Footsteps scurry over the stone floor, coming closer.
“Monsieur Swanson,” a voice calls out across the gallery. “I was hoping that I would catch you. Could I have a quick word about next week’s auction?”
Matthew sucks in a deep breath, trying to compose himself. I can clearly see the bulge in the front of his pants, and I would do almost anything to reach out and touch him myself, pull him deep inside me right here against the wall.
“Tell him you will come find him in a moment,” I whisper, my breath still short, my body still on the brink.
“I can meet you in your office,” Matthew manages, and the footsteps pause knowingly.
I turn away. I need my own time to cool off. What was that? And is it something I want to happen again?
Before he leaves, his lips are back on my neck.
“Don’t worry. I’ll finish what I started.” And with that he’s gone.
I walk through the gallery, straining to hear Matthew’s voice, but he must have gone deeper into the heart of the museum.
My heartbeat finally slowing down, the blood returning properly to my brain, I traipse up the stairs, past the bronze relief of theNymph of Fontainebleau, the gorgeous bare-breasted goddess Diana with her arm slung around the neck of a mighty stag. It’s weirdly sexy. Or maybe after what just happened with Matthew everything feels weirdly sexy.
I know exactly where I’m going as I pass through the halls of Renaissance paintings, so many of them depicting a chubby blond baby Jesus. I finally end up with the most famous woman in the world. In the Salle des États, theMona Lisais protected by bulletproof glass, and as almost everyone mentions when they walk into this usually crowded space, she’s tinier than anyone ever expects, like meeting a movie star in real life. She’s dwarfed even farther by the two-story Veronese mural opposite her, and yetMona Lisaremains the focal point, the celebrity who outshines everyone else at the party.
It’s jarring to see intensely familiar paintings in person. I know they are often a disappointment for people who expect them to be bigger or brighter, more like the touched-up images they see in prints. This one in particular has become a caricature of herself, much like Van Gogh’sTheStarry Nightor Wood’sAmerican Gothic, the kinds of paintings that transcend art and become a part of mass culture. I’ve never been able to get close to her, never been willing to brave the throngs of tourists surrounding her, eager to snap their pictures.
“Hi,” I say stupidly from half a room away. “Buonasera,” I try again, as if she might respond to her native tongue. It’s true thatshe seems to be staring at you no matter where you are in the room. Her eyes follow like a cat’s.
She’s terribly homely, Pascal had said when he brought all of us in here, our entire class. Of course he wanted to say something that could be perceived as profane. I don’t have my own opinion on her looks. She draws me in for another reason.
I get as close to her as I can without touching the bulletproof glass that also serves as a climate-controlled chamber. She’s well protected from every possible threat—human breath, bacteria, bullets. If only hearts and bodies could be so carefully preserved.
Da Vinci was a skilled mathematician, and theMona Lisais a classic example of that. Her features come across as so pleasing to most human eyes because of their proportions and symmetry, none of which are a coincidence. Her face is a perfect Fibonacci sequence of rectangular ratios.
It was my mother who first pointed it out to me on a postcard bearingMona Lisa’s image. She picked up a pen and desecrated the masterpiece with a series of exact rectangles and golden spirals. I move even closer to the painting now, my nose nearly on the glass. I can see my mother’s lines, see her calculations on the side of that tattered postcard. Because of her, art for me will always be math, and math will always be art. The two will be forever entwined like lovers.
“Emma,” a voice booms behind me. I leap back, slightly ashamed. It’s only Matthew though. His sly smile from earlier is gone.
“How d-did you find me?” I stutter slightly.
“Laurent could see you on the security cameras,” he says, his tone flat. I flush slightly. If Laurent could see me in here with theMona Lisa, what else did he see earlier? I don’t have time to ask. Matthew rushes toward me.
“The hospital called.” His voice cracks. “She didn’t makeit.”
14
Claire
I don’t likethe look of Isaac Israels from the very start. Our knocks echo unanswered when his door finally creaks open. He stands before us, taking up the entire small frame. His sandy hair is disheveled, though his beard is neat and tidy. He looks each of us up and down with a set of piercing dark eyes as though he did not expect us.
Jo’s arms overflow with tulips, their petals already wilting like sad question marks.
“Are tulips a silly gift to bring to a man?” she had asked earlier when we bought them, her voice tinged with uncertainty.
They are, but in the vast new Amsterdam train station I had taken pity on the flower girl with the filthy infant in her arms and said we should buy them, despite our carefully managed frugality.
“Jo, it is so wonderful to see you,” Isaac drawls. He leans in to kiss her cheeks three times before acknowledging my existence with a smoldering stare.
“Isaac, this is Claire. She works with me,” Jo introduces us, her tone cautious. “Didn’t you know I was coming? I wrote to you.”
“Yes, yes.” He gives a thin smile. “I fell asleep. I was up all night last night and the night before in a fever of inspiration and then I thought I would lie down for a moment or two and it turned into many hours. Please excuse my appearance.”
