Stealing Away

by Harley Fox

  “Mm,” she says, not looking up from her book. I shake my head and go back to watching. Rebekka and I started working for Edward at around the same time, a couple years ago. Julian came on after our old coworker and replica artist Anton got cold feet and bailed on a particularly lucrative job. We had nothing to trade, which made Edward look very bad in the client’s eyes. He gave Anton a “red smile” once he got his hands on him again.

  “Okay, it’s just on the right side there,” Julian points out.

  “I see it,” Edward growls.

  He pulls the van up next to the curb, parallel parking on the busy city street. Edward puts it in park and turns it off. I grab the handle of the side door and slide it open, replacing the stuffy air in here with the stuffy air out there.

  “Ah, fuck, it’s hot today,” I say as I step out. I put my hands on my back, cracking it, reaching myself up to my full height, which is taller than most people walking by. I can feel my T-shirt sticking to me, tugging on my abs and pecs. A couple of college-aged chicks walking by give me some raised eyebrows as they near. Their eyes rove over my body, then up to meet mine. I give them my patented I’ll fuck you better than you can imagine smile and their cheeks turn pink as they giggle to each other and keep on walking.

  Rebekka pokes me in the back and I step out of the way of the van door. She hops down onto the sidewalk while Julian exits the passenger seat, giving his back a stretch as well. Edward comes around to the sidewalk. The hustle and bustle of the street fills my ears.

  “Julian,” he barks. “Get a parking pass.”

  Julian grumbles, but does as he’s told. Rebekka locks the back door and slides it shut. The van is dark, making it difficult to see at night. Painting it this shade of blue is a good idea, but it makes the inside like a fucking sauna. I don’t know how Edward doesn’t break a sweat. You ask him, though, and he’ll probably start going on about internal temperature regulation or some other survivalist bullshit. I’d just crack the window a bit, if it were me.

  “So this is the place?” Rebekka asks.

  I turn around and have to crane my neck to look up at the giant white building. I let out a low whistle.

  “Damn. Got to be the best one so far.”

  Marble columns reach up, with roaring lion statues flanking them out front. The building stretches the whole block to each side. Tall tapestries hanging on the walls showcase the museum’s rare exhibits. Roves of tourists, school kids, families all spill in and out of the doors. It’s about lunch time so some of them are reclining on the steps leading up to the front door of the museum.

  “It is the best,” Edward tells us as Julian comes back with the pass. “They got a new shipment in just last week. A few things, some of interest. The one we’re going to focus on is this necklace, though. Jade. Ming dynasty. The rest of the stuff will fetch us crap compared to that.”

  I nod. The Ming dynasty’s a popular era. Some clients pay top dollar for anything from that time.

  Once Julian’s put the pass on the dashboard and locked and closed the van door, Edward says, “All right,” and we walk up the steps to the glass doors leading us into this sarcophagus of time.

  The air-conditioning feels great once we get inside. My shirt cools down instantly and I feel the cold dampness clinging to my hard body. More stares, from some solo mothers this time. They’re my favorite. They’re not looking for anybody to take them away. Just a quick escape from their humdrum lives. And an excuse to try out all the depraved stuff their husbands would never let them do.

  “Christ, would you look at this place?” Edward says. He’s craning his neck, staring up at the ornately painted ceiling, fifty feet high. “So fucking posh, so delicate for their dainty little minds.”

  “Who are you talking about?” I ask him, and he looks at me.

  “Everyone. These people just look at all this stuff, wanting to pass the time. They have no idea how easy we have it now, how hard it was for all the people who made this historical shit.”

  “Maybe they’re trying to learn. Maybe that’s what they’re here for.”

  There’s a sharp exhale through his nose. “You can’t teach these softies anything nowadays. Give ‘em three days in the forest and they’d all be dead in the first twelve hours.”

  “Yeah, and if we went back to forest living we’d lose all our culture. Would that be a better life?”

  “Hey, guys?” Rebekka looks from me to Edward. “Wanna tuck your dicks back into your pants and let’s get to work?”

  She leads the way to the admissions line where we wait like good citizens. Buy our tickets, go through the metal detectors, get the stub ripped off and handed back to us. I grab a floor map of the place, as do the rest of them, and take my pen and notepad out of my pocket. The four of us regroup.

  “Okay,” Edward says. “I’ll take first floor. Rebekka, second. Julian third. Marc,” he looks at me. “Can you be trusted alone? Or do you need someone with you to reel in your dick this time?”

  “Hey, come on,” I protest. “We weren’t in the bathroom that long. And she wasn’t that loud.”

  Julian grins and I give him a wink, but Edward’s voice makes my own grin dissolve away.

  “Just take the fourth floor and keep it in your pants this time. This place is pretty big. We’ll meet back here in three hours. Okay?”

  “Sounds good,” says Julian.

  “See you then.”

  We break and I head for the stairs alongside Rebekka and Julian. They go ahead, walking close together.

  “Jeez, is it just me or is Edward being more of a dick than usual lately?”

  Julian tilts his head. “He’s probably just stressed about this job. I think the reason we put this place off for so long is because he had trouble finding buyers.”

  “Yeah, but he can have some manners,” I protest.

  “Edward’s a dick, we all know that,” Rebekka says. “Remember what happened to Anton?”

  “How can I forget?”

  We reach the second floor and Rebekka branches off.

  “See you in a few hours,” she says.

  “Bye Rebekka,” Julian says, but she walks away as though she didn’t hear him. He looks despondent, and we climb up to the next level in silence.

  “Pfft,” Julian says when we reach it. “Man, count yourself lucky you don’t have a girlfriend.”

  “Huh?” I ask. “What do you mean?”

  “Ugh. Fuckin’ … Rebekka and I have been fighting for a week now. No sex. Talking is pointless. It’s like … no matter what I do, she’s pissed at me.”

  “Yeah, well … you guys have been together for a couple of years now,” I point out. “Love has its ups and downs, right?”

  “Sometimes I envy you, man,” he says, shaking his head. “Gettin’ laid all the time, not having to wake up next to the same person day after day. It must be nice.”

  I blink at him and then put a smile on my face. “Uh, yeah. Pretty great.”

  He smiles, nods. “Fuckin’ stud.” A chuckle. “That woman in the bathroom. Fuckin’ classic.” He slaps my back. “All right, see you later, man.”

  “Yeah. See you.”

  I watch Julian walk away, and then keep climbing the stairs.

  Julian’s not wrong. If anyone in this museum can be considered a stud, it’d be me. But I don’t think he’s right to dismiss what he has with Rebekka so quickly. They have a good thing going. They’re just going through a bit of a hiccup right now. Why, I don’t know. But he shouldn’t be willing to throw something like that away.

  As for my sex life, well …

  It’s fun, sure. I can’t count the number of women I’ve had. And the sex is good, sure, but lately it’s like the last few times have been … well, to be honest, I’d actually forgotten about that time in the museum bathroom until Edward brought it up. Something’s been missing, but I don’t know what. It’s like when you make bread but forget to put in the salt. The same thing, for sure, but you can tell it’s not c
omplete.

  I take my notepad out, flip through past our previous jobs to the first blank page, and start making notes. You do this kind of thing for a while, you get good at recognizing what’s worth taking, what’s easy to replicate, and what hazards to avoid. Edward’ll take care of the security, no worries on that. The cameras are another issue. Tripping hazards, areas where things can fall down easily are no good. I stay away from the dinosaur sections altogether for just that reason. Besides, a lot of those things are plaster cast anyway. It’s like they’ve beaten us at our own game.

  This place is busy. Lot of school kids. No problem; they don’t pay attention to you for too long. I’ve had some kids ask me if I’m a body builder, like Arnold Schwarzenegger. Sometimes I’ll respond by getting two of them to grab onto my arm and lifting them up. It’s cute, like a little game. Edward’s always getting on our backs about not attracting any attention, but how can you ignore something like that? Or turn it away? The kids are just curious. They just want to have fun. So give ‘em a little fun.

  I move through the sections, making notes, checking out the map to make sure I know where I’m going, that I don’t miss anything. I walk into the Japanese section and adorning the walls are display cases with weapons, tapestries, fancy kimonos, and traditional wedding outfits. Here the kids are going crazy, running from exhibit to exhibit, pressing their faces up against the glass or leaning as far over the barriers as they can.

  I approach a display of a full samurai outfit and there’s a little boy freaking out, wanting to climb up into the display and touch the artifact. His mom, a total MILF if I’ve ever seen one, looks exasperated and in over her head.

  “Mom, I wanna see it!” the kid screams. He’s drawing looks from passersby.

  “No, Dylan, I told you. You can’t touch it, it’s off-limits.”

  “But I want to! I wanna be a samurai!”

  “You know,” I say in a voice loud enough to get the kid’s attention, “you won’t get to be a samurai with that approach.”

  Both the kid and mom stop to look at me. I look down at the kid, a light smile on my face.

  “They were calm. Did you know that? The way of the samurai focused more on Buddhism and Zen than people think. In face, some of their warriors even gave up killing altogether.”

  “They did?” the kid blinks up at me.

  “Oh yeah. You know that thing they do in ninja movies?” I make a fist with one hand and punch it into the palm of my other hand, lowering myself down into a bow.

  “Yeah, yeah!” The kid does a perfect impersonation of it, and I nod.

  “Like that. They kept calm. Even if their enemies were crazy, blood-thirsty, and wanted to kill everyone. Calm and serene.”

  His eyes are wide. He’s nodding. “Calm. Yeah.”

  He walks away from the display, putting his hands together, taking bows and practicing moving slowly. His mom steps up to me, a grin on her face.

  “Wow. You should deal with kids for a living. Is all that stuff true?”

  I shrug. “Some of it. I can’t remember if the hand thing is true, but it fit, so I went with it.”

  She looks impressed. “Well, you’ve certainly calmed him down for me.” She eyes me up and down. “You know, Dylan’s with his dad tonight if you want to get a drink.”

  I open my mouth, but before I can answer the kid calls for attention.

  “Mom! Come check out this sword!”

  She turns, lifts a hand. “Be right there!” Back to me, she offers an apologetic smile. “Sorry. Duty calls. But hey,” she fishes a business card out of her purse and hands it to me, “give me a call. That’s, um … that’s my personal number.”

  I read the card, give her a smile.

  “Thanks,” I say.

  “All right.” And then she leaves to go join her son again.

  Phew. I can’t count how many women have just given me their numbers. And I know from looking at her she’d be an animal in the sack. But I won’t have time. We’ll be busy tonight, and then heading out tomorrow, after the sell.

  And besides that, what Julian said before we split up still resonates in my head. Sleeping with her would be like sleeping with every other woman like her. There won’t be anything else different. I’d just be getting my rocks off in someone with a different name.

  I pocket the card, knowing already that I’m not going to call her. Then I open up my notebook and get back to work.

  Persephone

  By the time I leave the bathroom I feel better. My makeup isn’t too smudged, but even if it is, who would care? If everybody’s going to judge me for my past, then maybe it’s time to swear off men for a while. That would at least make things easier.

  Sure. Easier to give in to everybody’s judgment rather than live life the way you want to.

  Ugh, shut up. It’s not that simple, okay? I can’t just ignore what my coworkers and colleagues say about me. If I did that I’d be … I’d be …

  I’d be what?

  I’d be something. And it’s not something I want to find out right now, thank you.

  I get to the end of the hallway and breathe out a sigh. I need to unwind. I don’t particularly feel like going back to that archival work right now. Maybe a quick stroll around the museum. Get my stresses out the best way I know how: with history. So instead of taking a left, I take a right, and soon I’m amid the swarming masses of people taking time out of their lives to enrich it with education.

  I can’t help but smile as I look at the exhibits, even though I’ve seen them all enough times to know them by heart already. Something I take pride in is noticing the minor details of the artifacts. Small scratches where excavation tools were held by shaky hands. Or maybe a finger impression, erroneously left by the actual maker of a two-thousand-year-old ceramic pot. Sometimes I have to stand back because of the hordes of people all craning their necks to see the actual hair comb that Cleopatra used. And it’s times like these that I feel much less lonely, surrounded by my people, even though I don’t know any of them by name.

  Up the stairs and I tour around, then up and up again, finally arriving on the fourth floor. I pass through the exhibits I’d taken the school group on this morning, walking into the Chinese history section. There are fewer people here—probably because of the stairs—so it’s quieter. Mostly adults. I arrive at the Forbidden Necklace and stop to admire it, able to take it all in since I’m the only one in front of it. Just look at the detail on it! I can’t wait to find out if it really was offered to Xiaojie Lie by Li Zicheng. It would be such an enormous and scandalous discovery. One that would change the course of history forever. And all for the sake of love …

  Something moves up beside me and at first I’m shocked to discover that it’s a man. He’s tall, that’s the first thing. Tall and strong. I’m sure that T-shirt he’s wearing is two sizes too small on purpose, because what it’s showing me it’s showing me in spades.

  He doesn’t seem to notice me. Instead he’s got a notebook and a pen out, and he’s looking at the Forbidden Necklace, jotting down small notes. He reads the placard, looks back up at the necklace. Glances around, makes some more notes.

  “It’s beautiful, isn’t it?” I ask. He blinks and looks down at me—he’s about a head taller than I am—before looking back at the necklace.

  “Yeah,” he says. “It’s really exquisite.”

  His voice is deep, almost gruff. But there’s a smoothness to it. Like a rich, dark beer.

  “It’s my favorite artifact in the whole museum,” I tell him. “It’s called the Forbidden Necklace, because it might imply an affair between the rebel leader who overthrew the Ming dynasty and the emperor’s wife. Back in the 1600s.”

  He nods, a smile hinted at on his face.

  “Forbidden Necklace. Like Forbidden City. I like it.”

  I smile up at him. “That’s right.” I nod down to the book in his hand. “Are you taking notes on it?”

  He closes the notebook with a snap. “Uh,
yeah. On everything. Just stuff that I can look up later.”

  “Well, I’m a bit of an encyclopedia myself. I actually work here. I’m an archaeologist, doing research.”

  “Oh, wow,” his eyebrows raise. “I thought all archaeologists just dug in the dirt.”

  “Well, you know what they say: archaeologists like it dirty and on their knees.”

  I freeze, my eyes widening. Oh my God. Why did I just say that?

  This guy’s eyebrows somehow raise higher than before and this time he actually smiles. He lets out a small laugh as I feel the blush creep up on my neck.

  “I’m sorry,” I stammer. “I don’t know why I just said that. It was so inappropriate.”

  “It’s okay,” he says, still chuckling. “It’s not everyday a complete stranger tells you how much they dig bones.”

  Now it’s my turn to raise my eyebrows.

  “Was that an archaeology pun?” I ask, and his smile broadens. He gives a single nod.

  “Just trying to keep up.”

  “Well, you’re doing pretty well so far,” I say. There’s something about this guy; I don’t know what it is. He’s hot, yeah, but I feel comfortable with him too. My eyes are on his, and his on mine.

  And then he leans in for a kiss.

  I pull back, the smile sliding off my face like a sheet of melting ice.

  “Whoa,” I say, and he stops, almost stumbles, before straightening himself back up. I drop my gaze. “Sorry. I didn’t—”

  “No, I—” he stammers.

  “I didn’t mean to … I’m just …”

  “No, it’s okay.” I glance back at him and his cheeks have the pinkish hue of a blush to them. “Sorry. I got the wrong impression.”

  Fuck. “No. No, you … you didn’t. I’m just … kind of dealing with something right now. Trying to, ah, get away from some past history.”

  He seems to consider it. “I would have thought a museum would be the last place to go to get away from history.” I smile again. I can’t help it. He smiles back. “Hey, okay. Want to start over?”

  I furrow my brow. “What?”

  “Here.” And he takes a few steps back, managing not to walk into anybody. “We’ll start over. You were looking at the necklace, right?”