The Cloisters(18)

“I think it’s time to bring Ann in.”

“It’s too soon, Patrick,” responded Rachel.

“She’s here to be an asset.”

Patrick had lowered his voice, which required me to lean my whole body against the door, my ear to the seam. When Rachel spoke again, I could sense the frustration in her voice through the thick, damp wood:

“We don’t know that we can trust her yet. Although she’s already curious. You know she found the wax? Did she ask you about it?”

“I took care of it.”

Then silence, save for the sound of my pulse beating through my ears.

“Come on,” said Patrick, his voice in a soft tone I hadn’t heard before. “Let’s not fight about this. You wanted her.”

“I think she can help,” Rachel conceded, and I sensed that this conversation was not only about the exhibition but something more, something I couldn’t yet see.

“Sometimes we have to take risks,” Patrick insisted.

Then a beat.

“Don’t you trust me,” he said.

Rachel must have nodded because he added:

“That’s my girl. You know I don’t think she ended up here by chance, right?”

The handle of the door began to turn, and I hurried to the end of the library, then slipped into the stacks before it had a chance to open. I made my way through the staff hallway, past the kitchen. My head down in the poorly lit hallway, I nearly made it to the lobby before I ran, literally, headlong, into Leo.

“You okay?” he asked, holding my shoulders and looking me up and down.

“Yes. Sorry. I’m—” I was too flustered, too out of breath from hurrying to focus on the words I wanted to say.

“Slow down, Ann. It’s a museum. No one’s saving lives here.”

“Right. I know.” I exhaled. “I was just trying to make the shuttle.”

“It just left,” he said, taking a step back.

“Shit.”

“Why don’t we walk?” He motioned for me to go ahead of him. The way his arm moved reminded me of the way he had stretched it above Rachel’s head—the strength of it, the possessiveness. I wanted to feel it above me, wrapped around my waist, my shoulders, hard and tight.

We traded the darkness of the museum for the canopy of the park, where the winding paths crossed the grassy expanses with dizzying rhythm. Leo walked next to me, occasionally humming a few bars of a song I didn’t recognize.

After we passed a group of children being led hand in hand like a tiny toddler daisy chain, he turned to me and said, without preamble, “Why are you here?”

“What kind of question is that?” It was sharp, his question. And it reminded me, as if I didn’t already know, that I was new and inexperienced, even unwanted.

There was some part of me that knew it would be best to ignore the things I had seen and heard that day, to build a barrier between myself and Leo and Rachel and Patrick. Between the world of the museum and the things I needed it to accomplish—an acceptance to grad school, a life outside Walla Walla. Contained in Leo’s question was an implication that had begun to worry me, too: Why are you meddling in our world?

I must have been quiet for a moment too long because he added, more gently, “I mean, why not Los Angeles or Chicago or Seattle? Why here?”

I gestured around us, relieved. “I hear it’s the greatest city in the world.”

Leo laughed. “Give it time.”

The last, trailing child trotted by us, dragging their free hand through the knee-high grass.

“It’s the art, I guess,” I said, looking up at his profile. Although I kept the other reasons to myself: it was thousands of miles from the Lutheran church where my father was buried, it was a city that never faulted you for your ambition, even if others might. We walked side by side, Leo’s hands deep in his pockets, a shoulder bag across his chest. “It’s the only place I can do the work I want to do,” I settled on.

“What are you willing to give up for the work?”

There was an edge to the question, and I pushed my hands into my own pockets and shrugged, not ready to let him know more when I still knew so little about him.

Leo bumped his shoulder against mine. “Not everyone is sensitive around here,” he said. “You shouldn’t take questions so personally. And if you do, and don’t want to answer them, just tell people to fuck off. I’m just trying to figure out if you’ll like it here. Most people here don’t care if you do, by the way. So long as you do the job. But I like it. I like the gardening, at least. The work, like you said. Even if I hate the visitors. Sometimes, on the quiet days, I can pretend it’s the way it was meant to be. Pre–tourist-industrial complex. Pre–experience economy.”

“To me, The Cloisters always feels a little that way. A world apart.”

We had reached the subway station, its entrance built into a rock outcropping, ivy cascading down its flanks. It looked like a station that belonged in Rome, not the northern tip of Manhattan.

“This is your stop,” he said, nodding at the stairs.

“Thanks for walking with me,” I said, embarrassed by how juvenile it sounded, as if he had held my hand like the children we had passed.

“I like walking with you, Ann Stilwell.” He hesitated. “It’s an incredible place—the city, The Cloisters. Just don’t let it wear you down. Make it sharpen you instead.”