Starry Nights (25 page)

“Better not be a guy,” Simon says.

“Oh, Simon. I never ever dated anyone before you, don't you know that?”

“Impressive,” I say, tipping my forehead to Simon's hair-dresser handiwork.

“I have many talents.”

I show Lucy where the pencil and paper should go in the Art Institute. “I'm on it,” she says and dives into her purse for her phone.

Simon loses hold of the braid. “Look at that. I'll have to start all over.”

“Oh, boo-hoo. I know how you hate having your hands in my hair,” Lucy says.

“All right, where else do we need people?” Simon asks.

“Well, I'm guessing the chances of knowing someone in St. Petersburg are pretty slim?”

Everyone shakes their heads.

“That's okay. I've got another plan for the Hermitage. What about New York?”

Bonheur waves a hand. “I have plenty of friends in New York. Where do we need to plant this clandestine sheet of paper and pencil to help you and the Muse?” he asks in a Sherlock Holmesian voice.

I show him the location in the Met.

“Consider it done. Americans are so friendly. They do love to help, you know,” he says as he whisks off a quick text message.

When he's done, he looks up at me.

“Something else?”

“That's going to be the easiest thing you do today, Bonheur,” I tell him. “The next part is going to require you and Sophie.”

“Good, because I was feeling left out,” Sophie says.

“Oh, you won't feel left out now, trust me.”

Sophie's eyes widen, and Bonheur's face turns white when I tell them what they have to do with their priceless Monet. “Just look at it this way—it's much easier to get a painting into the Louvre than out of the Louvre.”

“Oh, well then. Piece of cake. But how are we going to get it back? My mother will kill me if anything happens to that painting.”

“Nothing is going to happen to it. It's going to be in the safest place in the world for a piece of art.”

“So I just walk back in tomorrow morning and say, ‘Excuse me, did I happen to leave my Monet here?' “

Sophie rolls her eyes and swats her brother's arm. He's in a
sleeveless red top today. “Seriously. Mom bought that painting at Christie's, you dodo. Everyone knows it belongs to us, so we'll get it back.”

“Actually, you'll get it back tonight. Or at least, it'll be safe tonight. I promise. Besides, the worst-case scenario is you look like an idiot in front of your mom. It's not like you might get caught in the Louvre after midnight. And if you have to explain to your mom, something tells me she'll be cool with you having helped out on an Avant-Garde mission to save the world's art.” I look at my watch. “But you should probably get going soon. You have a lot to do, and I'm guessing you'll want to get over there a few minutes before closing time. I'll wait outside for you guys for moral support.”

“I'm going to need some absinthe for real after this,” Bonheur says as he slinks down into the wicker chair.

For once, Bonheur does not stand out in a crowd. He's outside the pyramid at the Louvre and he's wearing jeans and a brown T-shirt. Sophie has ditched her trademark tap shoes in favor of sneakers. They're about to do something totally legal, but completely unusual, so there's no need to draw attention.

Bonheur pats the side of his messenger bag. “It's like carrying around a freaking diamond.”

“More like thousands of diamonds,” I correct.

He rolls his eyes. “Don't remind me. My heart is already beating ten thousand times a minute. That's fast, right?”

“Very,” I say with a small laugh. “Okay, let's go through this. The Monet canvas is inside the bag, right?”

“We took it out of the frame and off the stretcher bars,” he says, referring to the wooden bars that keep canvases taut inside frames. “Then we put it into a padded envelope and caught a taxi because there was no way I was taking a Monet on the Metro.”

“Correction. I took it off the stretchers. Your hands were shaking too much to do that,” Sophie points out.

Bonheur holds up a palm to his sister. “Whatever.”

I continue to review the plan. “So you're going to go through security. They'll scan your bag, just like they scan every bag. There's nothing in it to alert them, and even if for whatever reason they looked through the bag, there's no law that says you can't take a work of art you own out for a stroll.”

“Right. Right,” Bonheur says and nods several times, as if the repetitive motion will calm his nerves. “Then we go to the ladies' room on the second floor.”

“The one by the far stairwell,” I add. We picked that bathroom because it's unlikely anyone from museum security will patrol a small, two-stall restroom at night.

“And that's where I come in,” Sophie says and bounces on her toes. She's game for anything. “I have the double-sided tape in my purse.” She shows me a small purple purse. “I take the canvas from the envelope and hang it under the sink, so no one will see it. Then we leave the padded envelope behind in the bathroom.”

“There you go,” I say and clap them both on the back. “You can do it. I'll see you in a few minutes. You better get in there now because it's going to close soon.”

Bonheur salutes me, and Sophie grabs his elbow. I watch as they head into the pyramid entrance. I'd go with them, but I
know far too many people who work there and I can't take any chances today. So I wait and I wander, and twenty minutes later, they rush out, breathless and full of adrenaline.

“We did it!” Sophie declares, then tells me how she hung their prized Monet. It's now out of sight, suspended on the wooden underside of the sink counter with sturdy, double-sided tape Sophie pressed against the unpainted outer edge of the canvas, the white border that's normally wrapped around the stretcher bars. That way the tape won't mar a brushstroke of Monet's nor affect the value of the art.

Now all I have to do is hope no one goes into that bathroom for the next several hours.

I don't have any carry-on luggage. This trip doesn't allow it, since you can't take anything into a painting. All we need are hands and wits. I hope they're mightier than the sword, or the nightstick, I should say.

“Ready?”

“I just need to do one more thing. Come with me,” Clio says and walks across the main floor. I follow her and we stop at a Toulouse-Lautrec. She tilts her head and offers a faint smile, tinged with regret. “A proper good-bye?”

That is something I can't resist. I take her hand and the museum is gone, wiped clean by the sounds of the cancan, the dance that originated at a cabaret with windmills at the top of Montmartre. How I wish I were truly dancing with her in Montmartre. But this is as close as we'll come. We've fallen into the festivities as only Toulouse-Lautrec could imagine them, surrounded by
turn-of-the-century-dressed men and women with high-laced boots and ruffled skirts who don't notice that we've crashed their painted party. Music plays from a band on the stage, drinks are shared freely, and everywhere are revelers. It's always a fete at the Moulin Rouge, but it is bittersweet tonight.

She holds her hands out, ready to dance. “May I have this dance?”

“But of course,” I say with a smile, trying my best to keep the sadness at bay.

“This is what I want you to remember of me, not what happens next. This is what I'll remember. The before,” she says, and her eyes are so tough and so earnest at the same time. I know she wants to believe what she's saying. I know right now she suspects she'll never forget this. But she won't
feel
it again. I will be just another memory, the same as all her other memories. Nothing special, just the week she ditched work.
What made it so compelling?
she'll wonder days and weeks from now, barely able to recall what it was like.

I wrap my arms tight around her as she leans into me, and I take my here and my now. I layer kisses on her neck, I plunge my hands into her soft curls that have come home underneath my fingers. The dancers kicking their legs high in the air onstage might as well be in Peru.
This
is all there is.
This
is all I want. “I will never forget you.”

“You saved me, you know. You saved me from being trapped. You're the reason I can be free of that painting,” she says, and with her words my heart is both caving and pounding. “I want
you to know how much I wish there were another way. I love you, Julien. More than art.”

That, in a nutshell, is the problem.

I fold her into my arms, and we dance for a few minutes inside a Toulouse-Lautrec, aware the whole time of a ticking bomb on the other side. But I let this moment stretch into itself, here in our sliver of time.

I wish I could say I don't care if I ever return to the real world.

But I can't say that.

The enemy was never really Renoir. The real enemy has always been the impossibility of us.

I kiss her once more, a last kiss that has to last for all time.

It is midnight. We're starting now so we can reach all the museums while it's nighttime in their time zones. I leave my backpack and phone under a bench, a home base here in Musée d'Orsay. A few feet away is the Japanese bridge Monet painted. I step inside it with Clio, and we place our clasped hands together on the railing.

“To the Louvre,” she says, and we step forward, our feet landing on another bridge, this one in Bonheur's painting.

I jam my palms out but still smack the tiled floor of the ladies' room hard with my hands. Clio falls out next, banging her forehead on a metal pipe.

“Ouch,” she mouths.

“You okay?”

She nods and rolls from under the sink. She stumbles as she stands up, getting tangled in her long dress. I reach out for her hand, so she won't trip and attract attention. She steadies herself,
and I crawl out next. I smile at my partner-in-crime, or rather, my partner-in-uncrime. “It worked,” I whisper, relieved that the painting's been safe from people and water since closing time.

“It's showtime,” I say and hold open the door for Clio. This part of the job is easy for me, since the Louvre is the one museum where we could control the arrival spot, giving me a place to hide. Clio takes off for the Géricault, and the halls are eerily silent.

I focus on my small tasks. I kneel down at the sink and carefully remove the tape from the painting. I move onto the padded envelope, which the canvas will need for a safe return. Sophie left the envelope between the trash can liner and the trash can itself, stowed out of sight. I take it out and tuck it under my arm.

A few minutes pass, and Clio must have healed
The Raft of the Medusa
and has to be onto the Rembrandt now. I hear someone's voice. I tense and shrink into a stall. I close the door quietly and hop up onto the toilet seat, holding the Monet and the envelope. Someone opens the door. I don't move a muscle. The light goes on. Through the crack in the stall door, I see a security guard. She looks into the mirror, bares her teeth, and seems to inspect them. She pinches her thumb and index finger together and grabs at her two front teeth. “There!”

She flicks the stray piece of food into the sink and turns on the water to flush it down.

She turns off the water and opens the door to leave when her radio crackles.

“Problem at the
Mona Lisa
,” the garbled voice says.

I hold my breath.
Please be safe, Clio.

The guard brings the radio to her mouth. “What's the problem?”

“It's talking dirty.”

The guard scoffs. “Really?”

“Something about a priest and a rabbi in a bar.”

“I'm on my way,” she barks into the radio and slams it onto her belt. The door swings shut, and she's gone.

I exhale, and then it hits me—the Mona Lisa is unspooling her insides, telling her dirty joke. I'm tempted to pop out of the bathroom and listen in the halls, but her gallery is too far away.

“… And the bartender says, ‘you can sit on my lap.' “ The voice is a boom, like it's coming from a speaker system, so I guess I don't have to leave the bathroom because the whole museum can hear it now, as Mona Lisa unwinds, telling her bawdy joke over and over.

Several minutes later the joke stops, and in sixty seconds Clio opens the door. She's breathing hard. I unlock the stall. “I had to fix the
Mona Lisa
too,” she says with wide eyes. “The guards had already taken off her glass when I got there, so all I had to do was touch her. Must have been the Moulin Rouge that did her in.”

That shouldn't make me happy, but in a sick way it does, the collateral damage from one last dance.