“So you are a friend of Le Bec?” she said.
I shrugged, shaking my head. “Nick knows him. I just moved here, so I don’t really know anybody yet. I only met Martine and Youssef tonight. How about you? Are you one of his friends?”
She glanced over to where he was acting out a story for three listeners, his gestures extravagant. “We used to paint together. You know—street art. He was a taggeur when we met, and now he is going to be famous.”
“Wow,” I said. “That’s so great.”
She smiled, small and tight. “Yes.”
“So you’re a street artist too?” When she nodded, I said, “That’s amazing. I’ve never met a girl street artist. I mean, I’ve never met any street artists at all until you and him.” I inclined my head at Le Bec. “The city I’m from has some excellent art, though.”
“Where are you from?”
I told her and was amazed to learn that she’d heard of Portland. She said she followed several Portland artists on TikTok.
“So what kind of things do you do?” I asked.
She picked up her phone, thumbed through a couple of screens, and handed it to me. The image sent a shock of recognition through me. I looked up, excited.
“You totally nailed this. That’s what I wanted to do when I saw her.”
Noor nodded, her eyes bright. “She is too powerful to be vulnerable like that.”
“Exactly,” I agreed. Noor’s photo showed a black-and-white Banksy-style stencil of the Venus de Milo on the side of a building. When Nick and I had seen Venus in the Louvre, beautiful but off-kilter and powerless because her arms had been broken off, I’d wanted to make her new arms. Seeing her so vulnerable distressed me. She could have been someone I knew. She could have been me.
In the photo, a girl wearing a spring-green headscarf that matched her coveralls stood on a ladder next to the painted Venus, attaching her left arm. The right one was already on—you could see the jagged line where it joined, and you couldalso see that, in contrast to the black and white of the rest of her, it was the warm color of living flesh.
“It’s perfect,” I said. “She looks strong.”
The girl helping Venus was rendered with a simple, graphic vibe, and her lively colors contrasted with the black and white of the statue.
Noor’s smile took over her face. She nodded toward Le Bec. “When he saw it, he said, ‘Why are you ruining his art?’ ”
I shook my head. “Not ruining,” I said. “You made her whole.”
She nodded. “That is what I said, but he could not understand why that was important.” I made a disbelieving noise. “I know,” she agreed. “This artist—Uno—paints stencils of the Venus de Milo all over the city. That is all he does; he is famous for it. I wonder if he knows what it means to girls, seeing this damaged body everywhere, as if it were normal.” She looked down. “One time, somebody put my face on one of his stencils, and all the guys I used to paint with thought it was very funny. They said they preferred the version of me with no arms.”
“That’s a creepy thing to say. Why did they think that?”
“Because I am a better artist than they are.” She shrugged. “One day, I saw one of the Venuses that Uno makes in my neighborhood—inmyneighborhood—and I just got so angry, you know? I thought,What could she do if she had the full use of herself?So I gave her arms. Now she can do anything she wants.”
“I love that,” I said. “You saw a problem, and you solved it with art.”
She smiled, delighted. “That is exactly it—that is what Ido.”
“I’d love to see some more.”
When she showed me the next piece, I laughed in recognition. It was theMona Lisa. Same subdued palette as the original, same pensive expression. But she was wearing a headscarf.
“I just saw her at the Louvre,” I said.
She smiled wryly. “That one is certainly more popular. Mine has been painted over many times, but I always put her back.”
“Why does she get painted over?”
“I think it makes people angry to see her with her head covered. It tells a story aboutLa Jocondethat makes them uncomfortable. But this means they have not looked closely at the original painting. Sheiswearing a headscarf.”
I closed my eyes and searched my memory of theMona Lisapainting. “But you can see her hair.”
