Starry Nights (17 page)

I nod. “I know. It's changing. It's starting to be different now. There's public art, and graffiti art, and videos, and cartoons, and experimental music, and a million ways to express yourself.”

“And that's what I always believed would happen. That anyone could create art, that anyone could consume it. And I told him that. I said, ‘I know you will have a great role in this, and that humans, not just Muses, would do more of the work of inspiration.' And let me tell you, he did not like that idea whatsoever. He said to me, ‘Only men and only great artists can make great art.' Suzanne was shocked that he'd say that. She started to berate him, but then he trapped me.”

“How? Did he stuff you into his canvas?”

“He took my powers of inspiration and twisted them. Muse dust is very limited but very powerful, and binding. He had been painting the gardens, and said he wanted to show me what he'd done so far, so when I looked at his canvas, he took me by the wrists and flicked my fingertips onto the painting. And I went in it. It's like a reversal, the way he used the dust on me. The last words I heard were, ‘Let's see if a human muse can free you someday.' ”

Every part of me aches for her. For the bitterness, for the pain. For having everything you love, everything you believe, turned against you.

“I'm so sorry that happened to you, Clio,” I say, but how do you even begin to comfort someone who's been caged for so long, even if the bars are beautiful?

She holds out her hands as if to say
c'est la vie
. “I've gotten used to it, I suppose.”

“So he did curse your painting. He cursed it with your own powers. That is sick and twisted. It's a self-fulfilling prophecy.”

“Kind of. It's ironic in a way because the thing I believed wholeheartedly in, the thing he didn't want to happen at all, he sort of made it happen. He put it all into motion through his arrogance.”

“But here's the thing. He's still after the painting,” I say, and I feel terrible for telling her that Renoir is back, but I can't keep it from her. I tell her about the haunting of Max, and then what I learned today about Valadon swapping a fake. There's no point in hiding it. Whatever we're in, we're in it together. “It's like he's trying to get you back. I mean, you're safe here. You're totally safe at the museum. But why now? What is he so worried about?”

“I don't know. I was cut off from everything after the moment he trapped me.”

“Besides, he didn't know he had the fake. He didn't know Suzanne swapped them out, so if he was crazed enough to trap you, you'd think he'd have—” I stop talking.

“Destroyed the painting? Destroyed the fake that he thought was the real me?” she offers, finishing the thought I didn't want to voice.

“Well, yeah.”

“He wasn't violent. He was, oddly enough, a gentleman. And he never would do that to one of his creations. He loved his art more than anything in the world.”

“Art can be a stupid, jealous thing.”

“In a way, I kind of know how he felt. I used to love art more than anything. But then I started thinking more about how art was created and it never made sense to me why it was only the nine of us Muses who could bring about true and great inspiration. It didn't feel right to me. And my beliefs started changing about making art, but also about what I wanted. The only problem is you can't really
want
as an Eternal Muse. You just
do.
You just do the work.”

“So let me free you then,” I say, because it's the least I can do for her. “I mean, that's what this curse or prophecy or whatever is about, right?
Let a human muse free you
. Let me free you from your painting. You said all I had to do was open the doors of the museum and let you out.”

She looks at me and lays a soft hand on my cheek. “If you did, I'd just have to go back. I'd have to work. The painting is what binds me to the museum, and the museum is what lets me come
out at night. Once I leave the museum, I'll be bound again—to being a Muse all the time,” she says, and it's such cruel beauty, the way these traps contain her. “I miss my sisters, but I know what it's like being a Muse. We are always being called upon. We are always working. I used to love working all the time. But being in that painting for so many years, I'm not the same. I don't know what I want anymore.”

I circle back to the call with Bonheur from this morning. “Clio,” I say tentatively. “This is going to sound weird, or maybe it's not. But my friend called earlier today and said the Muses were asking about you. They wanted to know if you were okay.”

She smiles. “And what did you tell him?”

“I said you were fine.”

Another smile. “Good answer, Julien.”

“Do you want to see them? Do they need you back?”

“I'd like to see them at some point, but I'm rather enjoying where I am this second. Besides, my sisters obviously filled in for me all those years. Just look at the walls here. I didn't inspire Toulouse-Lautrec or Seurat. The later Cézannes aren't mine, and the later Monets aren't either, not the water lilies, not the Rouen Cathedral. Even your favorite Van Gogh was made without me. So my sisters must have filled in for me.”

“Muse sick day,” I joke.

“Extended leave of absence,” she adds.

“So you're going to take a few more days off?”

“They got by this long without me. So I think I'll play hooky a little longer,” she says. “That is, if you'll keep having me?”

“Is that a serious question?”

She nods, and she looks so nervous.

“Yes. Whatever you want, Clio,” I say, even though my heart is heavy inside because whatever we are will inevitably unwind. It will never be more than an escape into a garden that isn't real.

She brushes her lips against mine, and I melt into her. Then she turns shy and says in a quiet voice, “It's always just been us girls, you know.”

“Your world with your sisters? It's just the nine of you?”

She nods, and I sense what she's trying to tell me. “Have you ever been involved with an artist though? The artists you inspire? I would think Muses and artists would be items a lot of the time. I mean, writers and singers are always talking about their muses.”

“Never. Never wanted to. Never interested. Never even thought about it.”

“Not even the tiniest idea? Like, ‘Oh, that Rembrandt is so hot.'”

She laughs. “One, he's not. Two, not even the flicker of a thought.”

“So I'm your first kiss?”

She nods and blushes. “Am I bad at it?”

“No, you're amazing. But to be sure, we should really kiss more.”

“Just to test things, of course,” she says.

“Lots of testing.”

We kiss with the sun warming us, lying on the green slats of Monet's surreal bridge. As I kiss her neck I tell her all the places I
want to kiss her more, the visits I'd make on the treasure map of her body.
X
marks this spot on her shoulder, then this delicious one on her wrist, then this divine location at the hollow of her throat, as she shudders and pulls me closer with each touch, an intrepid explorer uncovering a new land of kisses. I am only too happy to be her guide, even if time is ticking on the other side.

“I should go. I have no clue what time it is, but I bet it's the middle of the night and I have to get home at some point.”

“What a bummer to have a curfew, even a middle-of-the-night one,” she teases.

We're still on the bridge, and we both stand up to make our way to the blue irises where the painting opens up. But Clio stumbles at the edge of the bridge, and I reach out for her hand to keep her from falling.

“I'm a bit clumsy sometimes,” she says, laughing, and our clasped hands are on the railing at the same time. “Can't even get back to the Musée d'Orsay without tripping.” But when she's got her footing, we've stepped onto another bridge, a mirror of the first, though the light is different. It's brighter and greener here.

We've somehow walked into another painting in the Musée d'Orsay. We're in
Waterlily Pond: Green Harmony
, one of Monet's
many versions of his Japanese bridge. We step off the bridge and into the museum, but we're nowhere near Clio's painting.

We both look at each other, as if the other one has an answer. “Did you know you could do that?” I ask her.

She shakes her head several times. “I had no idea. And trust me, I searched every corner of my painting. The bridge never went anywhere except across the pond. I don't think it connected until we touched it at the same time.”

“Two muses touching it together?”

“It must be,” she says, but she's as surprised as I am. It's as if we've found a hidden tunnel.

“Convenient, you might say, that the Impressionists painted so many versions of that bridge.” The remark comes from Dr. Gachet, Van Gogh's doctor and the subject of one of our most famous portraits. He speaks in a low, sonorous voice as he points lazily at the image behind me. It's the first time I've seen him corporeal.

“They connect? The bridges all connect?”

He holds his hands out wide. “I'm not the one jumping in and out of paintings. I was simply making an educated guess.”

Then he wanders down the hall, and when he turns the corner I see Olympia alive for the first time too, waving flirtatiously at him. They link hands and walk off.

Clio whispers. “Olympia and Dr. Gachet have a little something going on.”

“Paintings hook up. Bridges connect. Girls and boys are muses. Just another night at the museum. You know, we should go to the
Hermitage sometime. We have another one of the bridges over there right now as part of a Monet exhibit.”

“We'll have to make it a date,” she says.

I walk her back to her canvas. Before she reenters, I ask her something that's been tugging at the back of my mind. “Clio, I know you said he loves his art more than anything, but if Renoir wound up cursing you to keep you from ushering in this new art age or something, do you think he'd go to any lengths to stop it from happening now?”

“He locked me in a painting for more than a century, so I'm sure he'd want to stop it but I don't know how he could. Why are you asking?”

“Just thinking about every angle.”

Only I'm not at all sure if he's after her or me.

Simon works on his bike tricks, and I lounge on the steps in Saint-Germain-des-Prés across from two packed cafés the next afternoon, eating an egg-and-cheese crepe. We don't say much, because he's practicing some kind of midair twist, and I'm trying to solve the mystery of Renoir's return. His motive for trapping Clio in the first place was to somehow prevent the arrival of a human muse, but he's done nothing to hurt me. So I don't think I'm the one he's after. He seems to want Clio back, but the question is, what lengths will he go to to get her?

Simon executes a bizarre half-flip on his bike and lands on two wheels just as my phone buzzes.

It's Bonheur.

“What's going on? Another message from the Muses?” I joke, but I suppose I understand now why they've been wanting to hear from their missing sister.

“Well, I told you to be at the ready, so if I were you I'd get over to the Marais as fast as you can. Cass has been spending a lot of time in the church behind her store. With paints. With easels. And with canvases.”

“She's forging again?”

“Evidently she's relapsed.”

“Do you know what she's making?”

“No, but she just came out of the church, so now might be a good time to see what's inside the house of worship.”

Bonheur fits in well in the Marais. He wears black leggings, a bright-pink satin apron tied around his waist, and a long brunette wig. His shoes are black flats. Smart guy. They're probably more comfortable on the cobblestones in this neighborhood.