The Cloisters(54)

When I turned around to see Leo, I also saw a garden of visitors watching us, concerned, trying to decide if they should intervene.

I batted at Leo’s arms, but he just smiled and held on to my waist. “Gotcha.”

“That was terrifying,” I said, looking around. I smiled reassuringly at a few of the more worried faces.

“You shouldn’t lean out like that. What if something happened?”

“You mean like what if someone came up behind me and pushed me?”

“That, or what if you tripped and fell. There’s a reason we don’t allow sitting along this wall.”

“Oh?”

He pointed to the sign that I had somehow, for weeks, missed. DO NOT LEAN OR SIT ALONG THE PARAPET.

“Come on,” he said. “I have something for you.”

He led me by the hand across the Bonnefont Cloister and through a gate that read STAFF ONLY BEYOND THIS POINT. I had never been in this section of The Cloisters. It was grassy and walled off from the rest of the museum, containing two small sheds and a long greenhouse full of sprouts. There were garden items like grass trimmers and cutting shears littered in piles, stacks of empty pots and bits of errant stonework tucked out of public view. There were trash cans full of trimmings, and a clump of leaves had been spread across the composting bed.

Leo led me into one of the sheds, which had wide potting shelves lining the walls, each dotted with glass canisters filled with dried seeds. I picked one up as we entered.

“Hyssop seeds,” he said. “I dried flowers from last year’s garden.”

There was a tenderness to how carefully everything was arranged, from the handfuls of flowers tied up and drying from pegs on the wall, to the way the cutting shears were all tucked, sharp end down, into terra-cotta pots. And it smelled of Leo, or maybe, Leo smelled of it: earthy and grassy, a hint of body odor.

He took down a handful of dried lavender from the wall and handed it to me. “These are for you.”

Their scent filled my nose—herbaceous and sunny and complex.

“I cut them after that first day in the garden and hung them up to dry. They last longer than fresh,” he said. “And when you’re tired of looking at them, you can break the flowers up and leave them around your drawers.” He reached out his hand and used his thumb to break the lavender flower into smaller parts. I watched them scatter to the floor below us.

If I hadn’t noticed how small the garden shed was when we entered, I did then. There was barely room for the two of us to turn around, and so, our bodies were already pressed close together when Leo put his hand behind my neck and kissed me. Looking back, it wasn’t he who lifted me onto the shelf, but me who hopped up, wrapping my legs around his waist and pulling him close enough that I could feel myself against him. He matched me, sliding a rough hand under my shirt, past my bra, then, lifting the shirt off, over my raised arms.

There was something in my movements that I found surprisingly confident and assured. As if, for the first time, I was leading and Leo following. No longer was I waiting for those around me to welcome me or offer approval; I was taking it, and the feeling thrilled me. So much so that I reached for the waistband of Leo’s jeans and began to unbutton them. But even over the rustle of our clothes, our bodies, an unmistakable cough could be heard outside.

“Sorry to interrupt,” said Rachel.

The strap of my bra had been pulled down. Leo didn’t turn around to greet her, but I slid slowly off the shelf and stepped into the sunlight that lit the threshold and pulled up my bra, slipped back into my shirt. And then, I walked out to where Rachel was waiting.

“You can finish,” she said. “I can wait around the corner.”

“We’re fine,” said Leo from inside the shed. “I’ll call you, Ann.”

As I walked away with Rachel, I didn’t say anything, didn’t even bother to brush away the creases on my shirt or cool my skin where it had become damp with sweat and anticipation.

“I didn’t realize it had become this serious,” said Rachel, looking at me as we walked back toward the library.

“I don’t know if I’d call it serious.”

“Taking these kinds of risks at work? It must be,” she said.

“How did you know that’s where we’d be?” I wasn’t sure I wanted to know the answer, but Rachel shrugged.

“I looked everywhere else.”

Then, as we passed through the Gothic arch into the galleries, she held the door and said, “Don’t let Leo ruin what we’re doing here.”

I walked through the door and stopped. We were in the tapestry room, where massive, thickly woven textiles depicted scenes of idyllic medieval life—a carpet of flowers sprung to life, a unicorn at rest.

“Why would you say that? Leo has nothing to do with what we’re doing.”

“Right now, you’re compartmentalizing. But what happens when that gets harder? When instead of focusing on the situation at hand you want to go to shitty punk shows and drink warm beers in the Bronx?”

Rachel’s words stung. Not just in their accuracy, but because I’d given her no reason to think I would put Leo ahead of her, ahead of our work, our discovery. The work was why I had come, but the tarot ensured I stayed, not Leo. Even if I occasionally found it hard to disentangle my relationships at The Cloisters from the place itself, as if my personal relationships and passion for the work had all become as knotted as the grapevines that grew in the gardens.