Alexandra took hold of my arm and urged me forward though I didn’t see the need to rush. We had plenty of time, and I said so.

“I don’t want you blaming me if you don’t get your research done—whatever it is,” she said with a note of sarcasm, which I chose to ignore.

The next gallery had walls painted deep crimson and was the first to be packed with tourists.

“More Caravaggio. He always draws a crowd,” Alexandra said.

We sidled through for a closer look at his portrait of Bacchus, everything about the picture sensuous, the boy in the painting both masculine and feminine.

“Ahead of his time,” I said, adding the salient details of Caravaggio’s tortured life—his bisexuality, the brawl that disfigured his face, the murder charge that forced him to flee Naples, the fact that when he died at thirty-eight, there was a question as to whether it was a fever that killed him or if he’d been murdered.

“Wow!” Alex said, “My art history professors always stuck to the facts. Your class sounds a lot more fun.”

I suggested she take it when we got home, which had me worrying I might not be teaching at all by then. I was glad to be distracted by Caravaggio’s painting of Medusa, decapitated, mouth open in a startled scream, eyes wide with horror, blood streaming from the neck, a thoroughly terrifying painting.

“It’s a self-portrait, you know.”

“Is it?” Alexandra looked surprised. “Why would he paint himself as Medusa—and with his head chopped off?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “Maybe it was his meditation on mortality.” I moved in for a better look, but light reflected off the plexiglass box. “I hate these damn boxes,” I said, thinking of Vincent building glass ones to protect the Louvre’s most valuable artworks.

“It gives me chills,” Alexandra said. “Those snakes look so real, as if they’re actually writhing.”

20

He stares at the metallic sheen of snakeskin, the decapitated head, red blood spewing from the severed neck, the glint of light in Medusa’s dying eyes, everything about the painting so intense and real, his hand itching to touch it, and he might have if it were not inside a box—but he has been distracted for too long.

Where are they?

He scans the gallery, finally spots them at the other end, heading toward the exit, moves quickly though as if without purpose, keeping a few people in between for safety, follows them into the bookshop where they linger, checking out pads and pencils, picture puzzles and games, everything decorated with art from the museum. The American is considering a smartphone cover with a picture of that painting—the naked woman on the shell—which he shows to the blond, who gives him a look, eyebrow arched, then laughs.

Why is it that seeing them having a good time gets under his skin, an idea taking shape in his mind like a photograph being developed, fuzzy, as yet without details, though he is filling it in, as graphic and bloody as the Medusa reproduction he has just spied. He considers buying it, but too late; the American and the blond are already heading out of the shop.