Starry Nights (8 page)

Eventually the museum closes, and as Gustave and another security guard keep watch, I wander through the galleries, always returning to the glass front doors to see if night is falling. The sun sets late in the summer, and I want so badly to tug it down faster on the horizon.

Soon enough, I'm greeted by a darkening sky that sends a thrill through me. My cells have become anticipation as I return to her gallery, where I hear the rustle of a dress. There she is, stepping out of her frame; so natural, so effortless, as if she does this every single night. Her long cream dress skims the floor, and she shakes out her blond curls, a Botticelli beauty emerging from a half shell. Her hair is long and luxurious, and it begs to be touched, and held, and kissed. She doesn't realize I'm here watching her, as her paint becomes body. Now she is flesh, and shape, and skin, and breath, and life.

She turns around, and her eyes are on me for the first time. They are the fierce blue of revolution, the color of a rallying cry.

Then she speaks. “I'm awfully hungry.”

I slide into a conversation as if it were the next bend on a well-marked path in the woods. “It's probably been awhile since you had a bite to eat.”

“More than a hundred and thirty years,” she says, with a wry nod.

“I know where there's a great île flottante, but it's closed,” I say, thinking of the nearby café that serves the floating meringue in caramel.

“Maybe you can bring one tomorrow?”

“Sure. It's the best in the city.”

“I do love sweets.”

“Fortunately, we have plenty of those here in Paris,” I say, then I remember the sandwich from earlier. “I have half a sandwich in my bag.” I pat my backpack.

“Would you mind terribly? I mean, may I have it?”

“Of course. Absolutely.” I sit down on the wooden bench, and she sits next to me. I never take my eyes off her, not as I unzip the backpack, not as I unwrap the bread and cheese, not as I offer it to her. When the food reaches her lips, she rolls her eyes in pleasure.

“This hits the spot,” she says.

“I can bring a sandwich tomorrow too if you like. Do you have a favorite?”

“Anything. Anything is good.” Then she stops, holds up her index finger. “Actually,
everything
is good,” she adds, and there's
a ravenousness to her words, a hunger in her voice, and I don't think it's just for food.

“By the way, I'm Julien.” I offer my hand to shake. Her touch is a confirmation of so many things, most of all that I'm not mad, because she is as real as I'd imagined. She's not a trick of the mind. She's atoms and elements, she is absolute, from the hair that falls past her shoulders to the folds of her dress to the slim silver bracelets she wears, each one the width of a few links of thread.

“You can call me Clio.”

“Clio,” I say. Then again, because her name is like a bell, clear and pure. “Clio.”

“It's better like this, isn't it?”

“Yes, I would have to say it's better like this.”

She sighs deeply. “I'm free. I'm finally free.” Her voice breaks for a moment as if she might cry. But tears don't fall. “And it feels spectacular.” She leans her head back, like she's on a beach letting the sun warm her face. “Ah, you have no idea what all those years inside a painting will do to a girl.”

She stretches her arms up high, shifts her neck from side to side, then turns to me. Her gaze is a spark, a ride on a motorcycle after midnight, as her wild blue eyes light up as if she's about to suggest something naughty. “Would you like to show me this museum, Julien?”

Okay, maybe not
that
naughty. But it's the way she says it. Like nothing could be better than the two of us, nearly alone, in the Musée d'Orsay.

“I would love to show you this museum.”

We wander through the galleries, and I show her the art. She trails her hand along the canvases, brushing her fingertips across pasteled bathers on beaches, bowls of peaches, and moonlit stars, then tracing them over petals of flowers, Tahitian women on islands, and cabarets in Montmartre. I don't tell her to stop, I don't say “keep your hands off” as I would to anyone else who tried to touch the paintings. There is a reverence to her touch, as if she'd never even dare think of hurting a painting, as if she could only think of loving them. When she reaches one of Monet's Rouen cathedrals she stops to consider it.

“I want to go there. I want to see the real cathedral. Have you been?”

“Yes. My father teaches art history. He took me to a lot of the places the artists here painted. Rouen, Arles, even Monet's garden.”

Her eyes widen. “You've been to Monet's garden? The real one?”

I laugh once. “Yes, the real one. What other one would I go to?”

“What is it like now? Tell me.”

“It's like this sensory paradise of colors and scents and sounds. It's like art made real. It's like walking through a field of inspiration,” I say, then stop myself when I hear the words coming out of my mouth. “God, that sounds unbelievably pretentious, doesn't it?”

“No. It doesn't. It sounds …” Her voice trails off and she looks
again at the Monet. She lays her hand along the doorway of the church. “It sounds like something I'd want.”

The way she says “want” tugs on my heart. It's both wistful and painful, a wish from a girl who's been trapped for too long. Are the other people in the paintings trapped too? Something is different about Clio though. I've never talked to any of the other painted people this long. They've never said more than a few words, and none of them have ever seemed sad. She's not like them. I want to ask who she is, where she's from, but the moment is delicate and I don't want to break it.

“Do you want to see my favorite Van Gogh?”

“Yes,” she says, and she's smiling again, sparkling again. “I definitely want to see your favorite Van Gogh, Julien.”

The sound of my name on her lips makes me wants to touch her arm, to reach for her hand. I keep my hands to myself though—she wanted to come out of her frame, but I don't know if she wanted to come out for me or to be free of her painted chains.

I take her to the wing on the second floor that houses the Van Goghs and bring her to
Starry Night.
A couple walks along the River Rhône as starlight fills the night and sailboats bob in the water. Clio places a hand on her heart and closes her eyes briefly. When she opens her eyes, she reaches for the painting, her touch like a murmur on the waves.

“Have you been here?”

“Yes, Van Gogh painted this by the Rhône in Arles. But I don't remember going. I was too young when my dad took me there.”

Neither one of us says anything as we admire the painting. Then her body shifts. She moves closer to me. We're not touching, but being so near to her is intoxicating. “We'll go together someday then,” she says, and now she's looking at me.

A heady, swooping feeling races through me at the admission that maybe she likes me too. “Anytime, any day,” I say, though I know it would be impossible. She may be real, but she's still painted.

“Show me more.”

I do, and an hour or so later, she has seen haystacks and operas, mirrors and pheasants, doctors and patients. “You love them all,” she says to me when we stop near her gallery. It's almost midnight, and I hate that I have to go home.

I nod. “Yes. I do.”

She asks me another question. “You've been coming to see me, haven't you?”

“Did you see me? Could you see me?”

“You're the first thing I've been able to see or hear on the other side of the frame,” she says with both frustration and relief in her voice. “I saw you in that room. You heard me, right?”

“Yes,” I say, flashing back to Bonheur's house.

“I wanted to come out sooner.” There is so much longing in her voice. Longing for what could have been? For the years she missed? She moves closer to me, so we're both leaning against the wall, inches apart. “As soon as I saw you, I tried to get out. It was the closest I've ever come to getting out until now.”

“I'm glad you're able to come out now.”

“Me too. You're so different from anyone I've ever met. You asked questions about me. You talked to me.”

She is so straightforward, and it is an immense turn-on. Who was that Jenny from Pittsburgh? I don't remember. I don't care. There's never been another girl I've wanted as far as I can tell in this second.

“‘What are you like, girl behind the paint?' That's what you asked me.”

“You remember,” I say. I'm sure she's some sort of enchantress, and she has put me completely under her spell. “Who are you?”

“I told you my name. I'm just a sixteen-year-old girl.”

“No.
Who
are you?”

Her gaze dances away and then back at me as she grins. “Julien, do you want me to tell you
everything
about me on our first …” Her voice trails off, as if she doesn't know the word. “What do you call it these days?”

“Um, date? First date?” I offer, hoping that maybe she sees it the same way.

“First date. Why, yes. I like the sound of that. And are visits to the museum good first dates?”

“I would have to say this particular visit to the museum has been my favorite date.”

“And for me as well.”

I feel wobbly, but I manage to hang on to ask another question. “Where have you been for the last century?”

She points to the gallery where her gilded frame rests. “On the other side of that painting.”

We walk back. “What's on the other side?”

“Tulips and hollyhocks, pansies and irises.” Her voice is pure, her French is impeccable, but she doesn't have the accent of a native.

“You don't sound like you're from here.”

“You doubt my French?” She places a palm against her chest, as if I've offended her.

“Maybe a little.”

“Do you think I'm French?”

“I don't know what you are. Or who you are. Tell me where you're from,” I ask, seized by curiosity, by the thirst to know her more.

She shakes her head. “Come back tomorrow, please. Promise me?”

“I promise.”

She walks back to her painting and steps into the frame, pulling up the gauzy hem of her skirts last, the lace edges brushing against the painted irises until she is immobile once more.

Then I do something I have never done before. I touch the art. Not with my hands, like Clio did. If the forensic experts dusted this painting for fingerprints they wouldn't find mine; they'd find the barest outline of my lips.

I walk home in a hazy dream state, still feeling the faint traces of her so dangerously close to me, as if she's imprinted on my skin. And so I hardly notice, and I barely care, that there's a guy my age in jeans and a tattered sweatshirt sprawled out on the museum steps, watching me walk away.

“Look! The sheet is messy on Olympia's bed.” Clio points to the edge of the white satin sheet in Manet's
Olympia
. A small bit of white fabric is poking out of the canvas, hanging over the gilded frame.

I pretend to chide the painting. “I tell them to clean their rooms and put their toys away, but they don't listen to me. Ever.”

“May I do it?” Clio asks.

“Be my guest.”

She hands me the plastic takeout container with half of the île flottante still in it. The caramel had turned drizzly, and the meringue had sunk by the time Clio emerged. But still, she is digging the dessert. She gathers up the white folds of the sheet, and I tense for a second, hoping it doesn't remain stuck outside the canvas, like Bathsheba's belly. But the sheets take and Clio tucks them neatly back in. The art here behaves differently from the paintings at the
Louvre. The art here seems healthy. The art there didn't respond to my touch.

“There.” Clio brushes one palm against the other.

“Now I finally have someone to help me get all the paintings back in order.”

“Does this happen a lot?”

“The paintings are terribly lazy. They expect me to straighten up after them all the time.”

“It's more like they're playing, though?”

I nod. That's exactly how the paintings here act at night. “Yes. They seem to be having fun.”

“But you still pick up after them?”

“Of course. I always take care of the art.”

“You are a caretaker,” she says and takes another bite of the meringue, then offers some to me. I take the spoon from her and eat a piece. I don't like to be fed.

I hand the île flottante back to her, then look at my watch. I've got to be home by midnight. Darn curfew. “It's almost eleven. Do you want to go to the ballet?”