Starry Nights

by Daisy Whitney

  I laugh and she pops outside. “Today’s take,” she says and removes a tiny pink-and-blue-china espresso cup from between her breasts. “I took it from Ladurée this morning. Their coffee is awful.”

  “Zola, how many times do I have to tell you? All the coffee in France is awful.”

  “And until the coffee improves, I will keep stealing coffee cups from all over Paris. I’m angling for one from the Red Café. Just opened a few days ago, and I hear the coffee is wretched.”

  Zola has amassed quite a collection of coffee cups in the last few years, tucking them between her breasts as she takes them from Les Deux Magots and Angelina as well as her neighborhood joints. She always brings them into school to show me her latest trophies. I don’t discourage the hobby—it’s entertaining to me, especially when she demonstrates exactly how she steals each one.

  “Keep on then, my favorite thief.”

  “How is your Renoir doing?” In addition to running the gallery, Zola’s mother is a renowned art authenticator and has verified paintings for museums around the world, including The Girl in the Garden for us.

  “She’s amazing,” I say, feeling as if I have a wonderful secret, and I do.

  Zola heads back into the store, and I turn the corner onto the museum’s block, saying hello to a few of my mother’s coworkers who are taking their lunchtime smoking breaks. I dart into a side door to the offices and snag my name tag.

  “Julien.” It’s my mother, and her voice is crisp and too controlled, the way she talks when she’s worried.

  “What’s going on?”

  She tips her forehead to her office, and I follow her. She closes the door. “The Boy with the Cat has sun damage now too.”

  “What? It never even sees the sun.” The Boy with the Cat is also a Renoir. Like the piano girls, it’s always protected from the sun, so this shouldn’t be happening.

  “I know. But now it’s fading too.”

  “When did this happen?”

  “I saw it today when I was out on the floors.”

  “Are the restorers coming?”

  “Yes. Right after they visit the Louvre.” That can only mean one thing. I tense. “Claire called me today.” My mother’s jaw tightens and her coal eyes are hard. “The sun damage is back on the piano girls too.”

  “Where’s the sun damage on the piano girls?” I ask carefully.

  “The keys. On the piano keys.” She holds out her hands, as if she’s looking for an answer to fall into them. “I have no idea what is happening. Why are our Renoirs getting sun damage?”

  “I don’t know,” I say, even though I’m pretty sure she was asking rhetorically. I do know there seems to be two different things happening to the art—there’s the simple fading of the Renoirs, then the stranger shedding of the others, like Bathsheba.

  “Maybe sunlight is getting into one of the rooms where it’s not supposed to,” she says, grasping for an answer.

  “Of course. That’s probably it. What about The Girl in the Garden, though?”

  She smiles, and her shoulders relax. “Perfect. Thank God.”

  “Are any other Renoirs fading?”

  “I checked each and every one. They’re all fine, so let’s hope it’s just contained to those two, and when the museum closes I’ll have the crews do a thorough check of the room to see if sunlight could be sneaking in.”

  I head to the main floor, where I find my tour group for the day. I guide them through the galleries, stopping at the usual paintings before I bring them to one of Renoir’s portraits of a woman, Gabrielle with a Rose. She is half-dressed, holding a rose near her ear. One breast is exposed and the woman’s chest is luminous, the shawl over her shoulders looks like the inside of an oyster shell. I scan quickly for any sun damage. My heart catches when I see that the corner of the shawl, a tiny sliver of painted fabric, has turned pale.

  I flash back to the piano girls. I was the first one to notice the sun damage in that work several weeks ago, and then my mother could see it. When the damage returned I was the first one to notice it at the Louvre, then a few days later Claire could see it. For some reason, I can see the sun damage before anyone else can.

  My chest tightens with the knowledge that any day now my mother, and everyone else, will be able to see what’s happening to Gabrielle. A fuse has been lit, slow and quiet.

  I force myself to focus on the tour group.

  “Renoir painted until late in his life, and this is one of the last masterpieces he created. What’s particularly interesting about this work is he was crippled with arthritis when he painted it,” I tell them and hold out my hands, turning them into claws. “He strapped the paintbrushes to his wrists and painted like that because his fingers were too gnarled to hold the brushes anymore. And yet, even with his damaged hands, he still crafted such works of beauty.”

  I take a step back and let them admire the painting, especially since this may be one of the last times anyone can enjoy it in its proper state.

  A woman with short hair and glasses clears her throat and speaks. “I’ve noticed that you have a lot of paintings by men. But the only women you seem to have here are the painted ones.” Her tone is challenging, like a student in a graduate class. She’s not the first person to make this observation though, so I have a response ready.

  “We have paintings by Berthe Morisot and Mary Cassatt.”

  The woman scoffs. “Isn’t that kind of like saying, ‘Oh, I have a black friend’?”

  I hold up my palms to her, a sign that I’m not fighting. “They were amazing painters too. Their work isn’t here as some sort of quota.”

  “But you have mostly male painters on your walls.”

  “Unfortunately, most artists have been men. In France, women weren’t even admitted to art school until 1894, when Suzanne Valadon was the first. But things are starting to change.”

  “Maybe your walls can change then,” she says, holding her chin up high.

  “Perhaps they will. I personally think anyone can create art. Girl, guy, educated, self-taught. Art is for everyone.”

  “I disagree.”

  There’s a guy’s voice now, and I’m feeling a bit ganged up on. I look for the voice, and I’m surprised to see someone I know. It’s Max, who draws caricatures by the river. “You have to be great to make art that matters,” he says.

  I give him a look like he can’t be serious. I don’t know Max well, but this doesn’t sound like the guy who joked about horses the other day. The other visitors start to look away and shuffle their feet.

  “Well, one of the things to remember about great art is it can cost a lot,” I say, going for humor to ease my way out of this awkward attack from different angles. I guide them to the nearby Van Gogh, his Portrait of Dr. Gachet. “This is the physician who treated Van Gogh in the final months of his life. The artist produced only two authenticated paintings of Dr. Gachet. One of them is here on our walls,” I say, pointing to the red-and-blue image of a man who looks as depressed as his patient was. I’m glad he’s never popped out of his frame at night. “The other sold for $82.5 million at auction.”

  There are gasps from the crowd at the price tag. “Enjoy the rest of your visit at the Musée d’Orsay.”

  I quickly thank today’s group, and as they scatter I pull Max aside.

  “Hey, Max. What’s the story? You seem a little—”

  He cuts me off. “Your painting is a fake.”

  “I’m sorry?”

  “Your Girl in the Garden. It belongs to my family,” he says as he stares at me with unflinching eyes. A thick curl of dark hair slides onto his forehead. “To my parents.”

  “Whoa. I don’t think so.” I want to ask how he could even own a Renoir, but for all I know his family could be recluse millionaires, collectors who live in a castle and bid anonymously at auctions the world over. Still, with the ratty sweatshirt and its worn cuffs hanging down to his fingernails, he hardly has the trappings of someone whose family traffics in priceless
paintings.

  Sweatshirt. My mind returns to the other night. The guy on the steps I barely noticed, but noticed enough to see his sweatshirt. That was Max. Why is he watching me?

  “I have the papers,” Max says as he taps a black leather folder.

  “And how come you never mentioned this all the times I saw you by the river? It’s just coming up now?”

  “It was not part of our conversations,” he says, and his voice is off, like it doesn’t quite fit him.

  “You’d think that’s the sort of thing that might come up though.”

  “It’s coming up now. And I came to you first since you’ve always liked my art. My great art.” It’s as if Max is prodding me, poking me in a hunt for soft spots. Pointing out that I’ve been nice to him, then twisting his own words about great art back on himself. “And I thought you might want to introduce me to your mother so I can resolve the matter with her.”

  My mother is focused on the sun-damaged Renoirs right now, so if I bring Max to her with some spurious claim, she’ll have a fit. She’ll berate me for not having done the legwork myself. I walk to the stairwell and motion for Max to follow me. “Show me the papers first,” I say, hoping I come across as tough and steady. But inside a queasiness sets in. I don’t want him to take her away. I don’t want Clio to leave, and even though I hardly believe the painting is his, I can’t take any chances.

  “It was ours. It was stolen during the Nazi occupation in 1942, and we’ve been searching for it since then.”

  Provenance.

  I curse silently. To be sold, shown, or exhibited a painting must have a traceable history and the owners must also prove its whereabouts during the Nazi era, when hundreds of thousands of paintings were looted. My mother conducted a thorough vetting on The Girl in the Garden already, but all provenance claims are taken seriously. Max reaches inside the folder. Using only the tips of his fingers to handle them, he shows me a series of papers claiming his family bought the painting from Bonheur’s family before the Second World War. He leans closer to me and his breath smells like heavy rose perfume. He smells like what I imagine the girls at their vanities in those Renoirs smell like. “She, the girl, was my great-great-grandmother. We bought the painting to protect her virtue.”

  “That’s just a story,” I say, shaking my head and repeating the words my mother said to me. But the story of two artists in love with the girl—with Clio—feels more true every night.

  “I would like to show Ms. Garnier the documents.”

  I don’t want to believe him, but the documents look as real as any others I’ve seen. Since I’m not one to authenticate records, I take Max to my mother’s office, where he introduces himself as Maximillian Broussard and makes an impassioned case for his family’s ownership of The Girl in the Garden. “As you can see, we still feel a great responsibility to guard her reputation, even now.”

  “Mr. Broussard, we have researched this painting’s ownership thoroughly, but we treat provenance claims quite seriously and I will certainly look into this,” my mother says, a cool veneer masking what must be a roiling sea inside. He leaves copies of the documents with my mother, and she tells him she will reach back out to him tomorrow after she confers with her board. “Julien, can you show Mr. Broussard out?”

  I guide him upstairs, out to the floors and to the exits. “I am sorry to be the bearer of such bad news, but I am sure you understand family obligations of this sort,” he says.

  I say nothing as the crowds move by.

  He leans closer and speaks in a low voice, the cloying rose perfume hanging heavily near me. “But some girls can just be trouble, and they shouldn’t be let out.”

  It’s as if all the sound were vacuumed up, as if all the visitors became clay figures, stuck in an animated pose, and it’s just Max and me. This guy who seems to know more about a painting than he should. A guy who’s been watching me and watching her.

  I’m stuck for a moment, the soles of my boots trapped by my own shock, as I watch him walk away from the museum. But when he heads across the street, I follow him. He settles back onto the green-slatted chair in front of his easel, pushes up the cuffs on his sleeves.

  When I see his hands I nearly gasp. His fingers are curled inward, the nails scratching his palms, bent up and seized.

  Like Renoir’s.

  Then he cracks his knuckles, and turns his TEN EUROS sign around. His hands are back to normal. Young, flexible Max’s hands.

  Clio’s words about the ghosts of great artists ring through me. Though you’d think they might visit museums too. What if she wasn’t joking? Maybe the ghost of Renoir is inhabiting Max the street artist?

  I walk over to Max as he reaches for his pencils. I turn the other green chair around, the one his caricature subjects sit in when drawn. I plunk myself down.

  “Dude, you’re going to have your picture drawn?” he asks, and he sounds like Max again, like the guy who draws exaggerated sketches of tourists.

  “What was the deal with that back there?”

  “What back where?”

  “Hello? In the museum?”

  “I’ve been here the whole time. What are you talking about?”

  “You were just on my tour. You had all those documents from the painting.”

  “I don’t know what you’ve been smoking, but can I have some of it?” Max laughs. The dour boy he was a few minutes ago has vanished.

  I stand up and run a hand through my hair. I mutter something about needing to leave, then walk across the bridge, trying to make sense of this newest wrinkle. Just when I settle into the idea that living art is my life, I learn that ghosts might be real too. The rose perfume smell, the hands—are those signs of ghostly possession? My phone rings, and Bonheur’s name flashes on the screen.

  I answer, and am about to launch into the story of Max because I have a hunch Bonheur believes in ghosts.

  But he goes first. “I literally just finished my final test for the bac, when I picked up Sophie’s message.”

  “Congrats on finishing your exam,” I say, needing to skip past details like le bac and his quirky sister. “Listen, this guy I know showed up today on my tour trying to claim—”

  “Weird curl on his forehead?”

  I stop walking. “You know him?” I duck into the doorway of pharmacy that promises to cure all manner of headaches.

  “I saw him walking up and down our block the other afternoon. Seemed fishy. Since Sophie finished classes before I did, she’s been keeping tabs on him during the days. He’s mostly outside the museum, but she found where he forged the papers earlier today.”

  I pump a fist in the air. “Yes! I knew they had to be fake. I can’t believe you guys saw him do it.”

  Color me impressed. I didn’t know Bonheur or his sister had a penchant for spying. The thought crosses my mind briefly that Bonheur could be tricking me. But I trust him. I tell him what Max said at the museum.

  “I didn’t think he’d get to the museum so quickly, but he moves fast,” Bonheur says. “Let me see if Sophie’s still there, where he doctored those papers. Hold on just a sec.”

  My head is swimming as this painting becomes a ripple in a pond that won’t stop. Each movement it makes spreads. When Bonheur comes back on the line, he gives me an address.

  “Sophie will meet you there in twenty minutes. I can be there in forty-five. And listen, bring that calf you won at the party.”

  “Why?”

  “You never know when Muse dust might come in handy.”

  Chapter 12

  The Appearance of a Key

  I text my mother that I’ll miss my final tour of the day and that she’ll need to have someone fill in for me, and I exit the Metro in the Marais to find Sophie. The address Bonheur gave me is on rue des Rosiers. I pass familiar shoe shops selling short boots with high heels, stores hawking expensive tailored shirts for men, and the Jewish deli housed in an old dress store that still has the sign LES JOLIES JUPES in blue mosaic tiles above
windows now full of rugelach and challah bread. At a corner where three roads converge, people crisscross and lean away from the tires of tiny cars shoehorning their way through the narrow lane.

  I walk past a falafel shop. It’s where Simon spends many evenings, holding court at one of the red-vinyl booths as friends come and go. I scan the open front, looking for his familiar shock of dark blond hair and slouched-back leisurely command of a patch of this eatery, but he’s not here. As I walk and look at addresses, I send him a quick text to see if he’ll be around later.

  I reach my destination, checking the number above the door against the one on the paper I’m still holding. They match. I’ve arrived at a vintage shop, the kind with a pastiche of vendors peddling black lace skirts alongside silver tea sets next to sky-blue vanities and lemon-yellow dressers. I pull on the handle, but the door is locked, and the sign says BE BACK IN FIFTEEN MINUTES. I’m about to call Bonheur when the door is pushed open.

  “Shh.” It’s Sophie.

  I step inside.

  “Want a bite?” Sophie holds out a falafel sandwich wrapped in wax paper. The pita pouch is stuffed with tomatoes, purple cabbage, cucumbers, and fried chickpea patties. Tahini threatens to slide down the bread. “Messy, I know,” she says. “But so freaking delish.”

  “Not hungry, but thanks.”

  “Seriously.” She thrusts the sandwich at me, but I decline. “Have you had them? You will never have anything better in your life.” She takes another bite, tearing off a hunk of the falafel sandwich, then wipes off her hand on a napkin and offers to shake.

  She seems calm and steady, and I feel unmoored. “Did you break into this shop?”

  She shifts her free hand back and forth in a so-so gesture. “I hid behind a dresser when they put the rugelach out.” Sophie points to the Jewish deli. “Cass can’t resist rugelach, so she took off. She won’t be back for another ten minutes, prob.”

  “Cass who?”

  “Cass Middleton.”

  “Did you just say Middleton?”

  “Duh.”

  “As in the Middletons?”

  “Double duh.”