Gallery After Dark

The last visitor left at 4:45 and I thanked the docent more warmly than I meant it. By five I had the doors locked and the lights on timers. Pine Valley's museum is one big hall, marble floors, a couple of display cases, and my office in back with a leather couch older than both of us. It was Friday, which meant no staff tomorrow, which meant nobody had a reason to be here.

I sat at my desk and thought about it for ten minutes. Then I texted Chris.

"Come to the office at 7. Special project. Don't ask questions."

Chris is my intern, 26 years old, fresh out of an MFA program and desperate to prove he's a curator and not just a guy who carries crates. He texted back a thumbs up in about four seconds. I looked at the thumbs up and thought, well. Here we go.

Three years since Martin died. Three years of casseroles and colleagues saying "if you need anything" and me never needing anything, apparently, because nothing ever came of it. I'm 44 and I'm done being a widow in a cardigan. That's the honest version. The less honest version is I'd been watching Chris bend over foam crates for a month and thinking thoughts a supervisor shouldn't think, and tonight I decided to stop pretending.

At 7:02 he knocked. I heard him before I saw him, that nervous double knock guys do when they think they're in trouble.

"Come in," I said. "Door's fine where it is."

He came in carrying a coffee he didn't need. "Hey. So, the text. Special project?"

"Sit down, Chris."

He sat. He's tall, dark hair he pushes out of his eyes when he's thinking, and he wears the same gray jacket every day like it's a uniform. I slid the clipboard across the desk at him.

"Inventory audit. We do them twice a year and I do them alone, which is stupid, because the insurance people want a second signature. So you're the second signature."

"Okay," he said, and took the clipboard like it was made of glass. "This is kind of a weird hour for an audit, though."

"It's kind of a weird museum. We do things after hours when nobody's underfoot." I stood and got my own clipboard, which was empty, and I want to note that I knew it was empty. "Start in the main hall. Far corner, the limestone piece. The Bernadette."

"The one that looks like a sad tooth?"

I laughed before I could stop myself. "Yes. The one that looks like a sad tooth. Write down exactly that, actually. The registrar will love it."

He grinned and stood up, and that was the moment I noticed my own pulse was doing something unladylike. Fine. Noted. Moving on.

The hall lights were off except the emergency strip along the baseboards, so the gallery was all long shadows and blue marble. I let him walk ahead of me. Not for the view. Okay, partly for the view.

"Hey, Gretchen?" he said, halfway across the floor. His voice did that thing where it bounces off marble and comes back embarrassed. "Is this, like, a real audit? Because I looked at the sheet and half of it's blank."

"It's real enough. And stop calling me Gretchen in here. It's Dr. Marsh in the gallery."

"Dr. Marsh," he repeated, and I heard him try it out and decide he liked it. Interesting.

The sad tooth sat on a plinth in the corner where the emergency light barely reached. Chris bent over it, pen scratching, reading the little brass plate like it owed him money. I came up beside him, closer than a supervisor needs to be, and held my clipboard up like I was consulting it.

"Condition report," I said. "Tell me what you see."

"Surface abrasion on the left flank. Some water staining near the base. Her, uh." He leaned in. "Her nose has a chip."

"You'd have a chip too if you were carved in 1931 and shipped across the Atlantic twice."

"She's traveled?"

"Everything here has traveled. Everything here has been dropped, rained on, and owned by at least one idiot." I reached past him to point at the base, and my arm went across his chest doing it, and I did not hurry the arm. "See the repair there? Old epoxy. Somebody loved her enough to fix her and not enough to do it right."

"That's kind of sad."

"It's very sad. That's most of my job. Fixing what the last idiot did and bracing for the next one." I stepped back and looked at him instead of the sculpture, which was the whole point of the evening, and he hadn't figured that out yet, which was the other whole point. "You do good work, Chris. I don't say that to people."

"Thanks." He looked down at his clipboard, then back up. "You kind of do say it, actually. You told me the Tyrell donation catalogue was competent."

"Competent. God. That was me being generous."

"I took it as generous," he said, and grinned, and I thought, twenty-six, and no idea yet what a woman means when she stands too close in a dark gallery. Give him a minute.

I moved around the plinth and let my shoulder brush his on the way. Just a brush. He went still, the way you go still when a cat gets on your lap and you don't want to scare it off.

"Dr. Marsh?"

"Condition report," I said. "Keep going."

"There's, um." He cleared his throat. "The pen isn't working."

I took the pen out of his hand, uncapped it, recapped it, and gave it back. "Try now."

"Okay. Yep. Working."

He wrote something. I stood close enough that I could feel the warmth off his jacket, which in a marble hall with the heat off is basically a campfire. The emergency light made a blue stripe across his jaw. I checked my watch, which was theater, and then looked at the sculpture, which was also theater.

"Do you know why I asked you here tonight?" I said.

"Second signature?"

"Do you believe that?"

He thought about it. I watched him think about it, which is a luxury you don't get in daylight with other staff around. "Not totally," he said finally. "But I figured if it was a test, the right answer was yes."

"That's a good answer and a bad habit. In here the right answer is the true one."

"Okay." He turned to face me. Blue light, nervous hands. "Then, true answer. I don't know why you asked me here. And I've been wondering since your text."

"Good," I said. "That's the first completely honest thing anyone's said to me in about three years." I reached out and straightened his collar, which did not need straightening. "My husband died three years ago. You probably know that. Everyone knows that, and everyone has been so polite about it that I've started to fantasize about being rude back."

"I didn't know what to say. When I started here. Everybody told me not to mention it."

"Everybody was wrong. Not mentioning it is worse." I left my hand on his collar longer than the collar required. "Chris. Do you find me attractive? True answer."

He made a sound as if he'd been handed a live wire. "Yes," he said. "Obviously. I mean, not obviously, I would never have said it, but. Yes."

"Good. Then here's the special project." I took my hand back and picked up my empty clipboard. "Walk with me. There's a piece in the east case I want to show you, and while we walk, you're going to decide something. You can say no to any of it, at any point, and we go back to being supervisor and intern and I never bring it up. Or you can say yes, and find out why I locked the doors at five."

He looked at the sad tooth, then at me. "The doors are locked?"

"Since five o'clock. It's just you, me, and the janitor, and Rodrigo doesn't come through the galleries until ten."

"Ten," he repeated, like a man pricing something.

"Ten," I said, and started walking, and after about four steps I heard his footsteps follow.

We stopped at the east case, which held the Wedgwood, and I set my empty clipboard down on a nearby plinth like it had a purpose. "Here's how tonight goes. You're going to hear my side of a phone call. The registrar at a lender. I keep a steady voice. While I do it, you put your hand under my blouse."

Chris made a face like I'd asked him to defuse something. "Under your blouse. While you're on a phone call."

"With a lender. Who is fictional, but only to you."

"And if my hand shakes?"

"Then I'll say the condition report needs revision, and he'll think I mean the vase." I pulled out my phone, which was not connected to anything, and dialed one digit so the screen lit up. "Any time you want to stop, say vase. Understood?"

"Understood." He swallowed. "Is this a test?"

"Everything is a test. That's what people don't tell you about jobs." I held the phone to my ear and watched his face. "Clay? Hi, it's Gretchen Marsh at Pine Valley. Yes, Friday evening, I know, I'm a monster. Listen, the Wedgwood. We're doing a spot inventory and I want your assurance on the provenance file from 2011."

"Hello?" Chris said to the empty hall.

"Sorry, say again? Oh, the file. Yes!" My voice was steady. I'd had three years of steady. Steady was my whole brand. Chris reached out slow, like the marble itself might object, and slid his hand under the hem of my blouse. His fingers were cold and careful and they found the skin of my stomach and stayed there.

"The 2011 file, Clay. The shipping insurance. Yes." Chris's hand moved up an inch. Then another inch. I kept talking about insurance, which is funny, because that's all this was and wasn't. His thumb traced my ribs and I heard my own breath do something a registrar should not hear.

"Dr. Marsh, the lender can't hear you," Chris whispered.

"The lender is dead air and a lit screen, and you know it. Keep going. I was