The Cloisters(32)

I thought back to the items in his library as Stephen slipped the Mundi card back into the box and retied the ribbon.

“Perhaps you would like to think about collecting?” he asked me.

I resisted the urge to laugh. There was nothing in the shop I could afford.

“He’s been working on me for months,” said Rachel, coming up alongside me. “Can we try those?” Rachel pointed down at two bands of hammered silver, each decorated with a ram’s head facing the opposite direction, so that when worn together they would be symmetrical. Only when the rings were pulled out did I notice that the entire ring took the shape of a ram’s body.

Rachel slid them on her finger. They were surprisingly delicate.

“Here,” she said, handing one to me. It fit beautifully. Rachel leaned in close to me and held her hand out so that it matched mine and the rams’ heads mirrored each other. Our hands were noticeably different, her fingers long and angular with manicured nail beds, mine with larger joints and torn cuticles. It struck me as curious that the same-size ring would fit both our fingers so easily.

“We’ll take these,” she said to Stephen, holding out her hand to admire the carving.

I slipped the ring off and held it out to her, curious what number the tag read. Just how much of an investment this was.

“No,” she said. “That one is yours.”

“Rachel, I can’t accept that.”

“Of course you can, don’t be silly.”

“They’re friendship rings,” explained Stephen, writing the receipt by hand. “Meant to be split between two wearers. From the 1930s. Silver. Sterling, of course.”

“But it’s such an extravagant gift.” I slid the silver band back on my finger.

Rachel looked at me. “Ann. What’s extravagant to some is not to others. Learn to accept a gift.”

I looked down where the ring was already exerting a delightfully heavy pull, and realized I needed to stop fighting the things that had been brought unexpectedly into my life since I had arrived at The Cloisters.

“Thank you,” I said.

Rachel nodded curtly, and we walked back to the main room where Stephen recorded the sale in his ledger in large, looping script.

“A beautiful pair,” he said. “Take care that they are never separated.”

“We will,” said Rachel, looking at me.



* * *



On the way back uptown, Rachel and I sat in silence, each of us watching out opposite sides of the car as the city unspooled: Central Park, the Henry Hudson, until finally, the campanile of The Cloisters was in view.

“You can drop us at the bottom here, John,” said Rachel, motioning for the car to stop well below the entrance to the museum.

As soon as we were out of the car, Rachel turned to me and said: “Don’t tell Patrick that Stephen showed you the cards.”

We were walking through stretches of manicured grass. It was midafternoon, and the sun hit us squarely as we went.

“But he sent me with you—”

“He didn’t,” Rachel interjected.

“Then why—”

“I thought it was important that you came. That you knew. I don’t want to keep things from you.”

I hadn’t planned on telling her, on telling anyone, really, about what I had discovered in my father’s papers. But Rachel wasn’t the only one who had secrets to share.

“I came across some unusual mentions of tarot over the weekend,” I said, looking up and seeing the ramparts of The Cloisters ahead of us.

“Oh? In which volume?”

“I can’t be sure.”

I explained to Rachel about the papers my mother had sent, about my father’s translations, and about my advisor’s transcriptions.

“And Lingraf never shared any of this with you?”

“No. I had no idea he had done any research on tarot.”

Rachel stopped. We had reached the roundabout in front of The Cloisters, and on the walls of the museum, colorful red banners rippled in the breeze.

“So he never mentioned it? Over the four years you worked together. Not a word?”

“None.”

“I see.” Rachel waited only a beat before adding, “Would you be willing to bring the papers in? So we could take a look at them?”

“Sure, but without knowing where they came from, I’m not sure how much use they’ll be.”

We entered The Cloisters and I let the cool air wash over me, felt the reassuring echo of my footsteps on the stone floors.

“I suppose we could ask Patrick,” I said.

Rachel put a hand on my arm, a light one, nothing too urgent. Then she said, “Let’s not. Let’s keep it just between us. For now.”





CHAPTER TEN


The flowers were so fully in bloom that their heads drooped toward the ground by the time mid-July arrived at The Cloisters, bringing with it a heavy blanket of heat and haze. But the library and galleries remained a refuge. Some days, despite the appeal of the gardens, I hewed to the gilded and vaulted interiors, walked close to the vents, and lived a life inside the walls. I was, in a word, cloistered, but mostly because of the appeal of air-conditioning.

Perhaps part of the appeal, too, was that Leo rarely came inside, and I felt myself caught between my desire to spend time with him and my commitment to Rachel. My attraction to him was, I feared, a distraction from the work. And the work had to come first; the work was my future. And so, while we had seen each other in passing—him across the garden in cuffed jeans and work boots, face obscured by a straw hat, or him leaving conservation and storage, hands in his pockets—I had done my best to make myself invisible in those moments. Done my best to be smart and put my head down, no matter how hard it seemed, no matter how easily I knew I might fold if given the chance.