The waiter stopped swabbing my eyebrow to glance over my shoulder, and his eyes widened in alarm. Following his gaze, I saw that my table had been demolished by a huge piece of carved masonry that had fallen from the building’s facade. My purse was lying to one side, but my copy of House of Mirth stuck out from where it was pinned under the enormous stone, exactly where I had been sitting.
If I hadn’t moved, I would be dead, I thought, and my heart raced so fast that my chest hurt. I turned back to the table where the brother and sister had been sitting. Except for a bottle of Perrier and two full glasses sitting in the middle of a handful of change, it was empty. My saviors were gone.
Chapter Five
I WAS SO SHAKEN THAT I COULDN’T LEAVE FOR A while. Finally, after allowing the café staff to use half their first-aid kit on me, I insisted that I could make it home on my own and wobbled back, my legs feeling like rubber bands. Mamie was coming out the front door as I arrived.
“Oh, my dear Katya!” she shrieked after I explained what had happened, and dropping her beloved Hermès purse to the ground, she threw her arms around me. Then, scooping up our things and leading me back into the house, she tucked me into bed and insisted on treating me like I was a quadriplegic instead of her slightly scraped-up granddaughter.
“Now, Katya, are you sure you’re comfortable? I can bring you more pillows if you want.”
“Mamie, I’m fine, really.”
“Does your knee still hurt? I can put something else on it. Maybe it should be elevated.”
“Mamie, they treated it with a million things from their first-aid box at the café. It’s just a scrape, really.”
“Oh, my darling child. To think what could have happened.” She pressed my head to her chest and petted my hair until something in me broke and I started crying.
Mamie cooed and held me while I bawled. “I’m just crying because I’m shaky,” I protested through my tears, but the truth was that she was treating me just like my mom would have.
When Georgia got home, I heard Mamie telling her about my “near-death experience.” My door opened a minute later, and my sister raced in looking as white as a ghost. She sat silently on the edge of my bed, staring at me with wide eyes.
“It’s okay, Georgia. I’m just a little scraped up.”
“Oh my God, Katie-Bean, if anything had happened to you . . . You are all I have left. Remember that.”
“I’m fine. And nothing’s going to happen to me. I’ll keep far away from disintegrating buildings from now on. Promise.”
She forced a smile and reached out her hand to touch my own, but the haunted look stayed.
The next day Mamie refused to let me leave the house, insisting that I relax and “recover from my injuries.” I obeyed, to humor her, and spent half the evening reading in the bathtub. It wasn’t until I had lost myself in the warm water and a book that my nerves got the best of me, and I sat there trembling like a leaf.
I hadn’t realized how scared the near miss with the crumbling building had left me until it took topping the tub up several times with scalding hot water to calm me down. Ultimately, I fell asleep with little plumes of steam rising up from the water around me.
When I passed the café the next day, it was closed, and the sidewalk outside the building was roped off with yellow plastic police tape. Workers in electric blue overalls were erecting scaffolding for builders to come stabilize the facade. I would have to find another location for my al fresco reading. I felt a pang of disappointment as I realized that this was the only place that I had a chance of seeing my recent obsession. Who knew how long it would be before I ran into Vincent again?
My mother began taking me to museums when I was a tiny child. When we went to Paris, she and Mamie and I would set off in the morning for “a little taste of beauty,” as my mother called it. Georgia, who was bored by the time we reached the first painting, usually opted to stay behind with my father and grandfather, who sat in cafés and chatted with friends, business associates, and whoever else happened to wander by. But together, Mamie, Mom, and I combed the museums and galleries of Paris.
So it was no great shock when Georgia gave me a vague excuse of “previous plans” when I asked her to come museum trolling with me a few days later. “Georgia, you’ve been complaining that I never do anything with you. This is a valid invite!”
“Yeah, about as valid as me inviting you to a monster truck rally. Ask again if you plan on doing something actually interesting.” To show her goodwill, she gave my arm a friendly squeeze before shutting her bedroom door in my face. Touché.
I set off alone to Le Marais, a neighborhood across town from my grandparents’ home. Weaving my way through its tiny medieval streets, I finally arrived at my destination: the palacelike building housing the Picasso Museum.
Besides the alternate universe offered by a book, the quiet space of a museum was my favorite place to go. My mom said I was an escapist at heart . . . that I preferred imaginary worlds to the real one. It’s true that I’ve always been able to yank myself out of this world and plunge myself into another. And I felt ready for a calming session of art-hypnosis.
As I walked through the gigantic doors of the Musée Picasso into its sterile white rooms, I felt my heart rate slow. I let the warmth and peace of the place cover me like a soft blanket. And as was my habit, I walked until I found the first painting that really grabbed my attention, and sat down on a bench to face it.
I let the colors absorb into my skin. The composition’s convoluted, twisted shapes reminded me of how I felt inside, and my breathing slowed as I began zoning out. The other paintings in the room, the guard standing near the door, the fresh-paint smell in the air around me, even the passing tourists, faded into a gray background surrounding this one square of color and light.
I don’t know how long I sat there before my mind slowly emerged from its self-imposed trance, and I heard low voices coming from behind me.
“Come over here. Just look at the colors.”
Long pause. “What colors?”
“Exactly. It’s just as I told you. He goes from the bright, bold palette of something like Les Demoiselles d’Avignon to this gray and brown monotone jigsaw puzzle in a mere four years. What a show-off! Pablo always had to be the best at everything he put his hand to, and as I was saying to Gaspard the other day, what really ticks me off is . . .”
I turned, curious to see the origin of this fountain of knowledge, and froze. Standing just fifteen feet away from me was Vincent’s curly-haired friend.
Now that I saw him straight on, I was struck by how attractive he was. There was something rugged about him—unkempt, scruffy hair, bristly razor stubble, and large rough hands that gesticulated passionately toward the painting. By the condition of his clothes, which were smudged with paint, I guessed he might be an artist.
That came to me in a split second. Because after that, all I could see was the person standing with him. The raven-haired boy. The boy who had taken up permanent residence in the dark corners of my mind since the first moment I saw him. Vincent.
Why do you have to fall for the most improbable, inaccessible boy in Paris? He was too beautiful—and too aloof—to ever really notice me. I tore my gaze away, leaned forward, and rested my forehead in my hands. It didn’t do any good. Vincent’s image was burned indelibly into my mind.
I realized that whatever it was about him that made him seem a bit cold, almost dangerous, actually heightened my interest instead of scaring me off. What was wrong with me? I had never gone for bad boys before—that was Georgia’s specialty! My stomach tightened as I wondered if I had the courage to go up and talk to him.