Starry Nights (2 page)

I close my notebook and stuff it back into the bottom of my bag, amid the crinkled pages of homework that I've barely glanced at.

I carry the escapee back to its home on the wall and tuck it into its frame, as I have done before. The canvas stretches itself around the piece of fruit, making a sucking sound, like a slurp, then goes quiet. The peach is two-dimensional again.

A black cat rubs up against me.

“Meow,” she murmurs.

She swishes back and forth against my jeans, her chest rumbling on my calf as she purrs. No wonder this cat keeps company with Manet's
Olympia
; she is the feline form of that naked woman. Sometimes I think Olympia watches me too; I swear I have seen her eyes flick back and forth, following me as I walk from one end of her gallery to the other. She always stays put though, stretched out seductively on the white silken sheets of her painted bed.

“How did you make it all the way over here?” I say as I scoop up the cat and bring her back to her nearby home. With the fifth floor closed for a summerlong renovation, nearly all our art is camped out here on the main floor. “They say black cats are trouble. That you're a sign of trouble. Is that true?” I ask as I escort her to
the edge of the canvas. She is silky, luxurious to the touch. She meows one more time, but the sound is cut in half when she folds herself back into her regular pose—arched back, fierce yellow eyes, completely still.

Almost as if she never leaped out.

I hear soft footfalls from another gallery, the delicate sound of toes tucked into slippers twirling against hardwood floors. My heart speeds up. The dancers—they're gorgeous. I hurry across the hallway. Two dancers in white dresses, including the girl from that first night, have jetéd their way out of a Degas and are now spinning in dizzying circles. They make regular nighttime appearances now, and many others have joined them too. Last week, all the dancers here in the Musée d'Orsay, and a few musicians from an orchestra scene too, peeled away from the paint Degas rendered them in more than one hundred years ago and formed a ragtag, makeshift company to perform
Swan Lake
in the main gallery at midnight. The only thing missing was the male dancers to lift them up. No one painted them. The only men Degas painted were teachers or choreographers, and they never leave the art.

I half want to ask the ballerinas if they'd ever consider adding in a little underground music, maybe even something cool and modern, because I like the traditional as much as I like the avant-garde. I'd have them all do a more streetwise number some night, flash-mob style, down the steps in our main gallery. I could play deejay, cue up my iPod on a set of speakers, and blast some of my favorite tunes from an Internet station that broadcasts out of Brooklyn.

The dark-haired girl dances past me on the way back to her frame but stops short. She turns around, grins wildly, then spins en pointe, again and again, a bravura coda to the impromptu show.

She crashes, crumples to the floor.

I rush over to her and kneel down as she whimpers and cradles her foot. “Are you okay?”

She nods bravely.

“Let me help you,” I say. She leans against me, small and lithe, and I loop my arm underneath her. She stands up, wobbly at first, then sturdy again. I've never touched one of the dancers. I've never touched any of the painted people. She feels so real. Warm skin, beating heart. Like me, like life. I don't know what I expected, but then again, I never expected paintings to perform.

A loose tendril of her hair brushes my arm.

“Thank you,” she says, tucking the hair into its proper place. I help her into her frame, the canvas wrapping gently around her, sensitive to her wounded state.

The museum is still again.

Or maybe it's always been still.

Maybe it's all in my untamed imagination. It's not as if the dancers twirl during the day for our visitors, or even in the evenings for my mother. But for now, if my life is becoming a Dali landscape, I'm lucky that my mother runs the Musée d'Orsay. Our walls are filled with the prettiest paintings, the kind you long to see alive.

On my way out I catch the spot on the wall where we will hang a new painting soon.
The Girl in the Garden
will look stunning
there. It would look magnificent anywhere. It's a Renoir and it's been the most sought-after lost painting for more than one hundred years, a work of art collectors and historians around the world have salivated over. Every several years someone claimed to have seen it, spotted it in an antique shop, caught a glimpse of it at a flea market. But now it's been found. Now,
The Girl in the Garden
is coming here, and she'll be one of the final paintings I show on my tours. I've only seen photo reproductions, but to have her on our walls and become flesh at night …

I head out, saying good-bye to the security guards. The gray-haired one, Gustave, gives me a curt nod. He fiddles with a piece of copper wire and teardrop crystals that he bends and twists into a miniature sculpture. He is an artist too.

Aspiring
, I should say. Just like me.

“Your piece is coming together,” I say.

“Thanks.”

“See you tomorrow, Gustave.”

As the door closes behind me, I bring my palm to my nose. My hand smells like a peach. I am sure of that.

I walk home along the inky quiet of the Seine, listening to a California radio station, since they do cool new music in America way better than they do in France. After a few songs, I turn away from the water and wind through the streets to my neighborhood.

I push off my headphones when I hear a rubbery thud on concrete. Next, the back wheel of a bicycle pops up, perpendicular to the rough stones.

It is Simon. King of bike tricks, the unofficial star act of nighttime riders and skate rats in Saint-Germain-des-Prés, and this is his base camp outside a pair of popular cafés.

“Want to know what this move got me tonight?” Simon's back on two wheels now, his feet planted on each side of the fire-enginered frame of the bike that's far too small for him, especially since he is insanely tall to start with.

Simon and I met at school several years ago and discovered a shared penchant for hijinks. One afternoon when we were both thirteen, Simon found a stash of cheap plastic Eiffel Tower replicas hidden under a blanket near the river, so we grabbed berets and baguettes and did our best to look like forlorn young boys who had to peddle tourist trinkets just to buy bread for the family. Never mind that poor French boys wouldn't have berets or baguettes. We made a killing the next few days outside the Eiffel Tower. Pretty much every American mother buying a tchotchke paid us double because we didn't seem like street scammers, like all the other “salesmen” waggling cheap silver, gold, and copper tower replicas in the faces of tourists.

But our fellow countrymen were none too happy. We'd infringed on the turf of some Algerians, and they ran us off their patch of sidewalk, telling us they'd track down our mommies if we ever tried to horn in on their trade again.

“What did your move score you?” I ask.

Simon executes a quick fishtail on the cobbled street. “The phone number from one of a pair of lovelies here tonight. The one with the long hair may have been custom made for your friend Simon.”

“Really?”

“Her name is Lucy, and she is tall, hot, and totally witty. The other I'll save for you.”

“Aren't you generous. I suppose she is the wicked stepsister?”

“No. The other one, Emilie, she's just kind of shy. But she's a dancer, so maybe I'll just take both at the same time.”

“Have fun with them. I better get on home. My mom will have a fit if I'm any later.”

“Wait,” Simon says, and for a moment he is nervous. “Um, I have a date with her Friday night. With Lucy. I need you to think of something really interesting for us to do.”

“Right, because I'm what? A social organizer? A date planner?” I joke, though there's some truth to it, because fun and games are the only subjects I've ever excelled at.

“Because you're the creative one, idiot,” Simon informs me.

“And you're the charming one. Or so you think.”

“See! That's why the ladies love us. We can make it a foursome. I'll see if her friend can come along,” Simon calls out as he wheels off toward his favorite set of steps, and I turn down the quiet lamp-lit street that leads to the only place I've ever lived.

When I'm inside my home, my mother shuts the door behind me and motions to the kitchen, where we can talk freely. My father must be asleep. He's a professor, and he has an early morning class tomorrow.

“I have something for you,” she announces, barely able to conceal the sneaky smile on her face. I pretend to look behind her back as if she's hiding something.

She shakes her head and tsk-tsks me. “You know the rules.”

I sigh. I do know the rules. I hate the rules. “I left my paper at school.”

“Well, what kind of grade did you get on it?”

“An average one. Like usual. What's this thing you have for me?”

“Don't you worry, young man. It's something you'll want. Are you going to pass your literature class this year?”

“I'm doing my best.”

She scoffs. “Your best? That is rarely enough when it comes to academic endeavors, Julien.”

I'm never good enough—I wasn't good enough for Jenny, I'm not a good enough artist, and as for school, I'm barely good enough to pass. It tires me, sometimes, my own mere adequacy. “And on that note, I think I'll just head to my room and spend some time with my friends from Brooklyn.”

This rankles my mother, as she hates my music with such passion I swear she wishes the Internet were never invented. Bands like Dirty Cat and Protracted Envy are screechy and scratchy, she likes to say. I tell her Mozart is too, even though I don't believe that.

I walk off, but she calls me back. “It's the Renoir.”

I stop in my tracks, and my heart dares to beat faster, betraying me. The prospect of the Renoir is more powerful than ticking off my mother. “What do you mean?”

“I mean, if you actually get your homework done, Julien, then you can see the
The Girl in the Garden
before anyone else does.”

I turn around. “But it's not coming to the museum for a few weeks, I thought.” I've been eagerly tracking the painting's journey since it resurfaced last month, just a few days after I cut the padlock. The collectors are a couple in Montmartre who run a high-fashion line, and their family had sheltered the painting for more than a century. They reached out to my mother and told her that
the Musée d'Orsay was the only place they wanted it hung. It's a gift to the museum. Quite the present, indeed.

“It's not. But you can see it tomorrow if …”

“If what?” I ask, though I know what's coming. Because the rule is this—if I pass all my classes, then I'm
allowed
to spend my evenings at the museum. Most parents would be thrilled if their kid wanted to hang out at a museum. But I'm the freak, the boy who actually craves the company of paintings, so my insidious genius of a mother uses all-hours access as a carrot for better grades.

“If you're doing well enough in literature. Then you can see it.”

“I'll bring home the Molière paper tomorrow.”

“Good. I have some final documents to review with them anyway. But just wait till you see the painting, Julien.” She places her palm against her chest, as if the memory of the painting is too much. “It's the most beautiful Renoir I've ever seen. You will be in love. I know you. You're just like me. You fall hard.”

I am like her in that way, but I don't have the other pieces she has. I'm not book smart, and I don't have the ability to apply theory or rigor to that love. Some days I think I'd be better off just hanging with the street artists who ply their trade by the river. Some of their work isn't half bad. Like this young guy Max who sketches hilarious drawings of tourists on the steps outside the museum most afternoons.

My mother reaches inside her purse on the counter and roots around until she finds what she's looking for. “I almost forgot.” She hands me a small white ceramic creature with brown spots. It's a calf, but a five-legged one. Renoir once said the idea of women
painters was as ridiculous as five-legged calves. It's a shame that he was such an amazing artist but not exactly what you'd call an equal opportunist. “From the collectors. A gift for you.”

I narrow my eyes at the calf. “That's weird. Why are they giving this to me?”

My mother shrugs. “I don't know, but I need to get to bed. I have an early meeting with the restorers. They're coming to look at that portrait, the one that had that little bit of sun damage. I need to get it fixed before it goes to the joint exhibit at the Louvre,” she says, referring to a different Renoir, a picture of two young girls playing a piano that started to fade several weeks ago. I noticed the damage first and alerted my mother. The restorers are the best, though. I'm sure they'll fix it in time for the exhibit at our sister museum.

She returns to her room. I inspect the calf out of curiosity. The fifth leg—a shrunken baby leg hanging from its back—has a small cap for a hoof. I take the cap off and a bit of silvery powder with the consistency of confectionary sugar tumbles free.

I shake the calf more, but it's empty now.

Strange. Why would they want me to have a ceramic five-legged calf? Simply as an inside joke?

I place the cap back on and drop the calf into my backpack, then take out my notebook. I grab half a chicken sandwich from the refrigerator and eat as I flick through my drawings. I stop at the one I drew the night before, Olympia's cat. My sketch is technical and precise, worthy of nothing more than an entry in a cat guidebook someday. Veterinarians might even coo over its
lifelike contours and shapes. I study it to see if I could maybe have drawn it a different way, a subtler way, to make the cat seem more … I don't know … enchanting. I run my index finger across the cat's head, but no ideas come to me. I close the notebook, tuck it into my backpack, and head to my room.