lucy's going to be so happy.”

“Yeah, but it's not like that.”

“Why not? She's a dancer. You need to be all over that.”

Call me crazy, but for some reason I don't think telling Simon
she's only into me because I inspire her to dance
is going to fly.