Starry Nights

by Daisy Whitney

  “Okay, so here’s a crazy thought,” I say, twisting around to look up at her. “I know this might seem like the last thing you want to hear since Renoir is probably not on your list of favorite people, but why don’t we see if you can fix the Renoirs with your Muse dust? Maybe we could get him off our backs at least.”

  She tilts her head, considering. “That’s not a bad idea.”

  “Or does that just feel wrong, considering what he did?” I ask carefully.

  She shakes her head. “No, we need to try it. I don’t want him to do anything more to you, my human muse.” She brushes her fingers against my face. “Or that brute of an English rugby player either,” she says in a whispering tease.

  I smile at her. “She’s a terror, let me tell you.”

  “And, I have to say, despite everything he did, I still do love his paintings,” she says with a guilty sigh. “I hate admitting that, but it’s the truth. Is it terrible to feel that way?”

  “No. That’s the thing about art. You can learn that an actor is a total jerk or whatever, but he’s still amazing and it’s like this gnawing in your chest. You want to hate him completely, but the work is so good you can’t.”

  “Exactly. So when we leave this painting we’ll try.”

  I toss out another theory. “Do you think the other Muses have cursed him?”

  She holds up her hands. “We don’t curse paintings, Julien. We are lovers of art. Our inspiration is for the art, not the artist. The job of an Eternal Muse is to coax out the idea and then to keep the art alive. To hold it up for all time with our love for it.”

  I demonstrate holding my arms up in the sky, like I’m Atlas holding the world. “Like that? You hold art?”

  “Sort of. Our magic and our love helps keep the memories of art and literature and beauty alive through the years.”

  “So how does it work? Being a Muse? Do you just appear before an artist or something?” I ask as I look at the sky. The golden stars bathe the night in a warm glow, as shimmery water laps the boat. The sound of sweet waves is as gentle as Clio’s hands in my hair. She seems to want to take care of me, and it almost makes me want to get beaten up again.

  “It’s like Homer’s Odyssey. Literally,” she says, then quotes the opening lines from the epic poem. “Sing in me, Muse, and through me tell the story. Our home connects anywhere in the world, so when poets, writers, painters, dancers, actors, musicians need us, we go. They don’t even have to call us by name. We just know that they need us,” she says, tapping her chest. “We each have an area of the arts that we specialize in. Mine being painting, as you know.”

  “Tell me who else you’ve inspired.”

  “Pretty much all of painting,” she says playfully.

  “I know that. Who are your favorites?”

  “J. M. W. Turner. English painter,” she says. “I like him a lot.”

  “Him or his works?”

  “Jealous? His works, silly. I also adore Ingres and Géricault, especially The Raft of the Medusa. That was such a hard one for him because it was so emotional. I put so much love into that painting to help him realize its potential,” she says, and I love hearing her talk like this. I close my eyes and listen to her stories. “And I like Francisco Goya a lot. His paintings,” she adds and runs her finger along the neck of my T-shirt. I relax into her touch, to how completely different it feels from Cass’s earlier today in the church. “Vermeer and Rembrandt, too. The Dutch masters are so amazing. De Heem too. I love his still lifes.”

  “His is one of the paintings that’s all weird at the Louvre,” I say and open my eyes. It crosses my mind that the paintings might be acting up because Clio’s missing. Could that be why the art is molting across town? If it’s her job to keep art alive, then is the art behaving badly in her absence?

  But I dismiss the idea. She’s been gone so long, it can’t be because of her.

  “Da Vinci was mine too,” she continues. “You want to know the real story behind the Mona Lisa?”

  “Sure.”

  “People are always wondering what she was thinking or doing. What is that enigmatic expression for, they want to know.”

  “Right.”

  “Well, she—Lisa del Gioconda, the subject of the painting—had been hosting a dinner party with her husband. Leonardo was there too. Lisa told a dirty joke, and that was her expression at the punchline.”

  I laugh so hard that painted water sloshes on me. “That’s the story behind the Mona Lisa? She told a dirty joke at a dinner party?”

  Clio nods. “That’s the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.”

  “Hey, I have a question for you. If you inspire all these artists, you must be able to speak every language. So you can talk to them, right? That’s why you speak perfect French but you don’t have the accent of someone who was born here.”

  “I do speak all languages,” she says proudly. “Impressed, are you?”

  “Yeah, and I thought it was a good party trick that I do accents. So how do you say in Dutch, Oh, Mr. Rembrandt, I think you need a bit more brown in this self-portrait?”

  She answers immediately.

  “You know I have no idea what you really said.”

  “Oh, I’m just faking you out, Julien. With my fake Dutch.”

  “How do you say in Italian, Leonardo, I think the Mona Lisa is lame?”

  She laughs and rattles off a quick Italian phrase.

  “All right, I have a good one. How do you say in Spanish, Mr. Goya, your paintings are so beautiful they remind me of the most amazing girl I’ve ever met?”

  She blushes and lowers her face, then repeats Spanish words back to me. Even though the pain shoots across my jaw, I sit up in the boat so I’m looking at her.

  “How do you say in English, I can’t imagine being without her?”

  She looks at me. Her eyes don’t let me go. “I feel the same.”

  I take her hand. Run my index finger along hers. Feel her skin warm to my touch. “Clio.” I breathe her name into the painted world we float on. I cup her face in my hands, my palms on her cheeks, holding her soft and close as golden starlight streaks across the night. All my nerves fly up my throat as I ask the next question. “How do you say in French, Clio, I’m falling in love with you?”

  She loops her fingers through mine, lacing them tightly. “Julien, I’m falling in love with you too.”

  Chapter 23

  The Flooding

  Streaks of pale-pink morning light filter through the windows at the front of the museum. The sun rises early in the summer; it’s only five in the morning.

  I catch a glimpse of Renoir’s The Swing that hangs next to Gabrielle. The dress the woman on the swing wears now looks as if it’s been washed a few too many times. I stop and stare more closely at the fading colors. I touch the dress gently with my palm, as if I’m saying good-bye to The Swing. Clio tried to repair Gabrielle when we left Starry Night, but Renoir’s art is lurching closer to colorless.

  When I reach the front doors, Gustave motions for me to come over. “Hey, Julien, remember my sculpture from the other night? Got it in the subway art contest just in time and now I’m going to be doing a few pieces in one of the Metro stations on the Balard line. Just heard from the project coordinator.”

  “That’s fantastic.”

  “You helped me figure it out. So thank you,” he says and tips his chin, looking proud of his accomplishment. Then it hits me—I’m more than something of a muse to him. I must be his muse, helping him along to realize his potential.

  I point both index fingers at him. “You are a rock star.”

  I push open the door to head into the dawn but double back. “Hey, Gustave. Can I ask you for a favor? Can you keep an eye out for a guy about my age—weird curl on his forehead, and very old-looking hands?”

  “Sure. Why?”

  “Just something about him. I don’t trust him near the art, know what I mean?”

  “I hear you. I’ll pass on the
word to the day shift too.” His phone rings. “My buddy at the Louvre,” he says in an offhand way, then answers. The guy who spotted the lemon. I freeze, then make a split-second decision to pretend to check my phone so I have a reason to listen to their conversation.

  “Trickle of water? You don’t say?” Gustave looks at me and twirls a finger near his ear. He pauses as his friend speaks. I swipe the screen to keep busy.

  “Just mop it up.”

  Another pause as I scan my text messages without reading them.

  “Yep. See you Sunday for cards.”

  He hangs up, shaking his head in amusement. “He’s losing it. Seeing things again.”

  “What’s he seeing?” I ask, doing my best to remain cool and calm, but inside I’m frayed thin with nerves.

  “Says when he was in room 77, he heard a trickle from the big Géricault. Turned around and saw a drop of water on the floor. Told you he was a loon.”

  “Yeah, sounds like it,” I say, but it’s as if I’ve been punched by Cass again, this time in the gut.

  The Louvre doesn’t open for another four hours. I go home and manage a bit of fitful sleep. But inside I am yanked in so many directions I might as well shred all my limbs and let loose my stuffing. I finally wake up, shower, down a coffee, and leave after my parents have both gone to work. I grab the Metro and exit a few stops later at the Louvre, where I line up early so I can be one of the first inside. I know exactly where to find The Raft of the Medusa, one of the most famous icons of early eighteenth-century painting that depicts the aftermath of a French naval wreck in a storming sea. I take the marble steps two by two as a woman with flaming red hair nearly collides into me as she heads the other way. I say sorry, but she’s already gone.

  My heart is pounding so fast I feel like a rookie in the police department heading to his first crime scene. Eager but terrified. I turn the corner and stop in my tracks. I’m paralyzed at the sight, as if I’m witnessing a horrific car accident unfolding in slow motion. The Raft of the Medusa is gushing. Like a fire hydrant on a summer day, water pours out of the massive canvas from the rocky waves Géricault painted, the ones Clio helped him to create.

  This is no mere trickle on the floor. The painting has sprung a leak.

  A young man in a gray jumpsuit—a janitor, I take it—races in with a mop and a bucket. Seconds later, he is joined by an older man with black slacks, a striped dress shirt, and a silk tie. He’s probably on the curatorial staff, but I don’t recognize him. I back up as he runs into the gallery, frantic as he shouts instructions and obscenities.

  “It was just kind of dripping a little while ago,” the janitor explains. “Then, bam! The water just shot out like a hose.”

  The man in the suit rolls up his sleeves, like he’s a handyman ready to do damage control. But he doesn’t have a clue what to do. No one does. The janitor mops feverishly, and the man starts shooing away crowds and then shouts to an assistant who rushes in, “Close this gallery. Close this gallery now!”

  I race into the next gallery as crowds crane their necks for a view of the flooding. I need to check out the others.

  First, I find the Ingres. I recoil when I see the painting is eating itself. The blue cushions have folded over the concubine and all that’s left of her is one eye that stares out desperately at me, as the cushions squeeze and strangle her.

  Then the La Tour. The tiny trace of candlelight left in the painting has turned into a red-hot flame as fire licks the canvas.

  Next, the Titian. I run into its gallery and step back instantly. The mirror in the painting wobbles precariously, hanging inches out of its canvas. Time freezes as it hovers, then speeds up as it clatters to the floor with a deafening crash, shattering into broken shards that send frightened visitors scrambling for cover.

  I grab for my phone, dialing my mother.

  “Are the paintings okay? Besides the fading Renoirs. Are all the others okay?”

  “I think so. Why?”

  “I’ll be there soon to explain.” I hang up and run to Rembrandt’s Bathsheba, only to find her shriveled up into tiny little hardened pieces on the floor, like pork rinds.

  I call Bonheur as I run out of the Louvre, telling him he needs to take me to the Muses now.

  Chapter 24

  Layer Cake Paris

  Sophie’s outside holding open the iron gate to the green door. She has on her red sparkly tap shoes, her toe plate smacking the cobbled sidewalk in a jazzy, impatient rhythm. It briefly occurs to me that Clio would probably like a pair of red sparkly shoes.

  “I heard about the Louvre. It’s awful,” she says. “Does anyone know what’s going on?”

  “They don’t have a clue.” We race through the courtyard. “Where’s your mom?”

  “Went to some fashion show over on the Champs,” Sophie says and mimes gagging as she yanks open the orange door. I take it Sophie’s not a fan of her mom’s haute couture empire. “Then she’s leaving for Milan for the week. But it’s not as if she minds that you’re going to see the Muses.”

  “She knows everything?”

  “What? Did you think my brother and I run a secret clandestine basement operation without our parents knowing a thing?”

  Seeing as my own mom isn’t the wiser about what happens on the other side of her frames at the Musée d’Orsay, yes I did. I don’t answer.

  “Besides, we’re not the only ones,” she says as we head down the hall to the TV room, passing the Jasper Johns and Monet’s bridge.

  “Only ones what?”

  “With access.”

  “To the Muses?”

  “Yeah. Lots of families all over the world can get in touch with them. There are many patrons of the arts, Julien,” Sophie says and rolls her eyes as she pulls on the trap door. I love being talked to as if I’m a dolt for not knowing how Muse access works.

  “And many of them need to be in touch with the Muses,” she continues. “Hence, the Avant-Garde. Like I told you.”

  “Well, take me to your leader, Sophie.”

  She descends into the dark, her tap shoes leading the way. We loop round and round, the air growing heavier, like a dense fog. At last we reach the basement, the one I sneaked into a few weeks ago at Bonheur’s party. I hear the voices again, and they sound like bells. The sound pierces me in a new way, reminding me of Clio and her pure, sweet voice. She’s one of them, and the home down below is where she used to spend her days.

  Bonheur is here in the cellar, and he’s waving a sheet of paper. He’s smiling, but businesslike. He hands me what looks like the kind of stationery you’d use for an invitation to a fancy tea party.

  Julien—I’m working at La Belle Vie today. Fastest way to get there is to take the third door on the right. —T

  I look at Bonheur.

  “T?”

  He nods. “T.”

  “For Thalia, I assume.”

  “Yes.”

  I rub a palm across my face. “This is a note? From the head of the Muses?”

  Another nod, this one longer.

  “Like we’re in high school and she’s telling me where to meet her when classes end?”

  “She gave it to me, and I’m giving it to you,” he says, his voice clipped with urgency.

  “She gave it to you?”

  “Yes, Julien, yes. She has crazy red hair and she smells like pomegranates.”

  “And she’s working at La Belle Vie?”

  “Yes, yes, yes,” he repeats, spreading his arms in frustration.

  “The head of the Muses is writing you notes.” I can’t help but feel that I’m losing it again.

  “And you’re in love with a girl who’s trapped in a painting. So there.”

  Sophie huffs. “Guys! You’re both being idiots. There’s art exploding at the Louvre.” Sophie sticks her chin out at me and points downward. “Go.”

  I’m in too deep to stop believing. “I’m guessing we get there through this door in the floor thing?” I point to the rectangular outli
ne, edged by silver Muse dust.

  “I’ve never been down there, Julien,” Bonheur says in a soft voice. “This is as far as Sophie and I can go.”

  I’m alone in this. I have to rely on the person I’ve never put much faith in. Me. But it’s always been just me. Now, it has to be just me; there’s no other way.

  “See?” Sophie demonstrates, pressing her hands against the stone slab edged by silver dust. Nothing happens to the slab. “It’s a one-way door for us. When they need it, they open it. We talk in here, in our basement. Otherwise, we just leave each other letters,” she says, tipping her forehead to the side of the slab with the mail slot for Muses.

  Bonheur follows suit, showing me as well that his hands can’t open the slab.

  A brief gust of anger rips through me, but I don’t even know who I’m mad at. I’m ticked at the Muses for never telling Bonheur and his family the whole truth about the painting, I’m angry at Renoir for trapping Clio, and I’m enraged at myself for not knowing how to save the sick art. “I swear, if I get stuck underground in Paris for the rest of my days, I will come back as a badass ghost and haunt you both forever.”

  Bonheur laughs and holds up his hands. “Duly noted, and I will consider myself now fully prepared for your ghostly vengeance.”

  I kneel outside the line of sparkling shimmery dust. I place my palms on the stone slab, and it’s a chemical reaction at my touch, baking soda and vinegar making a volcanic concoction. The slab slides open, like a door at a department store. I half expect to tumble into a magical underground world, where the sky is endlessly blue and the hills are sunlit green. But I have no such luck. Instead, I’m in the catacombs.

  I don’t understand why anyone gets a kick out of subterranean trips through the intestines of Paris and its dank, musty tunnels far below the streets. This city is a layer cake, with houses built on top of cellars, built on top of tombs, and you never know where the bowels will take you. I never know because I’ve never gone into the catacombs.