Page 73 of The Muse (Beautiful Magic 1)
“And the Géricault?”
“It was as if the water crashed backward and the waves rolled right into the frame. Then the canvas sort of slurped it all up. It looks just like the day it was made.”
“It’s amazing,” I say. “Russia now?”
“To Saint Petersburg we go.”
Clio might not be visible to anyone but me, but she’s audible to everyone. Including a guard who happens to be one room over from the Monet exhibit at the Hermitage. To complicate matters, the museum hasn’t updated its website lately, because the layout we saw of this gallery is just a tad wrong.
The guard jerks his head when Clio’s footsteps clip past him on the way to the Goya. But when he swivels around and sees me, I must appear—though it would be impossible—to be the source of the footsteps. At the very least, I’m an intruder. I’m about to jump into the closest Monet, the one I picked in advance for protection, but all the Monets near me are his earlier works that Clio inspired—thanks for nothing, Hermitage website—and I’m not about to take shelter in a painting that could collapse in on itself.
I scan the room quickly as the guard calls out to me in Russian.
I don’t know what he’s saying, but he’s not happy. He moves toward me. I spot a later Monet, one of the Haystacks. It’s a few feet from me. I step toward it as the guard comes closer. I reach my hands inside the painting and take out the haystack. It’s big, but it’s not heavy. I hold it in front of me as a shield. I don’t think he can see the haystack, since he’s not a muse. But like Olympia’s cat and Cézanne’s peach, the haystack is real, and it occupies space.
More Russian words fall from his lips. I shrug my shoulders but stay silent. Accents won’t disguise me. The guard is now mere feet from me, and he tries to grab me, but the thick bale of straw is a prickly buffer between us. He keeps lunging and keeps getting bounced back by the invisible haystack. Finally, he fumbles for the radio on his belt and calls for backup. He goes for his phone next and snaps a picture of me, of the Teflon guy he can’t touch.
C’mon, Clio. It’s only one painting.
I hear heavy running footsteps bringing another guard, who fires off more Russian orders at me. Seconds later, Clio’s racing through the halls, and both guards turn their heads at the noise. When she slides into the gallery, she sizes up the situation with a glance. She knocks off the second guard’s cap, and when he swivels around, Clio comes up behind the first guard and says something in Russian. His eyes widen, and he looks down at his pants, his face reddening. It gives Clio a chance to grab my hand, so I drop the haystack, then we run like hell to the bridge.
“What about the haystack?” I ask as soon as our feet touch safe ground.
“I’ll go tomorrow morning and put it back. It’ll take two seconds, but that was more time than we had just then,” she says.
“Right. How was the Goya?”
“Oh, it was beautiful.” She lays a hand on her heart. “I was so happy to see it again.”
Happy. I wince.
“But I still like you,” she says, and she sounds like herself, or as much of herself as there still is. She’s got that shy and sweet look about her, and part of me thinks she may even dive in for one more kiss. But she doesn’t.
“What did you say to that guard in Russian?”
“I told him his fly was down.”
I laugh, and she smiles, and we’re still in this together.
“Hey, Clio. As a favor, could you try to be just a little quieter when you run down the halls? I’d kind of like to not run into another security guard if I can.”
“Maybe you should draw me some padded socks,” she says with a wink, and I enjoy what I suspect might be our last inside joke.
The Impressionist room at the National Gallery in London is blissfully quiet. So is Clio as she taps the Muse dust into my hand. I close my fist around it then put the loose dust in my front pocket. Meanwhile, Clio heads—with careful, silent steps—away from the Monets and on to the Turners, a few rooms away.
I spy the bench I’d picked out and reach underneath. Yes! Simon’s friend Patrick came through. I untape the sheet of paper and pencil, lie flat on my stomach, and sketch quickly. The drawing is a contingency plan, so I tuck it under the bench and, with thirteen minutes left to wait, pop into a painting of Monet’s water lilies, out of sight of any passing guard.
