Starry Nights (12 page)

“Julien, you're not seriously mad, are you?”

I shrug. I'm more irritated than mad. “It would have been nice if you said something, especially that night we were talking on your block.”

“Would you have believed me? If I said something then, would you truly have believed me?”

“I don't know,” I answer truthfully.

“You were just starting to come to terms with seeing art come alive. I thought you would have just walked away if I dumped all these things on you.”

“So how did you know? Did your Muse friends tell you?”

“Yes. They alerted us. One of them saw you watching the dancers one night at the museum and knew then you were a human muse.”

“Great. So the Muses are spies too.”

“Not exactly,” Bonheur says as my phone rings.

I take it from my pocket. It's Simon calling. Someone who isn't doling out bits and pieces of my secret life to me like kibble for a dog.

I answer.

“I have decided to grant you an audience right now at my falafel castle.”

“Be right there.” I hang up, then turn to Bonheur. “Listen, I'm going to get something to eat and then give these papers to my mom. I'll catch you later.”

“Julien,” he starts, and I can tell he's about to try to explain himself again. But he seems to realize that now's not the time. “Have fun tonight at the museum, okay?”

Bonheur fancies himself a bit of a matchmaker for Clio and me. It's hard to stay mad at him.

“I will. See you,” I say and walk away from Bonheur and Sophie.

I pull the papers out of my jeans and look them over once more.

“Hands in your pants again, Garnier?”

Simon calls out to me from his command post in the falafel shop.

“Some days I just can't help myself,” I say, as I slide into the booth across from him, dropping the bag with the hat next to me. Simon is with Lucy, and she's snug against him, like they're two jigsaw pieces and she keeps lining herself up, making sure the interlocking edges fit just so.

“What have you got there?” Simon asks, a tip of the forehead to the papers in my hand.

“It's complicated.”

“But is it interesting?” Lucy's voice is a purr, and her green eyes are the perfect complement to the emerald streaks that curve like streams down her cascade of dark hair. “Complicated can be dull. Or complicated can be fascinating.”

“I would have to say this falls more on the
fascinating
side of complicated.”

Simon slaps a hand on the table, then holds out a big palm, the king of the shop waiting to be entertained with a story.

“Um …,” I begin, then trail off, as I try to assemble the clues.
Muses. Dust. Paintings that come alive.
The voices I heard in Bonheur's cellar were women's voices and they sounded like poetry, like history, like music, like art. Like Muses.
The
Muses. But now, there's a human one too.

“Do you believe in Muses?” I ask my friend and his new girl.

Simon pulls Lucy closer to him so they're sealed airtight. “I think Lucy is my Muse,” he says, then winks and leans in for a quick kiss.

“And what does she inspire you to do?” I ask.

“To order falafels. Want one?” Simon asks.

“Sure.”

He raises a hand, and the waiter appears. Waiters never move that quickly. Simon must be magic in this place.

Magic.
The word rolls through my brain, like a marble in a Rube Goldberg machine, jumping, darting, doubling back. There is magic somewhere in Paris. There is clearly magic in art, magic in dust, magic in my hands. I can't help myself. I grin, big and wide, and surely crazily. Because I'm
not
crazy, and maybe Bonheur was right to wait to tell me. I had to see it—the way I drew the key—to believe it. These things are real, and they're magic, and they're happening to me.

The only problem is there are curses, and art getting sick at the Louvre, and Renoirs fading from the sun. Good magic, bad magic, maybe?

After we order, Simon returns to the question. “So, Muses. You mean the nine ladies who inspire artists, writers, musicians, and so on?”

“Yes. Those Muses.”

“Sure, I believe in them.”

“As you should. Muses are powerful women,” Lucy offers, and I chuckle silently because not all Muses are women. “Goddesses, even.”

“I like goddesses,” Simon says.

“I
love
goddesses,” I say.

“I
worship
goddesses,” he adds.

“So here's the story,” I say, then I slide into the truth. Well, some of it. I have to tell somebody something, because the people I encounter don't tell me enough, and because my world is becoming stranger. “So there's this guy who's trying to claim he owns the Renoir painting we just hung, when he clearly doesn't. So I followed him out of the museum and I found these documents, which are the copies of the fake papers he showed us earlier today about the painting.”

“You're a detective now,” Simon says, as if he's proud of my cunning.

“And a burglar too. Don't forget that. I've got plenty of skills. Speaking of, can you look into someone for me? Research a name?”

“Sure.”

I give him Max's full name and ask him to research his family, where they lived, what they've done.

“Do you want us to follow him too?” Lucy asks, and her eyes light up, mischief in full bloom. She turns to Simon. “Wouldn't that be fun?”

“What I did for my summer vacation,” Simon quips, narrowing his eyes. “Espionage.”

“You know, that's not a bad idea.” If Bonheur and Sophie can do their own legwork, there's no reason I shouldn't have my people on it either. “That would be great if you would.”

The waiter brings our food and we eat. Then I remember the hat and the jewelry. “Lucy, would you like a purple hat?”

“I would love a purple hat,” she says and then coos when I show her the hat. She models it, tilting her head just so.

“That hat is turning me on,” Simon says and dives in for a kiss. My cue to go. I place some euros on the table.

Simon waves them away. “I'm like the mayor. I never let my people pay. Go on your way.”

I thank him, then leave the falafel shop, walking back across the city, rehearsing a slightly more detailed version of the half fact, half fable story of my discovery of these papers. I'm not going to let Max take
The Girl in the Garden
away from me. Christophe may have won over Jenny, but Clio stays with me.

My mother is in her office. She's eating roast chicken with small potatoes from the
traiteur
around the corner.

“If you thought my history paper was impressive, wait till you see what I have.”

She raises an eyebrow. I grab a slice of the chicken and stuff it in my mouth.

“In fact,” I continue, “I'm pretty sure you'll never give me a
hard time about school again.” I show her the papers I
found.
I leave out certain details—the possibility that Renoir's ghost is sharing Broussard's body, that I broke into the back room of a vintage shop courtesy of a key I drew, and that, evidently, I'm a human muse. The gist of my account for my mother is this—I followed Broussard all the way to the Marais, into a shop where I found these copies on the floor. Oh, did I mention the shop appears to be owned by Oliver Middleton and run by his prodigy teenage forger of a daughter?

“The art world is full of thieves and scam artists,” my mother says, seething. “The nerve of Broussard. And that trumped-up tale of protecting the girl. I bet that story was all a lie anyway. It's just a painting. She's just a model.”

I wince. Because Clio's not just a model. But who is she? Perhaps I can find out tonight.

My mother stands up and waves the papers victoriously. “I'm going to show these to Stefane,” she adds, referring to her colleague, the vice curator or something who works with the museum's board on all provenance claims. “This is the proof we need to keep that forger out of our museum.”

She walks away, then pops back in seconds later. “And, Julien. You can come and go as you please.”

Good-bye, midnight curfew.

I spread the desserts out on a bench in one of the galleries. Monet's picnickers watch us, their eyes shifting back and forth, their lips curved in smiles. But they stay inside their frame, as Clio and I sit on the floor with the bench as our table, and I show her what I've brought.

“This apricot tart is pretty much the best thing I've ever had. There's a bakery down the street that I got it from, and one of the first times I went there, an American mom was there with her young daughter. The mom was trying to order yogurt, so she said
un abricot yaourt,
but it sounded like
abricot tarte,
so the baker gave her the tart. She shrugged happily and sat down outside with her daughter to eat the tart. It looked good to me, so I ditched my bread order and went for an apricot tart too.”

Clio takes a forkful and tastes it. “I'd never go back to yogurt either. Then again, I'd never order yogurt at a bakery, because I can't resist sweets.”

She hands me the fork, and I take a bite too. Next, I show her the fruit crumble with blackberries, raspberries, strawberries, and blueberries. “You know what the best part of a berry crumble is?”

“No. What's the best part?”

“You eat that and you've got your five-fruits-a-day requirement in. Done. Well, four fruits. But close enough.”

She smiles and tries the crumble. “I feel so healthy right now.”

I point to the
macaron
I picked up at Pierre Hermé. “Now, this guy is one of those rock-star pastry chefs.”

She raises an eyebrow. “What does that mean? Rock-star chef?”

I'm reminded there were neither famous chefs nor rock stars in her day. “He's written books, his stores have lines out the door, tourists flock to him, and he mixes absurd flavors together, but everyone loves them. So I got you a grapefruit-wasabi
macaron
. I kind of went out on a limb here, but I figured you had probably never tried that combo before.”

She takes a bite and her eyes go wide from the burn of the wasabi. “My nose is on fire.”

“Maybe they skimped on the grapefruit and just put wasabi in.”

“Oh, there's grapefruit flavor in there too. It's all tarty and citrusy.”

“We could totally do food reviews.”

She laughs. “What's your favorite food?”

“Me? I like everything. But you can never go wrong with pizza. Or fries. Or chicken. Or roasted potatoes. Or sandwiches. I can pretty much eat all day.”

She laughs, then leans closer to pinch my stomach. “But you hardly seem like you eat all day.”

I think I might be blushing. I like her hands on me. “I walk a lot.” Then I add. “Walked a lot today. All over the city. Crazy day.”

“Why? What happened?”

“Everything, it seemed. For starters, this guy showed up trying to claim he owns your painting.” Clio raises an eyebrow. “But my friends had been tailing him, so they knew he'd been forging the documents. And we found the fake papers, so that's not an issue anymore. But they—my friends—think there's a curse on your painting.”

“A curse. Interesting,” she says, and she's veiled again, enigmatic.

“Oh, wait. I forgot one really cool thing that happened today,” I say. “Turns out I can draw things and they come to life.”

Her voice rises with excitement and her eyes brighten. “Show me. Show me now.”

“Really?”

“You think I don't want to see that?”

“Okay, what do you want me to draw for you?” I reach into my backpack for my notebook, pencils, and the pink polka-dotted calf. I stretch out across the hardwood floors and prop up on my elbows.

“Hmm. Flowers are a no. I've seen plenty of those. And clearly, you already excel in the food department, so we don't need chocolates.”

“A necklace?” I offer.

She looks sharply at her bracelets, one on each wrist. There's barely any space between the metal and her skin, and I don't see a clasp on them. “I detest jewelry.”

“So that's a no on flowers, jewelry, and drawn chocolate for you.”

“Wait. I've got it. You know what I desperately want?”

“Tell me.”

“A new pair of shoes.” She pulls up the hem of her long skirt, revealing a pair of form-fitting beige slippers. “I want something fun. But I have no idea what's in style today. Do you?”

I laugh and shake my head. “No, I don't follow shoe fashion. Or any fashion for that matter.” Then I vaguely remember seeing shoes in a store window in the Marais this afternoon. I snap a finger. “Wait. Short boots.”

Clio claps once. “Yes, boots! What color?”