Starry Nights

by Daisy Whitney

  “Threw it out,” Gustave says, and my heart lurches. “Said it was stinking the whole joint up.”

  Now I’m sure the guy isn’t a muse. That’s just not what you do with art. My mind twists back to the Louvre, to when the fire leaped into my hand, to Bathsheba’s drooping belly, and now to a lemon gone rancid. It’s as if the art is throwing itself overboard, walking the plank of its own canvases. I only wish I knew why the art over there is going lemming, while the Renoirs here are simply fading. I hope Clio’s painting doesn’t give out.

  “Bizarre,” I say to Gustave.

  “You’re telling me,” he says, looking down at a smooth slice of copper wire and a fake ruby. “I just can’t figure out how to make this look right. And I wanted to enter it in a subway art contest.”

  In a flash, I picture where the wire should go, how the piece would look edgy but clever at the same time.

  “Just bend the wire through the ruby.” I demonstrate by miming how to move the pieces. Gustave looks at the wire, then the miniature sculpture, then something seems to click for him. He nods several times. He does as I suggested, then holds the piece of art proudly in front of him. “That does look good. Thanks, Julien. I’m going to call it Crazy Like a Lemon. See ya,” he says and wanders back to his post near the front doors.

  I turn to Clio and am about to ask what she thinks is going on at the Louvre. But she speaks first, grinning the whole time. “You’re the muse.”

  “Yeah, I guess you could say that. That’s the other part of my crazy day. I learned I’m the first human muse. Go figure,” I say, and it doesn’t feel strange to tell Clio. Everything about this—us—already exists on its own weird frequency.

  “I thought you might be.”

  “A human muse? You thought that?”

  “It crossed my mind. I mean, how else would you be the only one to see the other paintings and me?”

  “What about the guy Gustave mentioned? The lemon at the Louvre.”

  She shakes her head. “Forget the Louvre right now. Forget lemons,” she says, trailing a finger down my arm that sends heat to every point in my body. If a lemon fell from the sky, or shot up through the earth to land in my hand, I’d toss it over my shoulder without looking back.

  “Gone. Lemons are wiped from my brain.”

  “Good.”

  Clio backs up then, my hand in hers. She leans between two Monets, the gardens at Giverny on one side, a sailboat on a shimmery, sunlit Seine on the other. Her hips jut out slightly underneath the gauzy fabric of her dress, and she waits, expectantly, for me. This I have dreamed of. This I have imagined since I first saw her painted likeness on the wall at Bonheur’s carnival of a home.

  “You know what you said a few minutes ago? About the boy you like at the museum?”

  She nods.

  “I like you too,” I say. “I like you a lot.”

  “You should really kiss me then.”

  Her lips part slightly, and she seems nervous, but like she wants this as much as I do. I move closer, touching her hair first. Her golden-blond curls are like the softest cat’s fur against my skin. I run my fingers through her hair, then kiss her for the first time. She tastes like a song, like a perfect summer day. She shivers as I touch her. It’s so sweet and so sexy at the same time. I kiss her more deeply, and she answers me by looping her hands around my back and pressing against me.

  I lose myself in her kisses. If anyone walked by, they’d see me kissing air, but I don’t care, because she’s not invisible to me. She’s more alive and more wonderful than anything I’ve touched, and I’m sure the world is rotating around this moment, and this moment is the world.

  We slow down, but we don’t stop. We linger on each other with soft hints and mere whispers of kisses, until she says, “More,” and crushes her lips against mine in a feast of kissing, hungry and ravenous.

  At some point we pull apart for breath. “Tomorrow I want you to come to my place.”

  “The gardens?”

  She nods wryly, like she has a trick up her sleeve, and I start counting down the hours.

  Chapter 16

  Degas Dancer, to the Fifth

  I have only one tour today, and it’s a morning one. I see a familiar face in my group—Emilie. She gives a small wave, acknowledging me, then a quick smile. I want to ask if she’s heard from the Paris Ballet. She’d look at home on its stage, with the powerful and graceful way she moves, like a swan mingled with a leopard to make her. When we stop at the Degas I’ve gotten to know, I do a double take. Emilie is a photocopy of Emmanuelle, just a few years older. Black hair, milky skin.

  Someone else notices the likeness too.

  “You look just like her,” says a round woman standing next to Emilie. The group turns their eyes on the flesh-and-blood girl. Emilie’s ears flame red. “Maybe you’re related to her.”

  “You never know,” Emilie says, looking away. I sense some discomfort in her, so I jump in and guide the group to another painting and another topic altogether.

  When the tour ends and the group disperses, she waits behind at the Van Gogh, standing next to Dr. Gachet’s royal-blue coat.

  “So? Are you dancing under the chandelier now?”

  She nods slowly, then shares a big, beaming smile. “And hanging out with the Phantom in the underground lake. But he hasn’t crashed the chandelier yet.”

  “I knew you’d get in. That’s amazing. Congratulations!”

  “Thank you.” Then there’s a pause, and during that beat, Emilie seems to draw in all her courage, because the next words fly out of her mouth, as if she’s released a fleet of hummingbirds. “Doyouwantogogetacoffeerightnow?”

  I glance down the hall, wondering if Clio can hear, if Clio would be jealous. But coffee is just coffee. “That would be great.”

  We leave and walk through a crowd of people lounging on our steps, stretched out in the warm June sun. I tense when I see Max on the sidewalk. But he’s sketching a young couple, moving his pencil quickly across the paper. His hands are normal, pliable hands. I take that as a good sign that Renoir’s ghostly reclamation project might have ended now that we’ve thwarted his forgery efforts. We walk past him, and I say hello.

  “Hey, Julien,” he calls out. “Guess what?”

  “What?”

  “I’m going to be teaching a class on caricature at an after-school program. Just found out this morning. Applied for the gig a few weeks ago. I’m totally psyched.”

  “That’s great.”

  “Pretty soon, a whole generation of French youth will be drawing pointy chins and big noses,” he says and laughs.

  I laugh too. Mostly because it seems that Max has regained sole proprietorship of his own body.

  Emilie and I pop into a café and order coffee. Like all French coffee, it’ll be horrid, and yet I’ll still drink it.

  “So that Degas. You want to know the reason I got so red when that woman made the comment?”

  “Red? I hadn’t noticed,” I say playfully.

  She pretends to swat at my hand. “I’m sure you saw my ears. They’re like beets when I get embarrassed.”

  “Why would that embarrass you, what she said?”

  She taps her long fingers against the table. Everything about Emilie is long and lean. Her legs go on endlessly. Her arms could hold wings. Her fingers are slender and elegant. “You’re going to laugh when I tell you. You probably won’t believe me.”

  The waiter brings us coffees, and Emily stirs sugar into hers. “Try me,” I say. “You’d be surprised at all the things I believe and believe in.”

  “I’m like the great-great-great-something of some Degas dancer,” she says in a rush, the words a traffic pileup. “That’s what my mother has always told me at least. It sounds crazy, doesn’t it?”

  Her crazy is nothing compared to my crazy. “Emilie, that doesn’t sound the least bit crazy. That you’re related to one of Degas’s models actually seems one of the more normal things I’ve heard or seen the
se days.”

  “Whew,” she says, and wipes her hand across her forehead. There’s a nervousness to her still, but it’s mixed with a touch of boldness too. She seems to shuffle between the two, like she’s at war inside with who she wants to be. “So she was supposedly this amazing dancer. Her name was—”

  “Emmanuelle.” We say it in unison, and Emilie looks shocked.

  “How did you know her name?”

  “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.

  Chapter 17

  For Everyone’s Eyes

  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.