Page 45 of One Year Ago in Spain
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Museo Sorolla wasonly a twenty-minute stroll away. At first, Claire had balked at going inside, worrying about crowds walking straight through Matías, but it turned out that tourists were all museumed out by the time early evening came around because they’d spent their energy at the bigger names, like the Prado and Reina Sofía.
“Joaquín Sorolla is one of my favorite painters, because hewas a master at playing with light in landscapes,” Matías said as they approached the museum. “Oh, I didn’t even think to ask before I brought you here—do you like art?”
“I do since I met you,” Claire said.
He laughed. “One fainting outside a hotel and a walk around the park, and I’ve already made such a strong impression!”
Claire blushed. She had spoken the truth, but it was for the other Matías. It’s just that his soul was so exactly like him, that she’d momentarily forgotten this Matías wasn’t quite the same.
She paid for their tickets while he was distracted by a display about Joaquín Sorolla. But it turned out that she hadn’t needed to buy two tickets, because the docent at the door took only one of them from her. He definitely did not see Matías, and thus Claire finally had confirmation that she was the only one who could.
Luckily, Matías was too enraptured by art in the entryway to notice that the docent had taken only one ticket.
“This used to be Sorolla’s home,” Matías said as they stepped into a room with vivid red-orange walls. Framed paintings hung in every open space—small ones of gardens and fountains, medium-sized ones of arched building facades and reflecting pools, and large portraits of girls in white dresses at the seaside, the salty wind blowing at their hats and parasols. There was an intricate metal-and-glass chandelier hanging from the beamed ceiling, and sculptures and vases and other curios lined every shelf.
No wonder this was one of Matías’s favorite artists. Claire could feel the hum of life here even though the painter was long gone.
“See how you can feel the sun in every one of his pieces?”Matías asked. His eyes gleamed and he breathed in deeply—signatures Claire recognized from whenever he was in awe of another artist. Her heart ached, missing Matías, even though he was also right here beside her.
“Tell me more about Sorolla and his paintings,” Claire said, because all she wanted right now was to listen to Matías talk forever.
“Be careful what you wish for,” he said. “I might bore you if you give me free rein.”
“Never,” she said.
Matías laughed. “Okay, you asked for it. Look at this one.” He pointed at a portrait of a woman clad in all black, with an enormous black hat on her head. “The room behind the subject is dim; the curtains are drab and muted, and they disappear completely into a blur of murky olive color on the left. And yet, look at how Sorolla highlights the woman’s face with light. You can almost feel the sun coming through a small, narrow window just to shine on her, and because of that, you can feel her solemnity more potently than if she were cast in shadow, too.”
As he was waxing rhapsodic about Sorolla’s use of light in the portrait, soft golden evening sun filtered through a small window in the room and landed onMatías’sface. He went transparent, though definitely less so than before, so the sunlight was able to bring out the gold in his eyes and make the contrast of his black hair even more stark against his skin. A shadow of stubble lined his jaw, and Claire closed her eyes for a moment, remembering the roughness against her own cheek, how it felt to press her mouth against his. How sometimes, in the beginning of their relationship, they would kiss so ferociously and for so long that hours later, she would come away with sandpaperburns on her mouth, her lips red and swollen even the next day. At the office, George would ask her if she’d had an allergic reaction to something; Yolanda would just snicker knowingly, being married to a fiery member of the art world herself.
In recent months, Claire had stopped letting Matías kiss her like that. She’d tired of going to work looking like a teenager after a backseat make-out session. She would be up for partner soon, and she had to look the part.
Now, though, as Claire looked at him with the sun caressing his face, she wondered:Why?
Why should the joy of her personal life mean she couldn’t excel in her professional life, too? Why had she started pushing Matías away, nitpicking at the idiosyncrasies that made him him?
Claire wanted to kiss him. She wanted to cross the small patch of museum floor between them, stand on her tiptoes, and taste the sun on his skin. She wanted to kiss his neck, scrape her mouth against the stubble, feel his arms wrap around her and his hands slip under the edge of her shirt.
But she couldn’t touch him. Professor Hong had made that clear.
So Claire stood rooted to her spot.
Matías was still looking at the painting. Then he turned and smiled at her. “What do you think?”
I think you’re extraordinary,she thought.And I don’t know why I didn’t see how lucky I was before.
—
They stayed untilthe museum was about to close. Claire never liked to be the kind of person who stayed in museums or restaurants until the very last minute. She imagined it wasprobably uncomfortable for the docents or waiters to have to go to each guest and politely tell them it was time to leave. So she always made sure she left early enough to save them from having to do that with her.
“What should we do next?” Claire asked as she and Matías stepped back out into the city. “It’s only eight o’clock. The night is still young.”
“Actually, I should go home,” Matías said. “I had a really good time with you, but I have so much I need to do before I head to New York.”
“That’s two whole weeks away, though,” Claire said. She didn’t know when or how she’d see Matías again, and she didn’t want to let tonight go. It was also still difficult to understand the fact that for him, going to New York was in the future, while for her, that was already well in the past.
And how much time did she really have? What if Claire wasn’t able to make this Matías fall in love with her before two weeks was up, when his memories of Madrid were supposed to end and shift to New York?
