Michelangelo's Ghost

by Gigi Pandian

  As soon as we wrapped up our improvised raga, I hopped from the stage and maneuvered through the narrow aisles between tables on my way to Lane, never taking my eyes off of him. I feared if I did, he’d disappear into the puff of smoke from the sizzling prawns a waitress carried past his table. My old waitressing instincts kicked in and got me through the obstacle course of tables, servers, and diners in less than five seconds.

  I didn’t take time to grab my shoes, which should have tipped off Sanjay that something was up, but I needn’t have worried about him noticing. He headed for two giggling twenty-somethings who I assumed were some of his groupies. Sanjay was a good-looking guy and a charismatic performer. The Hindi Houdini Heartbreakers were a group of fans, mostly but not entirely women, who adored Sanjay’s magic persona, The Hindi Houdini. After one of them discovered he played music at the Tandoori Palace a couple of nights a week, she posted it on their listserv. Ever since then, his fans would periodically show up at the restaurant. Sanjay got a kick out of it, enjoying the fluttering eyelashes during our breaks.

  A disguise can hide many things, but even with colored contact lenses, the eyes don’t lie. My insides melted as I reached Lane’s table and saw the look in his.

  “Sorry it took me so long to get here, Jones,” he said softly.

  With Sanjay distracted, I grabbed Lane’s hand and pulled him into the break room, where I locked the door behind us. In close proximity, I breathed in the faint scent of sandalwood and the comfort of being with someone I knew so well and who kept me just off-balance enough to be exciting.

  I pressed my back against the break-room door. Lane stood only inches from me. His face was no longer that of a stranger. He’d removed whatever it was that had subtly shifted the shape of his cheeks. His face and hair were now his own, but his dirty blonde hair was shorter than before and no longer fell over his eyes.

  “You could have simply called me back,” I whispered.

  “Isn’t this better?”

  “Much.”

  He pulled me to him and drew me into a kiss. Since I wasn’t in my heels, I had to stand on my tiptoes, and even then, he lifted me off my feet. If it hadn’t been for the lingering spiciness on his tongue, I would have completely lost track of where we were. When I pulled back and he set me down, his glasses were askew.

  “How long is your break?” he asked, straightening his glasses.

  “Not long enough. And Sanjay is going to recognize you now. Especially if you’re with me.”

  “He didn’t seem to be paying attention to you when you two were onstage. Only that poor sitar he was massacring. You, on the other hand…”

  “Are you jealous?”

  Lane looked away from me, toward the locked door. “I didn’t realize you two played for tips. I know second-year professors don’t make enough to live comfortably in San Francisco, but if you’d told me that finder’s fee didn’t work out, I’d have—”

  “It came through. The jar is there because some diners insist on tipping us. The money we collect goes to a homeless shelter.”

  Lane squeezed my hand before taking a step toward the door. “I’ll be sure to leave a big tip on my way out.”

  “Wait, you’re leaving?”

  “I’ll see you back at your apartment when you’re done here.”

  “Do you need the key? Never mind. Of course you don’t.”

  I woke up the next morning to the scent of strong coffee and cinnamon.

  Lane sat at my kitchen table, the materials from Lilith’s box spread out in front of him. Since the apartment was a studio, I could see him from the bed. I pulled on a robe and joined him.

  The argument we’d had before he left for Lisbon was the same one we always had. He said he was protecting me by being so cautious. Because of bad choices he’d made when he was young, he’d never be free from looking over his shoulder. I saw his point that he didn’t want to pull me down along with him, but what if I was willing to take the risk?

  Morning light streamed through my kitchen window onto his disheveled hair. I didn’t want to resume the argument.

  “It’s incredible, isn’t it?” I said instead. I already knew his answer. I could see the fire in his eyes as he pored over the sketches. He had an intimate knowledge of art history. He’d tried to get his life on track by getting a PhD in the field, which is how I’d met him.

  He threaded his fingers through mine and pulled his eyes from the drawings to my face. “The woman in front of me is even more incredible,” he said. “I wish our lives were different, you know. I wish we could be free to show the world.”

  “I do too. And I wish Lazzaro Allegri hadn’t been forced to hide the subjects of his art.”

  Lane let go of my hand. “The drawings in these parchment sketchbooks are like nothing I’ve seen before. The method is so similar to Michelangelo, but using techniques he must have learned in India. It’s different from the representative style of Indian art from the same period, making it truly a fusion of artistic styles I didn’t think existed at the time. And on top of that, the mix of Indian subjects and European mythology—” He tapped his finger on the most jarring sketch.

  “The monster,” I whispered. I hadn’t meant it to come out as a whisper, but the unnerving figure that faded into the crackled page demanded reverence. “The monster that guards Lazzaro’s hidden art studio.”

  Chapter 8

  “Our monster,” Lane said, “is a drawing of a twenty-foot stone carving that exists in Italy’s Park of Monsters.”

  I shivered and pulled the robe tighter around me. “I know. I’ve already looked through Lazzaro’s sketchbooks and my old professor’s notes, which included her photographs of the park. But that doesn’t make the monster any less creepy. A Renaissance-era garden with huge grotesque stone sculptures that look like the setting for a horror movie. Lost to the ages until it was rediscovered by Salvador Dalí in the late 1930s.”

  “Dalí helping discover such a macabre garden is perfect, isn’t it? Parco dei Mostri inspired one of his paintings.” He spoke the park’s Italian name with a perfect Italian accent. His ability to pick up languages was one of the reasons Lane was so good at blending in wherever he went.

  “Unsurprising. The uber-creepy garden isn’t far from the Allegri home where Lazzaro lived after he returned from India. Lilith Vine thinks Lazzaro’s masterpieces are connected to this Park of Monsters. She thinks his hidden art studio was located near one of the giant carved monsters.”

  “Lilith Vine?”

  “Weren’t you listening last night when I told you about my strange meeting with my former professor? She’s the one who bought these sketchbooks because they point to Lazzaro’s paintings that she’s convinced are hidden in a secret art studio.”

  “Actually, you didn’t get very far before we got…distracted. Why don’t you start at the beginning?”

  I tucked a messy lock of thick black hair behind my ear and thought about where to begin. “Lilith is a historian who threw her career away because she couldn’t accept that she wouldn’t achieve the same level of fame she had with an early success. She felt betrayed when I didn’t follow her to a different university, and I don’t blame her. But she got in touch because she thinks I can help her find the lost paintings of Lazzaro Allegri, the promising artist who was misunderstood and ostracized, much like herself.”

  “Ostracized for throwing away a promising career in Italy and painting in India instead?”

  I nodded. “Lilith thinks he was Michelangelo’s protégé before he left for India. He wrote only sparing notes in these sketchbooks, so I don’t yet know who his Indian patron was, or if he really had a connection to Michelangelo. The only thing his notes make clear was that he had an art studio hidden in the Park of Monsters.”

  “Why there and not in his own home?”

  “When he returned from India, he found himsel
f unwelcomed by his family because he wanted to use Renaissance techniques to paint Indian subjects, not the Catholic depictions his contemporaries were creating. Letters from his cousin indicate his family didn’t cast him out, but they wouldn’t support his art either. A couple of his early works of art ended up in a museum, so we know he turned his sketches into paintings. Lazzaro Allegri’s descendants still live in the ancestral home. That’s where they found his sketchbooks, which they sold to Lilith for a hefty price. They had no knowledge of the location of his art studio though.”

  “Lilith’s theory makes sense,” I continued. “The Park of Monsters was built by Lazzaro’s contemporary Pier Francesco Orsini, who went by the nickname of Vicino and lived not far from the Allegris. Vicino was an Italian nobleman who was a bit of an outcast within his family as well. It’s easy to imagine why, as two black sheep in their respectable families, Vicino would let Lazzaro use his larger grounds for his studio. I have to wonder if there was a bit of a mentor relationship as well, because Lazzaro was old enough to be Vicino’s father and had already traveled to India when they met.”

  I paused and looked for the sketch of a stone sea monster. “Lazzaro’s notes indicate the art studio grotto is near the Park of Monsters sea monster statue named Proteus, or possibly another sculpture symbolically connected to water, but the grounds were so overgrown that Lilith wasn’t able to find it. The park fell into disrepair after Vicino’s death, so the studio was lost to the forest. But here’s the cool part. You already mentioned Dalí being part of the group that rediscovered it in the thirties. But in the 1950s, a businessman saw an opportunity to create an attraction for Italian families. He did the initial work for us, clearing out much of the grounds. It’s only been partly renovated, and much of it is still overgrown forest, so it makes perfect sense why Lazzaro’s paintings haven’t yet been discovered. Whatever secrets Vicino Orsini knew of his gardens, and whatever treasures hidden inside by Lazzaro Allegri, were swallowed up by the woodlands of Italy. For nearly five centuries, the trees have held Lazzaro’s art captive.”

  I stopped my monologue and eyed Lane. “Why are you giving me that goofy lopsided smile?”

  “You’re even more beautiful when you get immersed in a story. You haven’t even gotten yourself a cup of coffee or come up for air.”

  “Stop trying to distract me. You see why I have to go to Italy.”

  Lane murmured noncommittally as he stood up and fixed me a cup of coffee.

  “What are you mumbling about?” I asked, accepting the mug. Lane had sweetened it not exactly the way I did, but this was even better. A hint of cinnamon accompanied the sugar.

  “I hate to burst your bubble, Jones.”

  “I know these sketchbooks don’t say exactly where to find Lazzaro’s paintings. That’s the whole reason Lilith came to me. She thought she’d identified where at the Park of Monsters Lazzaro’s secret art studio was located, but she couldn’t find it. But with what you and I can bring to the table—”

  “That’s not what I mean.” He twirled a pencil between his graceful fingers. “Something is missing.”

  “Obviously something is missing,” I snapped. “Lazzaro’s missing Renaissance-style paintings of an Indian royal court.” I calmed myself by savoring another sip of the exquisite coffee. I’d missed Lane’s coffee-making skills, among his other talents.

  “Step back and take a look at what Lilith gave you,” he said.

  “Exactly—look at everything she gave me. There’s a treasure hidden somewhere in here.”

  “I hate to say it, but I think North was right.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “You want the thrill of the adventure. You haven’t stepped back to look at this for what it really is. That’s why you’re letting people get in touch with you about things like this—”

  “What are you talking about? I didn’t ask for people to contact me. I’m simply being courteous to people in dealing with this reality. And I called you because I thought this was something you would love. You want to give back to the world, and this is your specialty. You could help bring to light Renaissance paintings of India from a man who very well may have been Michelangelo’s protégé. This would be a huge find. I thought it would be exactly the type of thing that would entice you.”

  “You’re right,” Lane said. “If there was anything to find.”

  I stared across the table at him.

  The edges of Lane’s eyes crinkled behind his glasses as he smiled at me. “God, I do love how passionately you throw yourself into everything you do. But in your excitement at this idea, you skipped a step. Why do we believe there are any paintings worth recovering?”

  “I thought the same thing at first. But letters show that his niece prevented his studio from being destroyed, even though he was unpopular.”

  “That’s not what I mean. I didn’t ask why you think the paintings exist. I asked why you think there are any paintings worth recovering.”

  “Because of…Well, because—” I stopped myself.

  Lane ran his hand through my hair, not seeming to notice how ratty it was. “I’m sorry I have to be the voice of reason, Jones. But even if we find Lazzaro Allegri’s hidden grotto studio, and even if his alleged masterpieces are there, there’s no chance the paintings survived.”

  “But the studio is there. Forgotten by generations. Hidden by an overgrown forest.”

  “I don’t doubt that. That’s the problem. You’re looking for the grotto where he worked in secrecy. This wasn’t an art studio inside the family’s mansion. We’re talking about a cave in the forest where he could paint in peace, away from his judgmental family. Five centuries exposed to the elements. There’s no way paintings survived that. If you find them, there will be nothing left but dust.”

  Chapter 9

  Lane made plans to return to Portugal later that day. I wasn’t sure if he was using the passport issued in his true name—Lancelot Caravaggio Peters—and I didn’t want to ask.

  “It’s right here, in Lazzaro’s notes,” I said, looking at Lilith’s translations yet again as Lane got dressed. “He says his paintings will survive.”

  “That claim doesn’t make him a magician, Jaya.” Lane finished buttoning his shirt and joined me at the kitchen table. “He’s been dead for nearly five hundred years. He could have had a big ego and assumed history would remember him, or that his cousin would see to it that his artwork made its way into a museum.”

  “What if it’s saying something more? He wouldn’t have died without making sure his paintings would be protected. Maybe if I take you to meet Lilith, she can help you get over your reservations. We’re supposed to talk on the phone this afternoon, but we could drive up to see her in person. You can catch a later flight.”

  “That’s a bad idea. Who are you going to tell her I am? You know I wish I didn’t have to go, but—”

  “I know,” I growled. “You think it’s safer for both of us. But what about a fulfilling life? We take risks the moment we walk outside, regardless of our pasts.”

  Lane studied my face but didn’t speak.

  “We don’t have to worry about North,” I continued. “Or—”

  “It’s not just them.” He spoke slowly and deliberately, as if he were struggling with himself. “There’s something else I should have told you. If I had, we could have avoided all of these stupid arguments.”

  “Then why didn’t you?” I meant the words to sound sympathetic, but in my frustration I’m not sure I pulled it off.

  He picked up a stray chopstick from the dish rack behind him and twirled it between his fingers. “I didn’t want to burden you with knowledge of something that would worry you more.”

  “That’s an even stupider reason than our arguments.”

  “It’s about Mia.”

  “Oh.” I felt a small pang of jealousy—all right
, maybe it was a big one—when I thought about Mia. Or to be more precise, Amaia Veronique Alba, the most sophisticated name imaginable for an ex-girlfriend. She was his first love, and she’d died tragically. A lot to live up to.

  “I didn’t tell you what she did for a living or how she died.”

  “You did. You told me you two were in college together and she died in a car accident.” My mouth went dry. “Are you saying that was a lie?”

  “No. That’s all true. But it’s also not the whole story.” He paused. The spinning chopstick became a blur. “Mia,” he said, “was a thief.”

  “Oh.” I didn’t know why it hadn’t occurred to me before.

  “We were both putting ourselves through college with our extracurricular activities. But we weren’t the same. For me, it was a game, getting back at people like my father who didn’t need the toys they’d inherited. You know that. I thought, at first, that Mia was the same. But then—” He swore and broke the chopstick. “She got in over her head. And she died for her sins.”

  “Are you saying what I think you are?” I felt acid rising in my chest. I wished I hadn’t had so many cups of coffee.

  Lane swallowed hard. “They killed her, Jones.”

  I took the broken chopstick from his fingers and took his hands in mine. “I’m so sorry. Why didn’t you tell me? You could have, you know.”

  “I was selfish. I didn’t want to lose you. Part of me didn’t want you to know just how dangerous knowing me could be.”

  “You thought I’d get scared off?”

  “I should have let you go.”

  “You tried.”

  “And failed. I’ve been at war with myself, wanting to be with you but also wanting you safe. This middle ground hasn’t been fair to either of us.”

  “What happened to her?”