by Frank Deford
That stunned Nina—no less, evidently, than it had baffled everybody else. “But don’t you have cameras and sensors and all that?”
“Doctor, this place is guarded like Fort Knox—has been ever since Murph the Surf stole the diamonds. So how Mr. Buckingham secreted himself is very important to us.”
“Nobody has done this since Murph the Surf?”
Fernandez shook his head ruefully, and it dawned on Nina then that inasmuch as nothing seemed damaged or missing, the authorities were more interested in how Bucky had gotten away with his nocturnal sojourn than they were in extracting a pound of flesh. So, Nina said, “Mr. Fernandez, I can assure you that my patient is no threat to anyone, nor to anything in this museum, and if I can speak with him, I’m sure that I can gain his promise that this will never happen again.”
Fernandez pondered this. “I gotta know how he did this,” he said.
“So, let’s find out,” Nina replied—and with that, Fernandez picked up his phone and asked that “the intruder” be brought into his office.
Bucky entered—if not manacled, still closely accompanied by two uniformed guards; nobody was taking the modern-day Murph the Surf lightly. He barely looked up at Nina, mumbling a “thank-you.” His suit was rumpled; he was unshaven, bowed of posture, sheepish of aspect.
“Bucky,” Nina said, “I have assured Mr. Fernandez here that you are not out to steal anything. Nor to harm anything. However, you have obviously trespassed—”
“But I didn’t damage anything!” Bucky cried out, coming into his own again.
Respectfully, Fernandez replied, “Sir, if I snuck into your house and spent the night, I would not be welcome there, even if I didn’t do any damage—would I?”
Bucky nodded. Nina took up the interrogation. “Did you actually spend the whole night in the museum?” He nodded again. “Did you break in?”
Bucky protested vigorously. “No, look.” Incongruously, he still wore a little admission button in his lapel. It was an especially hideous puce. “I came in late yesterday.” And then, quite proudly, “I’m a member of the museum, now.”
Nina buttonholed Fernandez, gesturing to the door. “Can I talk to you?” He nodded, following her out.
“What’s up?” he asked, when they were alone in the corridor.
“Look, I know how serious this is, Mr. Fernandez. But Floyd Buckingham just has one little problem, and that problem, incidentally, has something to do with the museum. But he’s a model citizen.”
“He hasn’t got any record,” Fernandez volunteered.
Nina was delighted to learn that Fernandez had discovered that; it put another arrow in her quiver. “Right! And he’s a great husband and father; respectable—he’s a prominent magazine publisher—the whole nine yards. If Mr. Buckingham tells you what he did and how he did it, and then you let him off, and he promises never to do it again…” Nina shrugged, throwing herself on the mercy of the museum.
“Can you guarantee me he’ll never do it again?”
“Mr. Fernandez, I can’t guarantee anything, but I can ninety-five percent guarantee it, and if he does do it again—yes, I can absolutely guarantee that he won’t hurt anything.”
Fernandez pondered that. “He’s gotta tell me everything.”
“Of course.”
“And no compromises. If I let him walk, I don’t ever want to see his butt back in here again. Ever.”
Nina nodded—although she was put off by Fernandez saying “butt.” God, Nina hated that word. “Ass,” she thought, was so much better. But nowadays everybody had concluded that “butt” was more respectable. So, she nodded solemnly and declared, “If his ass is ever back in here, he deserves whatever you hand him.”
“Okay,” Fernandez said, and they went back into the office.
“Bucky,” Nina said, steel in her voice, “tell Mr. Fernandez everything he wants to know.”
Bucky got the picture. “Okay,” he began, “I came into the museum late yesterday afternoon and went up to twenty-seven. See, I have, uh—”
Nina interrupted. “Mr. Fernandez understands the gist of that situation.”
Bucky nodded. “But there’s always people passing through, and I decided I had to be alone there. Somehow. So I started lookin’ around.”
“To hide?” Fernandez asked.
“Just to hide, sir. I mean, I know what terrific security you got, all that. I knew I couldn’t sneak up to twenty-seven during the night. I knew that. I just wanted to be positioned for some private time the next morning.”
Fernandez shook his head. He was beginning to have his doubts that he should let someone as bananas as this back on the street.
“Well, lemme tell you,” Bucky explained, “it’s not easy to find a place to hide here. I did see some nice big vases down in the European Sculpture Court, but they’re way up on pedestals. No good. Finally, I worked my way up to the north end. All the Egyptian stuff. You know that?”
Fernandez frowned. “Mr. Buckingham, it’s my job to know every inch of this museum.”
“Oh yeah, of course. So, anyway, I end up in that huge hall where the temple is.”
“The Temple of Dendar?”
“Yeah.”
“Don’t tell me you hid in the Temple of Dendar?”
“Oh no—no way, José,” Bucky said—but then he remembered that Fernandez was Hispanic, and he worried that maybe “no way, José” was anti-Hispanic. So, quickly: “I mean, that place has gotta be wired, lasered. Nobody could hide in the temple. But outside. Outside, where the temple’s been eroded, they’ve constructed these big blocks—concrete, I guess. They’re just like steps. And I could see this little ledge up in the back, and so if I climbed up the blocks and lay down, there was no way you could see me.”
“But the guards?”
“The guards are great, sir! They are all doing their job. But they are all around the front of the temple, where they should be, like stopping people from taking flash pictures and videos. Which they should. Which is their job. But nobody’s looking around near the back of the temple, because who cares? Right?”
“Right,” said Fernandez, shaking his head.
“All I really had to worry about was some visitor seeing me. But it was late; there weren’t many left. Still, just to be sure, I took off my little entrance button”—Bucky pointed to his puce lapel pin again. “I’d noticed all you officials wear little ID tags around your necks.” Fernandez fingered his. “So, what I did was, I took off a shoelace, and I had a little acetate folder in my wallet, and I put one of my frequent flyer cards in there. The United looked best—a nice, rich blue.” Bucky reached into his pocket and brought out his makeshift tag. Fernandez held his head; Murph the Surf had come to this. “Then see,” Bucky went on, “I punched holes in the acetate, ran my shoelace through that, and hung it around my neck. From any distance, you know, it looked like I was a big muckety-muck.”
“Holy Mother, I don’t believe it,” Fernandez moaned.
“All right, now it’s five o’clock. It’s only a few more minutes till closing. I walk up to the temple, around the side, where the big blocks go up, and act like I’m kinda checking it out. I pretend to make some notes. I can see nobody’s paying any attention to me. So—bingo—quickly, then, I scramble up the blocks and lay down on the ledge.” And that’s where Bucky stopped.
Everybody waited.
Finally, Fernandez said, “And that’s it?”
“That’s it. I never left, all night. I was a little scared about dozing off and rolling off. But, you know, I still caught forty winks here and there.”
Fernandez covered his eyes.
Bucky made sure to console him. “Sir, your security is terrific.” Fernandez shook his head. “No, no—think about it. Your system is based, logically, on the premise that you hav
e to protect yourself from somebody who’s up to no good. Why the hell should you care about somebody all harmless who just wants to spend the night?”
Fernandez did sort of mumble in support of that logic. Nina had to duck her head and pretend to search for a Kleenex in her pocketbook. Ah, yes, Bucky was back on his usual roll. “I mean, sir, I knew if I moved so much as a foot off that ledge, some laser is going to start ringing whistles all over the place. I am dead meat. So, I just lie there. All night. Finally, around quarter to nine this morning, I start hearing a lot of activity. I’ve still got my little United Airlines ID on”—he fingered it; Fernandez grimaced—“so I see the coast is clear, and I walk down those steps like I’m in charge. I make a beeline to the men’s room—whew—wash up, then go up to twenty-seven. I got there about ten after nine, and, yes, just what I wanted; I was all by myself. Mission accomplished. Couple more minutes, I’m gonna leave, but then the guard sees me. You have really got some terrific security people working for you, sir.” Bucky shrugged. “And that’s it. That’s all she wrote.”
“Unbelievable,” Fernandez said. He started to pace about. “But, I believe you. And I believe your doctor.” He waved a finger in Bucky’s face. “So, okay, I’m gonna let you go. But! But, I’m tellin’ you, sir: your butt is persona non grata in The Metropolitan Museum of Art from this moment on. Hereafter. Anybody sees you back here—ever—you’re arrested. Now, you can live with that?”
“Yes sir, I can. But I promise you: it’ll never happen again. Thank you.” He stuck his hand out then, and if somewhat reluctantly, Fernandez accepted it. Nina also thanked him, and then she left, Bucky behind her.
Outside, coolly, she only said, “Let’s take a walk.”
“I’m sorry, Nina. Uh, don’t you have any patients?”
“Patients? Excuse me, Bucky, but you are a patient—and right now, in fact, you’re more of a patient than I ever imagined.”
“I guess,” was all he said, softly—and they walked on, then, without speaking anymore, down Fifth Avenue. At the south end of the museum, across from 80th Street, Nina steered him around back.
The Metropolitan is incredibly jerrybuilt. The classical front, along Fifth, was actually constructed long after the museum was originally designed; other sections came along later, juxtaposing architecture of stark contrast. For example, the path that Nina and Bucky walked on now, at the south end, went by a sloping modern glass wall that abutted the beaux-arts front. That huge glass precipice gleamed in the morning light so that the day’s sunbathers were already assembled beneath, catching the rays from what amounted to a giant reflector.
Nina steered Bucky further along, toward the tunnel that headed out to the obelisk and the Great Lawn. The grass had just been cut, and already lovers had taken to lolling about and artists to working at their easels. Bikers rode by. Joggers loped, lost in their Walkmans. Nina pointed to an empty bench by the tunnel, and they slumped down together there. She waited without a word, until at last Bucky realized that it was up to him. He lifted his head. “I masturbated,” he said, softly.
“You what? Where?”
“Sitting there, looking at Venus and Adonis.”
“Did you plan that, Bucky? Was that why you wanted to be alone in twenty-seven?”
He shook his head, dispiritedly. “Oh no, Nina. Nothing like that. It just happened. I was there, alone, looking at the painting. And I could feel Constance. I was overwhelmed, and, all of a sudden, I—” He shrugged.
“Ever do that before?”
Gaily, Bucky held out his hands, up right before her face. “Hey, Doctor, no hair on my palms.”
Nina reacted instinctively. She took her own right hand, and slapped it down hard on his. “Goddamn it, this isn’t funny,” she snapped. “And stop smirking. Don’t you get it, Bucky? You risked your whole reputation, your whole career, your whole life back in there. Just imagine the headlines.” She held up her own hands now, as if they were a newspaper. “Met Masturbater!”
He ducked his head, shamefaced. “That close, Mr. Buckingham,” Nina went on—only this time she held up her thumb and forefinger, barely apart. “You were that close to losing that whole glorious existence you’ve created. And there’s no explaining yourself. ‘Oh please, your Honor, it’s very understandable. See, Venus is my current, would-be mistress, just like she was back in the seventeenth century in Antwerp. Soon, too, I’ll be shacking up with the same lady, who also lives in the twentieth century, and though I barely know her, I’m going to leave my wife and children and run off with her. But in the meantime, I’m sure you’ll understand that I have to rendezvous with her painting in the museum and make the best of it.’
“And, of course, the judge is just going to say: ‘Oh well, Mr. Buckingham, that explains it all. Case dismissed.’” And Nina brought down an imaginary gavel.
It was Bucky who held up his thumb and forefinger now. All the usual bravado was gone, all the cheek, all the charm that invariably passed him through the narrow portals of convention that blocked most other people. “Yeah, that close,” he sighed. “I know. I’m losing it. Aren’t I, Nina?”
“I guess,” she replied truthfully. “I guess maybe you are.”
“Yeah,” Bucky whispered. “But I can’t help it, Nina. I can’t stop any of this.”
And then, in the next moment, he began to sniffle, and then he began to cry—great tears, great wracking sobs. The good Dr. Winston could only reach over to her patient, to the disconsolate Buckingham, take him in her arms there on the park bench in Central Park, hold him, rock him softly, and assure him that it was going to be all right. But…
But, it didn’t seem to Nina anymore that it necessarily was going to be all right.
16
That afternoon (after he had called Phyllis with some ridiculous alibi which she did not for a moment believe), Bucky arrived at Nina’s for their appointment that had already been scheduled. Moving immediately to the couch, he plopped himself down and began to deliver a torrent of gratitude and apology—all of which was sincere, but overdone, nonetheless. Bucky also explained that he had already sent a personal note of appreciation to Robert Fernandez and had made out a nice check to the Metropolitan.
When he had concluded this recitation, Nina said, “Okay, for now, we’ll skip over these remarkable events of the past twenty-four hours. I have something else to ask you.”
“Shoot,” he called out. Already, some of the jauntiness was returning.
Nina, still standing, templing her hands before her face, withdrew them, and then leaning down, inquired, gently but firmly, “Bucky, tell me, Constance…her last name?”
“Rawlings.”
“Is Constance Rawlings real?”
His eyes darted about, confused. “You mean Constance—now?”
“Yes, let’s just confine this discussion to the present century.”
“Jesus, Nina, you don’t think I made up Constance?” She drew closer yet—if not for intimidation, then certainly for emphasis. “Well then, Constance Rawlings of Chicago is not to be confused with Jocelyn Ridenhour of New York, is she?”
This time, all the air went out of Bucky. “How did—?”
“If there is a difference, tell me about Jocelyn.”
“Well, of course there is. There’s Constance, and there’s Jocelyn. But how the—?”
“Never mind how. I’m the one with the questions.”
Bucky mumbled an “okay,” sipped some water, and then he began: “I met Jocelyn about a year after I left Philadelphia and came up to New York—advertising agency. She was in the art department, divorced then—and even though she was a lot older, we hit it off.”
“What does ‘hit it off’ mean, exactly?
“Exactly what you would think ‘hit it off’ means.”
“How long did the affair last?”
“Oh, a couple years. Really, right up till I started getting serious with Phyllis. By then, I’d left the agency, gotten into magazines, and when I broke up with Jocelyn, that was the last I saw of her until—”
“Until when?”
“Well, a couple years ago. Jocelyn’s won some kind of art director’s prize, and there was this award dinner I had to go to, and you know, we chatted—the usual: you’re looking great, terrific to see you—and we said, hey, let’s have lunch. And we did. Went to Gabriel’s. But that’s it. I haven’t seen Jocelyn for months.”
This wasn’t a lie. On the other hand, it wasn’t exactly the truth. It was Clintonish. Seen was the operative word. But Nina wasn’t informed of the subtlety, and so she took off in another direction.
“You ever tell Jocelyn about Constance?”
“All of it—walking into that office with her, getting all tingly. Jocelyn was fascinated. She’s always been into whatcha-callit—the spirit world, stuff you can’t explain.”
“But you never told Phyllis about Constance?” Bucky shook his head. “So, you told things to Jocelyn you wouldn’t tell your wife?”
“Hey, come on, you’re twisting that, Nina. When I was going out with Jocelyn, we knew it was just a, uh, thing. Look, she’s a good fifteen years older than me. We were making it, sure, but it was never really any typical boyfriend/girlfriend stuff. I could talk to Jocelyn about everything. In fact, she was the only person—I mean, before you—that I ever told about Constance. Now, do you really think I could tell Phyllis that no matter what happened in my life, there is this one woman who is meant for me—and it’s not her? Come on.”
Nina allowed him that. “Fair enough,” she said.
So now he shot back at her, “Okay, who told you about Jocelyn?”
Nina pretended to study her nails. “Oh, just somebody named Phyllis Buckingham.” Bucky’s head snapped back. “Some friend of hers told her about our little tête-à-tête at the Stanhope, and so she came in yesterday and asked me about us.”