Page 2 of The Muse (Beautiful Magic 1)
If I were going to imagine something, why would it be a young girl in a tulle skirt pirouetting from one soft pool of light to another across the shiny parquet floor in a flurry of white?
I cast a look around for the patrolling night guard, but there’s no one aside from me and the dancer.
How much did I drink at the club? One cocktail and then water? If I were seeing pink elephants, or genies riding on magic carpets while huffing on hookahs, or something truly outlandish—those would be easy to identify as fantasy. But the ballerina is both real and realistic, from the tips of her dancing shoes to the wisps of hair that have slipped from her bun to frame her delicate face.
My senses ignite, my brain buzzing. I’m too alert to be drunk. It feels more like dreaming while wide awake, because I recognize this girl. I’ve seen her before, but not like this.
This ballerina has danced her way right out of a Degas painting and into this museum.
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.
