Page 8 of The Muse (Beautiful Magic 1)
I raise a brow. “How is it a surprise if you know about it?”
“Because I’m throwing it.” He shushes me when I laugh, then explains, “I hate surprises. I’m that person who reads the last page of a book first. I want to know the movie spoilers, and I’ve never made it to Christmas morning with unopened gifts. Especially ones I order for myself,” he adds with a grin. “So, Rafe and I are throwing an un-surprise party for my twenty-ninth birthday. We all have to act surprised by anything anyone says, and whoever has the best look of shock or awe gets the prize calf.”
“That does sound like fun.” It’s certainly more clever than the usual party games.
Remy sets down the ceramic calf. “You should come. Bring friends if you want. The only requirement is to act surprised.”
I gasp in melodramatic astonishment.
“Brilliant.” He nods his approval. “A convincing look of surprise will serve you well in life.”
“I can see where it would.”
“So you’ll be here?”
Before I can commit, Rafe and Adaline emerge from the kitchen with dessert and coffee, and we take seats around the table with the calves to enjoy them while talking shop.
“I have the final paperwork,” Rafe says, opening a folder of paper documents.
Remy gestures affectionately to his partner. “I’ve never enjoyed paperwork. Rafe is so much better at the details. Merci, mon chou!” he calls out.
Rafe winks. “Someone must manage the humdrum things in life, like dinner and priceless pieces of art.”
“And someone must be entertaining.”
Rafe laughs. “And indeed you are.”
Remy blows a kiss, and Rafe and Adaline begin to go over Remy’s family’s ownership of the Renoir through the years, the certification by independent authenticators, and reports on the tests of the canvas and pigment and all the other details that prove the painting is not fake.
It would be much more interesting if I were involved instead of watching the tops of their heads as they skim the documents. After a bit, I ask the way to the restroom, and Remy directs me down the hallway to the second door on the left.
“Be sure to have a look around at the art,” he says in his cheerfully hospitable way. “We have a Jasper Johns, a Monet, and a Valadon you might like to see.”
“Will do,” I say as I slip out into the hallway.
Since the trip to the loo is chiefly an excuse to get away from the table, I linger on the paintings Remy mentioned. I particularly admire the way Monet captured the cobalt-blue morning light on the pond near his home, his Japanese bridge arching over the dreamscape of water beneath it. What must it be like to craft such beauty with your own hands? To evoke so much wonder with a brush and pigment? I’m best at technical drawings—accurate, but nothing awe-inspiring. Want a map drawn? I’m your guy. But something this beautiful, this transcendent . . .? I wouldn’t know where to start.
I wander a bit, looking for the Valadon Remy mentioned, but I don’t see one, so I finally make my way to the second door in the hallway. I open it, and then blink in surprise—genuine, not at all fake bewilderment—because it’s not the bathroom. It almost doesn’t look like it belongs in the same house at all.
The room is uncluttered, with bright-white walls, a long black leather couch, and a plasma TV screen hanging on the opposite wall. Nothing strange there, other than the jarring modernity and perhaps the latched door in the middle of the floor.
A trapdoor to a basement, maybe? But how can there be a cellar or basement when they live on a steep hill?
But the part that rates a second look is the chalk drawing that covers half the door.
Only half.
I glance furtively over my shoulder, feeling as if I’m snooping but unable to resist. Going in, I circle the door to view the design right side up.
A woman in a pale-pink dress, pale as the inside of a seashell, dances with a partner, her face turned away from him. I know the original of this—Renoir’s Dance at Bougival—but here, the man hasn’t been included in this chalk rendering.
Will someone add him later? It seems like such a deliberate exclusion, as if the woman is what matters. Since I’ve been studying up on Renoir for my independent study project, I know that the woman in the painting is Suzanne Valadon, an artist herself—the first woman, in fact, to be admitted into art school in France. When Remy suggested I would want to see the Valadon, I’d assumed he’d meant something she’d painted, not a drawing of her.
This is just weird.
The voices in the living room are still droning on about the detailed provenance of the painting. Adaline is good at this. History and authenticity—those are her bailiwicks.
