Chapter 4 #4
She nodded. “That is what I said, but he could not understand why that was important.” I made a disbelieving noise.
“I know,” she agreed. “This artist—Uno—paints stencils of the Venus de Milo all over the city. That is all he does; he is famous for it. I wonder if he knows what it means to girls, seeing this damaged body everywhere, as if it were normal.” She looked down.
“One time, somebody put my face on one of his stencils, and all the guys I used to paint with thought it was very funny. They said they preferred the version of me with no arms.”
“That’s a creepy thing to say. Why did they think that?”
“Because I am a better artist than they are.” She shrugged.
“One day, I saw one of the Venuses that Uno makes in my neighborhood—in my neighborhood—and I just got so angry, you know? I thought, What could she do if she had the full use of herself? So I gave her arms. Now she can do anything she wants.”
“I love that,” I said. “You saw a problem, and you solved it with art.”
She smiled, delighted. “That is exactly it—that is what I do.”
“I’d love to see some more.”
When she showed me the next piece, I laughed in recognition. It was the Mona Lisa. Same subdued palette as the original, same pensive expression. But she was wearing a headscarf.
“I just saw her at the Louvre,” I said.
She smiled wryly. “That one is certainly more popular. Mine has been painted over many times, but I always put her back.”
“Why does she get painted over?”
“I think it makes people angry to see her with her head covered. It tells a story about La Joconde that makes them uncomfortable. But this means they have not looked closely at the original painting. She is wearing a headscarf.”
I closed my eyes and searched my memory of the Mona Lisa painting. “But you can see her hair.”
Noor took her phone back, searched, and handed it to me again. I had to enlarge the image before I saw the scarf, so transparent it was almost invisible.
“I saw it when my class visited the Louvre the year I was thirteen,” Noor continued.
“I was so excited because the woman in the most famous painting in France is wearing a headscarf, and it is not popular to wear one here. We are forbidden to wear them at school. To see one on La Joconde felt so important. As if the artist had seen me. Seen who I am.” Her face hardened.
“When I showed it to the professeur, she said I was wrong. She said there was no scarf.”
“That’s awful.”
“It was as if the painting was only for people who looked like my prof. She made me feel like I did not exist. After I painted arms on the Venus, though, I decided that people need to see La Joconde as I saw her. The scarf is there—it is real, and if people saw it, perhaps they would be less frightened of people who look like me.” She did the “pff” thing with her mouth that in French means, But of course, I was deluded.
“But my version, she was painted over the next day. So I painted her again. I keep repainting her. Something that makes people so uncomfortable they have to destroy it is worth keeping alive.”
I loved her fierceness. “Do you only paint girls wearing headscarves?” I asked. I took another drink of Champagne. I felt warm and slightly fuzzy at the edges.
“Mostly. Like Le Bec mostly does pigeons and Uno only does his Venus stencils. You can work very quickly if you have a character you always paint, and working quickly means the police are less likely to catch you.” She gave me a conspiratorial smile.
“Are you showing off your little things, Noor?” Le Bec leaned down between us and took the phone out of my hands. I was going to say I wasn’t done looking yet, but he turned a dazzling smile on me. “You like art?”
I nodded. “Noor’s been showing me her work. It’s amazing.”
He put his hand on her shoulder. “It is too bad she will never be chosen for Le Mur.” He took his own phone out. “Would you like to see some of my work?”
I shrugged. “Sure.” I wanted to see more of Noor’s art, but I was happy to look at his stuff, too. On the screen of his phone, five giant pigeons slouched against a wall, smoking. “I love it,” I said, laughing almost in spite of myself. “It reminds me of my old school.”
Nick looked over my shoulder. “Is this the one that’s on Le Mur?” he asked.
“Yes.” Le Bec grabbed a Champagne bottle and topped off my glass. He made to fill Noor’s already-full glass, but she put a hand over it. “If you had listened to me, ma cocotte,” he told her, “you could have been on Le Mur, too.”
She shook her head. “If I had listened to you, I would be helping you to paint your pigeons instead of doing my own work.”
“You would have recognition.”
“I would be ‘team.’ Le Bec and his team.” Noor said “team,” but the subtitle read “servant.” She gave a one-shoulder shrug. “In any case, I already have recognition. People know Headscarf Girl.”
“They do not invite her to paint Le Mur Oberkampf.”
Noor moved her eyes away from Le Bec, silently considering the wall hung with gates.
Le Bec stared at her like he was trying to will her to meet his gaze.
Laughing people stumbled by our table; I gulped more Champagne, nervous at the tension that hung in the air, and felt Nick give my hand a quick It’s okay squeeze.
It didn’t feel like it was okay, though.
“I am happy for you,” Noor said at last, her eyes still on the gates. There was no sarcasm in her voice, but Le Bec glowered at her anyway.
I butted in, hoping to defuse the tension. “So why pigeons, Le Bec? Why not penguins? Or parrots?”
He turned to me, pleased by my attention.
“A pigeon is like an artist. Dirty, unappreciated, small, always with its eyes down searching for crumbs. It is not pleasant to feel like this, so one day I decided to make a pigeon that was big and strong and did not need crumbs from anyone. People liked it, so I made more. And now I do not have to eat the crumbs that others drop.” He smiled at me and Nick and threw a glance at Noor.
“You should come to see my wall. I am inviting all of you.”
“Great,” Nick said. I nodded.
“I am sorry; it is not possible for me,” Noor said. “I will be working.”
Le Bec rolled his eyes. “Drawing portraits of idiot tourists on the Pont des Arts? Wasting your skills?”
She shrugged. “I am not wasting my skills; I am adding to them. And earning money. I do not have to steal my supplies.”
He shrugged, like, stealing, schmealing, as my phone barked with my curfew alarm.
“Whoops,” I said. “I have to leave now, or I’ll turn into a pumpkin, and I won’t ever see Nick again. Which would be tragic.” I grinned at him, warm and loose and happy.
“It would indeed, mademoiselle.” He smiled, and we both stood up.
Le Bec grabbed my hand. “No, you must stay longer.”
“Alas, we can’t,” I said, pulling out of his grasp.
But of course we couldn’t just leave; we had to do our farewells, kiss-kiss-kissing our way around the tables.
Le Bec lingered so long as he kissed my cheek that I pulled away, giggling uncomfortably.
“Okay, bye,” I said, stumbling against Nick, who slipped his arm around me as we left and kept me tucked close all the way to the Métro station.
As we waited for the train, I said, “This is like a magic carpet ride.”
“This?” Nick’s gesture encompassed the sulfurous lighting, grimy tilework, and low-level hum of despair surrounding us.
“I mean, not the decor. But getting on in one place and hurtling through the darkness and then emerging in a completely different world—yeah. Portland’s pretty monochrome, but here, I feel like I’m meeting the world every day.
It’s magic.” I grinned like a complete goof. But I loved the Métro, grit and all.
He laughed. “You’ve had a little too much Champagne, mademoiselle.”
“Au contrary,” I said. “I’ve had exactly enough.”
He looked at me. “You’re the magic. You turn an ordinary Métro ride into an adventure. You’re brave enough to own your ‘meh’ over the Mona Lisa—”
“Meh, meh, meh,” I singsonged. “The Mona Lisa is meh and I have spoken. Did you know she’s wearing a headscarf? That’s an un-meh thing about her.”
He nodded. “It is.”
We smiled at each other. “I’m magic, huh?” I said, fishing a little. Okay, a lot.
“Absolutely. You’re smart and funny. You think I’m funny. You’re nice to my baby sister. And you have hair the color of an autumn sunset.”
My brain went Ding-ding-ding; correct answer! But I just said, “Those are lovely things to say about me, but none of that’s really magic.”
He rubbed his eyebrow. “So one of my dad’s US colleagues brought his family here on vacation last year.
His daughter’s our age, and Dad volunteered me to show her around.
She had a list of things she wanted to see: the Eiffel Tower, Notre-Dame, Montmartre—standard tourist stuff.
Notre-Dame was closed because they were still restoring it after the fire, so I offered to take her to Sainte-Chapelle, which is this jewel box of a church with incredible stained glass.
She filmed some of the windows and said, ‘Okay, next?’ She ignored all the incredible carving and blew off seeing the reliquaries, which are gorgeous and weird and well worth seeing.
We spent the day like that, going to one-of-a-kind places that she didn’t bother to look at with her actual eyes, because she was too busy getting ‘content’ for her feeds.
” He made dismissive air quotes. “We stopped at a café for something to drink, and she complained that she only got three ice cubes in her Coke. We were sitting in a famous, beautiful café that everyone wants to see when they visit Paris, and she was counting ice cubes. She wanted to go to a club, so that night, I took her to Le Shopping and introduced her around. She was nice to my friends long enough for a photo op, and then she spent the rest of the evening in her phone, except for dancing with Yann.”
“Barbie’s dream date Yann?”
He threw his head back and laughed. “Yeah. See what I mean? She didn’t even remember his name.
Then on the ride home, she said my friends were rude because they spoke French at her all night long.
They spoke English. Yes, they have accents, but they were making an effort.
They were being friendly. She wasn’t. This girl was surrounded by amazing things all day long, and she didn’t even see them.
” I made a sympathetic face. “Whereas you,” he continued, smiling at me, “think the Métro is magical.”
“I’ve taken a bunch of photos. And I said the Mona Lisa is meh.”
“She is meh. And you took photos, but you also looked. You interacted. When we’ve gone to a café, you haven’t counted the ice cubes.”
“Because I was in a café in Paris. I was too excited to count ice cubes.”
“I show you something amazing and you see how amazing it is, not how trending it’ll make you on TikTok or whatever. You were nice to my friends tonight.”
“Because they’re interesting people. You do not meet many debate nerds out in the wild. And they were really nice to me.”
“Because you’re magic, mademoiselle.”
I felt as effervescent as Champagne fizz.
We were both quiet on the walk home from the Métro. At my apartment door, he seemed suddenly awkward. I smiled at him. “Thanks. I had an amazing time.”
“Me too.”
We stood there for a minute. The doorstep good-night is always the trickiest part of a first date.
Do you kiss? Shake hands? Hug? Wave? Normally I’d be tense and awkward, worried about misreading signals, but I was full of Champagne, Nick had called me magical, and I’d seen how the cool kids did it.
I leaned in, kissing him lightly on each cheek.
He grinned. “Good night, mademoiselle.”
“Night,” I said. I watched him walk down the hall to the elevator. He turned around and waved, and I waved back. The minute I closed the door behind me, I texted Madame Dupuy, hoping I wasn’t waking her.
Her call came back immediately.
“Bonsoir, Madame Dupuy,” I said. “I’m home.”
“Bonsoir, Mademoiselle Tosh. Please tell me what is in the refrigerator.”
“What?” Wow, I really had had too much to drink.
“The refrigerator, mademoiselle. Please open it and tell me what is inside.”
“Um, okay.” I walked into the kitchen, puzzled, and pulled open the fridge. “What the…”
“Ah, you are then truly home. What do you see?”
“I see one of the shoes I was trying on earlier. I don’t…” And then the light dawned. Madame Dupuy had set it up so that she would know whether I was lying when I called. “Never mind.”
“Bon,” she said. “I will wish you good night. Fais des beaux rêves.”
Sweet dreams. Dad used to tell me that when I was still little enough to want him to tuck me in.
I hung up, took the chilly shoe out of the fridge, and carried it to my room, shaking my head in admiration.
She knew the tricks, and she’d set an excellent trap.
I wondered where she learned to do that.