PART I
THE GIRL AND THE GUY WHO STILL DOESN'T KNOW IF HE'S THE HERO OF THIS STORY.
CHAPTER 1
The guide pointed to a Monet painting. Overlapping tones of lilac, white, and green. Mixes with no logical criteria that created perfect gardens, leaves made of oil paint, almost as lifelike as those falling on the sidewalks in this early autumn. A group of Japanese tourists fired flashes at the canvas before following the guide to another part of the museum.
Nearby, a girl just watched. She didn't care about guided tours and had no patience left to hear about art history. She lay on the bench, her Converse sneakers resting on the wooden arm, making her feet slightly higher than her legs, at an angle of 15 degrees. Her head rested on her crossed arms, her eyes fixed on the museum's dome.
She loved the architecture, the mathematical calculations involved in its construction. The dome, for example, smoked glass plates predisposed side by side covered the entire polygonal space creating a perfect dome. Whoever did that deserved to have their name displayed on a plaque like all the other impressionist artists in the museum. Oh, they deserved it.
She checked her watch. It was still an hour before check-in at the hotel. Plan B to pass the time: analyze the realistic sculpture wing. Support and proportionality calculations; an art that attracted her much more than abstracts whose mathematical challenge index was close to zero. She walked against a new group of tourists, towards a sequence of bronze statues representing gods of Olympus.
And it was at that moment that she saw him, right in the center of the hall, analyzing the cold and expressionless eyes of a Pallas Athena with genuine interest.
First, it was his clothes that caught her attention, too cool. The leader of a motorcycle gang should dress like that (or then a rebellious teenager who collected Sex Pistols vinyl in his parents' basement), not guys who surely passed twenty-five years old. The slim pants wouldn't hinder any girl from imagining him without them, and maybe that was his intention when he put them on that morning. His military boots made a great pair with the worn leather jacket. Everything about him complemented each other well. Even the Ray-Ban and that cap seemed indispensable items, a requirement. It didn't matter if no one wore sunglasses inside museums.
Stella wouldn't need rulers or compasses to know if the golden proportions of his face were acceptable. The bone structure had the same mathematical perfection found in magazine models. A defined jawline, square chin, and prominent cheekbones. It was quite likely that the man starred in perfume advertisements riding purebreds on the beaches of Saint-Tropez, even if he dressed like a cool kid. After all, he was gorgeous. Among so many works of art, that guy definitely was the most exquisite of all.
He suddenly turned around. And Stella looked away, pretending genuine interest in whatever was in front of her.
It was the intimate parts of an Apollo. Tiny ones.
She felt her cheeks burn and wished she could disappear from there. When she thought it was safe to look back, the boy was very close. Close enough for her to notice the hair escaping from the side of the cap, dark brown strands that fell to his shoulders. She also felt the musky perfume. Heavens, unlike anything she had ever smelled before. The raw material must be imported directly from Paradise. She would bury her face in his neck and intoxicate herself with that scent, but the guy would surely think she was crazy and call security. She paid attention to the metallic buzz escaping from his headphones, trying to decipher the music: heavy rock.
She was sure he smiled. Possibly a smile directed at her. Lips curving slightly more to the left. So sexy.And if she had responded, maybe he would start a conversation. Maybe he would even invite her for a coffee in one of those picturesque streets of Prague, just below the museum. Then the minutes until check-in would become less empty, and she would have a story to tell when she returned to Brazil.
But Stella didn't respond.
And she just watched as he turned around and walked towards the exit.
Author's note: This story was originally written in my native language, Portuguese, so I apologize for any eventual translation errors.
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