The Fate of the Muse - By Derrolyn Anderson Page 0,49
Walking in, the first thing I saw was a long girl sprawled out on a short couch, fast asleep.
“Welcome to my shack,” Shayla whispered, “Tiffany got in kinda late.” She motioned for me to follow her to the tiny kitchen area, where a mess of cups and bottles filled a small counter with a miniature washing machine whirring away underneath. An assortment of lingerie was hanging to dry on a makeshift clothesline strung over the sink. The kitchen table stood in the corner, piled high with fashion magazines and newspapers. The whole place reeked with the pungent incense of overflowing ashtrays.
I followed Shayla down a narrow hall where she proudly showed me her room, waking up another sleeping model in the process.
“They’re not really morning people,” she laughed. “Hey! We have all day before the show… Let’s go climb the Eiffel tower or something!”
“I have an idea,” I said with a smile, “Let’s go see some art.”
We pulled up at the Louvre, stepping out into the vast paved courtyard on a beautiful blue sky day. I couldn’t help wishing that Ethan was there with me.
“Whoa! Check it out!” Shayla cried when she saw the pyramid, its diamond shaped panes of glass sparkling in the sun.
“That’s where we go inside,” I told her.
We walked around to look at the fountains before entering the glass pyramid and boarding an elevator going down to the galleries. We wandered among the paintings, sculptures and antiquities, stopping to pause at the feet of the Venus de Milo.
“Recognize her?” I asked.
“Nope,” said Shayla, “What happened to her arms?”
I shrugged, and we continued on our tour, weaving through the crowds of tourists gaping in awe at some of the more popular exhibits. We approached a spectacular marble statue of Diana the huntress alongside a stag, weapon in hand.
“She looks like she could kick some butt,” Shayla said respectfully.
“I believe she did,” I said, “She was the goddess of the hunt and the moon.” I remembered that she also had the power to talk to animals, and I studied the statue a little closer. Could she have actually existed? The things I’d seen in the past few months made nothing seem out of the realm of possibility.
“Come see,” I said, motioning to a crowd gathered around a small exhibit off to the side, “Look.” It was the Mona Lisa, set in a special concrete container, protected by two sheets of bullet-proof glass.
Shayla was tall enough to see over most of the people, and announced in a loud voice, “Oh yeah, I’ve totally seen that one before.”
Several people turned to glare at her disapprovingly, and she stuck her tongue out at them.
I smiled at Shayla’s complete lack of self-consciousness as we continued to weave our way through the endless galleries. She had no expectations, and voiced her opinions about anything that struck her fancy, freely and innocently. Sometimes she reminded me of Lorelei in her naivety, and then she would randomly blurt out something so wise and insightful it was almost shocking.
I was also amused at all the attention we were receiving from the opposite sex. Shayla was always an attractive girl, but the new-found poise she radiated made her seemingly irresistible. She held her head up, and walked with a confident stride that had both the Frenchmen and the tourists taking notice.
“That dude over there is checking you out,” she said, tipping her head at a man who stood nearby. Unlike most of the others, he turned away when our eyes met, becoming seemingly engrossed in a painting.
I rolled my eyes at her, “I think it’s you they’re all noticing.”
“Marina!” she called me over to a painting, pointing, “Look– it’s you!”
I craned my neck to look up at the huge canvas, six feet across and painted with a Renaissance version of classical Greek mythology. There, hidden amongst the crowded images of gods, goddesses and dancing nymphs was my own face looking back at me.
Shayla laughed, “Says here some Italian dude painted it… in 1497!”
I stepped closer, counting the dancing girls in the center of the painting. There were nine. The information alongside the painting described the gods Apollo, Venus, and Vulcan. Mercury the messenger stood in the corner, his arm resting lightly on Pegasus. The girls frolicking in the center were identified as muses, and the hair on the back of my neck stood up.
“A long lost relative?” Shayla teased me.
“Very funny,” I said, walking away slowly with a few backwards glances.