Mister Impossible - Maggie Stiefvater (ereader manga TXT) 📗

The larger a piece of art was, the farther away one was generally meant to stand from it, so Declan was not directly in front of the canvas but rather standing four yards off. He was just looking at it. He had been looking at it for ten minutes. He would probably look at it for another ten minutes.

A tear prickled his eye.

“A man in Florence once had a heart attack when he saw the Birth of Venus, if you can believe it,” said a voice beside him. “Palpitations are more common, though. That’s what Stendhal had. Couldn’t walk, he reported, after seeing a particularly moving work of art. And Jung! Jung decided it was too dangerous to visit Pompeii in his old age because the feeling—the feeling of all that art and history round him, it might kill him. Jerusalem … Tourists in Jerusalem sometimes wrap themselves in hotel bedsheets. To become works of art themselves, you know? Part of history. A collective unconscious toga party. One lady in the holy city decided she was giving birth to God’s son. She wasn’t even pregnant, before you ask. Funny what art will do to you. Stendhal Syndrome, they call it, after our lad with the palpitations, though I prefer its more modern name: Declan Lynch.”

“Hello, Jordan,” Declan said.

He stood there for a space with Jordan Hennessy, both of them looking at the painting. El Jaleo was both dark and luminous. In it, a Spanish dancer twisted through a dark room. Behind her, guitarists twisted round their instruments and onlookers clapped her on. It was all black and brown except for the striking white of the dancer and the flushed red in details. In person it was obvious how much rigor had been put into the contorted dancer and how little had been devoted to the musicians and the background, forcing the viewer’s attention onto her, only her. The entire work looked effortless, if one didn’t know better. (Declan knew better.)

“You’re my prospective punter, aren’t you?” Jordan asked. “I should have known. Mr. Pozzi of South Boston.”

Declan said, “How do you find a forger? Be in the market for a forgery.”

“Pozzi’s on the nose, don’t you think?”

Samuel-Jean Pozzi was the subject of one of John Singer Sargent’s most dramatic portraits, a full-length glory featuring his friend Dr. Pozzi, a well-known dandy and OB-GYN, in a blazing red dressing gown. Declan had feared using it as a name when contacting Jordan for a forgery might give the game away, but the potential reward of looking clever was too great a temptation.

“You didn’t guess it, did you?” Declan lifted his red scarf from his collar. “I’m wearing this scarf in his honor.”

“Cadmium red,” Jordan said. “Slightly toxic but little risk if handled well. Before I forget—”

She handed him the keys to his stolen car.

“Did you remember it takes premium?”

“Crumbs, I knew I forgot something. I did top up the wiper fluid.”

“Where is it?”

“A lady never tells.” She grinned at him. Then she stepped as close to the painting as she was permitted, bending at the waist to study the brushstrokes, graceful as one of Degas’s dancers. Her grin tugged wider as she guessed, correctly, that he was looking at her. Straightening, she lifted her arm and twisted her body, pulling herself into a perfect imitation of El Jaleo’s dancer. There was nothing like the sound of a museum, and the Gardner was no exception. The murmur of other patrons in the adjacent courtyard, the sound of footsteps echoing in hallways, the respectful whispers. Jordan Hennessy was art in front of art in a room that was art in a building that was art in a life that was art, and Declan told himself he had only come here to get his car back.

Foolish Declan smirked; Paranoid Declan sneered.

Paranoid Declan lost. Foolish Declan said, in an even tone, “You never finished my portrait. Seems unprofessional to just leave a client hanging like that.”

Jordan nodded. “And now you want a refund.”

“A refund won’t fill that hole on my wall.”

“It’d take multiple sittings. It might be ugly along the way before it’s all said and done.”

“I trust your expertise.”

She tapped her fingertips together absently. She didn’t look at him. “You know at the end of the day, it’s still a portrait, right? Just a copy of your face. No matter how well it turns out, that’s never changing. Just a copy.”

Declan said, “I’m perfecting my understanding of art more every day.”

Jordan frowned then—or at least she stopped smiling, which for her was as good as a frown. “What would you say if I told you I’d found a way to keep dreams awake?”

“I would wait for the punch line.”

“What if I told you this painting would keep Matthew awake if something happened to Ronan? That it had dream energy in it?”

Declan didn’t answer right away, because a trio of women entered the room, along with a docent. The four of them took an agonizing amount of time looking at the painting and taking photos in front of it and then asking the docent questions about the landscaping before they all trooped into the next room.

He glanced to be sure they were out of earshot, then glanced to see that Matthew was still sitting on the bench in the courtyard, looking at the flowers. Finally, he said, “I don’t think I’d say anything. I’d listen.”

And he did, quietly, as she pressed one of her hands into his shoulder to lean close and whisper everything she’d learned about the sweetmetals into his ear. She whispered how she’d realized that they were all art, and she whispered that perhaps this was why she felt so at home in museums. She whispered that this might be why she had been so drawn to John Singer Sargent in particular, and she whispered that she had decided to go to the most famous Sargent in Boston to see if it was a sweetmetal.

“And it is,” Declan said.

They looked at the painting in