Starry Nights

by Daisy Whitney

  I slide the frame out carefully, resting it against the nearby wall. I glance back at the door. It may be locked, but plenty of people here have keys. I have to be fast. I’m not even sure what I did this morning, if it was where I touched The Swing or how, but I don’t have time to parse out the details. I look at the shawl. It’s barely visible, so I start there, pressing my hands gently against the canvas. Should I leave my palms on the painting and wait for the colors to fill in like it’s some kind of paint-by-numbers magical ink? But I only touched The Swing briefly, so I take my hands off and wait. Nothing happens. I stand up, walk around, and wander through the other works. I look at my watch. Ten minutes pass. I check Gabrielle again. Still the same. What if my eyes were playing tricks on me with The Swing? What if desperate hope fooled me into believing?

  I head to another darkened corner of the storage room. I force myself to lie down and close my eyes, and I’d love to take a nap, but I can’t because my insides are twisted and torqued, and I am so full of wishing that I am like a coiled wire. But I must be more tired than I think, because the next thing I hear is my mother’s voice. “Julien, are you still here? It’s time for your tour.”

  I rub my eyes and sit up. I’m groggy and my head is fuzzy. “Sorry, I fell asleep.”

  “Well, obviously.”

  “Any more news?”

  My mom nods sadly. “More bad news from the Met. They had just tried moving the Vermeer to storage, but the painting got worse there. I’m told the same thing happened with the other museums. So just to keep the art stable, they’ve all left them hanging in their galleries. Roped off but hanging. Just in case,” she says, then gasps. “Oh my God, oh my God. It’s better. Gabrielle is better.”

  I jump up and rush over to the wall where I left her frame. My heart soars when I see that my handiwork has done the trick again. Gabrielle is restored, and her shawl is glorious. It must take more than a few minutes for the healing to spread, but spread it does.

  My mother turns to me, and tears are streaking down her face. She clasps me in a hug, though she has no idea what I did. “The paintings love you. Look, you come to visit them and they feel better.”

  Indeed, it seems something like that has happened.

  As the day winds down, my mother receives a happy call. It’s the curator in Boston. It seems Dance at Bougival is starting to get its color back too. She tells me this as she leaves. “Maybe it was all in our heads,” she says, laughing, as she taps her temple. Or perhaps the art is healing in the same way it turned ill. The curse spread from painting to painting; maybe healing spreads too. Tonight, I’ll fix ours and hope for the best at the museums across the river and the ocean.

  But for now, I’m hungry, so I walk out with my mom, say goodbye to her, and meet Simon down the street at a café. I order french fries, a croque monsieur with chicken instead of ham, since I can’t stand ham, and then one more to go, just the same.

  Simon raises an eyebrow. “Eating for two?”

  “Maybe,” I say, then drink my coffee. I shift gears. “Want to see something really cool tonight?”

  “A boxer? Or have you found a female sumo wrestler to tackle me next?”

  “Better. All you have to do is watch this time. Because I can do something totally awesome with these here hands.” I hold my palms up to him and explain how I can heal art with them.

  He looks skeptical but amused. “The thing about you, Garnier, is I know what you’re saying is crazy, yet I almost believe you.”

  I hold up a french fry victoriously. “See. It’s my sweet innocent face, isn’t it?” I give him my best angelic smile, then dip another fry in a ketchup bath.

  When we’re done, Simon says, “Let’s go see the show.”

  It’s later now, and the sun is dropping below the horizon. Gustave opens the front door for us and we head to the faraway galleries to the paintings I need to repair. They’re a few rooms down from Clio, and I’ll go see her soon to tell her the good news.

  Then I hear footsteps, and they’re not Gustave’s. They’re awkward and clunky. I know that sound, and it turns my marrow cold. I take off and run to the sound, my backpack smacking against me as I race.

  There’s another sound now. A muffled cry, but close by, and I turn the corner into Clio’s gallery to see Max scraping off the paint of the signature.

  Clio’s no longer in the picture.

  Next comes a low moan, laced with pain. My heart thuds, heavy in my chest, as I swivel around to find Clio on the ground, bleeding.

  Chapter 26

  The Reckoning

  I wish there were two of me, but in some ways there are, thanks to Simon. I grab Max first, tearing him away from the painting, and slam him to the ground.

  “Hold him down,” I say. Simon pins him. Max, possessed by Renoir, is far easier to hold than Cass Middleton.

  I rush to Clio and reach for her. “Clio, are you okay?”

  She shakes her head. “It hurts. Oh God. It hurts so much.”

  She moans like a wounded cat, and I’m sure Simon must be wondering who I’m talking to, since he can’t see her. But he can hear her.

  “I was starting to come out, to see you. It happened so fast …” She trails off, wincing, contorting her gorgeous features.

  I look over at Max. “How did you get in here?”

  Max jerks his head away, like a petulant child refusing to answer. Simon twists the collar on Max’s shirt. “He asked you a question. How. Did. You. Get. In. Here?”

  “Stairwell,” Max chokes out.

  “You were in the stairwell all day?” Simon asks. “Hiding out till the museum closed?”

  Max manages a quick nod.

  “And to think, I was just about to save all your paintings, Mr. Renoir,” I say and watch as his eyes widen with a grotesque kind of happiness.

  I turn to Clio. She’s cut across the stomach. “We have to stop the bleeding.” It’s all I can think of. I know nothing of medicine, but I know common sense.

  I take off my shirt and press it to her wounds, keeping my hands on them to stem the flow of blood.

  She cries out at the pressure. “It’s going to be okay, I promise,” I say, but I don’t know what to do. This isn’t the type of cut a Band-Aid will work on. “Should I try some Muse dust?”

  “It won’t work,” she says.

  I keep my hands on her, wishing she were a normal girl and I could whisk her off to the emergency room to see a doctor.

  A doctor.

  There is a doctor in the house.

  “Clio, I have to lay you down for a second. I have to get Dr. Gachet, okay?”

  But her eyes are closed and her breathing is slowing and she barely acknowledges me. She is fading in and out as I lay her head gently on the floor, not far from Simon’s bewildered eyes watching Max and watching me, as I race to Dr. Gachet’s frame on the second floor. My hands are bloody, and I don’t want to touch his canvas. But I need to wake him up. I wipe my hands off on my jeans, leaving a trail of crimson on me. I touch the frame with my elbow and call his name. “Dr. Gachet! Dr. Gachet! Please help!”

  He yawns and his mouth stretches out first. “Yes?”

  “Come out. We need you!”

  Then the rest of his face, chin, cheeks, forehead, hair, and now his body squeezes out in his shimmery, shiny royal-blue coat. I bring him down to the first floor.

  “She’s cut.” Clio is curled on the floor, twisted in on herself. She’s holding on to her middle, a trail of wet blood between her fingers. A small moan escapes, like air slowly freed from a balloon.

  Dr. Gachet bends down and begins to tend to her. Soon, Olympia takes notice. She jumps out, and the sight of her naked form strutting in heels and nothing else still surprises me. She hovers nearby, watching.

  Dr. Gachet turns to me. “She needs to be stitched up.”

  I hold up my hands. “How the hell are we supposed to do that? We don’t have a single painting of a hospital to go into. Or of medical equipment for me t
o reach and grab.”

  Doesn’t he get it?

  But Dr. Gachet knows more than I do. “She’s not like us, Julien. This is real blood, not paint. We can’t treat her inside a painting. She needs real stitches for the real blood.” He tips his forehead to the red that leaks out of Clio and lists off the tools he’ll need. Scissors, thread, a needle, and a little painkiller would be ideal.

  “There’s no way I can get that all in time.” I run my hands through my hair, and my heart is beating so fast, so crazy, pumping from fear alone.

  “Julien.”

  It’s the tiniest little whisper, like a bell. I fall to the ground, kneeling at Clio’s side. “What is it?” I ask softly.

  “Draw them,” she says. “Draw them for me.”

  Yes!

  She grabs hold of my left hand, flicks a bit of silver dust into my palm.

  I fumble for my backpack with my right hand. I grab my notebook, slam it open, and listen as Dr. Gachet describes in detail the instruments he’ll need. I draw like a surgeon, fast and precise, then trace the lines over in dust. In seconds the flat whiteness becomes shape, turns tactile under my touch.

  I give the painkiller to Clio, and the tools to the doctor in the house. Dr. Gachet begins his work.

  “Holy crap,” Simon says, and I glance over at him. Simon’s sitting on Max now, like the street artist ghost host is just a lumpy air mattress, and Simon’s watching a fascinating show. His jaw hangs open. He’s pointing at the scissors Dr. Gachet holds. Simon may not be able to see Dr. Gachet or Clio, but he can see a needle being threaded by invisible hands. A needle stitching up an unseen wound.

  “Yeah, so this is the girl I was telling you about. You can’t see her, but she’s amazing,” I say to Simon, then turn back to Clio. She reaches feebly for my hand, wraps her fingers around mine, and winces. “It’ll kick in soon. Just hold tighter till it does,” I tell her, urging her to channel all her pain into my hand.

  “It’s coming along. Hang in there,” Dr. Gachet says in his calm, doctorly voice as he makes neat stitches through Clio’s flesh.

  Clio’s tight grip on my hand starts to loosen, and her knitted eyebrows relax. The medicine is working now. She’s no longer flinching as Dr. Gachet sews. His hands are steady. He finishes, making a knot. “There.” He wipes one hand across the other, then turns to me, handing me back my shirt. I pull it on, bloodstained and filthy. “She’s going to be okay. She’ll need some rest, but she’s going to be okay.”

  “Can you watch over her, Dr. Gachet? You and Olympia, please?”

  “Of course, love.” The words come from Olympia, and she kneels down to stroke Clio’s hair. I give Clio a kiss on the forehead. “I’ll be back soon, I promise.”

  “I know,” she says, and her eyes flutter closed.

  I turn my attention to Max. “C’mon,” I say to Simon. “Let’s take him to another room.”

  Simon yanks Max and drags him to the next gallery. I move closer to Max, face-to-face with him now. “Don’t you get it? Don’t you finally get it? This is happening no matter how many of your paintings you remake, no matter how many times you try to chip paint off a canvas for your signature.”

  “I didn’t mean to hurt her,” he manages to say. “I just wanted the pigment to make my paintings.”

  “But you did. You did hurt her. You hurt her then and you hurt her now. You have to stop. It’s not just your art that’s being ruined. Have you been to the Louvre? Have you seen the Rembrandt? He’s one of your idols. And your own work. Just look around. They’re all dying because of you.”

  I point to The Swing. “If you were hiding out here all day, then you know it was fading this morning, and now it’s not. I fixed Gabrielle too. Fixed it with my hands and I’m not even a great artist or an Eternal Muse. I’m not even a very good artist. I’m just a guy who likes art, and I’m the only one who can fix your paintings. I can fix all of these.” I pull him over to each and every one of his paintings that have started to wither. “But you have to let it go. You have to move on. Your legacy isn’t the only thing that matters. There are bigger things at stake. For God’s sake, the guy whose body you’ve taken over is teaching caricature to kids. The security guard out there is showing wire art in a subway. My friend makes ceramic calves and they’re awesome. Art is everywhere, and it’s not just for great artists. Anyone can do it, and anyone will. You have got to let this go.”

  Renoir swallows hard. His pupils flare with desperation. “You’ll fix my paintings? You’ll save them?”

  “Yes,” I say, exasperated. “I hate what you did to her, but I’d save your work anyway. Your legacy is safe in my hands, I promise. But you need to leave us alone, and you need to go kill your fakes.”

  He mutters a strangled apology. “I’m sorry.”

  “Don’t apologize to me. Say you’re sorry to Clio.”

  I drag him back to Clio’s gallery, where she’s resting on the bench, Dr. Gachet on one side, Olympia on the other.

  Simon has Max’s hands gripped behind his back. When Max gets closer, he bends down and speaks in a low, remorseful voice. But he doesn’t say he’s sorry. Instead, he tells her, “Thank you. For inspiring me.”

  Then he rises, and Simon and I escort him out the front doors, where Gustave looks on with surprised eyes. “I’ll explain later,” I tell our security guard.

  We hail a cab, and I give the driver the address of the church in the Marais. The three of us are in the backseat, Max in the middle.

  “Kind of surprised the driver stopped, given your, um, your shirt.”

  “Yeah, it’s kind of a mess, isn’t it?”

  “So you’re in love with a painting?” Simon says.

  “Yeah, I’m in love with a girl who’s stuck inside a painting. Oh, and get this. She’s also a Muse.”

  “Yeah?” Simon raises an eyebrow. “As in one of the nine Muses?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Sounds like she’s perfect for you then,” he says, and there’s no teasing in his voice.

  “She is.”

  We reach the church, and Max leads the way to the basement, past the altar, down the steps. He turns on the light and takes out the knife with his claw hands, the same blade he tried to use to retrieve the missing piece for his forgeries. He closes his eyes as if this pains him, then opens them and slashes the fakes—the piano girls, the boy with the cat, and the Gabrielle that Cass had started next. Each one is gashed down the middle, the canvas split open.

  I grab Max by the shoulders. “Now you can go.” His hands knot up and cramp. But then he flexes them and stretches his fingers. There’s a gust of wind, and it carries the trailing, telltale scent of rose perfume on it. I hope I never smell roses again.

  Max shakes his head, as if he just woke up from a strange dream. “What the … ?”

  He looks around, completely at a loss as to where he is. His hands are his hands again. The hands of a young artist who makes art the way he wants.

  “Hey bud,” Simon says. “You’ve been sleepwalking. Let me take you back to your pad.”

  “Thank you,” I mouth to Simon.

  “I’ll watch over you for a bit,” Simon says to Max as they leave. “Make sure you don’t sleepwalk again.”

  I leave too, and I stop at a souvenir shop that’s still open. A customer sees my shirt and steps away from me. I grab the nearest I LOVE PARIS T-shirt and buy it. Out on the street I yank off the one coated in dried blood, toss it into a trash can, and pull on the fresh shirt.

  I return to the museum, where I scrub the blood off my hands and begin to heal the Renoirs. First a party scene, then a portrait, now a damaged landscape. I watch as they rewind to glory, becoming as perfect as the day they were made. By the time I’ve laid my hands on the fourth painting, the next two heal on their own. Just as the curse spread, the cure spreads, as if the paintings are linked. Like dominoes falling, all I have to do is touch a few and the rest follow.

  I take the nearest stairwell to the administra
tive wing, wanting to leap and clear all the steps in one big jump but restraining myself as I sneak into my mother’s quiet office to check her e-mail. She always leaves her programs running, so I click on her screen, tap on the in-box, and scroll through her latest e-mails to find a message from the director of the museum in New York. It’s only six in the evening there, and the museum is still open, so I’m not surprised, but I am thrilled, to find a note from minutes ago. The subject line is all exclamation points, and proclaims the sun-damaged Renoir has been restored. I read the rest of the note. “My fingers are crossed that the Vermeer makes a similar miracle recovery soon.”

  I’m so tempted to write back and tell my mom’s colleague to check the Vermeer in a few minutes, maybe in an hour, because I have a hunch that once all the Renoirs have recovered so will the other sick paintings.

  The cure has started.

  I mark the note unread, leave her office, and walk upstairs, feeling a sense of calm for the first time since art came alive for me.

  Everything is going to be fine. Everything is going to be better. I inhale deeply, relieve Dr. Gachet and Olympia from their bench-side post, and take Clio to the South of France.

  Chapter 27

  The Calm Before

  “I’m telling you, it was Thalia’s idea. She was all like, ‘Well, have you tried it?’” I say, imitating Thalia’s pointed statement.

  “I don’t care if it was her idea. You did it, Julien,” Clio says.

  Soft waves lap our feet. Warm sand forms a pillow for our heads. We are lying on the beach, inside a Cézanne. The perfect place for rest and relaxation, which is just what the doctor ordered for Clio. I am all too happy to be her companion on a quick trip to the painted seashore in Marseille.