Starry Nights (6 page)

I should say no. I should run far away from all these strange things—Muses, Valadon, his family guarding a prized painting.

But this is the real reason I'm not bothered that Emilie is off dancing. Because I'm off chasing a dream as well, and the hope that my reality isn't merely my illusion. “Why would you need to keep it safe?”

“It's not like other paintings, Julien. It needed more protection.”

“Why? Who would want to hurt that painting?”

“It wouldn't have been hidden for so many years if there weren't people who wanted to hurt it.”

Two artists in love with the same girl. Maybe the girl's family had been after it. Maybe they wanted to protect her reputation, as my mother said. My head spins with shadowy secrets of a girl who inspired love, aroused jealousy, needed protection.

Who is she?

“But you'll keep it safe at the museum, won't you?” Bonheur asks.

“Of course.” I have so many more questions, but the closer I get to the door, the harder it is to put words into anything resembling a logical order. My own beating heart is leading me to that room.

Bonheur removes a key from a pocket in his dress and opens the door. He guides me inside. “Sit, stay. I'll leave you two alone.”

The door clicks behind him, and I walk, like a patient hypnotized, to
The Girl in the Garden.

Even with the space between us, I can feel a warmth coming from the canvas, a body heat radiating out. I study the girl, the way she looks back, the way her lips are parted ever so slightly. I want to trace a finger across those red lips. I want to know what she was saying when she posed for this painting. What would she say now if she could talk?

I stand close and watch her. She stays still and silent, but the room feels expectant, as if anticipation itself is wrapping around me like a long line of smoke drifting across an Arabian night. I stare so hard at the painting that I squint, and when I do, I see the faintest of lines surrounding her.

A shimmer of silver.

The canvas buckles near her hand. Then it's quiet again. I hold my breath, pleading for more.
This is real, this has to be real, please let this be more than an illusion.
There's a rustling then, and one slender, feminine finger pokes out. I feel a rush of blood to the head. I lick my lips briefly, hold my hands together, and I wait.

“Come out,” I whisper. “Come out.”

I move closer to the painting, inches away now. “Who are you?”

There's the gentlest swishing sound of a skirt from behind the frame.

“What is your name?”

Then a distant sound, like a far-off bell.

“What are your favorite things?”

Something like laughter, but it's not from the party. It's as if the canvas is echoing a sweet, inviting laugh.

I put my hands on the frame. This is as close as I have come to touching her. “What are you like, girl behind the paint?” I ask, and for a moment I can hear soft breath and the beating of a heart, and I'm sure neither one is coming from me.

The canvas is quiet the rest of the night, and when the sounds of the party die down, I'm one of the last to leave. Bonheur presses the pink polka-dotted calf into my hands and tells me I earned it.

“I want to see her again. Before she comes to the museum.”

He smiles and programs his number into my cell. “Just think of me as your middleman. For
her.
”

We're no longer calling her
The Girl in the Garden.
She's a she. She's a girl, and I want her to come out at night even if she is all in my mind.

I hand my mother my latest history assignment with a gleam of triumph. I have obtained a slightly above-average grade on it, and I want to gloat because it is my after-hours access.

“Ha. You didn't think I could do it.”

She gives me a sharp look as she puts her glasses on. She won't believe I've accomplished anything academically until she verifies it with 20/20 vision. But it's amazing how an imaginary girl can motivate me. My mother peruses the pages, then gives an approving nod. She hands the paper back to me. “Well done. Now, do you think you could do me a favor and pay a visit to Claire at the Louvre to check out the
Interiors
exhibit? The Renoir with the sun damage has been repaired and is hung there, but I need your sharp eyes for a second look.”

I sigh. “Seriously? Can I just have an afternoon off?” I need to check on a different Renoir.

“This is important. I need you. You were the first one to notice the fading, so I would just feel better if you could give it one final look. I don't want to have any problems.”

“Okay,” I say, giving in.

“And Julien?”

“Yes?”

“Don't let on that the piano girls had any sun damage at all. It's all better now, so the Louvre doesn't need to know.”

“Of course,” I say, tucking this latest secret safely away. Besides, sun damage happens. It's a standard part of the aging process, and it can also be reversed by a good restorer. No harm, no foul.

On my way out, I see the usual assortment of street artists who've set up shop along the river to draw tourists with pointy chins and oversize heads. Max is there, the guy who's the best of them all. He's sketching a gangly English boy who is fidgety and antsy, but the parents seem determined to capture their son as caricature. The too-long limbs remind me of a baby horse, and I say this to Max.

“You better hope they don't know ‘
poulain
' or I've lost ten euros,” he says, but he's laughing.

“I'll cover you if they turn out to be bilingual equestrians.”

I'm not a religious person, and so I have to say I'm relieved that we have very few scenes of saints and martyrs, or crucifixions, for that matter, at the Musée d'Orsay. I'm not keen on interacting with anyone from the Old or New Testament when art comes
alive after hours. Thankfully, we only have art painted after 1848, and most modern painters moved far away from the religious and historical scenes of the past.

But the Louvre is our sister museum, and it claims earlier works, including a seventeenth-century Georges de La Tour depicting Joseph in his workshop with a young Jesus. I'm glad it's daytime, so the father and son are staying put in their frames.

“It's ironic as an interior scene, don't you think? It was my idea too, because I do have years of practical work in the field.”

The question, and the veiled insult about my age, comes from Claire. She's an assistant curator here at the Louvre and has been showing me how they're mingling the paintings for the joint exhibit opening soon on
Interiors through the Ages
. It's not the first question she asked me. The first was
Where is Marie-Amelie Garnier?
My response was simple:
She sent me instead, and I'd be honored if you'd show me the exhibit before it opens.
Then she huffed out an annoyed
Very well.

Claire is one of those perfectly put-together people—sharp skirt, heels, proper blouse, and the kind of straight brown hair you see on TV hosts and anchors. Like many of them, she's also humorless.

“It definitely makes me think,” I say, because I'm quite curious if any of these biblical characters hop out of their frames at night here in the Louvre. I've never been here when the museum's closed. Does the art make appearances for anyone when the doors are shut? I peer more closely at the brightly lit candle a young Jesus holds for his earthly father, as if the painting could reveal its nighttime secrets to me.

“Well, what does it make you think about?” Claire asks as if she's testing me, and I feel like I'm in school again.

I try to fashion an answer when a sharp and hot pain sears my hand. “Ow,” I say, and I look at the source of the pain. Hot, burning candlelight has jumped from the painting into my hand. Nothing like this has ever happened during the day. The paintings I encounter are always quiet when the sun is up. “Fire. It makes me think of fire,” I mutter, as I clasp my hand shut. I can't let on to Claire that her paintings are behaving strangely, so I keep my hand clenched until the flame dies out. When I open my hand, my palm is shaded a reddish-pink.

Claire turns to me and looks at my hand. “Oh dear. Your hand is all red.”

I step back in shock. “You can see that?”

She narrows her eyebrows. “Yes, I can see your hand. What happened?”

“I don't know.” I pull my hand away, but I'm flooded with equal parts relief and vindication. This isn't only in my mind. I half want to jump for joy to celebrate that I'm not nuts. But when I look at the La Tour again, I stumble. “Claire,” I whisper.

“What is it?”

I point to the painting. The candle in it is almost burned out now. Is this because I snuffed out the fire in my hand rather than returned it to the canvas like I do with Cézanne's peaches and Olympia's cat? Prickles of fear run across my skin. Have I ruined a painting?

She gives me a funny look. “What do you mean?”

“The candle. The flame in the La Tour. It's gone.”

She glances back at the painting and then to me, then laughs dryly. “Ah, you are so young and so funny. It looks the same to me. Perhaps next time you might want to bring along a more seasoned coworker.”

The painting appears fine to Claire. But is it fine? Because when I look at it, it's blackened and dark. Only the smallest speck of white candlelight is left. The painting hasn't returned to normal like our paintings do after they come out and play. But I'm the only one who can see that it's changed, even though she definitely saw what the painting did to my hand.

“Sorry. I was just kidding,” I say, trying to recover.
Marie-Amelie, thanks for sending your son. He's an idiot, but you knew that
. “But seriously, everything looks great. Just terrific. Fantastic. Stupendous, in fact.”

“And the Renoir of the young girls at the piano looks amazing here. Please tell Marie-Amelie I'm so grateful for the loan.”

I look at the piano girls. The painting is perfect, and the sun damage is completely gone. But when I lean in closer, I can see one of the keys that was brightened back to whiteness is turning pale once more. Claire's staring at the painting too, and my chest is tight with worry. Is the sun damage starting up again? Or is this painting afflicted with whatever weirdness has seized the La Tour?

“I love this one so much,” Claire says and turns away. I realize she can't see this new sun damage on the keys, just like she couldn't see the bad behavior of the La Tour. But she could see the effect the La Tour had on my hands.

When I take my leave of Claire, I double back through the museum, popping into galleries, searching for any other signs of molting art.

I see none. Then I spot
Bathsheba
, Rembrandt's rendering of an Old Testament scene. Bathsheba has always been a round-bellied woman, but now her stomach is distended, like she's sick. I walk closer to the painting; bits of flesh are poking out of the frame.

This is my chance to fix things. I've always been fast. My reflexes are top-notch. When no one is looking, I make a quick move. I reach for the sagging section and try to push it back into the canvas. But the fleshy part won't budge. Soon a new group of tourists pours into this gallery, and I slink back among them.

I leave for the nearest restroom and splash cold water on my face. I stare into the mirror at my brown eyes that Jenny insisted were hazel the day we met, and I wish I saw the world as I did back then. Back when paintings weren't burning my hands and dribbling fleshy bits from frames that no one else can see.

“The piano girls are fine,” I tell my mother. “Can't tell anything had been wrong with it.”

The only thing wrong is with me.

“Wonderful.”

There's no need to tell my mother the key on the piano is fading, since no one else can see it. Besides, she didn't tell me about Bonheur's connections to Valadon, so I see no reason to disclose every
detail either. But I hunt through our galleries later, examining many works as if I'm a doctor with a stethoscope and a tongue depressor, doing a checkup to see if our art might have a temperature now too.