Chapter 8
8
I carry her words with me, through waking and dreaming, over the next couple of weeks. There are exams to get through, grades that hardly matter, since I’ve already been accepted to graduate school here at the university. The most important thing, scholastically, is my project for my independent study.
The most important thing on my mind, personally, is getting to the museum.
Bless whatever neuron came up with the brilliant idea to do my project on the Renoir, because the overlap of those two things may well be the difference between graduating with honors and without.
Today is the day.
I force myself to keep a normal pace on my way to work, just to prove I have some self-control. And also, the woman can’t come out of the garden until the sun sets. So, there’s that.
I let myself into the Musée d’Orsay’s administrative wing with my key card and make for the nearest stairwell, taking the steps two at a time to the first floor, where she—the only “she” who matters—is already in place, ready to welcome visitors.
The crowd surprises me, though it shouldn’t. Tourists and locals alike pack the entrance to the gallery that showcases Woman Wandering in the Irises . It’s not quite Mona Lisa level, but it’s more traffic than the Musée usually sees.
It feels like the floor of a concert venue, everyone sweaty and elbowing each other, angling to get closer to the rock star. Everyone wants to see the lost Renoir.
Then—there she is.
My heart stutters, and a flush heats my face and neck. I want to push through the crowd to reach her and run my hands over her painted body. I want her to see me, and only me, amid the chaos.
I want her to like me.
I want her, full stop, and that’s an exceedingly uncomfortable thing to admit about a painting.
Only, I’m no longer pretending that’s all she is.
I leave her to her adoring public, calmer now that I’ve seen her here. Now that I know she’s in the building. I even manage to get some work done, and to say good night to Adaline when she leaves, and to behave like a human being and not an instinct-driven hormone machine raised by wolves.
Finally— finally —the museum closes. Gustave patrols, and another guard keeps watch on the monitors at the security desk. Now the waiting gets tough. The sun sets late in the summer, and I’d wrestle it down beneath the horizon if I could.
My phone chirps at sunset, and I pack up my messenger bag and make a loop through the galleries while I wait for full dark. Anticipation has sharpened my senses, and as I near her gallery, a dress rustles. Quickening my pace, I arrive as she steps out of her frame.
It’s as natural and effortless as if she does this every single night. Her long cream dress skims the floor, and she shakes out her curls, a Botticelli Venus emerging from the ocean, sun-kissed skin and tousled hair. Her chestnut hair is long and luxurious, enticing me to touch it, hold it, wrap my fingers around its silk.
She hasn’t noticed me yet, doesn’t realize I’m watching as her paint turns to flesh. As she takes on shape and skin and breath and life.
I would be shocked if I wasn’t used to paintings coming to life. What I am, though, is awed.
Awestruck by her beauty and her wonderful realness .
She turns, and her eyes fall on me for the first time. They are the fierce blue of a revolution, a color to rally flagging armies. They stun me.
Then she speaks, her accent warm, her voice sounding like a poet. “I’m awfully hungry.”
I laugh in surprise. I didn’t dare imagine what she might say first, but not something so pedestrian.
But I like it, and it makes answering easy, bypassing nerves and vaulted expectations.
“It’s probably been a while since you had a bite to eat.”
She nods with a wry arch to her brow. “More than a hundred and thirty-five years.”
“I know where there’s a great ?le flottante ,” I say, thinking of the nearby café that serves the floating meringue in caramel. Then I follow the thought through, and wince. “But it’s closed.”
“Maybe you can bring me one tomorrow?”
“Sure.” I would bring the Eiffel Tower to her if she asked for it. “It’s the best in the city.”
She nods. “I do love sweets.”
“Fortunately, we have plenty of those here in Paris.” I remember I have half a sandwich from earlier, and it’s not a courtly gesture, but it solves her problem.
I pat my messenger bag. “I have some of my lunch in here. It’s just a sandwich, but it’s pretty good.”
She eyes my bag hungrily, like she might take a bite out of it instead if I don’t hand over the food. “Would you mind terribly?” she asks, then recovers her aplomb. “I mean, may I have it?”
“Absolutely.” I sit on the wooden bench, and she sits next to me. The skirt of her dress spreads out and touches my leg.
She’s real. She’s here. And to say she’s beautiful would be to call the Alps tall or the ocean salty.
I unwrap the sandwich and hand it to her. When the food reaches her lips, she rolls her eyes in pleasure.
“This is perfect,” she says.
“I can bring you one of your very own tomorrow. Is there something you’d like?”
“Anything. Anything is good.”
She takes another bite, then holds up a “one more thing” finger until she can swallow. “I meant that. Everything is good. Bring me one of everything.”
Her voice is ravenous. No, she is ravenous. As she chews, she looks around the gallery with lively, hungry eyes. She glances at the messenger bag at my feet, as if she’s able to notice them now. She inventories my shoes, my jeans, my button-down shirt, and she can probably see the flush rising on my neck when she gets to my collar.
“I don’t know what to call you,” she says.
“I’m Julien.” I offer my hand to shake, and she takes it. I let the last of my doubt run out on a sigh. Her touch is real. She is real, from the hair that falls past her shoulders to the folds of her dress to the slim silver bracelets she wears, each one the width of a few strands of thread.
“You can call me Clio,” she says.
“Clio.” Her name is like a bell, clear and pure. “Clio.”
“It’s better like this, isn’t it? When we are on the same side of the frame?”
I laugh softly. “I couldn’t agree more.”
“I’m free.” Her voice breaks a little, as if her throat is tight with tears. She sighs and stretches her arms overhead. “And it feels spectacular .” She leans her head back as if she’s on a beach letting the sun warm her face. “Ah, you have no idea what all those years inside a painting will do to a body.”
Eyes closed, she shifts her neck from side to side, and I want to offer to rub the kinks out of her muscles, if only for an excuse to touch her. She turns to me, her wild blue eyes lit up like she’s ready to misbehave. Whatever she’s about to suggest, I’m down for it.
“Would you like to show me this museum, Julien?”
I can’t help my grin. The suggestion isn’t improper, but it’s the way she says it. Like nothing could be better than the two of us, nearly alone, in the Musée d’Orsay.
Standing, I offer her my hand. “I would love nothing better than to show you this museum.”
She looks tickled by the gesture. It goes with her dress and her era, but she doesn’t seem as prim as I thought women were a hundred and thirty-five years ago. Still, she takes my hand, and as her fingers touch my palm, a tremble sweeps through me—up my arm and through my whole being.
I don’t move for long seconds that contain lifetimes.
The painted woman is real. Is holding my hand. Is touching me. Her fingers wrap delicately around mine as she stands in front of me, alive and in the world.
And it feels spectacular.
Flesh and bone, warmth and sparks.
So many sparks race across my skin at the simple clasping of our hands.
If holding hands is a gateway drug, I’m already addicted.
We wander through the galleries of my home away from home, past the paintings that are almost like family. She trails her hand along the canvases, brushing pastel bathers on beaches, bowls of peaches, and moonlit stars. She traces her fingers over vases of flowers, Tahitian women on islands, and cabarets in Montmartre.
I would tell anyone else to stop. But there is reverence in her touch, something loving and tender.
When she reaches a painting of Monet’s Rouen Cathedral , she stops to consider it.
“I want to go there,” she announces, with some of the same longing as when she said she was awfully hungry. “I want to see the real cathedral. Have you been?”
“Yes. I’m studying art history, and I’ve visited a lot of the places the artists here painted. Rouen, Arles . . .” I watch her for a reaction. “Even Monet’s garden.”
Her eyes widen. “You’ve been to Monet’s garden? The real one?”
I laugh once. “Is there another one?”
“What is it like now? Tell me everything.”
There it is again. Everything is good. Bring me one of everything. She’s as hungry for the world as she was for my sandwich.
I search for words that are up to that hunger. “It’s a paradise of colors and scents and sounds. Like art made real. Walking through it is like strolling through a field of inspiration, where you can reach out and pluck an idea as easily as a flower.”
Then I hear myself, and stop with a grimace of embarrassment and chagrin. “That sounds unbelievably pretentious, doesn’t it?”
“No. It doesn’t. It sounds . . .” She looks again at the Monet, laying her hand against it to frame the doorway of the church. “It sounds like something I’d want.”
The way she says “want” is wistful and pained. It’s a wish from a woman shut away for too long.
Are the other people in the paintings trapped too? The idea never occurred to me. There’s something different about Clio, a vivacity I haven’t seen in the others. They seem content to do what they do, in or out of their frames. At the risk of a terrible pun, they strike me as rather two-dimensional.
Clio is something else.
I have so many questions. I want to ask who she is, where she’s from, but the moment is delicate, and I don’t want to break it.
“Do you want to see my favorite Van Gogh?” I ask, changing the mood and the subject.
“Yes!” She’s smiling again, sparkling again. “I definitely want to see your favorite Van Gogh, Julien.”
The sound of my name on her lips makes me want to touch her arm, to take her hand. I don’t do either of those things, or anything else my mind suggests. She’d been desperate to come out of her frame. I’d hoped—all right, assumed—her reasons were the same as mine. That we both wanted to see each other. Touch each other. Do other things with each other that I wasn’t going to admit to fantasizing about doing with a woman in a painting.
But now I don’t know if she wanted to come out for me or to be free of her painted chains, so I keep my hands to myself.
I take her to the wing on the second floor and show her Van Gogh’s Starry Night . In it, a couple walks along the River Rh?ne under a sky full of sparkling stars while sailboats bob in the water. Clio gazes at it for a moment, a hand pressed over her heart, then she closes her eyes. When she opens them again, she reaches for the painting, her touch as soft and light as a murmur on the waves.
“Is this one of the places you’ve been?”
“Yes. Van Gogh painted this by the Rh?ne in Arles. That was a family trip, though, and I was too young to remember it.”
We lapse into silence side by side as we admire the painting. She shifts her body closer to me. This near, she’s intoxicating. “Then we’ll go together someday,” she says, surprising me again.
I glance at her and find her looking back at me. That word, “together,” does a number on me, especially combined with “someday,” which implies a future date. A future together .
“Anytime, any day,” I promise. I don’t examine how or when. I just pretend it would be possible and then enjoy the heady, swooping feeling that maybe she likes me too.
After a long, sweet moment in front of Van Gogh’s Starry Night , she grabs my hand and says, “Show me more.”
I do, and we don’t stop until she has seen haystacks and operas, mirrors and pheasants, doctors and patients. When we come back to her gallery, it’s nearly midnight. I hate that I have to go home, and I’m dragging my feet to draw out the night.
We pause outside her gallery as if I’m walking her home from a date. She studies me, head tilted in speculation.
“You love them all,” she says—not asking, but confirming—and I nod.
“Yes. I do.”
Her head tilts the other way as she asks, “You’ve been coming to see me, haven’t you?”
I’m not surprised she knows, but I have so many questions.
“Could you see me? Hear me?” I ask.
“You’re the first thing I’ve been able to see or hear on the other side of the frame,” she says. I can’t tell if that’s frustration or relief in her voice. Maybe both. “I saw you in that room. You heard me, didn’t you?”
“Yes,” I say, remembering every encounter with her at Remy’s house.
“I wanted to come out sooner.” There’s so much longing in her voice now. Is it longing for what could have been? For the years she missed?
She moves a step closer, until we’re inches apart. “As soon as I saw you, I tried to get out. It was the closest I’ve ever come to managing it.” She gestures to our surroundings. “Until now, obviously.”
“I’m glad you’re able to come out now.”
“Me too. You’re not like anyone I’ve ever met. You asked questions about me. You talked to me and made everything better while you were there.”
I smile slightly. “I was thinking the same thing about you.”
For a moment, the question flashes through my head like a neon sign— what are you thinking?
It’s a valid question—how can I be so attracted to a painting?
But perhaps the answer is in front of me. She’s not a painting. She’s a person.
And that’s really all that matters, I suppose.
“‘What are you like, woman behind the paint?’ That’s what you asked me.”
“You remember,” I say. I’m sure she’s some sort of enchantress, and she has put me completely under her spell. “Who are you?”
“I’m Clio. I’m just an ordinary young woman.”
“No . . .” I reach up and brush a wayward chestnut curl behind her ear. “Who are you?”
Her gaze dances away and then back, and then she grins. “Julien . . .” she tsks, and it’s the sexiest thing ever, her chiding me in that shy but bold, joking but not kind of way. “I have to keep some secrets. You don’t want to learn everything about me on the first . . .” She seems at a loss for the word she wants. “What do you call it these days?”
“Date?” Hoping she feels the same way, I trail the back of my hand down the silken skin of her arm and say, “First date?”
“First date,” she echoes as if trying on the words. “Yes, that’s what I mean. I quite like the sound of that.” She tilts her head the other way. “How does this compare? Was touring the museum a good first date?”
“The best ever,” I tell her.
She nods decisively. “And for me as well.”
The admission makes my head spin, and I look at her, feeling helpless and wobbly and really, terribly happy. I save some questions for later, and shake my head, bemused. “Where have you been for the last century?”
She points to the gallery where her gilded frame rests. “On the other side of that painting.”
We’re back to her frame now, and I regard it with curiosity. “What’s on the other side?”
“Tulips and hollyhocks, pansies and irises.” Her voice is pure, her French is impeccable, but she doesn’t have the accent of a native. She doesn’t have any accent.
“You don’t sound like you’re from here.”
“You doubt my French?” She places a palm against her chest as if mortally offended.
I hold up my thumb and forefinger a scant inch apart. “Maybe a little.”
“Do you think I’m French?”
I shake my head. “I don’t know what you are. Or who you are. At least tell me where you’re from.”
She shakes her head. “You’ll come back tomorrow?”
“For our second date? I wouldn’t miss it.”
“Promise me?”
I pause, considering her pinched brows and the shift in her tone, and my nod is weighty, a vow in itself. “I promise.”
She places her hand on my cheek, just where I’d held it that day at Remy’s, and trails it along my jaw as she steps away. “Then I will see you tomorrow, Julien.”
“Tomorrow,” I echo. She walks back to her painting but stops and turns with her hand on the frame as if remembering something. Before she can speak, I say, “And I’ll bring food. One of everything.”
“Julien, no!” she exclaims. “I didn’t mean everything all on the same day!”
I tease, “You should say what you mean, Clio. Now I will have to eat all the sweets myself.”
She shakes her head with a little roll of her eyes. “Then I promise to taste one of whatever you bring.” So much is conveyed in the flick of her gaze, the saucy hint of a smile on her lips as she steps into the frame . “In which case, I am eager to see how you plan to indulge me.”
Her demeanor changes slightly as she settles into place, softens to something sweeter and terribly earnest. “Also, thank you , Julien.”
She says it with such appreciation, as if I’ve accomplished some tremendous deed for her. Anything I’ve done seems inconsequential next to what she’s done for me.
I don’t simply mean the wild beating in my heart, or the sizzling of my skin. But what she’s done for my mind—she’s proven I’m not mad.
Not in the sense that I can’t tell reality from fantasy.
But maybe I’m mad in another way.
Because one date, one night, one stroll through the museum by her side and I’m absolutely mad for more of her.
“Good night, Clio.”
She blows me a kiss then pulls up the gauzy hem of her skirt, the lace edges brushing against the painted irises, until she is immobile once more, leaving me dizzy with want.
* * *
I start home in a haze, feeling like I’m drunk or dreaming. Clio is imprinted on my skin; I feel faint traces of her. I’m so absorbed by the lingering sensation that I don’t notice the man sprawled on the museum steps until I’m almost past him. In a worn sweatshirt and jeans, he could be a vagrant or an artist—or both. Once I see that he’s lounging and not injured, I continue on my way, wrapped up again in the vision of Clio and the promise of seeing her again.