Chapter 31
31
Clio and I stand at the front doors of the Musée d’ Orsay. It’s time for us to leave.
I pause as I grab the handle, remembering when she told me how easy it would be to free her. You don’t need a crazy car chase or knife fight to free me. Nothing violent, nothing dangerous. It’s simple because art is grace. Art is class. You can free me by holding open the door and letting me out.
I do the thing Clio didn’t want me to do a few days ago. Because there is nothing for her on this side of the door. There is nothing to tie her to the museum. Not her frame and not me.
She crosses the threshold, and her feet touch outside ground for the first time in centuries. There is a woman beside me who wasn’t there before.
Anyone can see her. She’s no longer bound to the painting Renoir trapped her in. She’s bound to being a Muse, and she can’t wait to start up again.
I call Remy and ask him to let Thalia know the missing Muse is coming home. “Meet her at La Belle Vie,” he says, and I hang up, wishing I wanted to let her go, wishing maybe I felt like she does right now.
I would like to feel nothing; I want to be numb. But I feel everything. And worse, I feel it for someone who feels nothing for me.
We walk down the steps like two acquaintances, like two coworkers who did a job together. A job well done, but now we’ll move on. To the next city, the next assignment. I walk her across the river and to the block with La Belle Vie.
I stop on the Rue de Rivoli, my heart aching, ripped to shreds as I get ready to free her in the best and worst possible way. I brace myself for this moment. For the serrated knife’s edge of her farewell. “Goodbye, Clio.”
“Goodbye,” she says, her voice clipped and cheery. She doesn’t even use my name.
“Do you remember what happened with us?” I ask tentatively because she seems like a robot, like she had her chip erased of all past memories.
Her grin is so friendly it could be an advertisement. “Of course I remember. We had a nice time together,” she says, and smiles even bigger now, more brightly, but her eyes are empty. There’s nothing there for me. “And now I get to go back to work.”
Get to.
Not have to .
This is what she wants.
This is what she craves.
The work. Only the work. She only loves art.
“It’s been so long,” she continues, beaming, a new thrill in her voice. “I can’t wait to find out what’s next, what new assignments are waiting for me. I’ve missed it so.”
No, you didn’t , I want to tell her . You didn’t miss it. You were tired of it. You wanted more. You wanted us. You wanted me. Dammit. You wanted me as much as I wanted you.
I wish I could clasp her shoulders and impart this truth to her. I wish I could give her one-tenth of my love for her. Let it refill her. Fuel her. Renew her love in us.
And yet that’s another impossibility.
Like all the ones we’ve faced.
On some level, I understand that her measured tone isn’t personal. But that doesn’t stop me from feeling, from wanting, from aching.
I ache for her.
For what we had inside Starry Night .
For everything we could have had outside of that Van Gogh.
But that is gone. Like drawn items disappearing with the snap of fingers.
Thalia steps out of La Belle Vie and beams, like a mother welcoming back a long-lost child. Clio rushes to her. She doesn’t look at me, but I can’t look away. I can’t stop watching her.
I can’t stop wanting her.
And I don’t think I will ever stop seeing her everywhere I go.