The Muse

by Lauren Blakely

  Rembrandt’s Bathsheba in his Old Testament scene has always been a round-bellied woman, but now she looks bloated, her stomach bulging. Close up, bits of flesh are poking out of the frame.

  It’s grotesque, and like nothing I’ve seen in my museum.

  I picture Cézanne’s peach, how I’m able to put it back in its canvas. I glance around. There’s no one in the gallery, and perhaps if I can push the protruding bit of Bathsheba back into the canvas, everything will be fine. But there are alarms and security cameras, and this isn’t the Musée d’Orsay, where the guards all know me.

  Before I can take the risk, a new group of tourists pours into the gallery. I slink into their midst to see the art through their eyes.

  Not one person remarks on Bathsheba, or the canvas that for some reason can no longer contain her.

  And once more, I don’t know if art is losing its mind or if I am.

  “The Young Girls at the Piano looks fine,” I tell Adaline when I reach the Musée, managing not to flinch with guilt. “You’d never know there’d ever been a problem.”

  My decision not to tell my sister about the fading piano key comes down to the fact that I don’t know what to tell her. Sun damage no one else can see? Even if she believes me, what can she do? What can I do about it?

  Still, I walk the galleries, inspecting every painting for the least sign of trouble. There’s nothing—everything here is in perfect shape.

  For now.

  I have an early class the next morning, and immediately afterward, I take the train from the university to the Louvre. I hardly slept last night. I worried about our paintings in the Musée d’Orsay, but it was the Louvre that kept me wide awake with a kind of inevitable dread.

  My instincts didn’t lie. Whatever happened yesterday is spreading. More keys on the piano are disappearing, a peacock feather droops in Ingres’s Grande Odalisque, and the mirror inside a Titian has a hairline fracture.

  Bathsheba hasn’t fared well either. She’s painful to look at. There’s a black-and-blue bruise on the rolls of her stomach.

  She looks ill, and that thought leads me to a crazy notion—are these anomalies some kind of contagion, spreading from frame to frame? And did bringing that sun-damaged Renoir here introduce some kind of epidemic to the Louvre?

  But while the Rembrandt, the Titian, and the La Tour are bruised and cracked and burnt, the Renoir seems to be simply fading again.

  Either way, the art here isn’t so much coming to life as it is dying.

  A pit deepens in my stomach, and I can’t exit the Louvre fast enough, hating the sense that I’m leaving the art here to spoil. But a bigger panic seizes me.

  I call Remy as soon as I’m outside. “Is the painting okay?” I ask before he even has a chance to speak. “Is she okay?”

  “Of course.” He sounds startled at either the question or my tone. “Why wouldn’t it be?”

  “I need to see it. I need to see her.”

  “Now?”

  It’s not a reasonable request, but I’m not feeling reasonable. “Yes. If I can. I know it’s the middle of the day, but it’s important. You said she has to be protected.”

  There’s no hesitation this time.

  “Come, then. I’ll let you in.”

  7

  I hit the nearest Metro station and take the next train to Montmartre. It’s only fifteen minutes, but it’s the longest fifteen minutes in my memory, and when I reach my stop, I climb a hundred looping spiral steps to the exit. I start out at a quick walk, but near the house, I break into a sprint up the hilly street.

  Remy opens the door before I can text that I’m here. He’s dressed casually today in skinny purple pants and a white T-shirt that I’m sure were never peddled in a department store.

  “What’s wrong?” he asks, as serious as I’ve ever seen him.

  I’m about to do something drastic. I haven’t told a soul that I’ve been living in a mirage since that night the ballerina danced out of the Degas. But Remy said the Muses live below his home. Now I know something is really happening—to me, to the art—and he’s the only one I can think of who might believe me.

  “This is going to sound completely mental,” I blurt out in a rush.

  His knitted brows climb into a more Remy-like arch. “Mon ami, what besides the sheep on my balcony and a carousel in my living room makes you think I am not accepting of all kinds of madness?”

  That excellent point derails my runaway thoughts, which had been centered on convincing him to even listen to me. He closes the gate and says, “Let me guess. The Degas ballerinas are dancing for you at night?”

  My jaw hits the paving stones.

  I stare at him, dumbfounded. It’s as if I’ve been putting on an elaborate play for the public, and he’s pulled back the curtain, revealing the stagehands and sets and all the illusions. I don’t have to perform anymore, and it takes a second to figure out what to do instead.

  “They danced Swan Lake the other night,” I confess, pacing the courtyard, and when he doesn’t laugh, I tell him everything about the living art. “All of them, or any of them. The Cézannes, the Manets, the Matisses . . . The picnickers in a Monet brought their lunch out of the painting last week. Olympia’s cat prowls the galleries. I think she’s looking for mice.”

  Remy does laugh then, not mocking but delighted. “How astounding. The green-eyed monster is eating me alive right now.”

  “Yeah,” I admit. “It’s pretty cool, when I’m not worried I’m going completely round the twist.” I look at him directly. “It’s weird though, right? Does this happen to other people? Does your Monet come alive in the hall?”

  Does Woman Wandering in the Irises break free at night?

  That’s what I really want to ask, but I’m afraid of how badly I need the answer.

  “Of course it doesn’t,” Remy says. “Who ever heard of art coming to life in someone’s house?”

  “Exactly!” I gesture with open hands to the point he makes in my own argument.

  Rather than respond, Remy thoughtfully taps his smooth chin. “I think maybe it is something about a museum. Think of how much planning goes into how and where to display a piece—the frame and the lighting, the backdrop, what’s nearby, even the flow of the room. You know this. Art is art anywhere, but the setting affects how it affects us, how we interact with it.”

  I stare at him, his matter-of-fact explanation as jarring as my first glimpse of the ballerinas. “So you think art can only come to life in a museum? Not in a home or a private gallery?”

  He raises his hands in a shrug. “Who can say? Perhaps there are people who enjoy performances of Swan Lake in their homes nightly.” With a wave, he dismisses that idea as ridiculous. “But no. I do believe it is the museum. This is what I’ve always believed, and so it must be true. In a museum, you sense the faces looking out of the paintings are just waiting to come alive as soon as the doors are locked.”

  I’d felt exactly that many times, even before the edges between life and art had blurred. But Remy is right. Only in a museum is there the sense the art has another life when no one is watching.

  “I suppose there is a kind of logic to it,” I say. “Museums are like churches for art. Sacred spaces, or holy ground or something.”

  Remy nods excitedly. “Yes, that’s it. We come like pilgrims to an abbey to see them.”

  I feel like I might have a faint glimmer of understanding about what’s going on, and that worries me. Am I grasping at straws? “You seem very certain of this when you’ve never seen it for yourself.”

  Another dismissive wave. “Do you have to see the sun to believe in it? My family believes it. Sophie believes it. Rafe . . .” He makes a so-so wag of his hand. “The power of art is real, and anyone can feel it, even if not everyone can see paintings come to life. But some people can. The Muses say there are, and have always been, those who can see art live and breathe.”

  And just as I feared, the explanation is getting away from me agai
n. “Hold up, Remy. The Muses told you this? In the basement?”

  He shrugs. “It isn’t an ordinary cellar.”

  “Yes. I gathered that. I hadn’t realized how extraordinary though.”

  “They live and work far beneath Montmartre. I’m a sort of emissary for them.”

  He might have said “I’m a bike messenger” just as matter-of-factly. I look around the courtyard for a bench because my head is spinning from how quickly my world is changing.

  No bench. I have to man up and deal with this on my feet.

  “What about that silver dust I saw in the cellar? There was some inside the five-legged calf you gave me too.”

  “And in the one you won at the party.” Remy nods, pleased I am following him, which proves I’m a better actor than I thought. “They give it to me from time to time to pass along.”

  This is too much. I pinch the bridge of my nose and wonder which of us is the delusional one—him or me. Though I suppose we might both be. Or maybe Remy’s delusion is part of mine.

  Perhaps he can sense I’ve reached the end of my tether, or maybe his feet are getting tired, because he puts a hand on my shoulder so that we’re both angled toward the house.

  “Mon ami, we can stand here longer and debate the Muses and madness and the magic of museums, but I think you might rather come inside and see what—who—it is you came to see.” The roguish teasing in his voice as he gives my shoulder a shake is more the Remy I’m used to. “A certain beautiful woman in a garden, maybe?”

  I run a hand over my chin. “Is it that obvious?”

  He nudges me toward the house. “You wear your feelings on your sleeve, as they say.”

  We go in by the orange door, and he leads me down the hallway, even though I know my way by now. Heat rises in me. The whole house quivers, hazy and warped. There’s a strumming in my body, and a whispering in the air that urges me on. Remy unlocks the door to the room where she’s kept, and it’s torturous to stand still that long.

  Then . . .

  Then, it doesn’t matter—because nothing exists anymore but me and this room and this insanely gorgeous painting that I want to hold and touch. This painting that is perfect—no sun damage, no fading colors, no flowers wilting from the seams.

  Remy leaves me alone with the painting, and when I am mere inches away from it, I lift my hand, but I am careful not to touch the frame, or even the canvas. The painting is still a painting.

  Until it’s not. There’s a stretching I feel in my own muscles and tendons, like coming awake at dawn when the first rays of a coral sunrise flare through the windowpanes. A sound goes with it—a sweet morning yawn, delicate arms unfolding from the night, and eyelids fluttering open.

  Inside her garden, the woman presses her fingertips against the wall of reality between us, imploring the canvas to yield for her. Slowly at first, then more quickly, she reaches her hand through the paint, spreading her fingers.

  I don’t hesitate. I reach for her, my fingers touching hers and then sliding around them. Her skin is warm and soft and radiant.

  And confident.

  There is a boldness in her touch that makes me feel like I can do anything, and the things I’ve done, I can do better.

  I press her soft hand to my cheek; her palm is so warm, so tender on my face. I want her to come all the way out, to talk to me, to tell me who she is.

  Holding her hand, holding her painted gaze, I speak the first and only thought I have. “I want more than anything for you to be at the museum. I can’t wait to meet you.”

  “It is the same for me with you,” she whispers from beyond the canvas.

  8

  I carry her words with me, through waking and dreaming, over the next couple of weeks. There are exams to get through, grades that hardly matter, since I’ve already been accepted to graduate school here at the university. The most important thing, scholastically, is my project for my independent study.

  The most important thing on my mind, personally, is getting to the museum.

  Bless whatever neuron came up with the brilliant idea to do my project on the Renoir, because the overlap of those two things may well be the difference between graduating with honors and without.

  Today is the day.

  I force myself to keep a normal pace on my way to work, just to prove I have some self-control. And also, the woman can’t come out of the garden until the sun sets. So, there’s that.

  I let myself into the Musée d’Orsay’s administrative wing with my key card and make for the nearest stairwell, taking the steps two at a time to the first floor, where she—the only “she” who matters—is already in place, ready to welcome visitors.

  The crowd surprises me, though it shouldn’t. Tourists and locals alike pack the entrance to the gallery that showcases Woman Wandering in the Irises. It’s not quite Mona Lisa level, but it’s more traffic than the Musée usually sees.

  It feels like the floor of a concert venue, everyone sweaty and elbowing each other, angling to get closer to the rock star. Everyone wants to see the lost Renoir.

  Then—there she is.

  My heart stutters, and a flush heats my face and neck. I want to push through the crowd to reach her and run my hands over her painted body. I want her to see me, and only me, amid the chaos.

  I want her to like me.

  I want her, full stop, and that’s an exceedingly uncomfortable thing to admit about a painting.

  Only, I’m no longer pretending that’s all she is.

  I leave her to her adoring public, calmer now that I’ve seen her here. Now that I know she’s in the building. I even manage to get some work done, and to say good night to Adaline when she leaves, and to behave like a human being and not an instinct-driven hormone machine raised by wolves.

  Finally—finally—the museum closes. Gustave patrols, and another guard keeps watch on the monitors at the security desk. Now the waiting gets tough. The sun sets late in the summer, and I’d wrestle it down beneath the horizon if I could.

  My phone chirps at sunset, and I pack up my messenger bag and make a loop through the galleries while I wait for full dark. Anticipation has sharpened my senses, and as I near her gallery, a dress rustles. Quickening my pace, I arrive as she steps out of her frame.

  It’s as natural and effortless as if she does this every single night. Her long cream dress skims the floor, and she shakes out her curls, a Botticelli Venus emerging from the ocean, sun-kissed skin and tousled hair. Her chestnut hair is long and luxurious, enticing me to touch it, hold it, wrap my fingers around its silk.

  She hasn’t noticed me yet, doesn’t realize I’m watching as her paint turns to flesh. As she takes on shape and skin and breath and life.

  I would be shocked if I wasn’t used to paintings coming to life. What I am, though, is awed.

  Awestruck by her beauty and her wonderful realness.

  She turns, and her eyes fall on me for the first time. They are the fierce blue of a revolution, a color to rally flagging armies. They stun me.

  Then she speaks. In English, her accent warm, her voice sounding like a poet. “I’m awfully hungry.”

  I laugh in surprise. I didn’t dare imagine what she might say first, but not something so pedestrian.

  But I like it, and it makes answering easy, bypassing nerves and vaulted expectations.

  “It’s probably been a while since you had a bite to eat.”

  She nods with a wry arch to her brow. “More than a hundred and thirty-five years.”

  “I know where there’s a great île flottante,” I say, thinking of the nearby café that serves the floating meringue in caramel. Then I follow the thought through, and wince. “But it’s closed.”

  “Maybe you can bring me one tomorrow?”

  “Sure.” I would bring the Eiffel Tower to her if she asked for it. “It’s the best in the city.”

  She nods. “I do love sweets.”

  “Fortunately, we have plenty of those here in Paris.” I remem
ber I have half a sandwich from earlier, and it’s not a courtly gesture, but it solves her problem.

  I pat my messenger bag. “I have some of my lunch in here. It’s just a sandwich, but it’s pretty good.”

  She eyes my bag hungrily, like she might take a bite out of it instead if I don’t hand over the food. “Would you mind terribly?” she asks, then recovers her aplomb. “I mean, may I have it?”

  “Absolutely.” I sit on the wooden bench, and she sits next to me. The skirt of her dress spreads out and touches my leg.

  She’s real. She’s here. And to say she’s beautiful would be to call the Alps tall or the ocean salty.

  I unwrap the sandwich and hand it to her. When the food reaches her lips, she rolls her eyes in pleasure.

  “This is perfect,” she says.

  “I can bring you one of your very own tomorrow. Is there something you’d like?”

  “Anything. Anything is good.”

  She takes another bite, then holds up a “one more thing” finger until she can swallow. “I meant that. Everything is good. Bring me one of everything.”

  Her voice is ravenous. No, she is ravenous. As she chews, she looks around the gallery with lively, hungry eyes. She glances at the messenger bag at my feet, as if she’s able to notice them now. She inventories my shoes, my jeans, my button-down shirt, and she can probably see the flush rising on my neck when she gets to my collar.

  “I don’t know what to call you,” she says.

  “I’m Julien.” I offer my hand to shake, and she takes it. I let the last of my doubt run out on a sigh. Her touch is real. She is real, from the hair that falls past her shoulders to the folds of her dress to the slim silver bracelets she wears, each one the width of a few strands of thread.

  “You can call me Clio,” she says.

  “Clio.” Her name is like a bell, clear and pure. “Clio.”

  “It’s better like this, isn’t it? When we are on the same side of the frame?”