“Fuck it,” they decided. Mrs. Havering’s table would be closely monitored instead.
* * *
—
Rogers and Mrs. Havering spent the first course of the meal in an epic silence, as she continued to sway back and forth, bobbing and weaving in her seat, sizing up the other tables to identify everyone else’s more favorable placement. Even Lindie Garrison had been placed next to a curator from the Asian Department.
Sliced cucumbers held the first course’s salmon mousse topped with caviar. Rogers scraped off the mousse to eat it, then lifted the cucumber pieces to his mouth, scooping them up awkwardly with his knife and fork. His knife slipped while conducting this odd operation and a large cucumber disk careened through the air. A Mezz Girl intercepted it with the stealth flash of an outstretched arm, just as it was about to peck at the back of an expansive helmet of hair. One small seed escaped, stuck in the net of hairsprayed tendrils, hanging tenuously like a spider from its web.
After the first course, the auction got underway, helmed by a Christie’s auctioneer who knew almost everyone there. Rumor had it that he had drawings of every Upper East Side residence that might one day have property to sell—inventories and scribbled notes sketched on cocktail napkins in cramped powder rooms during dinner parties and receptions, tracking each home’s future potential as a source of revenue.
He dove quickly into the first item, the Lance-a-Lot Package, which drew bids at a steady clip, easily reaching $750,000. The momentum slacked as the price neared one million. Unfazed, the auctioneer shifted gears and began to promote the package’s commemorative video. He pointed to the flickering projections playing behind him on the wall: old black-and white films of museum staff dressed in armor from the collection as they jousted in Central Park.
“In the early years of the twentieth century, Trustee Edward Harkness used his Hollywood connections to get a movie camera for the Met’s Egyptian Expedition,” the auctioneer explained, “In the off-season, the camera returned to New York, and, as you can see, the staff got a little creative.
“This is once-in-a-lifetime stuff, people. Do I hear one million?” he added.
“One hundred and twelve million!” Rogers called out impatiently, with an old-fashioned stiffness that just narrowly veered from a British accent. With his formal intonation, he sounded like an overeager amateur on stage.
The Mezz Girls rolled their eyes.
“Now he’s fucking with the auction,” one of them hissed.
“I bet that amount is what his original gift would be worth now,” another one added, shaking her head and folding her arms across her chest.
Mrs. Havering pivoted dramatically toward her neighbor. Her eyes widened with shock, as if she had finally found the cat she had been hunting for all night, only to discover that it had a hundred and twelve million dollars. Leaning back in his chair, Rogers moved into one of the streams of light and now seemed like a reflection in a cloudy mirror. She could have pushed her hand right through him.
Murmurs rippled through the stunned party, and the bewildered auctioneer dropped the hammer without so much as a countdown, anxious to lock in the bid.
“Sold for one hundred and twelve million dollars to the very generous gentlemen at table twenty-three!” he shouted.
Hesitant, confused applause broke out, and immediately a fuming Mezz Girl appeared at Rogers’s shoulder, knowing that she had to keep up the charade of his antics.
“Your name, sir?” she asked politely, her pen poised above her clipboard.
The crowd hushed with a prying quiet—the leaning curiosity of the rich—interrupted only by the scrape of chairs turning toward the man’s table, waiting for his response.
“Jacob S. Rogers,” he proclaimed, then paused for effect, “of Rose Lawn, Paterson, New Jersey.”
“Paterson, New Jersey??” Mrs. Havering exclaimed into the silence, now doubly slighted by being seated next to someone from New Jersey. “No one is from Paterson, New Jersey!”
Confusion gripped the room. Some had heard of Jacob Rogers and began to whisper questions in a real-time gossip chain. The chatter swelled and grew louder.
Enjoying the disorder, and the fury he had inspired among the Mezz Girls, Rogers stood up from his chair, stroked both sides of his substantial beard, and crossed the room. The guests quieted as they watched him move through the tables.
After descending the few stairs from the Temple platform, he walked straight through the gallery wall, dissolving into a cloud of shimmering dust. The Mezz Girls heard him snicker as he left.
“Bastard,” they muttered.
The crowd exploded again with more questions.
“Typical!” Mrs. Havering howled from her perch, now fully exasperated. She craned her neck and scanned her table incredulously; the cat was lost again.
Then she twitched, and her face suddenly softened. She registered the strangeness of Rogers’s appearance and disappearance: If Rogers was a ghost, then maybe her husband, Leonard, could be in the room, too?
Her eyebrows curved into gentle arches framing a new depth in her eyes. Her stern, pursed lips relaxed into an expression of hope and expectation. She brightened, sitting upright like a young woman in her gilded chair, as if waiting for someone to ask her to dance. She gazed around the room again, but this time breathless, her heart quickening with the idea that Leonard could be near.
When Leonard Havering rested his hand on his wife’s shoulder, all of her indignation and anger fell away. She gasped and floated upward to him, relieved, renewed.
The Haverings swayed together within the commotion of the rustling crowd, a waltz of memory and comfort. A tent of light formed a cone of glittering dust just for them, as they moved within a bright circle upon the floor. Leonard glowed as Rogers had, ethereal and indefinably vague, while Mrs. Havering clutched the back of his dinner jacket with childlike fists, a desperate attempt to keep him.
“I don’t like anyone I don’t know,” Mrs. Havering whispered, this time a confession rather than a complaint. She buried her head in Leonard’s chest and finally spoke the truth, “I think you’re the only person I’ve ever really known.”
He smiled—that blooming, optimistic beam that always sliced through her despair—and pulled her closer. “I know,” he soothed, his voice as clear as water, her face lifted to the past, “I know.”
Over at Michel’s table, Mrs. Wrightsman sat serenely, enchanted by the Haverings and the gentle chaos Rogers had stirred. In the raking light, she looked just like the Met’s marble head of Athena, goddess of wisdom, from the late second century BC—bought with the Rogers Fund in 1912.
LOST
Morning sir,” Walter said cheerfully, as he cleaned the front steps of the Met with a scoop and broom. “You early today, or am I late?”
Walter had begun to recognize Melvin over the past few days and sensed that something was off. In his usual way, he offered kindness rather than judgment. Neither a tourist nor a museum staff member, Melvin had the air of a weary local. He always sat near the top of the steps just to the right of the doors, where Walter would start to clean, working his way down to the sidewalk.
“You must be slacking,” Melvin said, “I’ve been here for hours waiting for you to get started. And don’t miss that sesame seed I just dropped.”
Melvin smiled so Walter knew he was kidding. He wondered what it would be like to do a job with such direct and clear goals. Surely there weren’t any politics in custodial work, only specific assignments and tasks: a day’s work for a day’s pay. Or were there arguments over shifts? Or who had to scrape up the old gum? Turf wars over the best broom?
“Well, I’d better speed things up then!” Walter replied, comically moving his own broom back and forth at a rapid speed.
Melvin laughed and went back to his bagel, tearing at it with his teeth as globs of wet cream cheese oozed from i
ts sides and dropped weightily into a paper bag. He continued to eat it with raw, messy bites, leaning forward over his substantial girth to keep from staining his jacket and tie.
Three pigeons pecked at one of the fallen sesame seeds, their necks bobbing forcefully as they tried to retrieve it. After a minute, Melvin extended his leg to kick the stout gray birds. They flapped low to the ground, skirting along the stone like broken kites, only to return right back to the elusive seed. Melvin kept repeating this cycle, extending his leg and observing the persistence and stupidity of the pigeons as they returned.
“Are you harassing my staff?” Walter yelled from ten steps below. “They’re union, you know.”
“Well, they do seem to stick together,” Melvin replied, almost admiringly. “You know, when they’re done, they’re gonna crap on my head.”
* * *
—
Melvin had taken up residence on the Met’s steps five days earlier, after getting laid off from his job. He felt both hidden and exposed atop the majestic heap.
In his gray suit, he maintained the uniform that had ferried him forward across twenty-two years of employment, starting with the first, sweatingly cheap version he had bought for his City College graduation in 1977.
His small head poked from his white shirt like an ancient turtle: a sloping chin leading up to a mouth unbalanced by the exaggerated overhang of his thin upper lip. Above, his flattened nose formed a puckered runway to his advancing forehead and the bald stretch of skin that ended in thick folds at the back of his neck.
It was still early, close to 7:30 AM, but he had to leave his apartment at the usual time to keep up appearances with his doorman. He could not yet envision a world in which his routines were fully unraveled. Until he could develop a new ritual as an unemployed, middle-aged man, the museum would serve as the shell to his snail, a glorious act of beauty concealing his slow, rubbery self.
Melvin propped his worn briefcase against his side. The swollen bag was closed with a large buckle, its leather surface scuffed and cracked with the ravages of a thousand subway rides. An insurance man always had paperwork, the accessory of his trade. Now the tired case was filled with blank sheets to maintain its heft when the doorman insisted on carrying it to the elevator at the end of the day—a service only provided in the few months before Christmas tips. Those empty pages made Melvin’s stomach sink.
What passed for a doorman at Melvin’s Third Avenue rental was the costume change of a janitor into a thick polyester coat with three bars on the shoulders—a man at the door rather than a doorman, with the same coat rotating among the building’s meager staff, regardless of size or shape. But Melvin quietly knew, with an almost anthropological clarity, that those men were the only people who registered his existence each day.
“Hey,” Melvin shouted to Walter, “What’s your name?”
Walter ascended the stairs and nobly extended his hand. He was neat and compact in his carved musculature, and moved with a steady, deliberate pace that was confident and consoling.
“Walter,” he said, “Walter Howe.”
Melvin shook his hand. “Melvin. Melvin Bleckman.” His old salesman instincts fired and then fizzled.
“Nice to meet you Melvin.” Walter turned to go back to his work, but Melvin interrupted him.
“Hey Walter,” he said, “Any idea why this building was never finished? What are those piles of stones up there supposed to be?”
Melvin looked upward to the four piles that sat above the columns on the façade, like some bored child had abandoned them. They were clearly meant to represent something other than unrefined pyramids of limestone.
“You know,” Walter replied, proud to talk about his museum, “I asked someone that once, and they told me that the guy who designed this building wanted them to be sculptures representing different times in history. The first one was supposed to be ancient and the last one was supposed to be modern, but I don’t remember the middle two. I guess the idea was that all the art inside could fit into one of those categories.” He paused and looked up. “But they ran out of money and never got around to it.”
“That happens,” Melvin said grimly, now back to thinking about his own dilemma. Today was his appointment at the unemployment office, his first public admission that he had no job.
“Yes it does,” Walter responded, “I kind of like them unfinished. It’s nice to think of this old place as a work in progress.”
Walter returned to his sweeping, and Melvin considered the idea of four categories that would hold everything in the Met. Life and death, to be sure. Sex, money…power…war…religion…love…. He thought about grouping them into four sculptures. Life and death, sex and love, war and religion, money and power. Surely some artist could make four statues about all that.
Maybe it was this deliberation, or his trepidation about the unemployment office, but for whatever reason, that day, the inside of the museum beckoned to Melvin. He had been inside before—school trips to the Egyptian Wing, and an ill-fated date with a squat woman from the actuarial department—but not since his exile on the steps.
As Melvin waited for the Met to open to the public, he watched the looping activity on the museum’s plaza: a food vendor scooping stagnant water from the oblong fountain for cooking his hot dogs, his curbside cart covered in American flags and labeled Disabled Veteran; mean girls in shrunken school uniforms with bare, coltish legs, gossiping and spitting gum onto the ground before entering the Marymount School across Fifth Avenue; a Wall Street banker stepping his expensive English shoe into one of the sticky, pink wads and pulling it along with him to the cab stand at 82nd Street; the awkward ending of a date that had started the night before: he, hungover and evasive, she, eager and overdressed; the strange proximity of two rats humping nearby, one mounted atop the other, aping the couple’s unbridled fucking just hours earlier; excited tourists clocked to the wrong time zone, too early for the Met, but elated by the sight of genuine New York City rats; a bike messenger, spandexed like a superhero on a stripped bike mummified in duct tape, whipping down the avenue and then leaping over the curb to escape the path of a cab stopping to pick up the Wall Street banker; a homeless man dragging a tall wooden cross south toward the park entrance along with a cardboard sign that read, “He is comming. Are U ready?”; a goth high school student handing the homeless man a cigarette when asked if one could be spared, and then the careful acrobatics of balancing cross, sign, and cigarette simultaneously, a challenge never faced by Jesus; a Park Avenue matron clad in quilted jacket, Belgian loafers, and cauliflower hair, competing with her greyhound for minimum weight and maximum elegance; an elderly man, lumpen and stiff, clutching his walker and dragging himself forward as if toward Death itself; his nurse beside him, seeming to ignore the slow and incontinent subject of her toil; and Walter, his crisp silhouette outlined in the late September sun, carefully sweeping as if the plaza were his own front porch.
Life and death, sex and love, war and religion, power and money. Not just in the Met, Melvin thought to himself. Right here on these steps.
* * *
—
At 9:30 the museum opened for the public, and Melvin clumsily unfolded himself from his perch, tossing his crumpled bagel bag and empty coffee cup into the trash bin to be the first through the doors. His appointment was at 12:30 so he had plenty of time.
The Great Hall welcomed him with its enormity and luster, like entering the inside of a colossal diamond. Melvin was immediately struck by how the bright, light-filled interior offered him more anonymity than the steps. Under the towering domes he seemed even less exposed, happily inconsequential within this warehouse of so many different worlds.
Melvin’s own apartment sat in a dim, sluggish light no matter what the time of day, the pallid flatness of its alley view giving way in the evening to the unchanging moon of his neighbor’s kitchen light across the airshaft. His two rooms wer
e sparsely furnished with a lumpy sofa, an old television, stale bed sheets, and a poster of a Warhol soup can that had been left hanging on the wall by the previous tenant.
None of this really mattered to Melvin, who went to his office seven days a week, the pretense of work disguising the time-filling comfort of his cubicle. In the seventeen years he had lived at 1577 Third Avenue, not a single guest had crossed his threshold. When he watched TV crime shows, he thought about how the dust of those rooms contained his own, lonely DNA, and no one else’s.
He approached the admissions desk and pulled a dollar from his pocket, knowing that a donation of any amount could get you an entry button. He clipped the metal disk to his lapel, a vibrant turquoise against the drab suit, and felt like he had earned a merit badge. An unaccountable sense of belonging washed over him.
His plan was to move straight ahead toward the central staircase and push himself deep into the building, hoping to find some treasure to direct his journey. He crept along the north side of the staircase with faltering strides that seemed specifically choreographed for his short, thick legs and uneven posture, the briefcase serving as a ballast to his wobble.
A large mosaic fragment greeted him: a bejeweled woman with immense brown eyes, compassionate and knowing in their direct gaze. He passed the shining Byzantine chalices and elaborate gold accessories of early Christianity and stopped to look at a set of silver plates that illustrated the story of David like a comic strip. Battles with Goliath and a lion, described with flinging drapery and simplified expressions that made the hero resemble a middle-school doodle.
He then plodded past the candy-colored stained-glass windows and moved toward the monumental Spanish gate that divided the Medieval Hall. The Hall itself was a cool cave at the building’s center, like the lungs of a giant whale. The arches that punctuated its sides seemed to form a ribcage stretched wide to contain some ancient breath it had pulled in long ago and held steadily.
Metropolitan Stories Page 7