The Muse

by Lauren Blakely

  “An apron party? What is that?”

  “Hell if I know, but I’d get an apron if I were you.”

  “You’re not going to wear an apron, Julien?” she asks with a bit of mischief in her voice.

  “He’s making me go to the party. He can’t make me wear an apron.”

  “Something tells me no one could make you go to a party. Maybe you actually want to go.”

  Maybe I do.

  Remy wears a light-blue apron with red cherries. Sophie has gone meta and her apron has prints of mini aprons on it in orange, yellow, purple, and blue. Emilie sports leggings and a pink tulle apron, and Lucy is dressed to the nines in a black-and-white-striped skirt topped with a pink apron with black piping, like a sexy ice-cream-parlor girl. Simon can’t keep his hands off her. He wears an apron with “Kiss the Chef” written on it in bold letters, and Lucy does as instructed.

  “Bonjour! Felicitations to everyone but Julien,” Remy declares as he invites us into his home.

  “Why not Julien?” I protest, even though I know the answer.

  “If you can’t get into the spirit of the party, how can the party spirit get into you?” He pats my cheek and gestures grandly for everyone to follow him down the hall.

  Monet’s Japanese bridge painting is back on the wall. I force myself not to look at it. Seeing it makes my chest hurt. I force myself to look anywhere but at the door to the room that leads to the basement. The door that leads to her. To heartbreak.

  Sophie brings around a tray of macarons—with combos of saffron and peach, caramel and pistachio, and even grapefruit-wasabi.

  I pass. I don’t need another reminder. Not when I’m only now starting to feel a smidge of un-misery.

  “There is something wrong with someone who doesn’t like macarons,” Sophie says, narrowing her eyes.

  “Just not in the mood.” That feels true of just about everything these days.

  “Suit yourself. But tomorrow you will wake up and think, ‘I wish I had a macaron right now,’ and it will be too late because I’m eating whatever is left over tonight.”

  She sashays to another group of partygoers as Remy drapes an arm over my shoulder. “Don’t listen to her. Nobody ever died for lack of a macaron. Love, on the other hand . . .”

  I tense, and he finally notices I’m not being coy about his matchmaking attempts. His confusion is obvious—not that he keeps his emotions close to the vest.

  He turns to face me, one hand still on my shoulder, and lowers his voice. “Don’t you want to see her again, Julien? You haven’t come by at all. Have you just been going through La Belle Vie?”

  I wince.

  The pain in my heart is too much to hide. I turn to him, my jaw tight, my voice heavy, and tell him, hoping it will unburden me a little more. My God, I need it to. Do I ever need it to.

  “She doesn’t want to see me,” I say heavily.

  His jaw drops. “What? After all that? After all you did?”

  “It’s just one of those things about Muses,” I say, adding a shrug, like that softens the blow to my soul.

  It doesn’t.

  Remy isn’t going to accept that as my final answer, so I explain briefly and emotionlessly what happened to us when Clio saved the art. “So, if you ever see me go near that trapdoor, handcuff me and keep me away. Please.”

  His eyes are sad. His lips turn down. “All right. But I won’t let you stay away from our house. I would be a poor friend to let you cut yourself off from life because you are taking a break from love.”

  “I won’t do that.”

  He gives me a sternly doubtful look.

  I raise my hand. “I vow, I won’t. How can I prove it?”

  He studies me for another long moment, and then calls out, “Rafe, mon chou! Bring me the thing!”

  I already regret this.

  Rafe appears beside Remy, mouths I’m sorry to me, and holds out, hooked on his finger, an apron that looks like something a unicorn coughed up. There are pink and purple ruffles, silver ribbons, sparkling trim, and violet glitter.

  So. Much. Glitter.

  Remy holds it out like a monarch bestowing a medal, his expression imperious. I sigh and take my cue, bowing so that he can loop the apron around my neck. When I straighten, he takes my shoulders and kisses one cheek, then the other.

  “Now, Sir Julien, I command you to lead off the dancing.”

  “Me?” I hardly notice Sophie tying the apron strings behind me.

  “Someone has to go first. Music!” He claps twice and swans off through the gathered crowd of guests, then the unignorable beat of techno pop begins and people move outside where there’s room to dance in the courtyard, with the goat and the sheep.

  Rafe kisses each of my cheeks too, claps my shoulder, and tells me, “You’ve made his night, you know.”

  Then he’s off, and Sophie is pushing me to where nobody has waited for me to start the dancing.

  “I don’t see any dancing, Twilight Sparkle,” Simon tells me, grinning like a madman.

  Emilie grabs my hand and pulls me into an empty space. “Come on. I know you can hear that music,” she says, pointing to one of the thumping speakers. She pirouettes and moves gracefully into some clubby dance moves that I can copy.

  Music, art, dancing. Those have to be the balms for me. They were for Clio.

  Please, please let them be for me.

  Lucy joins in, bringing Simon onto the impromptu dance floor, and Sophie jumps around too. Remy pulls Rafe out of the kitchen to dance with him, shaking his hips.

  I watch them all. Dancing the way they want, listening to the music they like. I think of Gustave and his subway art, of Max and his caricature classes, of my friends and their random loves, like aprons and five-legged calves and flash mobs on the curving corner of a hilly street in Montmartre.

  I don’t know that Renoir would have liked this party. But I do.

  I’m pretty sure Clio—or at least the Clio I knew—would have liked it too.

  For several minutes, hell for maybe even a half-hour, I don’t feel the ache.

  I don’t feel the misery.

  I start to feel something else.

  Hope.

  Hope that I might make it through all this longing.

  That I might find a way to come out on the other side of unrequited love.

  Later, Remy disappears for a while. When he returns to the party, he pulls me aside, a small smile on his face. “Thalia wants to see you tomorrow morning. Can you meet her?”

  I arch a dubious brow. “Why?”

  He shrugs, saying he has no idea. “She just asked if you could be at the bridge between the two museums at nine. What should I tell her?”

  I don’t know if I like Thalia. I don’t know if I want to see her, and I don’t know what she could have to say to me.

  But I still say yes.

  It seems I can’t let go of hope.

  34

  Thalia waits on the Louvre side of the river, one hand resting on the railing, the other on her waist. She wears slacks and a blouse, her red hair loose around her shoulders.

  “Thank you for meeting me,” she says.

  “Well, it seemed rude to turn down the head of the Muses.”

  She manages a small smile, the kind that doesn’t show any teeth. “I want to thank you for all you did for the paintings. Without your help, they’d have been lost, and I’ve been remiss in not extending my gratitude.”

  “What else could I do?”

  “You could have let the art die.”

  “No,” I say levelly, “I couldn’t.”

  Thalia studies me for a moment, then nods. “So, you saved it, at great cost to yourself.”

  “Yeah.” I watch the water, gray and murky, flowing under the bridge, wondering why I’m here. What I was hoping for. “Yeah.”

  Neither of us speaks for a minute, then Thalia breaks the silence. “You really loved her, didn’t you?”

  “Yes,” I say with a huff. “Isn’t it
obvious?”

  “How? How do you love her?”

  “You asked before, and I told you already.” I’m not going to flay myself to satisfy her curiosity.

  Thalia nods, but then inches closer, her eyes imploring. “Would you mind, though, telling me one more time what it was like?”

  It was my everything. It was all my days and nights, and as much as I desperately want to get over Clio, I am ruined for anyone else.

  That is the reality. Because there is only—and will only ever be—her. “She made me feel like everything was possible, even when I knew it wasn’t. I felt like the stars were ours.”

  Thalia nods, the corners of her lips turning up. “Thank you again.” I shrug, and she says, “I have a gift for you, if you’ll wait a moment.” She pats my shoulder. “Stay right here.”

  I sigh, wondering what it could be and if I want anything from her.

  Thalia’s gone long enough for me to suspect she’s not coming back. That she was pulled away to some orchestral emergency or poetic crisis. A violin somewhere is weeping away notes, a poem is drowning in the tears of its words.

  Finally, she returns, and with her, coming toward me on the bridge, is Clio. She’s wearing jeans and green flats, and she’s so beautiful it makes my chest hurt, but I can’t look away.

  All that hope rises in me again. All my wishes rush to the surface.

  I can’t let go of them. I can only stand here waiting.

  Hoping.

  Craving.

  Still loving.

  “Hi,” Clio says, a little grin curving her lips. Thalia has stayed back, giving us privacy.

  “Hi.” I try to keep my voice even.

  She looks nervous, but hopeful too. I see a glimmer of it in her eyes, and don’t know what to make of it.

  “How are you?” she asks.

  “Um, fine.” My brows knit. There’s a point to this, but I can’t begin to guess what it might be. “You?”

  She rocks on her feet, heel to toe, something she’s never done before. Uncertainty is so unlike her. “I’m good.”

  Now what? I’ve wanted nothing more than to see her again, but here we are, and words fail me.

  But it seems I don’t need them, because it’s Clio who has something to tell me.

  “I went to see Thalia last night.” She trails a finger along the bridge railing, looking at it instead of me. “We had a long talk.”

  Not what I expected, but I’ll see how this plays out. “You did?”

  She nods. “Yes. I was happy working again, but I was also troubled.”

  I’m swept up now, snared by an idea . . . a notion that this is rushing toward something I have to see. It may kill me . . .

  But maybe not.

  “Troubled by what?” I ask.

  “Memories. I kept thinking about my time at the Musée d’Orsay.”

  “And?” I ask carefully, feeling like I’m on the cusp of something fragile.

  Another nod. “I would replay them. Whenever I was working. Whenever I was helping artists to feel the love they needed, the memories all flooded back.”

  Oh God.

  My muscles tighten. I am poised, ready to leap but not sure which way yet.

  She meets my eyes now, closer to the unflinching woman I knew. “I kept thinking about our nights. About why I didn’t go home as soon as I could.”

  “Tell me,” I say.

  Clio swallows, a little roughly. “The things we did are not things Muses usually do. My sisters all agreed. Going to the beach. Rowing boats. Dancing. Having picnics.” Her lips curve into a not-so-bashful grin. “Other things.”

  My fingertips tingle as if something precious is just out of grasp. “What sort of other things?”

  “Kissing. Touching. Being together. Wanting. Those are not things Muses do,” she says. “And every time I’ve worked, every time I’ve put love into art, I kept returning to those nights with you. And I started to feel things I’ve never known before.”

  “Like?” I ask, barely a whisper, but audible enough.

  “Like . . . missing.”

  That word. That one wonderful word.

  “I missed you, and it was entirely new and kind of awful.”

  I wouldn’t call the sound I make a laugh, but she peeks at me hopefully, then grows earnest again.

  “I realized I’m not the same as before. I haven’t been the same since I fell in love with you.”

  The last night at the museum, when we parted outside the doors, she was clinical and friendly. She didn’t seem to feel anything at all. That Clio was worlds different from the woman in the painting.

  “You remember all that?” I ask.

  “I never forgot all that, but it was just . . . a fact.” She tucks her hair behind her ear in such a human gesture my heart stutters. “But when I started working again, it was more than remembering. It was feeling. And the feelings didn’t go away. They’re part of who I am now.”

  I hold in a breath. I hold in all the breaths in the city. The potential in what she’s saying hangs before me like a fragile snow globe I don’t want to drop, don’t want to break.

  “And so, I went to Thalia to ask her for something.”

  I let myself hope.

  I hope so much it hurts. But I’ll take it. Because I think maybe, just maybe, it’s the kind of hurt that leads to something magical on the other side.

  35

  Clio

  * * *

  The entire world feels new and brimming with possibility.

  Excitement, anticipation, and hope all collide inside me in a mad frenzy, rushing to break free.

  I want to tell Julien everything that happened last night.

  Everything that happened before, starting with the power of memory, with how my heart and mind and soul went back to him, piece by piece, every time I inspired an artist.

  All that love I channeled reminded me of all the love I had in the museum, in the paintings, in his arms.

  He’s waiting, and it’s time to finish my tale and find out how it ends.

  I glance back at Thalia, who’s been waiting patiently and watching curiously. I motion for her to join us for this part, and when she does, nodding silently to Julien, I dive in.

  “I went to Thalia and asked her to right a wrong.”

  She takes my arm, squeezes it affectionately. “She offered me a rare opportunity. Not everyone gets to fix a mistake.”

  I’m so proud of my sister Muse. Proud of her for saying yes.

  Proud of her for knowing it was time to let me go.

  I raise my hands, letting the sleeves of my shirt fall to my elbows. “No more bracelets.”

  His eyes widen as they land on my bare wrists then fly to my face. I’m still amazed myself.

  And here’s the most astounding, marvelous, incredible thing that I’m bursting to tell him: “I’m not a Muse anymore.”

  My God, it is wonderful to say.

  It’s wonderful to be.

  “It was my choice,” I say, laying my hand on my heart. “I expected I’d fall out of love with you, and I thought I had. But the memories of us kept the love alive. Suddenly, I wanted something I’ve never wanted in all my years—a life outside of what I knew. A world beyond a painting.”

  Julien seems to drink in what I’m saying, working it out, but not quite fully comprehending it yet. “Not a Muse anymore? Is that possible?”

  I nod because I can’t speak past the lump in my throat.

  But I want to say the rest. This man gave up his whole heart for the world’s art. He gave up love to restore beauty. He let go for the sake of something bigger than us.

  “I asked Thalia to unmake me.”

  He frowns and looks at Thalia. “You did that?”

  She clears her throat. “She’s no longer eternal. No longer bound. No longer a muse of any kind.”

  I shrug, unable to make it simpler than this: “I’m just a woman. That is all.”

  That’s what clicks for him. He believes
in the impossible.

  Like art coming alive.

  Like a pencil drawing something into reality.

  Like stepping into another world.

  That’s how I feel right now.

  I want to inhale this world—drink it in, live in it, love in it, be in it.

  “You’re a woman outside the garden,” Julien says in a hushed voice.

  “I am no longer wandering in irises. I can wander anywhere. With my own two feet. I can’t travel by painting anymore and it’s wonderful to walk everywhere,” I say the same way, full of awe and joy. I sigh gently, happily, then turn to Thalia. “I’ll miss you too. But you’ll take good care of the art, right?”

  “It’s on my to-do list forevermore.” Thalia taps her heart then her own bracelets. She has two on each wrist now, hers and mine.

  Julien glances between us, realization no doubt dawning and turning to shock and dismay. “You’re not going to see each other again?”

  I feel the same, but I’ve had a few more hours than he has to process this. I knew it was part of my choice, but knowing you’ll leave and saying goodbye are worlds apart.

  Thalia shakes her head, and her voice breaks. “Not often. I’m quite busy and will be even busier now. But I’ve had more than a century to get used to not seeing Clio,” she tells him with a gentle smile for me. “We made do without her then, and with one human muse on the scene now, and maybe more to come, we’ll have help.”

  He nods crisply. “Right, of course. I’m on it.”

  She smiles her thanks at him, and then she asks me, “Then my work here is done?” But what she’s really saying is farewell.

  “It is.” I clasp her in a tight embrace and then let her go on her way.

  When she’s gone, I’m left with Julien. I’m excited and nervous. As a Muse, I didn’t have to worry about what happened next, because it was always the same. Here, I don’t know what to expect. I don’t know anything about how the world works without my shackles.

  But I want to find out. My God, I can’t wait to find out.