Alive in Shape and Color

by Lawrence Block

  Today the bronze was cool. The summer sun hadn’t yet warmed the metal like it had the day she interviewed. She let her hand slip off the statue itself onto the marble plinth. Marble always felt warm to her, comforting in its cold stone way.

  Then she squared her shoulders and walked across the terrace. More steps, and she would be inside the beaux arts building that looked so early 20th century on the outside, and hosted some of the most transformative works on the inside.

  Her stomach twisted. She still wasn’t sure if museum work was for her. The internship would tell her that. She actually got one of the coveted curatorial internships, available only to graduate students. She was supposed to learn about the artwork and how to preserve it, but she would also work with the museum collections and help plan exhibitions, or so she was told.

  Planning someone else’s work because she couldn’t see a future for her own.

  She reached gigantic columns at the top of the stairs, her hesitant form reflected in the glass of the large door on her left. She ran a hand over her face, then glanced back at the ruined Thinker. He wasn’t really Rodin’s any more. He was a combination of Rodin’s vision, the bad decision to keep him outside, and the vandalism. A different kind of art.

  Art out of control.

  If she stepped inside, her life would be all about control. Planning, work, classes, doing what someone else wanted.

  If she walked away—then what? Fifty thousand dollars in student debt for no reason whatsoever.

  If she ran away—well, she had nowhere to run to. She wasn’t talented enough to strike out on her own, and she no longer had any dreams.

  She winced at the thought, walked between the huge columns and headed for the center door, her face in the glass round and young and determined. Not showing her inner turmoil at all.

  Not showing anything except an expression that already felt like it had been cast in stone.

  1970

  Everything had seemed so clear at midnight. At midnight, Lisa had had no idea she would be covered in blood, searching for Helen.

  At midnight, Lisa had been sitting cross-legged on the floor in the back of the van.

  And she had been terrified.

  She should have trusted that emotion.

  She had imagined their trip like the opening of that Mission: Impossible TV show—match touched to fuse, then a long, slow burn with sparklers, until everything turned white. She hadn’t pictured the clunky alarm clock taped to three sticks of dynamite, and some kind of mechanism behind it all that would—Leo promised—ignite the entire thing.

  Leo and Irv sat in the front seat, Irv behind the wheel because he was the best driver. And Helen beside her, head tilted back, eyes closed. Remarkably silent for a group that could talk late into the night. Everyone else seemed incredibly calm. Lisa had been the only one fidgeting. Probably the only one with regrets, already. Pre-bombing regrets.

  A chill had settled into her bones, one she couldn’t shake. She had spent days contemplating those sticks of dynamite, which, Leo warned, were dangerous all by themselves. She kept thinking about the town house bombing in Greenwich Village not quite three weeks ago. She kept replaying the news footage in her mind—March snow falling around the ruins of this swanky town house in the Village, firemen in their heavy winter coats and boots, smoke billowing out of the ruins.

  Reports said that two women—one naked and screaming—escaped the rubble, went to a neighbor’s, got clothes and food, and disappeared. Initially, Lisa had hoped that one of them had been Diana. Diana had recruited her. But four days after the bombing, the police had announced that Diana was among the dead.

  The dead: two men, one woman. Rumor had it that the second man was Terry. Lisa had heard him speak more than once, those intense eyes focusing on her and her alone. He had reminded them all that Weatherpeople didn’t kill. They were bringing the war home, yes, but not the death. Just the fear, and the destruction.

  Then he had reminded everyone in that audience:

  They’ll come after us if we kill someone. Once we kill people, we can’t go back.

  Who would’ve thought that the people they’d kill would be their own?

  Irv pulled the van onto one of the little side roads dotting the university. Lisa had attended classes around here, but it all looked strange to her in the dark. No streetlights, not back here, and just a bit of light dribbling from the buildings around her.

  Irv shut off the ignition and the vehicle shuddered.

  No one said a word.

  Then Irv opened his door. The interior light came on—dammit, someone should have disabled it—and in the bright white glare, she saw just how frosty her breath was.

  “Long way to walk,” Leo said, voice low as if someone could overhear them. Maybe some student was walking the grounds this late, but she doubted it. It was midnight, although not as dark as she wanted. Clouds skated across the full moon.

  “Yeah,” Helen said, sounding confident as usual. No shiver in her voice, no hesitation. “I want to see this.”

  “I don’t want to be close,” Lisa said. “There’ll be pieces.”

  She thought of Diana. Identified by bits. Tiny bits.

  “Shrapnel,” Irv said, and she thought she heard affection in his voice. “Just like ’Nam.”

  Always bringing them back to the mission.

  Lisa glanced at the box, the bomb nestled inside, wrapped in blankets as a kind of cushion.

  “Let’s go,” Irv said.

  Irv opened the side door, letting in even more cold air. His eyes were bright, but his lips looked chapped. He was nervous, which was probably why he hadn’t said anything on the drive over, why he was pushing them all now.

  “We hurry, we screw up,” Leo said.

  “We go too slow,” Irv said, “we miss our window.”

  It was midnight. The alarm clock was set for 12:30.

  Lisa scrambled out of the van and stood behind Irv. Helen slid out after her.

  Leo reached in for the box. He had made them all promise that he would handle the bomb, no one else. He had had a training session in bomb-making. He’d also read a few books, which was a few more than the rest of them had read.

  Helen glanced at Lisa, then grinned. Lisa made herself smile back. Helen bounced on her toes, not from cold, but from excitement.

  Lisa had seen it before. Helen had grabbed a helmet from one of the leaders on the Days of Rage, and stuck the bulky thing over her blond hair, then grinned, as if daring to them to take it off. That Chicago march—had tear gas, arrests, but those were expected. Lisa had avoided the tear gas, nearly got clubbed with one of the truncheons, and kicked a pig in the knee. He had squealed, doubled over, and then toppled, and she had felt powerful.

  She didn’t feel powerful now.

  The clouds passed. Moonlight bathed everything in a clear, cold light. Helen’s eyes glinted.

  “Ready?”

  Lisa nodded.

  Leo cradled the box in his arms, as if it contained a puppy, not three sticks of dynamite. He started down the path, Irv beside him, walking like they were carrying an offering to an altar.

  Maybe they were. An altar to the rich, the powerful.

  The Cleveland Museum of Art, founded by Cleveland’s wealthy, all their money made in oil and refining and railroads, the kind of men who were now “investing” in Vietnam, paying for the war, paying for kids to die.

  Lisa nodded her head, hanging on to her resolve.

  No one worked at the museum late. No one would be near the south entrance. Irv had checked on that. It was important to all of them that no one get hurt.

  The air was dry and frigid. The edges of the wide path leading up to the south entrance hadn’t been shoveled as well as it should have been. Ice-covered snow crunched as Lisa stepped on it, the sound like miniature explosions in the night.

  The sound didn’t seem to bother the others. They walked quickly, Leo breathing hard. The bomb didn’t weigh that much, so he had to be nervou
s, more nervous than he was letting on.

  Ahead, she could see the statue, sitting high on its base, contemplating all that was beneath. She’d had a tour of the museum not two weeks before. The guide had said that this sculpture, The Thinker, had been intended to be part of a Great Doorway for some other exhibition in France or somewhere. It was all supposed to illustrate Dante’s Inferno.

  The Thinker was supposed to be looking down, into the Gates of Hell.

  From which Lisa, Leo, Irv, and Helen were emerging.

  The clouds covered the moon again, dimming the eerie light. And Lisa swallowed some of the dry air. The statue almost looked alive, as if he actually saw them coming, as if he knew what they planned.

  “How’re we doing on time?” Leo asked, voice echoing across the icy white landscape.

  “Plenty,” Irv said as Helen said, “Ten after.”

  Neither of them looked at the time on the alarm clock, which Lisa wasn’t going to point out.

  They’d reached the long terrace in front of the huge staircase coming up from Wade Lagoon. The Fountain of the Waters had been shut off months ago, and looked barren, particularly in this light.

  They had to cross the terrace, go up some steps, walk across more marble, and go up more steps before they even came close to the damn statue. It had never seemed so far away.

  Lisa’s mouth was dry, and she was cold, colder than she could ever remember being. She glanced at Helen, who grinned again, then held up two Magic Markers, fat and stubby.

  “What’s that for?” Lisa asked.

  “We gotta state our intentions, right?” Helen said.

  “We are.” Leo half growled that sentence. “I’m carrying our intention.”

  His comment made Helen pout. Then her gaze met Lisa’s again, and she shrugged prettily.

  They climbed the last flight of stairs.

  Leo bent over and set the box down. He looked like a penitent and The Thinker like a bored god who had seen it all. Lisa could almost hear him saying that nothing would catch his attention.

  Then Leo would stand, smile, and say, This will.

  It all happened in her mind in a flash. She made herself focus, even though this was the part that scared her the most.

  Leo stood up with the bomb in his hands.

  On TV, they had said that someone had crossed wires at the town house, that they hadn’t known what they were doing, and just jostling the bomb they were making set off the explosion. Explosions—there had been three. Had Diana died in the first one? Or had she seen it, tried to get away, only to get caught by a secondary blast, all the other sticks of dynamite going up?

  One cop had said that most of Diana had been vaporized. Lisa didn’t want to be vaporized. She held her breath, so she couldn’t see the warm air from her lungs turn into frozen water vapor in the ice-cold air.

  Leo slid the bomb on the top of the pedestal, right beside The Thinker’s toes. The Thinker’s feet looked surprisingly lifelike. And she felt a half-hysterical giggle build. Would they identify The Thinker by pieces and bits? Would they figure out what happened to him by looking at a section of his toes?

  “There,” Leo said. “We have to go now.”

  “One second!” Helen’s voice rang across the terrace. That was when Lisa realized Helen wasn’t beside her. Irv was; he had watched Leo with the same intensity that Lisa had.

  But Helen had moved, and Lisa hadn’t even noticed.

  Lisa stepped to one side, saw Helen crouched beside the large pedestal that the museum had placed the statue, the sharp smell of Magic Marker in the air.

  She had written Off the Ruling Class! like the Black Panthers sometimes yelled Off the Pigs. Like that horrid Manson family had written Death to Pigs in blood at those murders last summer.

  But all Lisa could think about was that Red Queen in Disney’s Alice in Wonderland, who had scared the crap out of her as a little girl, screaming, “Off with their heads.”

  “Come on,” Leo said, his voice reverberating against the ice and marble and columns.

  Helen stood up, raised a Magic Marker like it was a flag, and said, “There. Now it’s done.”

  Her grin chilled Lisa even worse, and off with their heads in the Red Queen’s voice echoed in her mind, sounding ever so slightly deranged.

  Helen, as the Red Queen.

  Lisa shuddered. She hurried down the steps, and suddenly she had passed Leo, ending up behind Irv, who was moving fast.

  “C’mon.” Leo was clearly talking to Helen. “We gotta go.”

  Helen laughed. God, it sounded like a Disney villain laugh, out of control and crazy.

  Irv reached out, grabbed Lisa’s arm, and pulled her forward. She nearly fell. She wanted to shake him off, but she was afraid she would slip even more on the ice.

  She heard crunching behind her, feet breaking ice, and Leo wasn’t yelling anymore.

  She wanted to turn, to see the fuse, lit and burning, as the flame crept its way to the bomb, even though she knew that wasn’t how it worked. Her heart pounded, and she couldn’t quite catch her breath.

  She hadn’t looked at her watch. They had enough time, right? They had to.

  A clock somewhere on campus rang its half-past-the-hour bell.

  If they kept going on the regular path, they might be in the bomb zone when the bomb went off. Lisa veered in the other direction, running for the Wade Lagoon. She wasn’t sure what she was thinking: the Lagoon was iced over. But she had to get as far away from the museum as she could.

  “We’re not going to make it,” Irv said, although she wasn’t sure what “it” was, since they were no longer heading back to the van.

  He grabbed her and yanked her toward the gigantic Fountain of the Waters. She tripped over the lip, where the pool was in the summer, and staggered onto even more ice.

  The fountain itself provided little cover, but its base, with a bunch of steps, seemed okay.

  She knelt on one of the steps (marble; cold), and put her hand on the edge, then squeaked with surprise. She had clasped an ice-cold fist.

  She looked over, and saw a life-size boy, opening what looked like wings. He was naked and extremely realistic.

  His face looked demonic in the shadows cast from the fountain itself.

  The bomb hadn’t gone off. She looked between the gigantic figure carved on her right and the fountain itself. The museum looked the same. The Thinker crouched in his usual contemplative position. No explosion. Nothing.

  Except Leo, scrambling the last few yards toward them. He leaped over the lip of the pool, skated into place beside her, and crouched, covering his head with his arms.

  Irv was already protecting his head.

  She ducked too, wondering what the hell had happened to Helen.

  Nothing happened. It was strangely quiet.

  “Shit,” Leo said, his voice muffled by his knees. “Shit, shit, shit.”

  He dropped his arms, rose up like Lisa had done a moment ago, and peered over the edge of the fountain, only his hands hadn’t touched any of the figures.

  “It should have gone off.” Irv was looking up too.

  Lisa brought her arms down, but she wasn’t going to peer over that edge. They weren’t far enough away.

  “Give it a minute.” She sounded steadier than she felt.

  “What if it doesn’t go off?” Irv glanced at Leo, who did not look back. “They’ll find it.”

  “They’ve found other bombs,” Lisa said. Why was she the calm one all of a sudden? “All the duds. It hasn’t led them to any of us, not yet.”

  “I wonder if the clock just stopped. It’s cold. The mechanism might not have worked.” Leo stood up—

  And that was when the world turned white. The fountain shook. Lisa toppled backward onto the ice. Then she heard it, the loudest sound in the universe. The sound felt physical, big and forceful, as if it could shove her around all by itself.

  She got pelted by tiny bits of ice. Or something. Something fine. Like sand. The grit fi
lled her mouth, her eyes, her nose. She coughed and couldn’t hear it.

  She rolled over so more junk wouldn’t go in her face, but it seemed like the ice/sand storm had already ended. She sat up, then remembered the bomb, and thought she better crouch again.

  Until she realized: it had gone off.

  The world had gone weirdly silent. Irv had fallen over, and Leo—she couldn’t see Leo.

  She blinked her eyes. They felt gritty, as if she had just awakened. They were starting to tear, but the tears felt cold. She wiped a hand over her face, felt something wet, looked, realized that, yes, some of what hit her had been shards of ice.

  But not all of it. She saw fine bits of metal glinting in the moonlight.

  Her mouth tasted metallic. She spit, then spit again, looked, didn’t see blood. Maybe she was okay.

  Just shaken.

  Irv was sitting up, looking stunned.

  She still didn’t see Leo.

  She scanned, finally saw his form crumpled against the edge of the pool. She scrambled toward him, put a hand on him, felt something warm and wet and sticky, then smelled copper.

  Blood.

  “Leo,” she said, but her voice sounded wrong. Far away. “Leo.”

  She wanted to grab him, shake him, but she wasn’t sure if she should. Then he moved, just a little, bringing a hand up toward his face.

  The hand dripped.

  She looked down, saw blood pooling from his right side.

  He had been standing in the open when the bomb went off. Irv’s voice, inappropriately cheerful, echoed in her head.

  Shrapnel. Just like ’Nam.

  She swallowed, knelt down beside Leo, and for the first time that night, wished she had more light.

  She needed to look for the damage.

  She needed to see if he was going to die.

  2015

  They assigned Erika the Yitzhak exhibit. She hadn’t even known the exhibit was coming when she interviewed. She hadn’t known anything about it until the morning of her hire, when they tried to explain the exhibit to her.

  An Israeli artist, hired to—what, exactly?—do something with the Rodin.