Chapter 1
1
July—Present Day
A peach falls out of a Cézanne.
I grab the fruit before it rolls down the steps and out to the lion sculptures, near where the security guards make their nightly patrols. This peach looks tasty, rosy, and ripe, begging to be eaten, and I imagine the way it would drip juice down my chin, leaving my face and hands sticky but worth it. When I run my thumb over it, the skin is fuzzy and tender. It feels the same against my lips when I bring it close enough to bite.
But I don’t. The peach is a puzzle I view from all angles. One part of me says go ahead and bite. See what happens. At least I will know whether it’s real or a figment of my imagination. The rest of me doesn’t want to chuck out my understanding of reality after twenty-one years.
Instead, I do what Cézanne did—capture its likeness. I set the peach down and rustle in my messenger bag for my notebook and pencils. Taking a knee, I balance my sketchbook on the other and sketch quickly. When I’m done, I hold up the drawing so I can compare it to the subject, and I see . . . an accurate rendering of a peach.
That’s all. It’s a how-to-draw-a-peach tutorial, not something delicious you want to wrap your lips around. Not the kind of peach that evokes a summer day and a sweet, sultry smell that makes you feel something about fruit and the nature of the universe.
This sketch is not something you can have feelings about.
With a bone-deep sigh, I stuff my sketchbook into my bag.
I stand and carry the peach back to its home on the wall and tuck it into its frame. The canvas stretches itself around the piece of fruit with a slurping sound, then goes quiet. The peach is two-dimensional again. It still feels odd, no matter how many times I do it.
Something rubs against my ankles, and I look down to see a black cat winding around my boots.
“Meow,” she murmurs. I hadn’t noticed her approach. But then I wouldn’t—dark cat, shadowed gallery, pussyfooting from where she belongs to swish back and forth against my jeans.
Her chest rumbles against my calf as she purrs, alluring and enticing. No wonder this cat keeps company with Manet’s Olympia —she’s the feline version of the naked woman. Curiosity—at least, that’s a safe bet—makes the cat seek me out, but sometimes I think Olympia watches me too. I swear I have seen her eyes following me as I walk from one end of the gallery to the other. She always stays put though, stretched out seductively on the white silken sheets of her painted bed.
“Now, how did you make it all the way over here?” I scoop up the cat and return her to her home. With the fifth floor closed for a summer-long renovation, nearly all of the museum’s pieces are here on the main level. “They say black cats are trouble,” I tell her, stroking her silky, luxurious fur as I bring her to the edge of her canvas. “Is that true?” She meows one more time—maybe an answer, maybe not—but the sound is cut in half when she folds herself back into her regular pose—arched back, fierce yellow eyes, completely still.
Almost as if she’d never leaped out of the frame.
This is how my nights go now.
It’s not why I started coming to the Musée d’Orsay after hours, but it’s why I can’t stay away.
I hear soft footfalls from another gallery, and I smile. If I was a little surly before—all right, I was definitely surly—my mood lifts at the delicate sound of toes tucked into slippers twirling on the hardwood floor. I head across the hallway, not wanting to miss the dancers. They’re beautiful, graceful, and watching them is both breathtaking and relaxing at the same time.
When I turn into the gallery, two dancers in white dresses, including the girl from that first night, have jetéd out of a Degas to spin in dizzying circles. They make regular nighttime appearances now, but not in any set routine. Last week, all of Degas’s dancers here in the Musée d’Orsay, plus a few musicians from an orchestra scene too, peeled away from their paint to stage an impromptu midnight performance of Swan Lake in the main gallery. What will tonight’s show be?
The dark-haired one from the first night dances past me on the way back to her frame but stops before she goes, turns back to grin at me wildly, then launches into a set of pirouettes. She spins en pointe, around and around, a bravura encore to tonight’s performance.
She’s stunning, and as she whips through the turns, she takes my breath away.
Not from desire though. From appreciation for the way she moves.
Then, at the last moment, she wobbles, and just like a top, she goes over, crashing to the floor.
My heart spikes in alarm, and I rush over to her, kneeling beside her, tense with worry. “Are you okay?”
She nods bravely as she cradles her foot.
“Let me help you,” I say gently. She seems too delicate for full volume.
She nods and leans against me, small and lithe. I loop my arm underneath her, and through my concern, I’m curious how she’ll feel. I’ve never touched one of the dancers. I’ve never touched any of the painted people.
She feels real. Warm skin, beating heart. Like me. Like life. Why that should surprise me, considering I’m surrounded by paintings that leave their frames to traipse through the gallery, nice as you please, I don’t know.
I support her as she rises and gets her feet under her. She’s a bit unsteady at first, then sturdy again.
A loose tendril of her hair brushes my arm. It’s the unexpected evidence that shakes me, knocks home the realization of how lifelike she is.
Beautiful, talented, and fully alive.
But only at night.
The dancer tucks the stray hair into its proper place and murmurs, “Merci.” Then, I help her into her frame, the canvas wrapping gently around her as if being careful of her injury.
The museum is still again.
I’m amazed I don’t have more doubts than I do. After all, the dancers don’t twirl for the visitors during the day or for my sister when she works well into the evening. And once the dancers take their figurative bow, the galleries will stay quiet for the rest of the night. That’s just how it goes.
Whatever the reason, my life has become a Dalí landscape. This has become my version of normal.
On my way out, I stop at the spot where we will hang a new painting soon. Woman Wandering in the Irises . I concentrate for a moment, picturing it there, knowing how stunning it will look. The coveted Renoir would look magnificent anywhere.
Displaying Woman Wandering in the Irises is a major achievement, and it would be even if it was hideous—which it definitely is not. Lost for more than one hundred years, it’s the stuff that art collectors and historians around the world dream about. Now and then, people would claim to have seen it—spotted it in an antique shop, glimpsed it at a flea market. Finally, just weeks ago, the piece was found and authenticated. Now, Woman Wandering in the Irises is coming here. When I give my tours, it’ll be one of the final paintings I show. The best for last.
There.
Right there.
That’s where it’ll be.
My blood rushes faster when I imagine that beauty on the walls.
All the times I’ve gazed at a copy of that beautiful woman in the irises, and now to think of her here, becoming flesh at night . . .
I can only imagine what that would be like.
How much more I might feel.
How much more intense it would be than the moments with the dancers.
I catch myself getting uncomfortably lost in my imagination, and I grimace and give myself a good, hard mental slap.
Pull yourself together, Julien.
I’m a guy with a crush on a painting.
There it is, in all its embarrassing honesty.
I shake it off, laughing a little at myself. I’ve just built a little bit of a fantasy to fill the gap left by the breakup with Jenny. Transference or something. It’s not vastly different than an image of a model or movie star.
Except . . . it’s a painting.
And I have to face facts—it’s not the strangest thing these days. Or nights, rather.
I head out, saying goodbye to the security guards. Charles isn’t at the desk tonight. The gray-haired one, Gustave, is there and gives me a curt nod. He’s fiddling with a piece of copper wire and teardrop crystals that he bends and twists into a miniature sculpture. He’s an artist too.
Aspiring, I should say. Just like me.
“That piece is coming together,” I say, giving him a smile.
“Thanks.”
“See you tomorrow, Gustave.”
As the door closes behind me, I bring my palm to my nose. My hand smells like a peach. I’m sure of it.
I’m not sure, though, if it means I’ve gone mad, or the world has.