by Orts, Teresa
Nate kept on reminiscing, but his voice had gone to the back of my mind.
“The salvation to both lies beneath.” I remembered as the elevator door opened on the ground floor.
“What?” Nate stared at me, confused.
“The answer is not on the obelisk. It is down below, on the crabs at the base!”
Nate still didn’t seem to get it.
“We need to get back to the obelisk, now!” I grabbed Nate’s hand and we sprinted up 5th Avenue. This time I was the one dragging Nate along.
He ran behind me, but he seemed utterly confused.
“The prophecy says ‘Only the divine stone found where heaven meets earth will save her.’ The clue is in the next sentence. ‘The salvation to both lies beneath.’”
The spark of hope that appeared in Nate’s eyes was enough to keep me going. We were going to get to the bottom of this, no matter what it took.
“The plaque said the crabs nested underneath the obelisk had been added when it was reerected in Alexandria. Cleopatra had them put there, so the clue she left for us must be on the crabs.” I kept walking without breaking my stride.
I felt so relieved for at last having an idea.
“I see what you mean,” Nate said as if he’d finally put the pieces together.
Nate picked up the pace as the obelisk appeared again behind the trees.
When we got to the base, there was a woman there with her dog. She was smoking a cigarette while the white poodle ran free on the lawn. She was in her sixties or so and was wearing a fancy red coat and high heels. Her hands were covered by red leather gloves, and she was also wearing a pair of glittering diamond earrings. She watched us as we walked around the obelisk in a rush. She was probably wondering what was so exciting about it.
“They’d been in our face all this time,” I said, staring up at the top of the pedestal where the bronze crabs rested under the obelisk.
“I know.” Nate observed them, even though he didn’t seem a hundred percent convinced by my theory.
Unlike the obelisk itself, the crabs were in relatively good shape. They were almost intact. I went around checking each of them, but they were too high up. I couldn’t see them properly.
After checking that the only person around was the woman with the dog, I took off my coat, jumped over the railing surrounding the obelisk, and managed to climb up the pedestal.
The woman was now staring openly at me. She leashed her dog and came toward us.
“Sophie, be careful!” Nate climbed over the railing. He was standing right beneath me with his arms stretched up into the sky as if prepared to catch me.
There was nothing on them. Damn!
I’d hoped the crabs had some symbol on them. It would’ve made our lives much easier. With four plain crabs, I was as lost as before.
After I had awakened Nate’s hope in vain, I didn’t want to have to break any more bad news.
“Hey, come down. That woman’s coming over,” Nate hissed. I could hear her high heels clicking on the pavement as she approached.
“One minute. I need to check the other ones,” I said as I tiptoed around the edge of the pedestal.
“Be careful. You’re going to kill yourself,” Nate said, following along the base as I moved.
“Hey, you can’t be up there,” the woman shouted as the dog barked at me.
I pretended not to hear her and kept on walking along the edge.
“She needs to come down. She can’t be up there,” the woman told Nate as she realized I was ignoring her.
I didn’t want to get in trouble. I rushed to check the other crabs and climbed down as the woman requested.
“There’s nothing special about them. I’m not sure what the four crabs mean,” I announced, disappointed, to Nate as the woman stood next to him.
“What’s that you’re looking for?” the woman asked.
Most likely she’d decided we’d be the anecdote to bring to her Upper East Side tea party. However, I wasn’t in the mood for small talk.
“Nothing, just wanted to check the crabs from up close,” I said, putting my coat back on.
The woman seemed annoyed at my dismissive attitude.
“We were just leaving. We just expected the crabs to look different,” Nate explained apologetically.
“Well, they’re not the original ones.” The woman looked away.
“How do you know?” Nate and I said in unison.
A thin smile appeared on the woman’s face. She was going to finally get the attention she’d been seeking.
“I’m a lifetime member of the Met. The originals are in the museum.” She pointed back toward the Met.
Nate and I looked at each other. The crabs were replicas. We looked at the gigantic white building behind the trees. The Met was only fifty yards from where we stood.
“The main entrance is at the front,” Nate said, darting toward the museum.
“Thank you.” We waved at the woman as we ran toward the Metropolitan Museum.
CHAPTER XIV
THE MUSEUM WAS JUST as I remembered from the time I’d visited with Dad at the age of nine. The main entrance hall was a massive open space resembling a Roman Catholic cathedral. The ceilings were two or three stories high. On each side of the hall there were pillars that reached up to the ceiling, joining in arches. In the center of the hall there was a dome and the top part was made of glass. Hundreds of people—mostly tourists it seemed, speaking foreign languages—shifted around the hall.
“Any idea which way to go?” Nate said, gasping for breath as we stood in the middle of the hall with no direction.
I shrugged, trying to think where to start. This museum had one of the largest collections in the world.
“The information desk?” I said, staring at it.
“Not bad for a start.” Nate grinned as if he was embarrassed he hadn’t come up with the obvious plan himself.
As we advanced through the hall to the information desk, an entire group of foreign tourists joined the desk line. One of them had an open orange umbrella and the rest followed like a flock of sheep. They took photos of every corner of the entrance hall, including the information desk. It made me wonder what was so special about that plastic circular desk.
We waited behind them as the attendant distributed headphones and museum maps to each. Nate tapped his foot on the floor impatiently. We both stared at them as if by doing so it would make them move faster. Some of them were asking questions in undecipherable English to the attendant. This was going to take us all day.
“I’ll try to get a map,” Nate said to himself and squeezed past the tourists until he got to almost the front of the line. He stood behind two older ladies. One of them turned to glance at him, but showed no sign of letting him through.
Nate turned, catching my eye and sighing in desperation. Then, standing on the tips of his toes, he reached over one of the ladies and managed to get a map from the desk.
He squeezed back through the group, and we stepped to one side while Nate unfolded the map.
“Egyptian Art. There.” I pressed my finger on top of the map, making it wrinkle.
Nate turned the map around 180 degrees, placing the map’s main door right behind us.
“That way!” He pointed at the passage on the right side of the entrance hall, right below one of the arches.
Nate hurried, squeezing through the people in the corridor. There were sarcophagi on either side, which we ignored since we knew exactly what we were looking for.
At the end of the corridor, the room opened into a large space similar to a gigantic greenhouse. The right side wall was made of glass and faced the gardens of Central Park.
As soon as we walked in, I remembered clearly the last time I’d visited with Dad. I’d been absolutely dazzled by the beauty of the Temple of Dendur. That was the first time I’d ever been anywhere near an authentic Egyptian monument. I could never forget feeling so small next to something so important from Ancient Egypt.
“You check that area. I’ll go this way,” Nate said, rushing to the left side.
I went around searching for the four crabs, but couldn’t locate them. The room looked slightly smaller than I remembered. This had happened to me several times. I’d been back to places as an adult and I found them less exciting. It was a shame that when we grew up we lost the ability to be fascinated by simple things.
I could see Nate going around the Temple of Dendur, checking the pieces next to it, but I could tell his search was as unsuccessful as mine. This was really going to get us nowhere. There were too many pieces in the Ancient Egyptian area.
There were two uniformed security guards standing at either side of the doors. They each had an earpiece in one ear.
I waved at Nate, and as soon as he saw me, he rushed over to meet me by the door.
“Did you find it?” Nate said, wiping the sweat off his forehead with his jacket sleeve.
“No, but maybe he knows,” I whispered, nodding toward one of the security guards.
Nate didn’t waste a second. “Excuse me, do you know where the crabs that held the obelisk in Central Park are?”
“No idea. It’s best you ask at the information desk in the entrance.” He looked over Nate’s shoulder as if he couldn’t stop guarding the room for a moment.
“Yeah, I remember those crabs. They were over there, next to the temple. They must’ve moved them somewhere else,” the other guard said.
“Do you know where?” Nate and I said in one voice.
“Your best shot is to ask at the information desk. They could really be anywhere.” He gave an apologetic smile and looked away.
We stared at each other and accepted that whether we liked it or not, we were going to have to patiently wait in the line at the information desk.
When we got to the main entrance hall, it seemed that the midmorning rush had passed. There were still lots of people around, but there were no visitors waiting at the information desk.
“How can I help you?” The woman at the desk smiled at us. She reminded me of Mary from the Getty.
“We’re looking for the crabs from the Central Park obelisk. Do you know where they are?” Nate asked, as if trying to slow himself down.
“Yes, they’re by the Temple of Dendur.” She grabbed a map and proceeded to mark it. “If you go through that—”
“They are not there,” I said, sounding slightly too direct.
Nate playfully kicked me on the foot as if to warn me to watch my manners.
“Yes, they are by the Temple of Dendur.” The woman continued marking the map and ignored what I said.
“Believe me, they aren’t there,” I insisted.
The woman brought her gaze up from the map to meet mine and took a deep breath. “I have been working here for eight years and they have always been next to the Temple of Dendur.”
“Sorry, she meant the security guard told us they’d been moved.” Nate apologized.
“He probably didn’t know what he was talking about,” the woman said, shifting her attention to the people waiting behind us, hinting that we needed to move.
This reminded me of the time I bought a pair of shoes from an online store. As two months later the shoes hadn’t arrived, I called the shop and explained to an attendant by the name of Lucy what happened. She had no idea what I was talking about, so she transferred me to the store central office. Once I was on the line with the office, they had no idea why I’d been transferred to them or who Lucy was. Then they advised me to try to call again and select option two on the main menu. After an hour, I was back to square one, and no one knew where my shoes were.
Certainly, we didn’t have the time and I wasn’t going to let them drive us around in circles.
“Would you mind double-checking in the computer?” I asked as politely as I could.
“I’m certain that—”
“I would be so grateful.” Nate looked directly at her with his best good-boy smile.
The more I knew Nate, the more I realized he was aware of the effect he had on women. Not only on teenagers, women of any age. The woman looked at Nate and turned around reluctantly to search on her computer.
“I’m afraid both crabs have been taken off display. They—”
“Both!” Nate exclaimed, cutting her off. “You mean four of them.”
The woman spoke, rushing through the words without showing the least interest. “Yes, the computer says we have only two.” Reading farther down the screen, she said, “The other two were stolen back in Egypt when the obelisk was being transported to the shipping agent in 1980. We have the two remaining ones.”
Nate and I stared at each other, bewildered.
“Is there any way to see the ones in storage?” Nate asked, pressing his lips together as if he’d reached the same conclusion as me. Were we not the only ones who knew of the importance of those crabs and the prophecy from the Caesareum?
“In some cases it is possible to view pieces in storage for purposes of specific research. Please move to the side and fill out this form to request an appointment.” The woman reached under her desk and produced a form and a pen.
“Now, if you’ll excuse me,” she said, looking right past me as if I was no longer standing in front of her. “How can I help you?”
“Wait,” Nate said, refusing to be dismissed. “What do you mean ‘an appointment’? We need to see them today.”
“The pieces are in the basement vault, and they’d have to be brought out. It’s a three-month process at minimum,” she said without making eye contact, as if we were talking to a computer.
“Please move aside. There’re people waiting.”
This is what they call the New York attitude. I’d heard of it before, but this was the first time I’d experienced it firsthand. She obviously knew how desperate we were, but she couldn’t care less. She only got paid to answer questions and fill request forms following the protocol, and that’s all she was planning to do.
I wasn’t a big fan of L.A., but at least people in California seemed friendlier. Perhaps it’s the warmer weather.
New York was the city that never slept, no doubt about that. You could tell by people’s stressed attitudes.
We were both leaning on the desk as if to absorb the shock.
“What are we going to do?” I asked. This time I was the one hoping to hear from Nate that everything was going to be fine.
“I have no idea. We’ll have to think of something else.” Nate had no reason to pretend anymore. I’d seen exactly what was happening to him.
As there was nothing else for us to do at the museum, we filled out the useless form anyway and took a taxi back to the hotel. We would have to think of a way to get to the two crabs in the vault.
Nate stared out of the taxi window the entire trip without saying a word. I wanted to tell him that everything was going to be fine, that I wasn’t going to let anything happen to him, but that wasn’t a promise I knew I could keep, and Nate knew that also.
When we got to the hotel entrance, Nate’s cell phone went off. He searched the different pockets of his jacket until he located it. He checked the caller ID and rolled his eyes at me.
“I have to take this. It’s Preston—my cousin. If you want to go ahead, I’ll stop by your room later this afternoon,” Nate said, staring at the elevator doors as they opened.
“It’s okay. I’ll wait.”
Preston and Nate seemed to be close, as this was the second time he’d called him in the past two days. I still found it unbelievable Preston Gorringe, the leading candidate for the senate seat in California, was Nate’s cousin. Preston was obviously important to Nate, even at this time, since Nate always interrupted whatever he was doing to take Preston’s calls.
Nate stepped to the side, making it harder for me to listen.
“Hey, Preston,” Nate said, almost in a whisper.
“I know. I got your text.” Nate walked around in small circles. “Tonight around
9:00 p.m. I’ll be there. Don’t worry. I have the address.”
Nate glanced at me for a split second.
“Okay, see you then.”
Nate stowed the phone in his pocket and pressed the elevator button.
“Sorry, I had to take the call.” He didn’t give up any more details.
We got into the elevator, but no words were spoken. I could tell Nate was trying to avoid conversation. He didn’t seem eager to tell me about his cousin Preston, or where he was going tonight at 9:00 p.m.
I didn’t understand Nate. He was always so reserved, especially about his family. It seemed hard for him to speak out loud about his private life.
I could picture his mom’s horrified look if she found out he was dating a girl from West Hollywood. That was probably a scene he’d been avoiding also.
As the elevator doors slid open on the fiftieth floor, Nate spoke without making eye contact. “I’ll see you in the morning. I have to meet my cousin Preston tonight. He’s in New York, too.”
Nate fidgeted on his feet. “I’ll make some phone calls to see if anyone can fast-track our application at the Met. Dad knows some people. Maybe they can help us.”
“I was just thinking about it, too. Tomorrow I have a meeting with Professor Silverman at NYU to discuss my scholarship. He also works at the Met. I’m sure he can help us.” My voice quavered as if I was about to start crying.
I didn’t know why, but deep inside, I was expecting an invitation to join him tonight.
We stood there, unsure of each other for a moment, and as I didn’t want to force Nate to do anything he wasn’t ready for yet, I looked away and swiped my room key. “Okay, see you tomorrow, then.”
“Hey, wait!” Nate grabbed me by the arm, making me turn toward him. “Why don’t you come with me?”
“If you don’t want me to, it’s okay,” I said so quietly I barely heard the words.
Nate placed his hand under my chin and lifted my face until our eyes met. “What do you mean? You’re welcome to come if you’d like.” His eyes narrowed, confused. “Preston happens to be here for a convention.”
“I still can’t believe Preston Gorringe is your cousin,” I said out loud, as if to let it sink in.