Mister Impossible

by Maggie Stiefvater

  “I didn’t ask for a break,” Hennessy said.

  Her secret was this: She was tired of trying.

  Madame X. Madame X. Madame X.

  When Declan slept, he dreamt of her, Virginie Amélie Avegno Gautreau, the red-haired beauty who powdered her face and pinked her ears to make herself unforgettable, a painting before she ever showed up on a canvas as John Singer Sargent’s Madame X. Virginie Amélie Avegno Gautreau, her face turned in striking profile, shoulders proud, fingers poised on the table. Virginie Amélie Avegno Gautreau, with her suitable but troubled young marriage, her many affairs, the dress strap slid from her shoulder to subtly imply she lived two lives: a proper, daylight existence and a stolen, shadow existence that was a reaction to the unsuitability of the first. Madame X.

  When he woke up, he thought about the circumstances under which she had been painted. When Declan went to sleep, he thought about how she might be similar to El Jaleo. All the hours in between, he thought about how that process might be re-created to make a new sweetmetal. Madame X. Madame X. Madame X.

  And by Madame X, he meant Jordan Hennessy.

  He couldn’t get enough of her.

  Boston suited him. Schedule suited him. Appointments, phone calls, goals—they all suited him. Building an elaborate spiderweb (a proper one, structurally sound on the outermost corners and sticky only in the very middle so that it trapped only the insects he liked to eat and not himself in it) suited him. He was making a plan. It was high stakes and it was dangerous and Jordan was right: He liked it. He liked all of it.

  Declan liked the alarm at 6:00 a.m. He liked the cafés that woke up even before he did. He liked the ding of the email that meant his newspaper had arrived in his inbox. He liked the swick of his CharlieCard in the turnstile, he liked the jostle and noise of the T as he read the headlines and swiped to the business section. He liked hearing from a new business contact he’d gotten from one of his father’s old contacts. He liked the assembly of jobs and tasks that got ever more complex as trust built.

  Declan liked being buried to his neck in art history. He had begun as Pozzi, and Pozzi was a good start. Pozzi was how Madame X had begun, after all, with Sargent asking his friend Dr. Pozzi to introduce him to Virginie Amélie Avegno Gautreau as a portrait subject. Madame Gautreau! Sargent found her an impossibly beautiful and hopelessly lazy model. He sketched her over and over, painted her over and over, trying to capture on canvas whatever it was that made her famous in social circles. And when he did—when he’d painted that haughty beauty with her strap impudently fallen on her marble shoulder—the scandal nearly ruined him. Some things weren’t meant to be painted out loud. Sargent’s friend, the novelist Henry James, persuaded him to move to Britain to get away from the disgrace, so Sargent started his life from scratch there, not knowing that eventually Madame X was to be the painting he was best known for. Was that what Declan was doing? Here in Boston? Declan didn’t know, but he liked it.

  Declan liked the parties. And there were ever so many parties. He had never allowed himself to be so public in DC, so himself, so out and about, but Jordan argued that extroversion was actually safer. It took no effort, she noted, to disappear someone who didn’t really exist, so they should live, they should live loudly. It was impeccable logic and, in any case, what Declan wanted to hear. He liked making his burner phone his real phone, making sure that, yes, it was a good number for him, a permanent number for him, a place to get the man for the job. The first get-together was small: an exhibit opening at a tiny Fenway gallery. Drinks and music, a funky vibe, young collectors, an after-party that spilled into a bar. After that, Declan bumped into his senator’s sister’s daughter on the street in Somerville and got invited to dinner, which turned into drinks, which turned into dancing. All of it turned into more texts and calls and invitations. Jordan was an exceptional and practiced partygoer. He liked how he looked on her arm.

  Declan liked finding out how passionate Sargent had been about El Jaleo. A musician himself, Sargent had been fascinated by the culture of flamenco, and a trip to Spain had left such a mark that three years later he was still painting studies of dancers and guitarists for the piece that would eventually hang in the Gardner. When the twelve-foot-long painting debuted at the prestigious Salon, it rocketed Sargent to fame and cemented a career that would last his entire life. Was this what it had in common with Madame X? Was it that the painting changed his life, or was it that he knew that it was going to change his life? What was soul? Declan didn’t know, but he liked trying to find out.

  Declan liked the new roles his brothers played in this fantastic construct. Even though he felt guilty about letting Matthew’s schoolwork slide (Was he going to college anyway? Would he ever actually be an adult?), he liked ordering takeout with him, and he liked using him as an excuse to see the touristy things, and he liked doing the holidays with him. Matthew’s dreamy episodes seemed to be fewer than before, and Declan felt safe enough to get Matthew a part-time job at one of the local galleries, packing orders, which seemed to improve his mood. Everyone loved seeing him; who didn’t love Matthew? And Ronan—even though he wasn’t in Boston, his presence was still huge in Declan’s life. Once Declan stopped changing his phone number and started going to parties, a Moderator named Carmen Farooq-Lane called to ask if he’d been in touch with Ronan Lynch since the Potomac River incident. (No, said Declan, but while I have you on the phone I should let you know I’ve made very good friends with an attorney since your unannounced attack on my personal residence, a sentence that ended the phone call.) And in the oddest places, people would lean in and suddenly whisper, Are you Ronan Lynch’s brother? Please thank him. This would have petrified Declan back in DC, but now it all made him feel like he was part of something bigger. Golden Matthew, charming the city. Rebellious Ronan, finally grown into something useful. Cunning Declan, trafficking in art and stories. The Brothers Lynch. He liked not worrying about them all the time.

  Declan liked coming to the Fenway Studios at the end of the day when Jordan was just waking up for her workday, which lasted all night. He liked that without any conversation they’d decided it was right for him to sit in the antique leather chair by the window and tell her about his day while she worked at her canvases. He liked that she had begun painting him again, although she refused to show him this portrait. He liked that she was trying to make him her sweetmetal. He liked watching her create her copies of El Jaleo and Madame X, her ability with the brush never failing to transfix him as she forged layer upon layer in oils, same as when he had first glimpsed her at the Fairy Market. Virginie Amélie Avegno Gautreau.

  Jordan Hennessy.

  He thought about her all the time.

  He liked it all. He liked it very much.

  “What are you thinking?” Matthew asked.

  “What?”

  “What are you thinking about?”

  “I’m not thinking about anything, Matthew, I’m just waiting for Jordan like you are.”

  The two brothers lingered in the Dutch Room in the Gardner museum, killing time until Jordan was meant to meet them for late lunch. Breakfast for her, since she probably was only just now waking up.

  “You are thinking, though,” Matthew insisted. He had that whinge to his voice that indicated today was going to be one of his tricky days. “You’re thinking of things you’re going to talk about with Jordan. Why don’t you talk about them with me?”

  He wasn’t wrong, which was an impressive display of discernment on his part. But it was no less aggravating. Declan said, “Because you’re two different people. I’m not going to copy-paste a conversation.”

  “You just think I’m stupider than her,” Matthew said. “You save all the smart things to talk about with her and then just point out people walking dogs to me.”

  “Do you or don’t you like it when I point out dogs?” Declan asked.

  Matthew groused. “I don’t only like when you point out dogs. I want to know what you’re doing. What you’re
, like, you know, thinking.”

  “Fine,” Declan said. “I was wondering if these paintings are sweetmetals. If that’s why they were stolen.”

  The green-wallpapered Dutch Room in the Gardner was notable for many things, including a Rembrandt self-portrait, a few Rubens, and some very excellent historical furniture, but it was now probably most famous for the things that weren’t there.

  One cold March several decades before, two thieves dressed as policemen had stolen thirteen works, including a Rembrandt and a Vermeer. It remained the largest unsolved art heist in history. Any crime of that size would have been notable, but the loss was felt even more acutely because the Gardner museum was both small and unusual, unable to rebound in the way any other museum might have. Isabella Stewart Gardner had overseen every inch of the intimate museum’s creation. She’d acquired and placed every piece, micromanaged down to the building and tearing down of walls and other architectural features, and one of the requirements in her will was that nothing in the museum be changed after her death. Even widening one of the doorways a few inches for accessibility had required petitions and paperwork. This mandate meant that the museum couldn’t acquire new works or rearrange old ones to take the place of the stolen works. Instead, the empty frames had been hung back up where the pieces had been. In essence, the loss itself was now displayed—and what more universal piece of art could there be?

  “Sweetmetals, why? Because they were weird choices? The stolen stuff, I mean?” Matthew asked, which, again, displayed slightly more focus than Declan had come to expect from his brother. He’d been paying attention on their many visits.

  “Because they were weird, yes. Because there were more expensive pieces hanging just feet away and they left them. Because they took that bronze finial, of all things.”

  “The bird thing,” said Matthew.

  “Yes,” Declan echoed drily. This was more of what he expected from his brother. “The bird thing.”

  For decades experts had been trying to understand why the thieves had taken the pieces they had, and why they had treated them the way they did. They’d hacked valuable canvases right out of the frame. They’d pocketed disparate works on paper. They’d taken the Shang dynasty bronze beaker that had been on the table in front of the Rembrandt they also stole. And of course, as Matthew noted, the bird thing—they had stolen a bronze eagle finial off the end of a random flagpole. Was it personal? Experts wondered. A random grab? What did these works have in common?

  “I was thinking if they were sweetmetals, the randomness would make sense,” Declan said. “Or at least as much sense as any other explanation. It wouldn’t have been about traditional value or artistic merit. Just energy.”

  “But why didn’t they take the dancing lady, then?”

  “El Jaleo.”

  “That’s what I said. Dancing lady with her arm on backward.”

  Declan resented the somewhat accurate description of the painting but let it pass. “I don’t know. Maybe they ran out of time. Maybe it was too big. Maybe they had been told not to.”

  “By who?”

  “Powerful people are interested in these things,” Declan said. “Powerful people control a lot of them. It’s why we’re working very carefully.”

  “Wouldn’t that mean if Jordan made one, she’d be powerful people?” Matthew asked.

  Declan looked sharply at his brother. “Yes, I guess it does.” But what he didn’t say out loud was that unguarded power was actually weakness. If you had something someone else wanted and no way to stop them from taking it, you were vulnerable to exploitation. Jordan and her sweetmetal. Ronan and his dreams. It was why the spiderweb was so important, though he wasn’t about to get into that with Matthew. The web was to protect him, not involve him.

  Jordan appeared in the narrow doorway then, and as she joined them, Matthew said, “Was that so hard? We had a conversation. It wasn’t just copy pasta.”

  “What’s the conversation?” Jordan asked. “Was it a good one? Was it about me? That would be a good one.”

  “These guys,” Matthew said. He pointed at an empty frame.

  Putting her hands on her hips, she studied it as intently as she would if there had still been a painting in it. “Do you reckon these were sweetmetals? Is that what we’re thinking?”

  Matthew leapt gratefully into the conversation as Declan looked at the two of them. He felt so content in that moment, watching the two of them lightly bat around theories, that it turned right back around into uncertainty. He liked this life so well. He liked the people in it so much. It felt as if the other shoe must drop eventually.

  “By the way, you’ll never guess who I had a lovely wake-up call from,” Jordan told Declan. “Our good friend Boudicca came in on the tails of my nudey landlord to let me know that their sweetmetals are going fast and they’re waiting to hear from me … and also had I ever thought about getting together a portfolio for a gallery?”

  “Bribery is new. What did you tell them?”

  “I appreciated their diligence and I was still having a bit of a think if I even really needed one these days. Would they let me know when the last one was on the line?”

  This was perhaps what Declan liked the best about all of this, about Jordan Hennessy: She could handle herself. He’d never had anyone in his life who didn’t need him to manage, guard, chastise, protect. He’d never had an equal—he’d never even known he wanted an equal, and now that she was there, he liked it.

  “They loved that, of course,” Jordan said, with her usual grin.

  No, that was probably what Declan liked the very best about all of this. Never in his life would anyone have accused Declan Lynch of being an optimist, but he had to admit that he was starting to see the perks. Things might be okay, he thought. Jordan and Matthew were dreams, yes, but as long as Hennessy and Ronan were alive, they could live their own lives. And if something happened to Hennessy or Ronan, now Declan knew that sweetmetals existed in the world to wake them up. Even if he couldn’t immediately get his hands on one, he no longer had to fear losing his entire remaining family in one go; he had recourse. Things could be okay. Things were okay. He’d never felt that way before.

  He liked it very, very much.

  As the three of them pushed out of the museum into the chilly day, his phone rang. He held up a finger to the others to let them know he’d catch up at the car in a minute, and he answered it.

  “Hello?”

  Adam Parrish said, “We really need to talk about Bryde.”

  The city woke up,” Adam said.

  “Back that up a moment,” Declan replied. “Explain to me what that means.”

  He’d found Adam in line for a celebrity chef’s food truck in Harvard Square, an establishment that served gourmet waffles with savory toppings for fourteen dollars a pop. Adam introduced the other students waiting with him as his good college friends, but Declan was dubious. The way they all stood together with Adam reminded him a little of a computer wallpaper he’d seen at the school office, a big shepherd dog standing with a bunch of ducklings huddled around its legs. Probably the photo was supposed to be cute, but at the time, Declan had thought about how unrewarding and one-directional the effort must be for the dog. This feeling of Declan’s had only been underlined when the friend group discovered the food truck was cash only and began to wail, forcing Adam to patiently count out bills from his wallet in return for waffles and IOUs.

  Adam had changed since their time together at Aglionby Academy, Declan thought. Old Adam never had any money. And old Adam would’ve scathingly pointed out the large CASH ONLY sign tacked to the truck rather than come to his wealthy friends’ rescue.

  “I thought Cambridge was dead before this,” Adam said, leading Declan briskly through the Harvard campus. They’d left Adam’s ducklings eating in order to speak more privately, and now that he was out of sight of them, Adam ate his fancy waffle on the way, perfunctorily, one bite after another, until it was all gone, without any sign of
enjoyment. “No ley energy. That’s why Ronan went straight to nightwash here.”

  “What is it you wanted me to see?” Declan asked.

  “We’re not there yet. I don’t use it like him, but I can feel the ley line, too. I use it if I scry or read cards.” Glancing behind him, Adam led Declan out of Harvard Yard to Oxford Street. There, he slowed his pace, but Declan could not yet see anything unusual. It was all quaint and scenic: red brick, white trim, black trees, blue skies. “I couldn’t really do any of that after coming here. Like I said, the city was dead. Those tarot readings you saw were just for show. I was just reading people. Parlor tricks. Fake magic. But lately I’ve been feeling these … I don’t know. Pulses. Like power surges. Or heartbeats.”

  Declan wasn’t sure he liked the sound of the last bit. Power surges sounded clinical and manageable. Heartbeats sounded living, and living things were unpredictable and hard to control.

  “And then something really happened last night,” Adam said. “Look here.”

  They faced a more modern building labeled SCIENCE CENTER. Casting a furtive glance up and down the street, Adam crouched beside a concrete bench built into the wall. Reaching beneath it, he scraped out a large handful of debris.

  Then he showed it to Declan.

  To Declan’s surprise, it was not leaf litter, but beetles. Some were small, ordinary-looking insects, black and unremarkable. Others were huge and spotted, with the portentous grace of elephants. Some had massive forked antlers. Others were brilliantly blue, with galaxies of stars glittering through the color.

  Declan did not have to be told they were not native to Cambridge.

  “These are the Rockefeller beetles. Some of them. Do you know what those are? There’s one hundred thousand of them on display in the Museum of Natural History just over there.” Adam plucked one from his handful and showed it to Declan. The bullet-shaped beetle was ferociously green. It also had a perfect little hole straight through it when he held it up to the sun. “That’s where the pin would go, to hold it to the mount.”