Chapter 27
27
We are not alone.
Around the world, artwork is spitting up.
Vomiting its insides.
A whole new spate of problems.
I clean up under the Cézanne, bagging the sand and leaving it below the frame, as the other museums around the world have done.
I spend my time tracking the art as it falls. A Goya in Saint Petersburg, a handful of Vermeers in the Met, a Morisot at the Art Institute of Chicago. The Renoirs are now all undamaged, that debt settled, but something far more dangerous has infected the other art.
I scroll through my email alerts even as I grab a late-afternoon coffee to go. At least one thing doesn’t have to do with the art implosion. There’s a note from Emilie, with an attachment.
Hi Julien,
I’ve been following all these crazy museum reports. How bizarre. I have faith you’ll sort it out though.
If you’re not too busy doing that, I got a solo in The Sleeping Beauty (it’s fine if you say “I told you so”), and you mentioned you might like to see the ballet. I have two tickets reserved for you and your girlfriend. You can get them at the link I attached.
Best of luck and see you soon (I hope!),
Emilie
My girlfriend . In the midst of everything, that word still makes me happy. The thought that Clio will be free by the date of the performance even makes me happy enough to smile.
* * *
When night comes, Clio escapes from her painting looking ashen and weary.
“I know what’s going on with the art. I figured it out,” she says in a dead voice. She slumps against the wall and drops her head into her hands. “It is all my fault.”
I sink down beside her, shaking my head, wanting to reassure her. “Clio, it’s not your fault. Even Thalia didn’t make the connection.” I rub her back, encouraging her. “It’s going to be fine. The art you inspired needs you back, so we’ll get you back.”
“That’s not it, Julien. That’s not it at all.” Clio lifts her face and looks at me. Her eyes are rimmed with pain. Her face is stricken. She lowers her voice to a confessional tone, like she’s admitting a terrible crime. She whispers, “I caused it.”
“No, you didn’t,” I say, denying it for her.
She nods. “I did.” She winces, draws a breath, then seems to steel herself. “They’re dying because I love you more than them.”
What?
I sputter. I blink.
I can’t believe that. I refuse to believe that. She has to be wrong.
I start to protest, but words are like sawdust in my mouth. “No” is all I can manage.
She takes my hand, squeezing it. “Yes.” She sounds forlorn. She sounds like she lost a symphony. “It has to be the reason. No Muse has ever been in love before. We only love art, or literature, or music. We love each other, and the art form we’re inspiring. Our magic is for inspiration, and our love is for preservation. That’s it; nothing more. When I started caring about you, all the art I inspired, all the art I loved, got sick. It can’t be any other way, Julien.”
“People can love more than one thing, Clio.” I sound more desperate than logical. I feel desperate. This can’t be the answer. “Emotion isn’t a finite commodity.”
“For people , Julien.”
I stare at her, struck silent.
“I thought about it all day. The Géricault—that was the first to die,” she says, and puts a hand on her heart. “That painting was so hard for him. Remember how I told you that? How I had to give it so much of my love to bring it into being, and to keep it alive? The Ingres at the Louvre too. And Rembrandt. I’ve loved them all,” she says, recounting the works she nurtured, her passion for the art permeating her voice. “All I’ve ever done is put my love into paintings. Then you came along, and I started wanting you instead.”
Her words warm my heart, but I can’t be distracted by these feelings. I have to convince her of the wrongness of what she’s saying. “That’s not true. The art started changing before you came to the museum,” I point out. “You were still at Remy’s house. The day after his party, I went to the Louvre and first saw the changes. The timing doesn’t line up for your theory to be true.”
She shakes her head with heavy sadness. “I wish that were so. But I fell for you before I even came here to the Musée d’Orsay, Julien. It was the night you talked to me for the first time. Remember? I tried to break out then because I wanted to see you. So, you see, as soon as I felt the first inkling of something for you, the paintings began to change. The deeper I fell for you, the sicker the art got.”
I grab onto that one light spot in the darkness dropping onto me. “The first time I talked to you, huh?”
She smiles. “Yes. You’re so easy to like. Falling for you is the most wonderful thing I have ever done.”
She looks radiant, like she’s glowing because of me, because of our love, and I can’t resist touching her. I grab her and kiss her hard on the mouth, holding her face. Reveling in the feel of her. In the way she responds. In how we connect.
Her body aligns with mine, sensual and snug, her breasts pressed to my chest, her hips to my hips.
We kiss long and deep and hard.
We kiss like it might be the last time.
And though I despise that thought, I love every second of her touch.
Of these lips, this face, this heat, this life.
She kisses me with so much passion, I know she must be right. If I were a painting that had experienced love like this and then the love went away, turned elsewhere, I’d shrivel up and explode too.
But I’m not a painting. I’m a man who can hold himself together so that the woman I love can do what she needs to do.
“So how do we fix it?” I ask at last.
“I have to do it,” she says in a careful, measured voice. “Let me try it here first. Where is the Cézanne from last night?”
“Where we left it.”
We walk a few rooms over to the Cézanne. The bag of sand is nestled at the foot of the frame. The canvas is a messy stew of mottled oils.
“So, first, I’ll just touch it,” she says, and places her palms on the remains. Nothing happens. “Now, I’ll concentrate on putting the love back into it.” She lays her hands on the canvas once more, closing her eyes. Her lips part, and she looks so beautiful, the way she looked when she first told me she was in love with me. It makes me ache, and it makes me want her at the same awful time.
As she stands like that, the sand from the bag swirls around her on a gentle wind, then dances back into the frame, where it returns to paint and the colors become grass and sea and trees again, reforming a ravaged landscape into the luscious one Cézanne created.
I have seen so many amazing things. I’ve had my mind blown many times, but watching the art being repaired, like time-lapse photography running backward, has to be at the top.
When Clio opens her eyes, she looks the slightest bit different. It’s hard to pinpoint how, but she looks a bit less like Clio and more like Thalia. Not in her features, but in her demeanor. As if she’s been sharpened.
“There you go,” I say, gesturing to the painting, restored to exactly the way it was before. “As good as new. Voilà.”
I smile like she hasn’t changed at all in the process.
We can do this. She can do this.
This is what has to happen, no matter how heavy the air or how hard my lungs have to work to breathe through the tightness that grips me.
When I look into her eyes, I know what she’s going to say will slaughter my heart.
She squares her shoulders. Draws a deep breath. “The thing is, it’s not enough for me to love the art. I have to put the love I feel for you into the paintings.” She takes a beat, then deals the punishing blow. “To save the art, I have to stop loving you.”