“My shoes are just… a little bit painful,” I said, in what might have been the understatement of the century. “I might have a blister.” Or five, I added silently to myself.
“Why didn’t you say something?” he asked, looking baffled. “We could have stopped, or taken a car.…”
“It was fine,” I lied. “I didn’t want to bother you.”
“But you’re in pain.”
Hearing it like that—like it was so obvious—made my face get hot. Why hadn’t I just told him what I was feeling? Why had I been too afraid to tell him what was going on? As we rounded a bend in the park, though, I realized I knew my answer: because I didn’t do that.
Because I never did.
“I think we should be getting close,” Matty said, glancing down at his phone, and then frowning as he looked ahead. “But that doesn’t make any sense, because…” He stopped and stepped to the side of the path, and I joined him, running my hand over Brad’s floof.
“What?” I asked, looking ahead. Through the trees, I could see a large white building, lit up against the darkness. “This is where we’re meeting her?” I asked, stunned. It wasn’t—it couldn’t be…
“Yep,” Matty said, shaking his head with a laugh and walking forward.
“But…,” I said, hurrying to catch up, still not understanding, as we walked toward the large white building in front of us.
Also known as the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
* * *
I’d been to the Met a lot over the years. With my mother, mostly, either on trips into New York specifically to go museuming, or when we were in town to see a show and she just wanted to pop in. She’d also bring me along sometimes for exclusive preview events—one of her perks as the Pearce curator. My grandmother had loved the Frick the best, and my mother preferred the Whitney or the Guggenheim (in New York, that is—her favorite museum anywhere was Crystal Bridges in Arkansas). But although I had a soft spot for MoMA and I loved going to the Neue Galerie to see Klimt’s Woman in Gold (and eat their café’s apple strudel), my favorite museum had always, always been the Met.
There was something about the sweep of it, how epic the collection was. All the centuries and schools and time periods it encompassed in one single building. I’d been there more times than I could count—but until now, I’d never been there at night.
As we walked up to the museum, I smiled as we passed a poster for an upcoming show. The Early Art of Hugo LaSalle: From Pittsburgh, with Love was written in a font that was meant to look like graffiti. It wasn’t coming to the Met until next month, but I’d heard all about it. My mom had lent them several paintings from the Pearce’s collection for it. And apparently, there would even be a section of it devoted to the mystery of New York Night number three.
The poster for the show was a blown-up Polaroid of a young-looking Hugo LaSalle. He was standing in front of a small house, an overstuffed suitcase on the steps next to him. In the background, you could see a white moving truck with CARUSO & TASSO painted on it in bright blue letters.
I looked at the image for a moment longer before hobbling faster to catch up with Matty. Something was ringing a faint bell, like this was familiar in some way to me, but I couldn’t put my finger on it. Maybe I’d seen this picture before, in one of the many LaSalle books around our house, and just hadn’t remembered?
We climbed the stairs to the front entrance—the museum was closed for visitors, but there were still people sitting on the steps, though the fountains on either side had been turned off for the night. I tried not to gape as we walked up to the entrance, but it was hard—it was all lit up, light spilling out from inside the building and lights outside, the white marble columns framing the long red banners that read THE MET, just in case you weren’t quite sure you were at the right massive art museum.
Matty had texted Margaux that we were there, and we were brought inside by the security guards and her assistant, a guy named Zephyr who was in his twenties and seemed extremely put-upon.
“Come with me,” he said with an irritated sigh, after we’d gone through the metal detector and pulled off our coats. “Margaux did not tell me she was having guests. Like I need more things to handle…”
“I don’t think we’ll be here long,” Matty assured him as we stepped into the Great Hall. He looked up, just like I did, and my jaw dropped.
We were practically alone, in my favorite museum, at night. The information desk was empty, and the usual throngs of people were just gone. The wooden benches were empty, the seated pharaoh statue was keeping watch over nobody. I looked up at the vaulted ceilings and skylights, at the vases of flowers, at the darkened members’ desk and closed coat check, at all the marble everywhere.
It was like something out of a dream I hadn’t even had yet.
“What is that?” Zephyr asked, stopping short and frowning at Brad, who gave him a doggie smile.
“That’s… Brad,” I said after a moment.
“Margaux knows about him,” Matty added.
“I don’t think the security,” Zephyr mouthed this last word, “is going to let you have a dog in the museum.”
“He’s an emotional support animal,” Matty and I said at the same time, and then I had to bite my lip hard to keep from laughing.
Zephyr shook his head, clearly irritated with both of us, and led the way forward, up the staircase that led to the galleries. I wished he wasn’t walking so fast—I wanted to take everything in.
There was a gallery I’d always loved on the first floor that had a lot of gems and jewelry, and I wondered suddenly if there was any way I could break off and just check it out without looking like I was planning a heist. I would have loved to wander through without crowds of people pressing up behind me for a better look.…
“This is really something,” Matty said, climbing the stairs, and I followed, not as embarrassed by my halting gait now that he knew the reason why and I no longer had to try and hide it.
“I know,” I said, looking around, as we walked up the wide, empty marble staircase. If Kat was here, she would have pulled me into doing the dance we’d done on the stairs in Anything Goes our sophomore year, I just knew it.
Where was Kat right now? Had she been able to get around okay? Was she regretting the things she’d said to me, like I was regretting what I’d said to her?
We reached the top of the stairs, the huge Triumph of Marius looming large ahead of us. Zephyr zipped us through the gallery—there were security guards in every gallery, and one that seemed to be especially assigned to us walking behind me—and I was just trying to see as much as I could, because when was this going to happen again? I wasn’t even sure why it was happening now, so there was no way I’d ever be able to re-create it.
We were walking fast, down the hallway that always had photography exhibits displayed, and I wanted to stop, and look at everything I could, but Zephyr was practically running, and I was just doing my best to keep up. I heard Matty ask Zephyr a question about the shoot as we hung a right, and then we were in the part of the museum I knew best, because it had gallery after gallery of impressionists—my favorite.