Chapter 7 Tara
Tara
The restoration lab doesn’t look like much from the outside—just another anonymous door tucked into the Louvre’s warren of back corridors—but stepping inside is like entering a chapel.
A holy place where art is God.
The air carries its own perfume: a blend of linseed oil, old varnish, and the faint metallic tang of solvents.
Brushes stand like bouquets in glass jars.
Magnifying lamps hover over easels, their halos of light illuminating cracked surfaces, centuries of wear, and entire histories waiting to be coaxed back to life.
My station is one of many in the windowless restoration lab, where the air is always cool, and the humidity is carefully monitored, ensuring the artworks never suffer. Fluorescent daylight lamps buzz softly overhead, and magnifiers on articulated arms hover like watchful insects.
Before me lies the Rosalba Carriera pastel, a de Valois woman whose powdered wig is barely holding its shape, her gaze dulled by centuries of dust and time. Still, I can see the ghost of her light—my task is to restore her without rewriting her.
When my shoulders ache and my eyes blur, I retreat to the little staff kitchen at the end of the hall. There, beyond the glass windows, the Seine glitters in the weak winter sun. Bateaux slide on her silken waters like lazy brushstrokes.
On the far bank rises the dome of the Institut de France, solemn and grand, its stone catching the last of the sun’s light. Down below, the bouquinistes’ green stalls line the river, their lids propped open like storybooks, hawking postcards and worn novels to anyone who lingers.
Paris is an outdoor museum. Everywhere you look, you see grand buildings. It’s a city out of a dream. And while the City of Lights breathes outside the hallowed halls of the Louvre, inside, it feels as though time itself pauses for me, the art restorer who feels like she’s stepped into a dream.
I tighten my paint-stained scarf that’s holding my hair off my face as I walk back to the lab.
My bangles are scattered on the paint table. I don’t want them to clink against the canvas and bruise it.
I’m in my uniform—boho overalls and comfortable ankle boots.
Comfort first because the work demands it.
I focus back on the woman in front of me. I lean in with a sable brush, hands steady, heart quiet.
Restoration is patience.
It’s cleaning millimeter by millimeter, stabilizing pigments, filling the smallest fissures so the surface reads whole but not new.
The point isn’t to make the art piece perfect—it’s to let its truth breathe again.
Every time my brush lifts a veil of grime and the original color peeks through, I feel like I’m in conversation with the artist across the centuries.
That’s why I fell in love with this work.
My mother designs jewelry in Los Angeles—delicate, intricate pieces hammered by hand.
I grew up at her workbench, watching her file and polish, learning that beauty comes from devotion to detail.
She gave me her hands. My abuela—before she passed away—gave me her love of history.
Between them, I suppose this was inevitable.
“Don’t hunch, you’ll regret it when you’re forty.”
I glance up. Cece peers at her canvas, her back straight, a headband holding back her short dark hair.
“I’m twenty-eight,” I tell her. “I’ve already started regretting things.”
She grins. “Not posture. That’s a lifetime injury.”
She tilts her lamp and squints at her canvas. “Can you believe I get to do this? My professors swore that landing a post at the Louvre this soon after university was impossible. But here I am, spending my days with grapes and oysters.”
“That’s food, Cece,” I tease.
Cece is working on a nature morte* from the early 18th century. It’s not a Chardin, sadly, but one of his students, which makes it historic in its own right. Anything that is touched by Jean Siméon Chardin is.
The canvas is modest—barely half a meter wide, but it is exquisite.
Oil on canvas, 48 x 65 centimeters, it depicts a silver platter crowded with oysters, their pearly shells cracked open, arranged beside a bunch of dark, glistening grapes that spill over the edge of the table.
A half-filled wine glass catches the light, and in the shadows, you can make out the rough outline of a cut lemon.
“It’s art,” she shoots back, mock-offended. “Which means every cluster of grapes has to look like heaven blessed it or they’ll kick me out of here.”
I look at her canvas and nod appreciatively. “Chardin’s student did indeed make each grape look like a drop of midnight.”
I swish my fine sable brush in a small glass jar of solvent with enough turpentine to loosen the varnish, then wipe it carefully on a clean cotton rag. “And,” I add, “they’ve rendered each oyster with almost indecent detail.”
“Tell me about it,” she sighs.
She eyes the Fragonard at the other end of the room. It’s the famous The Meeting, lovers caught mid-tryst in a swirl of silk and roses—propped on an easel, waiting its turn.
The Louvre will be working on it soon, a delicate spruce-up after two and a half centuries of dust and darkened varnish. It will be a senior art restorer, not Cece, who adores the artist and even wrote her master’s thesis on Jean-Honoré Fragonard.
“What can I say? Some people get romance. I get dead oysters on canvas,” she says sulkily.
“My first restoration jobs were nothing glamorous.” I step back from the easel to study the painting from a distance, judging how the corner I’ve been working on catches the light.
“I got a gig at LACMA when I was eighteen—nineteen, maybe. I was the intern’s intern.
” I laugh softly, remembering the thrill of simply being allowed in those rooms. “I was ecstatic if they let me touch anything. Most days, I was cleaning the backs of canvases, tightening stretcher keys, or mending tiny chips on gilded frames. Once, I spent an entire summer stabilizing a cracked plaster bust of some long-forgotten Roman senator. No one would have noticed if I’d done it wrong—but to me, it was everything. ”
She glances at me. “You have a PhD and you’ve been doing the work for…like ten years? You work at the…? Where do you work?”
I grin. “The Philadelphia Museum of Art,” and because Europeans have no clue what that means, I add, “it’s highly regarded in European art and conservation.”
Cece nods. “You liked it there?”
“Yes, I did. I came here for the Carriera.” I trace a crack in the pastel with the tip of my brush.
“I love the Rococo period, especially the women like Rosalba who made art that was dismissed as decorative, pretty, and minor. But it’s not.
It’s brilliant.” I then look at Cece, who’s watching me with wide eyes.
“And because I get to live in Paris and drink wine at lunch….”
“Not that you do,” she retorts.
“Alcohol, I worry, will make my hand falter. But I’m all in for a glass of wine after work.” I turn back to the canvas and coax another breath of color from the de Valois woman’s powdered cheek.
I know this is why I’m here. For the work. For the history. For the patient miracle of making something fragile endure.
By five, the lab quiets.
Parisians don’t work late. It’s the law here, and I appreciate it.
I’ve never had this much free time in my life.
People don’t work in the evenings, don’t work on weekends, don’t work when they’re sick—and no one expects them to.
I like the douceur de vivre* of living here.
I rinse my brushes, and seal the jars of pigment, before turning off my lamp.
I am one of the last to leave. The crazy American who works longer than she needs to.
But I like the quiet and the silence, especially now when the museum is closed unless there is a special event.
The Louvre is open from nine in the morning to six in the evening most days, but on Wednesdays and Fridays, it remains open until nine in the evening.
I put on my jacket and scarf, slinging my satchel over my shoulder, as I step out into the early evening.
I don’t take the Metro home.
Paris, unlike Philly, is meant for walking.
I cut through the courtyard, the Louvre Pyramid behind me, and cross the Pont des Arts.
Couples fold into each other along the Seine, the glow of streetlamps gilding their silhouettes as photographers crouch nearby. For an instant, Paris feels like a postcard I’ve somehow walked into.
Halfway across the bridge, my phone buzzes. I smile as I answer it. “Hey, baby sis.”
“Finally!” Marisol groans. “I’ve been waiting for it to be after your work and before my school. Time zones are the worst. Where are you?”
“Crossing the Seine like a proper Parisian.” I shift my bag higher on my shoulder. “It’s cinematic. You’d approve.”
I can hear her smile. “Send me a picture. How’s work? You restoring, like, the Mona Lisa or something?”
“Not the Mona Lisa.” I dodge a tourist with a tripod. “But close…at least for me. A pastel by Rosalba Carriera. She’s keeping me busy.”
Marisol is twenty, all energy and determination, studying engineering at UC Irvine. She’s the practical one—always solving problems, building things.
Growing up, she tinkered with my mom’s tools and rewired the toaster three times before Papi begged her to stop.
“How are the ‘rents?”
“Mom’s swamped with orders—Valentine’s Day wiped her out. She said she’s going to send you pictures of a new necklace she designed. And the restaurant is crazy, which means Papi is crazy. The place is packed every night.”
“Sounds about right.” If I close my eyes, I can almost smell Papi’s carne asada sizzling on the grill and hear the jukebox in the corner—Selena, Luis Miguel, and the occasional Vicente Fernández ballad, when Papi gets sentimental. The soundtrack of my childhood.
I feel a sense of melancholy. I miss my family. I miss my colleagues. I even miss Philly, and who would’ve ever thought that could happen!
“You sound good…like really good. Is it the food? The men? What?” Marisol interrogates ebulliently.
I pause, watching the water ripple under the bridge.
Gustave’s face flashes in my mind—the way his storm-gray eyes had softened, for a moment, before he cut me down. “Paris is…good for me.”
I don’t mention him to my sister.
I don’t mention the caliente* sex or the fight at the Pyramid.
Not because I don’t trust Marisol—I tell her almost everything—but because this feels like it’s mine, private and raw, not ready for the family group chat. And…because I’m embarrassed, if I’m honest. He made me feel foolish, like a na?ve American who stumbled into a world she doesn’t belong in.
Marisol fills the silence, rambling about her fluid dynamics class, about a group project where she’s the only girl on the team—shocking—and about a guy who keeps asking her out, even though she’s made it clear that she won’t date until finals are over.
I walk through Saint-Germain-des-Prés, which is alive with chatter from cafés.
I can’t wait to get back to my flat and reheat the chili con carne I made yesterday. A couple of fresh tortillas waiting in the fridge for a quick warm-up, a glass of Pommard Burgundy I picked up over the weekend from the wine shop down the street, and…el paraíso*.
With Papi being a cook, food is basically our family love language.
I eat out plenty in Paris, but some days I just need comfort—something my abuela used to make, the kind of food that feels like home.
I turn the corner onto Rue de Buci, my earbuds still full of Marisol’s chatter about some genius boy in her physics class who thinks “mansplaining” is a compliment, when I freeze.
Because I see him. The man with the stormy gray eyes.
He’s at one of the tiny café tables directly below my apartment. He’s in a dark suit, impeccable, looking utterly out of place among the students in leather jackets and the tourists nursing carafes of cheap wine.
The second he sees me, he stands, raises his hand in a tentative wave.
My stomach drops to my shoes.
“Uh, I have to go,” I blurt into the phone, cutting off Marisol mid-rant. “Love you, bye!”
I stab the OFF button, and shove the phone into my coat pocket.
A hot mess of emotions slams into me. Dread, because the last time he spoke to me, he made me feel like the world’s worst human. Irritation, because he has the audacity to show up, and—dammit—relief.
Joy, even. Because I’ve missed him.
How do you miss someone you barely know? Someone who insults you, mistrusts you, makes you question your own judgment?
And yet my heart aches in a way that has nothing to do with logic and everything to do with the man waiting for me under my window.
* Still life (French)
* Sweetness of life
* Hot (Spanish)
* Paradise (Spanish)