Chapter 13 #2
But the crowds are nearby. Through the massive, barred windows, the crystal pyramid illuminates the courtyard outside and I see tourists snapping their pictures.
The figures in the sculptures also stand in judgment of the two of us, particularly the stoic bust of Cardinal Richelieu.
I absorb their stares as I step backward slightly, pressing myself into Matthew, only the thinnest layers of fabric separating us.
He hardens against me, and if I turn, I could reach up and clutch his curls like Psyche desperate to have Cupid savor her.
His lips find the exact tender spot where my neck and shoulder meet.
A shiver of pleasure rushes through me as his mouth swipes along the ridge of my collarbone.
My body hasn’t reacted like this to anyone’s touch in more than a year.
His hands clench harder onto my waist as I release a guttural groan.
I spin around, grasp his hair, and pull his head down to my breast. He wastes no time unbuttoning my flimsy shirt and pushing aside my bra to trace my hardened nipple with his tongue.
I throw my own head back in ecstasy when he clamps down with his teeth ever so softly.
He moans with pleasure as he falls to his knees and gathers my skirt in one hand and yanks it up to my waist, all the while kissing the insides of my thighs, my hips, running his tongue over my underwear.
He finally slips a finger into me and presses his thumb firmly against my clit as I dig my nails into his shoulders and bite down on my lip to keep from crying out.
His grip on my ass tightens, his tongue moves furiously over every inch of me, the stone figures and paintings watching, rapt.
A door slams in the distance. Like teenagers caught by our parents, we both cry out quietly in horror.
I was so close I was about to come apart right here in this cold, sterile gallery and now I’m aching for him to finish no matter the consequences, but he pulls my skirt back down and my fingers fly to the buttons of my shirt.
Footsteps scurry over the stone floor, coming closer.
“Monsieur Swanson,” a voice calls out across the gallery. “I was hoping that I would catch you. Could I have a quick word about next week’s auction?”
Matthew sucks in a deep breath, trying to compose himself. I can clearly see the bulge in the front of his pants, and I would do almost anything to reach out and touch him myself, pull him deep inside me right here against the wall.
“Tell him you will come find him in a moment,” I whisper, my breath still short, my body still on the brink.
“I can meet you in your office,” Matthew manages, and the footsteps pause knowingly.
I turn away. I need my own time to cool off. What was that? And is it something I want to happen again?
Before he leaves, his lips are back on my neck.
“Don’t worry. I’ll finish what I started.” And with that he’s gone.
I walk through the gallery, straining to hear Matthew’s voice, but he must have gone deeper into the heart of the museum.
My heartbeat finally slowing down, the blood returning properly to my brain, I traipse up the stairs, past the bronze relief of the Nymph of Fontainebleau, the gorgeous bare-breasted goddess Diana with her arm slung around the neck of a mighty stag.
It’s weirdly sexy. Or maybe after what just happened with Matthew everything feels weirdly sexy.
I know exactly where I’m going as I pass through the halls of Renaissance paintings, so many of them depicting a chubby blond baby Jesus.
I finally end up with the most famous woman in the world.
In the Salle des états, the Mona Lisa is protected by bulletproof glass, and as almost everyone mentions when they walk into this usually crowded space, she’s tinier than anyone ever expects, like meeting a movie star in real life.
She’s dwarfed even farther by the two-story Veronese mural opposite her, and yet Mona Lisa remains the focal point, the celebrity who outshines everyone else at the party.
It’s jarring to see intensely familiar paintings in person.
I know they are often a disappointment for people who expect them to be bigger or brighter, more like the touched-up images they see in prints.
This one in particular has become a caricature of herself, much like Van Gogh’s The Starry Night or Wood’s American Gothic, the kinds of paintings that transcend art and become a part of mass culture.
I’ve never been able to get close to her, never been willing to brave the throngs of tourists surrounding her, eager to snap their pictures.
“Hi,” I say stupidly from half a room away. “Buonasera,” I try again, as if she might respond to her native tongue. It’s true that she seems to be staring at you no matter where you are in the room. Her eyes follow like a cat’s.
She’s terribly homely, Pascal had said when he brought all of us in here, our entire class. Of course he wanted to say something that could be perceived as profane. I don’t have my own opinion on her looks. She draws me in for another reason.
I get as close to her as I can without touching the bulletproof glass that also serves as a climate-controlled chamber. She’s well protected from every possible threat—human breath, bacteria, bullets. If only hearts and bodies could be so carefully preserved.
Da Vinci was a skilled mathematician, and the Mona Lisa is a classic example of that. Her features come across as so pleasing to most human eyes because of their proportions and symmetry, none of which are a coincidence. Her face is a perfect Fibonacci sequence of rectangular ratios.
It was my mother who first pointed it out to me on a postcard bearing Mona Lisa’s image.
She picked up a pen and desecrated the masterpiece with a series of exact rectangles and golden spirals.
I move even closer to the painting now, my nose nearly on the glass.
I can see my mother’s lines, see her calculations on the side of that tattered postcard.
Because of her, art for me will always be math, and math will always be art.
The two will be forever entwined like lovers.
“Emma,” a voice booms behind me. I leap back, slightly ashamed. It’s only Matthew though. His sly smile from earlier is gone.
“How d-did you find me?” I stutter slightly.
“Laurent could see you on the security cameras,” he says, his tone flat. I flush slightly. If Laurent could see me in here with the Mona Lisa, what else did he see earlier? I don’t have time to ask. Matthew rushes toward me.
“The hospital called.” His voice cracks. “She didn’t make it.”