“Good for you,” she told it.
Chapter Four
I didn’t think it was history when I was doing it. I thought I didn’t want to die or have my expedition declared a failure by my king. Later, the libraries would tell me different—that it was a historic moment, a turning point in world affairs. Historic moments always smell like shit and dirt.
– From the personal journal of Aelfred the Black,
circa 1191 ACE (fragment)
The morning dawned gray and cold. A fresh inch of snow covered the city, fat flakes drifting down lazily on the chilly wind off the lake, and Theo put on two jackets before leaving her apartment.
The whole city seemed reluctant to wake up. Traffic on Lake Shore Drive was sluggish, and the holiday cheer scattered throughout the Loop seemed tired and shrill against the gray sky. The keycard reader on the Columbian’s south staff entrance had an actual icicle hanging from it.
Inside, the museum was sluggishly beginning its day. Pipes groaned and creaked as extra heat pumped through to bring the place back to life. Theo shared the elevator with a man holding a tray of dead pine martens. The smell of formaldehyde was overwhelming, and she tried not to breathe too deeply as the elevator made its agonizingly slow crawl up to the eaves of the building.
The loft had the air of a wake. People gathered in small clusters and talked quietly, their expressions grim or worried or simply confused. The board had convened; now it was time to wait and see.
Theo sipped her coffee as she opened her email. Twelve messages, most of them work related: a list of the winners of the employee raffle, an angry note about a missing lunch cc’d to the entire top floor, a message from [email protected], and three new security bulletins. Wait, what?
Theo eyed her inbox, trying to decide which of the messages she wanted to open first. Personal issues versus professional issues…tough call. She closed her eyes and clicked randomly.
From: Mark Zimmer
To: All
Subj: Re: Security bulletin 2.0
Addendum to previous bulletin—
REMINDER: All forms of social media are considered “issuing a public statement.” Even if your profile is set to Private, somebody will find a way to share it. Until further notice, please DO NOT discuss the so-called Collector robberies, museum security, or internal museum policy of any kind in public venues such as Facebook, Twitter, etc. For a partial list of prohibited topics and venues, see the attached file.
Please remember that this is not an infringement on your freedom of speech or a, to quote Mr. Lee’s last mass email, “Nazi-like” restriction. Information publicly available is a tool for potential thieves, and we have to be prepared to deny them anything we can.
Call the Security office if you have questions.
She scrolled through the other messages. The remaining bulletins held no surprises, mostly reminding everyone of the rules. Employees must wear IDs prominently displayed and be prepared to offer additional identification when questioned by authorized personnel. Nobody was to say anything to the media. The Security office would be conducting an internal review, rescreening everyone with access to sensitive areas and especially valuable items.
That last item added another pound or two to the lead weight in Theo’s stomach. Her access rating was fairly high, thanks to that time spent in the prep rooms sketching mummies and shabtis. Granted, a security review wouldn’t turn up anything more damning than a couple of college fines for paint-spattered dorm rugs, but that didn’t mean Theo wanted the hassle. Knowing that someone was sitting there pawing through her records made her flesh creep.
Shaking her head, she closed the emails and finished off her calorie-laden coffee. Maybe those personal issues wouldn’t be so bad. She opened another message.
From: Seth Adler
To: Theodora Speer
Subj: Lunch
Miss Speer—
I’m sorry that our lunch yesterday ended so abruptly. Is there a chance we could give it another try? I enjoyed talking with you. Please call me.
And, at the end, a standard text signature with home, office, and cell numbers attached.
Theo sat back in her chair. Around her, the loft came to life as the furnace heat permeated the last cracks of the building. Someone was humming circus music—either an attempt at distraction or a coded act of aggression toward Stiegler, whose coulrophobia was legendary. Life went on.
Theo knew she wasn’t a very insightful person. If she had been, her last relationship might not have ended with a whimper instead of a bang. But though she’d never expected to really understand someone like Seth Adler, it was beginning to bother her that she couldn’t.
But she remembered the way Adler had looked yesterday. Hard angles and lines, contrasted subtly by the suit that showed a little wear and the droplets of melting snow dotting his hair and skin. The wry humor, the small smile, the strange attitudes he wore in his body that disrupted the image of the sleek businessman.
She ducked her head and covered her face with both hands. Her cheeks were warming again, and there was a strange tremulous sensation in the pit of her stomach. She needed perspective on this, or she’d do something stupid. Time to call in the cavalry.
“Hey, Aki!” she called over the low cubicle wall. “Adler wants me to go out with him again!”
“Woo-hoo! Is he gonna put out this time?”
Theo rolled her eyes and, knowing her friend, waited. Footsteps moved toward her and Aki’s head popped over the edge of the cubicle.
“Seriously, though,” he added conversationally, “from the way you were acting yesterday, I thought it was a massive disaster. Do you really want to try again?”
“I don’t know,” she said, looking up at Aki. “I mean, I like him—sort of. He’s funny when he unbends. But he’s a donor, which means spending time with him is dating inside the workplace. Technically. And I think I kind of flaked out at the end when I heard about the robbery…”
She let her head sag into her folded arms. “Argh! I’m confused as hell, Aki. Help. I don’t think Zimmer’s security alerts covered this.”
“Huh, I’m surprised. He covered everything else.” Aki came around the cubicle wall and perched on the edge of Theo’s desk. “Hey, did you hear we can’t use Facebook anymore? My mom’s gonna be pissed about that.”
“No, we just can’t discuss the robberies or the museum on Facebook. Are you gonna help me or not? I’m at a loss here.”
“Tell him dinner instead. You two seemed to get along a lot better when there was wine involved.”
“And how the hell do you know that?” Theo said archly, mock-offended.
Aki stretched. “You’re not the only one who can eavesdrop, remember. People get an eyeful of goofy ol’ Aki and figure he doesn’t have a brain in his head. I saw Adler playing with his pocket watch and you were actually smiling at him.”
“Stalker.”
“Nah. Think of me as more like a bodyguard.” Aki picked up the family photo in the Disneyland frame and made a face. “FYI, you should get rid of this before Stiegler has a shit fit. Huron was singing ‘It’s a Small World’ while you were at lunch yesterday, and they really got into it.”
“Focus, Aki,” she said wryly. “Please. So you think I should suggest dinner?”
“Yep. More distractions, plus wine. And if he turns you down, bonus—no more conflicting feelings.”
“That’s a little sneaky of you, Aki. I knew we were friends for a reason.” She took back the photo and put it facedown on the desk, obscuring the offending cartoon characters. Aki hopped down off the desk, and she shooed him away before turning back to the computer.
Dear Mr. Adler,
That sounds good to me! I should be the one apologizing, though—it was me that ran out on you. I promise it won’t happen again. :)
Unfortunately we have to finish up the exhibition prep ASAP, so lunch outside the museu
m really isn’t an option right now. If you’ve got time after 6 PM, though, we could go grab a working dinner someplace near.
Theo Speer
Not perfect, but it would do. Send. With a sigh, she pushed her chair back and cracked her knuckles, working out the kinks in her fingers and wrists.
The most recent layers of paint were curing downstairs, and would be for most of the morning. Since the delay was unavoidable, she was automatically slated to help with the inevitable last-minute ephemera of every massive exhibit: posters, brochures, wrangles about photograph resolution and saturation, and the hundreds of other little things that made up a museum experience.
As she flipped through her to-do list, the email window lit up.
I like that idea. Maybe if we move fast enough, our jobs won’t be able to drag us back.
Tonight isn’t possible, but how about tomorrow? I can pick you up at the museum at 6:15.
Italian this time, maybe? With no televisions on the side, I promise. S.A.
“Surprisingly not disastrous,” Theo murmured as she typed her acceptance. Her stomach still felt a little queasy, but she did her best to ignore it.
Fortunately for her peace of mind, she was kept busy all morning. Yesterday’s commotion had disrupted the painting schedule, and now they were in a rush to finish the mural before their tight pre-exhibition schedules became too hopelessly skewed. By eleven o’clock they had laid down most of the mural’s color patches and were ready to do detail work.
Theo was eating lunch at her desk when the department started buzzing again. Administrative emails, mostly from Egyptology, were flying with wild abandon. Only a handful had been accidentally cc’d to the entire museum staff, but that was enough for everyone to know that the board had come to a decision.
As Theo finished her burrito, a crowd gathered by the door. Someone had come in. She caught a glimpse of a short man and a shock of graying hair.
Well, that meant one thing. She scrunched up her burrito wrapper and dropped it in the trash. The denizens of the aerie gathered around Van Allen, and Theo joined them. Aki was already there, his hands coated with charcoal from sketching.
“What’s the word?” Theo whispered. Aki shrugged.
Dr. Van Allen called for silence, and the grumbling artists and technicians gradually settled down. As short as he was, Theo could barely see the top of his head through the small crowd, but she could hear him clearly enough. It was impossible to judge his mood from his words, though. Unlike Dr. Schechter, who would attack a new project with the tireless energy of a bloodhound on the scent, Wayne Van Allen always had the same blank façade for whatever was presented to him.
“Attention, please,” he called out, and the last of the talkers quieted. “Thank you. First, allow me to say that the work you’ve been doing has been very encouraging. The exhibition is ahead of schedule, and I can say with confidence that it’s going to make quite the impression once it opens.”
“But,” Aki muttered.
“But there’s been a change in the exhibition materials.”
Aki elbowed Theo, and she gave him a quick shove back and hissed at him to be quiet.
“The museum recently engaged in a series of negotiations with Oxford University, which is conducting a study on tuberculosis in pre–New Kingdom mummies. In light of recent events, we’ve agreed to offer them THS203—”
A babble of protest broke out before he could continue. “Bogus!” Aki yelled, and half a dozen of the others agreed. Theo didn’t try to stop him; she was thinking the same thing.
Mummies were getting rarer every year. A good specimen, especially one with such a strange background as THS203, was invaluable. A tuberculosis study could mean anything from noninvasive scans to active dissection, which would as good as destroy the specimen.
Either way, it was leaving them with no mummy and no centerpiece for the tomb re-creation. Everything the lofts had been working on would need to be altered, reshuffled, or redone completely. Maybe the exhibition wasn’t being canceled, but Dr. Van Allen’s announcement was going to mean scrapping half of the work they’d already completed.
The curator held up his hands for quiet, and the loud complaining reluctantly subsided. “I know this is going to make more work for us,” he said, adjusting his glasses. “But this decision hasn’t been made lightly, and I promise you this is going to be good for the whole museum. As an incentive for offering the mummy, we’ve been guaranteed the first pick of the Pompeii artifacts coming out of Florence in the next year.”
That got a murmur from the assembled artists and workers. Pompeii was a hell of a draw, and the historical society in Florence was producing new macabre casts of the ancient victims. A Pompeii exhibit, especially on a semi-permanent basis, could go a long way toward keeping the museum in the black.
“So…overtime, right?” Aki said, crossing his arms. The technicians wouldn’t be too happy about that; they’d already put a lot of time and effort in on the project, and running new wiring for parts of the gallery would be a pain in the ass. The artists, on the other hand, were more than fifty percent independent contractors and needed every hour they could justify billing.
“Overtime,” Van Allen confirmed. “Two of the interactives are being moved to cover the wall, and the remaining space will need a simplistic mural. With so little time, we won’t be able to order prints or plaques, so anybody who’s free to join a gridding team, let your group leaders know now. Speer, I trust you can supply our mural needs?”
He said it mildly, ordering a painting as if it were a pizza with extra cheese, but Theo could see her scant spare time vanishing down the drain.
“To replace the mummy?” she said, frowning. That whole display, replaced with another mural? It had to be good, and it also had to be done quickly. “On the west wall…”
She could see the layout in her mind’s eye, the setup the department had been working on for weeks. Without the mummy itself, the important element of immersion would be lost. She had to come up with some way to pull them back into the ancient world. It was Empires of India without the life-size elephant, Travels with Early Man minus its mammoth-tusk hut. Something to pull the visitors into the world, something in two dimensions that would make them feel as if it were in three…
“The west wall,” she repeated. Not a light bulb, but a spark nevertheless. And on the east wall…oh. Oooh.
“I think I have a couple of ideas,” she added slowly. Van Allen raised an eyebrow at that. “But I’ll need to get to work now, so someone’ll have to take my spot on the first mural team. I can get you the prelims tomorrow, okay?”
“Tomorrow morning.” There was slight but noticeable emphasis on the second word. “We have to be practical.”
“Is that what they’re calling it these days? ‘Practical’?” Aki muttered in Theo’s ear as the group broke apart. She swatted him lightly on the arm, but it was an automatic reaction; her mind was focused on other things.
Three dimensions, walls, staring eyes. Potentially eerie, but also potentially fascinating. She picked up her tablet and began to sketch.
A few minutes later, her computer pinged. She had email. Apprehensive, she opened the message.
From: Akeela Lee
To: art peeps list
Subj: pompeii?
Ten bucks says it’s not just ths03 going AWOL. Board meetings just to trade one mummy? Yeah right. Bet he wants to get as many exhibits off grounds and out of the museum as possible so there won’t be liabilities when stuff gets stolen.
From: Jared North
To: Akeela Lee
cc: art peeps list
Subj: Re: pompeii?
Who cares?
From: Akeela Lee
To: Jared North
cc: art peeps list
Subj: Re: pompeii?
>Who cares?
Everyone, genius. Work is going to get a lot harder to come by soon. How’s your resume?
There was more, mostly passive-aggressive sniping between the team members, but Theo didn’t read much of it. Though the loss of THS203 had been tempered by the possibilities for fresh designs, Aki’s commentary had put dark thoughts into her head.
If the museum’s response to the Collector threat was to batten down the hatches and trade away some of their more likely targets, then they probably wouldn’t be accepting many new exhibitions either. And without a constant rotation of shows requiring new designs, brochures, and graphics, much of the art department—including Theo—would be superfluous.
Looking for a distraction, she checked her voice mail. Her mother wanted to know if she’d heard about the robbery, and whether she was still going to watch the Deerfield house for them while they were in Taos.
Theo texted back a plural affirmative and tried not to think about what she’d be doing for Christmas. Maybe she could have friends over to the house? They could buy a couple of cases of the cheapest stuff they could find, like they had done when they were in school. Ringing in the birth of Jesus with a hangover sounded good.
If her friends weren’t doing anything for Christmas. Which was about as likely as the Collector spontaneously turning himself in.
With a sigh, Theo turned back to her new designs. ’Twas the season for getting her ass in gear.
And for breaking dinner dates. The sight of the open email tab reminded her, and her heart sank at the thought. Sending another email changing her mind might make it appear that she’d panicked. After a moment’s hesitation, she picked up her cell phone and dialed the number from the email footer.
Painter of the Dead (Shades of Immortality Book 1) Page 6
