Mulling it over after another bite, Dylan instinctively asked herself the question she most dreaded: What would my family do? Picking up a french fry, she turned the idea over in her head. They’d skip work and go play around until a solution to their problem came to them. Dysfunctional as they could be, the idea wasn’t all bad, Dylan reasoned, especially if she could skip school responsibly and come up with the ideas she needed for Technocore.
She wondered if this was wise. At the diner, visiting Crescent Children’s Museum had seemed like a great idea, and Mike sounded genuinely excited she was coming to see the place. Now, standing in front of a formidable-looking structure, she was less sure. The building was old enough that the Washington climate was taking its toll, and bits of moss and lichen had started growing in the cracks between the roof and on the stone steps leading up to the heavy wood doors. Crescent must have been beautiful when it had been built in the 1940s, but now its graying cement facade looked tired. Dylan reached for a heavy brass handle and gave the door a hefty pull, pushing her doubts about the visit aside.
While the outside might have been imposing, the inside was warm and inviting. The floors were old, serious-looking marble with black, red, and white geometric designs covering every inch, but the dim sconces had been replaced with a variety of brightly colored light bulbs. Glancing up at the map in front of her, Dylan realized that the colors corresponded with the different sections of the museum. What would have been boring wood-paneled walls had been covered with inviting banners, advertising exhibits like the waterworks, the sounds-and-signs room, and still others focusing on various forms of art. Dylan walked up to the massive oak counter built into the floor. School was not out yet, so the museum was slow. Only one woman wearing a brightly colored cat T-shirt was behind the desk, attempting to solve a Sudoku puzzle.
“Hello,” Dylan said, trying not to feel guilty as the woman jumped in surprise.
“Hi. Can I help you?” she asked, pushing her Sudoku to the side.
“Yes. I’m here to see Mike Robinson.”
“Is he expecting you?” the woman asked, already dialing what Dylan guessed was his extension.
“He should be. I spoke to him a few minutes ago.” Dylan threw in an extra smile for good measure.
The cat-shirt woman nodded before speaking into the receiver. “Hi, Mike, there is a Ms. . . .” She glanced up, waiting for her to fill in the blank.
“Dylan Delacroix.”
“A Ms. Delacroix here to see you.” Dylan listened to mumbles on the other end as the woman smiled affably. “Sounds good,” she said before shifting her focus back to Dylan. “He says he’ll be right over.”
Dylan nodded and went to study the big calendar of events by the door. She was vaguely aware of the happy shouts of children’s questions floating through the stone corridors every so often. Actual whispering is a skill you acquire over time, she thought, then amended that. Whispering was a skill you acquired if you were lucky. As far as she knew, Deep had never learned to whisper, and it didn’t seem likely that she would learn anytime soon.
The sharp click of dress shoes on marble pulled her attention away from whisper skill development. Dylan whirled on her heel as Mike strode down the long corridor, looking like what magazines thought people at museums looked like. He was dressed in dark-gray slacks and a smoke-infused light-blue dress shirt, and his walk was intentional, not hurried. As if walking in colorfully lit corridors were the same as being in his living room. He had his sleeves rolled up and his collar unbuttoned. She wanted to hand him a tumbler full of scotch and an old book. Unless there was a polo pony and an Aston Martin waiting outside, he could not have looked more like a character in an Annie Leibovitz photo for Vogue.
“Thanks for coming,” Mike said as he drew closer to the large calendar, an easy smile tugging at the corners of his eyes. Mike leaned in to give her a quick hug, made slightly awkward by her bulky bag. Dylan realized that, outside of her first night home, she had not touched Mike. Or even come close enough to smell the aftershave he used. Earthy and fresh. Not floral.
Mike left his hand on her elbow as he turned to face the woman at the desk, reminding her more forcefully of the first night on his front steps. Dylan felt her stomach tighten, remembering the reassuring muscles that had steadied her. Fighting an instinctual urge to lean into the security of his arm, she readjusted her necklace and her thoughts.
“Gloria, I’m going to take Dylan on a short tour. If anything comes up, feel free to call my cell.” Turning back to face Dylan, Mike added, “I was surprised you showed up.”
“Did you think I wouldn’t come? I always come.” Dylan smiled, adjusting her handbag to rest under one arm.
Mike paused on an inhale, dropping his arm from her elbow and biting down on his lower lip. Tilting his head to the side, he blinked at her. Dylan’s mind replayed her last words as Mike shut his eyes and took three deep breaths. Did she have ketchup on her top? She looked down and was relieved to find no food attached to her attire. Looking back up, she met Mike’s gaze as he shook his head slowly. Exhaling, Dylan asked, “What?”
“You always come, huh?” Mike said, trying to press his grin into a straight face, his eyebrows raised mischievously.
“I . . . that . . . that . . .” Dylan opened her mouth and then closed it, the heat of a furnace burning in her cheeks as she realized how her words could be construed. She had been thinking that he looked good when she’d first seen him. But, she reasoned, that was in a strictly scientific-observation sort of way. It certainly wasn’t the cause of her perfectly innocent words. Mike was just twisting them. “That is not what I meant.”
“Sure it wasn’t,” Mike said. “Are you trying to tell me something, Dylan?”
“No. No. I’m not trying to tell you anything.” If Dylan had thought she was overheating before, it was only because she hadn’t known the humiliation she felt could get any worse. “No. Really, that is not what I meant.”
“It’s fine. You don’t need to be embarrassed. I’m happy for you.” Mike stared at her for a long moment before clearing his throat. “Shall we start in the theater?”
“Yes. Let’s do that,” Dylan said, making her words crisp. Running a hand over her hair, she tried to flatten her flustered mind, carefully storing her urges in the irrational corner of her brain, where she could blame them on her upbringing. “The theater, huh?”
“It is the best place to get a sense for what we do at the museum.”
“It sounds like I’m about to get the donor spiel.”
“You are. The top-donor speech, as it is. Only the special donors get a guided tour.”
“From a director, no less.”
Mike gave a lopsided smile at his own title, tugging half of Dylan’s heart along with the curve of his lips. She took a deep breath, practically begging her misbehaving thoughts to go back to their corner. She was here to see if she could help, not to ogle. “Don’t get too excited,” he said. “A donation of two hundred fifty dollars or more constitutes a ‘special donor.’”
“That will change. Soon as you get this room up and running, Crescent is going on the map as a cutting-edge children’s facility.”
“Facility? That sounds clinical.”
“It’s not clinical. It’s professional,” Dylan corrected, watching the other half of his smile catch up to the first.
“If it gets me a paneled sensory room, you may use all the business jargon you want.”
“You may as well start calling it a children’s facility now. I don’t lose often, buddy.”
“I wouldn’t have asked you here if I thought you did.”
“I was kidding.” Dylan laughed as they rounded a corner and passed through another set of heavy doors, complete with a brass lion handle from the movies.
“I wasn’t.”
Dylan almost tripped over his confidence. If she hadn’t been a professional high-heeled sprinter, she might have. Mike did not break eye contact with her, self-assurance vibratin
g off him. She wasn’t sure what to do with the compliment, so she redirected the conversation toward the massive stage at the back of the room. “So this is the theater?”
“Yes. This is the point in the tour where I dazzle you with childhood-development theory and my vast knowledge of experiential learning.”
“By all means. Dazzle away.” Dazzle away? Dylan hoped he developed sudden amnesia and forgot the entire trip to the theater, or at least the part where she stopped forming cohesive thoughts.
“Right.” Mike nodded solemnly. “At Crescent our mission is to provide children with experiences. Not unlike adults, most children learn by doing. By providing kids with more than a nameplate and facts, we give them a chance to act on the knowledge they have gained. Our theater offers children the opportunity to dress up and act out different concepts and professions. Chances to be doctors, astronauts, and scuba divers all in one location.” Mike paused and looked at Dylan a little sheepishly. “This is the part of the tour where I admit to rigging the space so there are guaranteed to be children playing in here for donors to see. Your visit caught me off guard.”
Dylan laughed, feeling less self-conscious now that she had some company in the self-deprecation department. “Impressive. Please explain the mechanics of staging playtime. I may need this trick later.”
“Homeschool groups. They usually require a couple of days’ notice, though.” Mike shrugged the sheepish look off, replacing it with the confidence he had worn moments ago. “Continuing on, unlike adult museums, which are largely observational, Crescent subscribes to the experiential-learning model. Take, for example, our waterworks space.” Mike began walking in reverse up the sloped auditorium. “This is where I impress everyone with my ability to walk backward while answering questions.”
“It is impressive. You are out here giving away tour trade secrets. I might steal your job.” Dylan felt her smile surface as her Gunderson-induced panic subsided. Crescent and Mike, the self-narrating tour guide, were just what she needed.
“Honestly, this one comes with years of practice as an undergraduate campus tour guide. I’m not worried about people in the consulting world mastering this skill overnight.”
“Someone’s getting cocky. If you trip, I want you to know I’ll laugh.”
“I wouldn’t count on it. Never fell once in over ten years.” After throwing a quick glance over his shoulder, Mike twisted around to face the installations as they walked into the next room. Dotting the room were dozens of freestanding structures, all brightly colored and built at elementary-schooler height. Looking to her left, next to a glass case Dylan could make out a massive cartoon drawing of a raindrop explaining how clouds worked. In the case was a tiny ecosystem, miniature clouds dropping even smaller buckets of rain on a little cityscape of Seattle. As Dylan watched, the clouds slowly stopped raining and cleared up. Despite the twenty-five-year age gap, both Dylan and the sticky-handed child watching the display were astonished.
“The clouds will reform in fifteen minutes,” Mike said, noticing her squinting in the direction of the display. Dylan arched an eyebrow in lieu of asking for an explanation. “There is a heating coil under the city that—” Mike broke off midsentence, moving from Dylan’s side and making a beeline for one of the installations.
“Oh, buddy, you really don’t want to drink that,” Mike said, scooping a child away from a dripping stalactite in an impressive arch. The rumpled little boy, surprised by his impromptu flight path, clung to Mike’s forearm until his feet were on the ground. He looked up at Mike and gave a small forlorn glance at the stalactite display before toddler-running back to an aggressively bored-looking teenager furiously tapping on his phone.
“What no one tells you in school is that being here is one part museum advocate, one part childcare provider,” Mike said, walking back toward Dylan and readjusting his sleeve, which had been pushed farther up his toned forearm.
“What happens if the kids drink the water? Does an alarm go off?” Dylan asked, remembering the feel of his arm under her hand. Taking her gaze off him, she watched the teen as he took the rumpled boy by the hand, still oblivious to his previous antics.
“No, no alarms. We don’t want to traumatize any of them. And we chlorinate the water to kill germs.” Mike shook his head and smiled before adding, “But last week I caught a kid trying to pee in it, so really, I wouldn’t vouch for its potability.”
“I can kind of see where it looks like a big toilet,” Dylan reasoned. Mike guffawed, throwing her a sideways look. “What? I know I shouldn’t say that given my parents’ profession, but if we are being honest here,” she added with a sharp gesture of her free hand, “you can’t tell me that doesn’t look a little like a toilet.”
The idea of peeing in public was something Dylan usually found mortifying, but here she was giggling like bodily functions were adorable. She blamed Mike for this.
“I feel like his mother would have made the same excuse if she wasn’t busy being horrified.”
Hanging a hard right at a set of heavy doors marked EMPLOYEES ONLY, Mike started down an empty hall. Without the brightly colored lights, the marble floors gave off a distinctly less welcoming, more financial-institution vibe.
“This closed section leads to the sensory space,” Mike said as they continued down the corridor, the sound of Dylan’s heels bouncing off the bare walls. She stopped abruptly as Mike plunged into the massive black hole that appeared at the end of another right turn.
“Um . . . ,” Dylan called into the darkness. Her pulse quickened as the formerly friendly children’s museum turned into the beginning stages of a horror movie. The sound of Mike shuffling around in the dark didn’t do much for Dylan’s courage level.
“I’m looking for the light. I thought I left it . . . on . . .”
Taking three cautious steps into the blackness, she found herself groping around her purse for her pepper spray. Maybe Neale was right. Maybe the Robinsons were charming ax murderers after all.
“Got it!” Mike yelled, filling the room with the Rapturesque white fluorescent lighting often used for nighttime construction projects. Blinking, Dylan quickly stashed her pepper spray—and her humiliation—back in her purse, vowing to stop listening to Neale.
Unfortunately, the lighting did little to help the horror story appeal of the space. The walls might have once been cream but had slowly faded to a depressing shade of grimy beige. Large pieces of murky clear plastic hung over what Dylan assumed were windows, the massive, earthy, ornate wooden frames barely visible under the dust and bits of plaster.
“What was this place?”
“It’s labeled ‘grand room’ on the floor plans. Although I’m not sure what a grand room is, honestly.”
“Huh.” Dylan felt gravel and loose chunks of whatever covered the floor beneath her heels and tried not to wrinkle her nose. Perhaps Mike saw the potential for a sensory room, but all she saw was a lawsuit waiting to happen. Nicolas would have a field day suing this place.
Dylan grimaced at the missing ceiling tiles, then looked back toward Mike. He was studying the hunks of absent wall plaster with the sort of intensity usually reserved for avoiding looking at other things. Or people, Dylan thought.
Using the stained walls around his head as a cover, she watched Mike for a moment. His usually relaxed posture was noticeably absent, replaced by a spine that was too straight to be comfortable. Her inner business consultant kicked in as she ran down her CEO diagnostic checklist. Normally relaxed hands jammed in pockets—check. Shoulders a fraction of an inch too high—double check. Avoiding eye contact at all costs—also a check. Zero indication that he was still breathing . . . Dylan paused to observe his rib cage for a second. Although his torso filled out his shirt quite nicely, there was no way he was moving a lot of air through it. Check.
All nervous, protective gestures present and accounted for. Taking a deep breath, she exhaled. “Wow.”
“Wow good? Wow bad?” Mike asked, narrowing his eyes
.
Every fiber of her knew that Mike was showing her a very dear but exceptionally impossible dream. It was a miracle the city still considered the structure sound enough to let children—or even dogs—in with this section still standing. When she’d said she wanted to help, she had thought she’d write a personal check, maybe beg her dad to pony up. But this project was so much bigger than what her puny charity budget could manage. Still, a deal was a deal, and she was nothing if not good for her word. She had to try, or risk being as flaky as the rest of her family.
“I can see it . . . ,” Dylan said, careful to meet Mike’s gaze. Dream lawsuit or no, she couldn’t tell Mike the truth about his plan.
“Really? I know it’s rough,” Mike answered. His shoulders dropped the appropriate distance, but his face read as skeptical.
“Yeah. I . . .” Dylan’s eyes cast wildly about for some redeeming quality in this troll cave. “I love the chandeliers. Are those brass?”
“I was a little worried about them structurally, what with the water damage.” Faux genuine as her response was, Mike was willing to grab the life raft. Taking a massive step over piled-up scaffolding, he walked toward the center of the room. “I want it to be paneled to the edges, like the Sky Church.”
“Sky what?” Dylan watched the ground and tried to gracefully circumnavigate the pile of junk so she could stand next to him. Mike stopped pointing at the wall long enough to aim an incredulous stare at her.
“Sky Church. The venue inside MoPOP.” When recognition didn’t immediately dawn on her face, he tried to rephrase it. “You know, the venue in the Experience Music Project, now MoPOP? The wacky-looking museum—”
The Checklist Page 9
