Starry Nights by Daisy Whitney

Author:Daisy Whitney
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Published: 2012-12-31T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter 19

Irises in Hand

“Touch my painting.”

I lift an eyebrow. “I thought you’d never ask.”

Clio swats my arm.

“Sorry. But you kind of walked into that one.”

“I know,” she says and rolls her eyes.

“But I want you to touch the flowers first. So you know you can go through the painting without freaking out.”

“Whoever said I was going to freak out?”

She gives me a sideways look. “Right. Not me. But just in case, I want you to get those irises.”

“So I should just reach in there with my hands?”

“This from the guy who kissed a painting the other night.”

I blush. She knows.

“I’m not going to hurt the art though?” I ask, thinking of the other Renoirs. I don’t want to add to the list.

“You’re a muse. You can’t hurt a painting.” Her voice softens and she dips her fingers into mine. “Your hands are no ordinary hands. Your eyes are not like the eyes of others. You see things other people can’t see. You can touch things other people can’t touch.”

She uncurls my fingers one by one, kissing the tip of each softly. I want to do so much more with her hands. But I let myself exist in this one achingly magnificent moment, with her velvet-soft lips against my skin.

“Now,” she instructs. “Reach inside.”

I take a breath, fighting back all the instincts that tell me I could damage the art. But I do it anyway, like I’m petting a nervous animal, or maybe I’m the nervous animal. The canvas feels crackly, the petals on the irises chipped. “More. You can’t hurt it, Julien.”

I press harder against the canvas, but it’s still flat and dry, and I feel stupid. I’m standing here trying to grab the guts of a painting, like a twisted medicine man stretching his hand into a chest to retrieve a beating heart. I pull my hands back, stuffing them into my pockets.

“I feel like an idiot. I can’t do this.”

“It’s okay,” she whispers in my ear, her voice pure poetry. “Close your eyes and just feel.”

There’s something about Clio that makes me believe I can be better than I ever have before. So I do as I’m told, letting her words be my guide. I close my eyes, take my hands out of my pockets, and reach forward. Everything is dark now, and I am blind by choice, but I can touch. This time the canvas bends back. Like a dance partner letting me dip her, the surface stretches and invites my hands in. Against the blurry black of my closed lids, I see a momentary flash of silver, and in my palm I can feel the softest flutter of a petal, smooth and real. I grasp, tenderly but firmly, a bouquet of irises. I open my eyes.

“I told you so,” she teases.

“Holy blue irises in my hands.”

“Now put them back.”

I do the reverse, and the flowers are lapped back into the frame.

“And now, perhaps you’d like to come on inside and see ‘my house,’ “ she says and sketches air quotes.

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