13 Little Blue Envelopes(36)
For once, she fit in completely.
There were three named wings to choose from—Denon,
Sully, and Richelieu. She checked her pack into the baggage claim, chose Sully at random, and headed into its depths, immediately finding herself in a re-creation of a stone vault, which led around to the section on ancient Egypt. She 164
wandered through room after room of mummies, tomb decorations, hieroglyphics.
She had always liked Egyptian things, especially as a kid, mostly because she’d seen them at the Metropolitan Museum with Aunt Peg and they played “If you could pick what things you wanted to take with you when you died, what
would you take?”
Ginny’s list always started off with an inflatable raft. She didn’t even own an inflatable raft, but she could imagine it perfectly—it was blue with a yellow stripe and handles. She was convinced that she’d need it in whatever heaven she was imagining.
The Egyptians had also taken some seriously weird crap
with them to Deadland. Tables shaped like dogs. Little blue thumb-sized dolls that were supposed to be servants. Big masks of their own heads.
She turned the corner and walked down the hall toward the Roman sculpture.
And she was right back where she started, in the stone
vault. It seemed impossible, but it had happened. She tried again, following the signs and the maps. This time, she ended up in the sarcophagus room. On a third try, it looked like she had made it into Roman statues, and then bam, she was right back in with the canopic jars and tomb decorations.
It was like she was walking through some kind of fun house.
She finally had to follow a tour to get out of the land of the dead. She followed them through the Roman statues. Little French children sat below the nudes, gazing up. Not one of them was pointing and laughing. She kept walking through the endless succession of connected chambers until she caught sight 165
of a sign that featured a little picture of the Mona Lisa and an arrow. She followed this through at least a dozen more galleries.
One thing Aunt Peg had instilled in her was a comfort
around paintings. Ginny never claimed to know much (if anything) about painting. She didn’t know a lot about art history, or techniques, or why everyone suddenly fainted in ecstasy if some artist suddenly decided to use only blue. . . . Aunt Peg had explained that while these things were important to some people, the main thing to remember was—they’re just pictures.
There was no right or wrong way of looking at them, and there was no reason to feel intimidated by them.
As she wandered through the galleries, she felt herself
relaxing. There was something about the orderliness of it all—
something familiar in this strange place. Just being there made her feel that although she was so far from home, she wasn’t alone. It seemed like everyone else was trying to capture something about the place. Art students perched everywhere with their massive drawing pads, gazing intently at a work of art or a decoration on the ceiling, trying to duplicate what they were seeing. So many people were taking pictures of the pictures— or weirder still, videotaping them.
Aunt Peg would love that, she thought.
She was so busy watching them that she didn’t even realize that she had walked right past the Mona Lisa. It had been buried somewhere in one of the crowds. In any case, it seemed as good a time as any to stop. She sat down on a bench in the middle of an Italian gallery with deep red walls and pulled out the next letter.
166
#8
Dear Gin,
So there I was, Gin, on my way from the passions
of Rome to the cool romance of Paris.
I thought I was broke before, but I’d always had
a little money. But I’d blown most of what I had
in Rome.
There was a café I passed almost every day. An
amazing smell of fresh bread always came from it,
but the place was just falling to pieces—the paint
was chipping, the tables were plain and ugly. It
was cheap, though. So I went in and had one of
the best meals of my life. No one was in there, so
the owner sat down and talked to me. He told me
that he was closing down the café for a month
because everyone in France goes on vacation for a
month in the summer. (Another thing that makes
France cool.)
I had an idea.
In exchange for a little money for food and
letting me sleep in the café, I would redecorate
for him. The whole place, top to bottom. For the cost
of a couple croque monsieurs, a few hundred cups
of coffee, and a little paint, he would have his
entire café decorated with original work by a
woman who would stay there twenty-four hours a
day, seven days a week. It was too good an offer to
pass up. So he accepted it.
For the rest of the month, I lived in the café. I
managed to get some blankets and pillows and I
made myself a little sleeping nest behind the bar.
I went to the market for food and cooked my meals
in the little kitchen. It didn’t really matter if it
was day or night—I painted all the time, whenever
I felt like it. I slept with the paint fumes. I
dreamed about the designs. I permanently stained
the skin under my left thumbnail blue. I made