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heritage.

It was a dying father who demanded the exception. Hospice care, and then a funeral, gave her time to perform her responsibilities as the estate’s executor. They were perfunctory. Her education had guzzled its value. Smith was expensive, so too, Harvard’s graduate school. Her mother’s belief in education and her father’s belief in their only child was why she’d agreed to her life-after-his-death duties.

This summer was to be a once-in-a-life-time experience. There’d been enough reading, listening, watching the Travel Channel. She’d come to Paris in search of the excitement others swore was here. That, and the desire to be moved to that place stored deep in her desires.

There was no way she could see all—let alone appreciate—the Louver, in the time she’d allotted when first she’d drafted her itinerary, the morning before making her reservations. On a professor’s salary, compromise was a way of life. She could spend her entire vacation examining the treasures of the place and never see another cobblestone. That was not an option. When she walked past the guard, through the ground floor turnstile, she told herself, three hours would have to do. She headed for the room with Greek Antiquities and Venus Di Milo. There was something about her proximity to a sculpture created in the 2nd century B.C. that made her feel enriched while utterly insignificant. Doing something that 2200 years later would merit its placement in The Louver was impossible. Being here wasn't what she’d hoped. Standing at its side, she felt like just one of seven billion earthly inhabitants whose contribution to humanity was so insignificant as to be meaningless. Then, she was relieved; her schedule allowed only a brief visit to this place that displayed treasures representative of the human spirit that only worked to crush hers.

Swept along by a herd of tourists, the odors of contradiction filled her senses. Cologne wafted on the swell of renaissance expectation, too there was the unwashed mixing with a hint of street vendor’s fare having hitched a ride past museum guards on shirttails and shoulder bags of what appeared delegates from the United Nations, so varied were skin colors, hair textures, costumes, and languages. Her head swiveled, trying to glimpse the masterpieces hanging on every wall. Maze-like room after room opened to her group.

In the sightlines that momentarily formed, then dissolved, allowing access to the edges of her herd, the walls, she noticed artists stationed along the several walls she passed. Each with canvas, easel, oils and brushes. Each positioned adjacent some masterpiece—most she didn’t recognize—each offering their interpretation of the work hanging adjacent them. Why, she wondered, would they copy these pieces instead of doing an original work? How was their forgery unlike a writer sitting at a keyboard typing the words of Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Tom Sawyer or Franz Kafka’s The Metamorphosis?

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The sound of these words—so French, so sensual—transfixed her; confident, but polite, so . . . moving. The forger suddenly realized that paint splotches cluttered her canvas-like hand. The professor’s attention still fixed on the woman’s mouth, neither saw nor felt the wet oil on her flesh. Her response, a smile, accompanying a slight nod.

“I’m so sorry, you are not French. Of course not! Are you Canadian? No, I think American. Oui?”

Still unable to form words, this nod was more obvious, more assertive.

“Ah oui. So sorry. I just asked if I caused you a fright. Asked that you forgive me this. This is only what I said.”

“Umm,” said the professor. “. "Oh oui, surpris. Un peu je suppose, mais tu n'as rien à t'excuser T ."Vous n’avez fait aucun mal.” T .

“Vous êtes Canadien! Canadien Franҫsis, oui?” T

“No, no, no. I'm an American. I teach French at Southern Methodist University in Texas. Dallas, Texas. I’m so sorry, I was just practic—”

The forger’s paint-spotted palm pushed toward the professor’s mouth. “No apology.” She giggled. “If we speak English, is better for me. For me to make better my English. If you don’t . . . um, make any matter. It’s okay?”

“Non, c’est bon. Si cela peut aider, je serai heureux” T  — the professor stopped speaking; a smile filled her face — “I’m sorry. A professor’s habit I’m afraid. Of course we can speak English.”

“Your accent is, um” — the artist rolled her head back, looked to the ceiling — “right at home. Have your studies been long?”

“I majored in romance languages in college, did graduate work in French at university, and I’ve been teaching for seventeen years.”

“You are to be better speaking French than me" — her lips forced a frown — "and I talk with it for all my twenty-eight years.” The forger’s fake frown disappeared. A smile in its place caused the professor a smile of her own. “Students to your class should learn very good to be French speaker, even if only half as good as you.”

“You are too kind,” said the professor.

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“For you to say this is to make me happy. But I have put some paint to your arm. We should wipe this away so skin so soft as this does not damage.” The artist’s eyes glanced at the paint smeared on the professor’s elbow. “Une belle femme T  . . . Oh, see? Now the turn is mine to talk first, without thinking, in French. We both make this habit. I might think we share other things. Such a lovely woman” — a seductive grin eased over the artist’s mouth — “should not to have the purple elbow.

“I’m about to . . . um how do you say” — her pleasant face turned toward the Mona Lisa — “ah oui, use the break. This is correct, eh?” She glanced at her empty station, then back again to widened eyes. “You would like accompangner T  me for refreshment?” Her question companion to a sensuous massage removing purple oil from the professor’s arm.

“Uh, oh I don’t think—”

“We don’t to leave The Louver!” She interrupted, a reassuring look replacing her smile. “Just this way” — her fingers released from the professor’s elbow, to point in the direction from which the herd had come — “there is le café. Do you like a wine? Or perhaps a water is fine? This is for . . . um, is my treat. The least I can do for causing such a fright for you.”

“Well, I guess it would be—”

“Wonderful. Please, this way.” The artist in the blue beret directed traffic, extending her left hand into the crowd, parting the tourists in a way that might have impressed Moses. Her right hand landed on the professor’s back, safely above her waist, but with a sensual effect the professor thought would only have accompanied a touching resting several inches lower.

As they moved through the crowd, a hundred questions jumped, nearly simultaneously, into her consciousness. Her hands shook, her stomach moved into her throat; she wanted to give voice to them all, but feared she would look silly. What did she know about French artists? What could she ask that wouldn’t sound naïve, or simple, or worse, an ugly American? She would later write in her journal she’d not a clue why the artist’s impression of her had become so immediate, so important. But there in The Louver, she’d the thought that Paris might have the potential to become exciting.

They stood at a small round table orphaned by chair thieves, now abandoned in a nearby corner. “You could take this one” — the artist pushed an empty chair toward the professor — “and I can arrange a second from there.” She pointed and stepped around a café patron, then skipped to an empty stool. A smile grew full on her face as she plundered the bounty.

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They waited only seconds for a waiter to approach. “Que puis-je vous apporter masdames?” T 

“Je vais prendre de l’eau s’il vous plait,” T said the professor.

“Petillant ou T  tranquille?”

“Petillant, Perrier si vous l’avez.” T .

“Et vous” T . — the waiter turned to the artist — “Juliette? Le régulier?” T .

“Oui.”

“Juliette, I love that . . . your name, I mean. I’m um . . . my name is Isabella, but friends just call me Issy.”

“Then for me, you will be called just Issy.” Juliette’s smile filled with expectation.

“If you like, sure.”

Expectation turned relaxed.

“So you come here often. It must be a remarkable life. To spend so much of it surrounded by all the beauty housed here, in The Louver, I mean. But” — Issy closed, then opened her eyes — “that’s not to say there isn’t beauty everywhere one looks in Paris. I didn’t mean—“

“Yes, but is okay. I understand. I feel bad when times are here that I take this” — she waived her arm in a circle — “as . . . how do you call it? Prendre pour acquis?” T .

“Take for granted, I think.”

“Qui, for granted. It is always bad to be this. I try to stop but . . . well I guess we all have trespasses. No?”

“Qui.” The women smiled at one another, then at the waiter as he stepped to the table.

“Pour toi.” T  The waiter slid the bottled water and a glass of ice over the small table to Issy. “Et vous, Juliette.” T  Her regular was a small glass of red wine.

The professor cleared her throat and recounted stories—some accompanied by a nervous laugh—about her students, the flight— nervous morphed to excitment—to Paris, and her joy at being there. The artist sipped her wine and inquired about America, the duration of her stay, and whether she had plans for other travels. Their talk all very polite, very small. Somehow just the sound of Juliette’s voice was calming, making Issy question less the propriety of sharing a drink, while allowing her to wonder about the possibilities.

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“So, may I ask you a personal question?” asked the professor.

“Oui.”

“Why copy someone else’s work instead of doing your own?” Her forwardness shocked her, but a smile kept it hidden from the artist.

“It is—how to say—um . . . pour s’entrainer?” T 

“Practice? So, you do it for practice?”

“Qui, um . . . yes. I do this to make more good my paintings. My skills with the brush.”

Issy’s eyes fixed on Juliette’s lips, her mouth, to the point of almost missing what she said.

“So, do you no original works?” Issy sipped from her glass, its sweat moistening the tips of her fingers.

“Oh oui. But, one can’t measure her . . . um, to réalisé potentielle T  with doing just originals. Only by to arrive as master, you must copier T a masterpiece.”

“So you are a craftsman? I’ve always thought that would offend an artist.” Issy’s smile quick, trying to encourage Juliette to challenge her thesis.

“If artist . . . um, how to say ne voit pas in English? Oh, I remember” — she extended her left hand above the table, palm directed at Issy, stopping a translation — “she does not to see the craftsmanship c'est une snob pas une artiste. T 

“How is the brush stroke for the breast, different, or the same as for the eye? How will light refléter d'un l’ombre T  . . . um, a shade of the red competing to the second one? Is it natural for shadow to fall to here” — her hand lifted to just below her breast — “or all the way” — then lower still to below the table — “to there? This are questions of l’artisan—of craftsman. I think is right?”

“Yes, l’artisan translates to craftsman,” said the professor.

“Without doing this answer, I être—to be—a artist piteux T .” The tip of her index finger circled the rim of the wineglass while she looked at its contents. After several seconds, she snapped her finger. “I have one thought, magnifique T . I should paint you. It would légitimise . . . um for English, le-git-i-mize my compétence T for your eyes. No? And for me, I will to paint the most beautiful woman today in the Louver.”