Metropolitan Stories

by Christine Coulson

  We no longer required the thrill of the real Alexander Ferris.

  Fantasy Ferris—bigger, brighter, blonder, beautiful-er—had obscured the boy himself. And we wondered no more.

  WHERE WE KEEP THE LIGHT

  Moody Russell cradled the unwieldy pillow of light in his arms and looked toward the Buddha Gallery’s forty-foot-high ceilings as he bent his knees and threw the cloud upward, releasing it into the air. It floated skyward like a stray balloon, then fractured just before reaching the ceiling, a firework display filling each fixture. The gallery lights were on.

  Moody was one of the Met’s lampers—the guys in charge of changing the lightbulbs.

  Sometimes the objects didn’t seem ready to face the fresh glare of the coming day: the visitors, the flashbulbs, the constant squeak of tourist chatter. “Aw, come on!,” Moody imagined a monumental Buddha moaning. “Five more minutes?” Its tone would be that of a bleating teenager. If the Buddha had a pillow—which, given its size, would need to be the scale of a mattress—it would crush it over its head.

  “Sorry, big guy,” Moody would say to comfort the Buddha, “but you’re the star of this show.”

  Moody moved to the next gallery, climbing a few steps until he reached the room devoted to the arts of Korea. There, he pulled another armload of light from the supply he carried on his orange cart and threw it more softly toward the lower, eighteen-foot ceilings.

  This time, the cloud snagged on a graceful stone hand sculpted into a gesture of meditation. The radiance hung there for a moment until Moody gave the cloud a gentle shove, sending it north and leaving a bright smudge of light across his brown Met uniform. Moody looked down and scowled, knowing that the other lampers would see that he’d missed a shot.

  In the Temple of Dendur, Moody took out the broomstick clamped to his cart and swung it at smaller puffs of light. He paused like a home-run hitter watching the luminescence soar upward into the cavernous space. “Aaaaahh!” Moody cried with a hollow yell to emulate the roar of a crowd.

  * * *

  —

  Moody had always been good with light, ever since he grabbed his first moonbeam as a toddler. He cradled it all night in his crib, a secret comfort in the room’s frightening eclipse. As a child, he would look out the window of his suburban house and imagine that the outline of the trees formed the inky shadow of a sleeping monster, only kept in its slumber by the shine of nearby streetlights. Later, as a teenager, he would stare at the stars, soothed by their pulsing breath, reassuring flashes in the face of his greatest fear: the dark.

  For Moody, darkness was a place, a tunnel where adult voices swelled into anger, then howls and pain. Darkness could hurt.

  The door to his room would crack open to reveal the hulking shadow of his father, as if the sleeping monster were now awake. He would drag Moody from his bed so he could shove and bat at the boy’s body, scraping and grabbing at his adolescent frame with swinging, extraordinary paws. A brutal roar would echo, rippling to the walls and back again, until the beast was sufficiently fed. Then he would drop the boy to the floor like a worn-out toy, and stagger, panting, from the room.

  These nights made Moody skittish and easily broken, often cowering despite his size and unrealized strength. His family mocked the throbbing clench of his terror; they called him “moody.”

  * * *

  —

  Light’s the whole game!” Moody would now tell anyone at the museum. “Can’t see any of this stuff in the dark!”

  As he made his stops each morning, Moody let his mind travel—the gray light of Paris, the scorching brightness of ancient Assyria, the summer sky of Wayzata, Minnesota, in the Frank Lloyd Wright room.

  His favorite escape was the Gubbio Studiolo, a small private study made for the Duke of Montefeltro’s fifteenth-century palace in Gubbio, Italy.

  Moody loved the closet-sized room, a complete illusion made with walls constructed of intarsia—tiny shapes of wood pieced together to create the impression of cabinets and shelves, latticed doors and benches. The fantasy continued with renderings of all the attributes of a Renaissance man: armor and military honors, piles of books, and instruments associated with music, science, and architecture.

  Every object was depicted with perfect perspective, animated by the further illusion of light and shadow made with different types and tones of wood. Moody understood the constructed shadows like an astronomer could grasp the solar system. They transformed the two dimensions into three, and corresponded to the source of real light in the original room: two windows side-by-side in a niche to the right as you entered.

  Moody would often stand in the Studiolo, the Italian sun brilliantly recreated with a series of invisible fixtures set beyond the windows. The false sunlight poured into the room’s nestling confines and stretched across the terracotta floor, providing a dizzying comfort in its perpetual afternoon.

  * * *

  —

  Hey Moody Russell!”

  Moody heard the thud of Joe Carasi’s Staten Island accent across the empty Medieval Hall. He turned to see his fellow lamper tossing mounds of light toward the stained-glass windows from a cherry picker. “What’s the difference between a pregnant woman and a light bulb?” Carasi asked.

  “What?” Moody Russell yelled back, playing along.

  “You can unscrew a light bulb,” Carasi replied.

  “Hey Joe Carasi,” Moody continued, without any reaction to the previous joke, as he pushed his cart slowly across the hall to European Decorative Arts, “How many Roman Catholics does it take to screw in a light bulb?”

  “How many?” Carasi said with mocked enthusiasm, as Moody moved past him.

  “Two,” replied Moody over his shoulder, “One to screw it in and another to repent.”

  Moody continued to move toward the Italian galleries as Carasi yelled, “See you in the Staff Caf!” in his wake.

  Theirs was a band of four: Moody Russell, Joe Carasi, George Sugarman, and Bill Faden, the Younger (Bill Faden, the Elder managed the custodians). They were the rock stars of the Operations team, smart and specialized in their crucial role.

  The four of them had a glittering cool that hung upon their diverging frames. Moody, a tall slab of a man, led the team with wisdom and the longevity of thirty-two years as a lamper. The wiry Carasi served as the sharp fool, quick and jabbing with his spiraling neighborhood humor. Sugarman was the gentle giant, precise and tender within his spongy mass, swollen nose, and cloudy glasses. And Faden, the Younger—and the youngest—played the handsome joiner, game for any twinkling fun. They all shared Moody’s crippling fear of the dark, understood, but never mentioned, as their common plague.

  * * *

  —

  The lampers landed at their Staff Caf table at 9:30, trays piled and stomachs ready. They began as usual: a rapid-fire exchange of museum humor that amused them with clapping predictability.

  “Hey Moody,” Carasi started, nodding toward a table of guards. “How many guards does it take to change a light bulb?”

  “Only one,” Moody whipped back at him, “But he’ll need to do some push-ups first.”

  “Hey Faden,” Moody continued, as an assistant from Development passed, “How many rich guys does it take to change a light bulb?”

  “Uh, one to change it, and a Mezz Girl to thank him for making the light possible,” Faden thumped, with a wink.

  “Hey Sugarman,” Faden said, taking up the ball. “How does Dick Trachner change a light bulb?”

  “That’s classified,” Sugarman declared quickly, with faux intensity.

  “Hey Joe Carasi,” Sugarman said, completing the quartet, “How many curators does it take to change a light bulb?”

  “Hooow many?” Carasi exaggerated, as a drawings curator walked by.

  “Three. One to change the light bulb, one to show earlier versions that influenced it, and one to
say that the changing was actually done by an assistant.”

  With this daily grace complete, the four bent over their breakfast piles, filling their mouths with the slurping urgency of hungry children. The intimacy of their small family revealed itself when, in the absence of any explanation, Carasi spoke about his sixteen-year-old daughter.

  “So, I look at Maria going out the door this morning and it’s November and she’s got no coat on. So, I say, ‘Where’s your coat?’—perfectly good question, right?”

  Mouths still full, all heads bobbed in agreement, the silent gesture of their amen, high-five, everlasting accord.

  “I bought her that nice pink down jacket last year. Cost me a fortune. So, she says, ‘Dad, I’m too old for ironic dressing.’ Which I hear as ‘I’m too old for balsamic dressing.’ So, I’m thinking ‘Why the hell are we talking about salad?’ and she storms out—no coat—and what am I supposed to do? What’s ironic about a coat?”

  Moody had three children, all out of the house now, and knew the brutal force of teenage rebellion. “Just let her get cold,” he counseled, “She’ll forget about irony and put on the damn coat.”

  “Drives me nuts,” Carasi responded.

  Mouths still full, the heads bobbed again.

  “Good sausage today,” Faden observed, “It’s different.”

  The heads bobbed steadily now, accompanied by a grunting symphony of approval.

  “Turkey, I think,” Sugarman added.

  Mouths still full, the heads bobbed again.

  * * *

  —

  At 7:25 that night, all the lights went out. Not just in the Met, but across New York City. The plug pulled on the whole apple. A massive blackout.

  The visitors had already left, as had most of the staff.

  Moody stood before his locker and felt his heart jackhammer with furious speed. His cart was empty, as were the cabinets where they stashed any spare glow.

  No light, no escape, nowhere.

  His whole life had been structured to avoid this very moment.

  The safety bulbs hadn’t even switched on. Immediately, the syrupy black of threat, and silence, and unknown everything, coated every crevice of space, every unseen wall, every lurking, pounding, breath-crushing inch before him, thick and trembling like some panicking crowd, despite his isolation.

  The door will crack open.

  The monster will rage.

  The echo will roar.

  There was only one place that might rescue Moody. But it would mean crossing the museum, plodding through the ebony swamp of galleries to find his salvation. He would aim for that place like a bull’s-eye, knowing that the path of his shivering arrow would not, could not, be straight.

  Moody’s quaking fear tripped him forward, heaving and unsteady. He staggered into the void as if his boots were two binding weights. The torrent of blackness showered upon him with the might of a gale wind as he trudged across the limestone floors. A long-forgotten howl clamored in his mind, and he slammed his eyes shut as if to squeeze the noise out of his head.

  Jumping shadows hinted that other bodies rustled on the edges of Moody’s trail, but he couldn’t register them as anything solid or real. He prowled onward like a wolf in winter, sniffing with desperation to find scraps for his survival.

  His path followed the map of his memory. So many times he had taken this same route, quick and nimble during his happy rounds, never registering its length or snaking turns. His bones finally took over, pulling him right and left and up and forward, through Africa and ancient Greece and Byzantium and then gliding into fifteenth-century Italy.

  He turned the corner and there they were, all three of them, stuffed in the Studiolo like a clown car. Moody entered and saw what he had hoped: an impossible stream of warm Italian light still shone through the window and formed a long rectangle on the tile floor. Within that miracle, Carasi, Sugarman, and Faden sat like cats on a windowsill, purring with relief in the Renaissance sun. Moody joined them on the floor and felt the light revive him as it smothered the static charge of his twitching nerves.

  Renewed in the persistent glow and soothed by its inconceivable presence, they stayed clustered in silence, relieved in unison, unquestioning of this singular exception to the consuming darkness. Still anxious, Moody broke the noiseless reverie.

  “You ever see what this guy looked like?” he asked the others.

  “What guy?” Sugarman responded, welcoming the distraction.

  “The guy who had this room built?” Carasi asked, joining in the collective diversion. “Wasn’t he the Duke of Monte Carlo, or something?”

  “Montefeltro,” Moody corrected.

  “Right, Montefeltro,” Carasi agreed.

  “Hey Joe Carasi,” Faden interrupted with tense humor, “Isn’t he a cousin of yours from Staten Island?”

  “Yeah, well you should see the nose on this guy, Montefeltro,” Moody said to steer the conversation back to his original question; he had seen a picture of Piero della Francesca’s famous portrait of Montefeltro. “Like a Mafia hit man who lost one too many fights. You know those noses that have a ledge at the bridge, like you could rest your beer on it?”

  “Oh, like Georgie here,” Carasi interjected, “Gogo, what do you keep on that monster beak when you’re not wearing those filthy glasses? Leftovers? Snacks?”

  “Hey Moody Russell,” Sugarman said, ignoring Carasi, and now speaking with a Staff Cafeteria calm, a tone of consoling normalcy. “How many plastic surgeons does it take to change a light bulb?”

  Moody knew Sugarman purposefully ignored Carasi’s insult to seize deftly on the thematic opening. In that moment, some cardinal reflex took hold, restoring the essential blocks of their constructed world.

  “Just one, Sugarman,” Moody replied, smiling, “But he’ll also want to do something about your nose.”

  OBJECT LESSON

  We protect them and save them and study them, all the while knowing that they think they’re protecting us, saving us, studying us.

  “We” are the art, the evidence, the beauty that these walls are built around and that these lights proclaim important. Objects made of everything, anything: yes, paint and marble, bronze and gold, glass, silver, paper, clay, but also steel and ribbons, mud and hair, wood, wire, and bones. We come from everywhere: tombs and closets, palaces and studios, floors and ceilings, fortresses and temples, sometimes with parts of those places still clinging to us. Because so often we were removed by someone, somewhere, when that someone couldn’t wait, or we couldn’t stay.

  “They” are our minders, men and women with a mothering, smothering kind of love for us. They fret over our every inch, every scratch, every wound, every questionable repair. They polish us like it’s the school play, every day. Our big moment for the world to see what beaming, glossy children we are.

  Every piece of us is testimony: Whose eye chose that shape, whose hand made that line, whose mallet carved that bump? Show us what happened, they beg, so we’ll know.

  Well, mamas, there’s been some mileage since we were made, some action, in slow drips and big splashes. Glory, war, revolution, the tilts of taste and the swags of renaissance. Some dark, dark ages, too. Empire to dirt in the course of a millennium. Slices cut into our sides to fit us into a new room. A century in a cardboard box, woodworms drilling like some unscratchable itch. The goddamn vacuum cleaner banging into our legs. Light bulbs!

  Shit happened. We show them what we can. The rest they guess, and they dig for it—sometimes actually get out the shovel and dig for it.

  Of course, they have their own dramas, with their delicate fears, their skyscraper egos, and their cracked and broken hearts. We help them when we can, jump into the museum, cradle them the way they cradle us, as if a single breath could crush them. But that mortality business is byzantine stuff, so many knotty roads and intricate pieces.r />
  Survival is a funny business, too. A losing game. Literally. They love us, and we lose them all. The ones who made us, the ones who gave us, the ones who sat down and played with us, the ones who held us, or just laid eyes on us. The ones who bought, traded, and sold us. Cleaned us, redeemed us, brought back the sheen on us. Loved us. Learned everything there is to know about us.

  Imagine how many reflections that ancient mirror has seen? Now imagine, imagine: Every one of them. Dead. Gone.

  But we live on. We are the proof, sticky but silent, hanging on that wall, standing on that pedestal. The proof that anyone was ever there at all.

  PAPERCUTS

  Walter turned the corner by the ancient dumbwaiter. It was 5:00 AM and his shift had ended. He loved when he was assigned the night shift, particularly this time of day in the serenity of the museum’s basement. He walked the hallways to a silent rhythm, the pace of those who had preceded him for a century, and those who would arrive after him, starting their day in just a few hours. He thought of the lemon cake he would bake when he got home, a relaxing ritual in the solitude of his apartment. He would smell that tart, sugary aroma as he sat on his sofa watching TV and anticipating the thick sleep that would soon take hold.

  These thoughts were interrupted, and Walter slowed down, surprised by the small pile he saw on the concrete floor. As a custodian, Walter instinctively noticed things that looked out of order, but this was different. He didn’t fully grasp what he saw until he got closer, but he realized immediately that the mound of plaid and denim was something fragile and broken.

  When he reached it, his breath pulled in sharply, an inhale of shock, followed by the weighted exhale of genuine grief. It was the small body of a staff member, a guy who Walter only knew as the Rubber Band Man. Walter always saw him in that same spot in the basement, diligently organizing the paper Met shopping bags in front of the wall of stacked boxes.