“Not the movie, Daddy. That place. I’ve been there.”
Her father only shook his head, chalking her insistence to her illness. He stood and scooped his daughter into his arms. “Come on, Princess, let’s put you to bed.”
Mikah wrapped her arms around her father’s broad shoulders and laid her head against his chest. “Buachaille Etive Beag.”
“What did you say?” He frowned as the strange words emerged from his daughter’s mouth.
“That’s the name of the mountain.” She’d never wondered how she knew that, whether she was feverish or delusional.
“You, sweet princess, have a wonderful imagination.”
“I want to go there someday.”
“Then someday you will, but right now you need to go to bed.”
“Okay, Daddy. Maybe I’ll dream of it some more.”
“Maybe you will,” he said, thinking nothing more of it.
She’d been miserably hot and enraptured at the same time. Just as she was now. Scotland had become her secret love and over the years that fascination never faded. She’d had posters as a teen and read travel guides through college. She avidly collected movies set in Scotland and sometimes she caught sight of familiar places in films that weren’t even set there.
For years, Mikah had been saving up for a vacation to Scotland and now she was here. The culmination of years of longing to visit this place and now she was here. And she hadn’t even had to dip into her savings to do it after all.
In recent years she’d visited other museums across America, gathering works from those museums for special exhibits as a function of her position as collections curator with the Milwaukee Art Museum. However, this was her first major journey abroad. When her boss announced that they’d be putting together an anthology of the early Pop Art movement, she’d lobbied fiercely to be the one to take lead on the project.
Though it was technically a business trip and despite the unusual temperatures, Mikah had felt an odd sense of contentment upon landing first in England and now in Scotland. She’d been all across the UK in the past week, collecting works from some of Britain’s best modern art museums. While Americans like Warhol and Lichtenstein didn’t get started until the 1960s, the Pop Art movement had its birth in Britain in the 1950s with artists like Peter Blake, Eduardo Paolozzi, and Richard Hamilton.
The views, the sights, the people; everything seemed as familiar to her as those works of art. Comfortable. Like a long-lost friend.
The first lift of her hair by the summer breeze had caressed her skin familiarly. The smell of the Highland air had conjured vague images of people and places she’d never known. Though Mikah was single and considered herself happily so, the rugged romance of the Scottish Highlands surrounding her roused a heretofore untapped desire to have someone to share it with. She found herself longing to walk hand-in-hand with a man she loved, the scent of heather surrounding them.
Oddly enough, she felt as if she had come home.
This was a home where she’d never lived, much less visited. But the feeling was heartwarming, nonetheless.
Though not so warming as the weather, she was reminded as the cab too quickly arrived at their destination, stilling even the feeble draft its movement had generated. She paid the man for his services and forced herself to step back out onto the radiant concrete of the street. Shading her eyes against the bright sunlight, she stared up at her destination. GoMA, or for those not in the know, the Gallery of Modern Art.
It, like everything else she’d seen in the past three days, was easily recognizable to her. She knew the neoclassic building with its marble columns and tall cupola on the roof as if she’d walked through its doors a dozen times before. Shaking her head at what she considered a burgeoning bit of insanity—most likely brought on by the stifling heat wave—Mikah shook her head with a self-derisive chuckle. Of course, she had seen the building before, just like everything else she’d seen so far. After all, she’d been scouring the web for weeks in planning this trip.
And if that wasn’t a reasonable excuse for the déjà vu moments that had been flying every which way since her arrival, her lifelong fascination with Scotland—and indeed all of Britain—could easily explain it. She’d read books, posted calendars, and searched websites on the topic for enough years to make it all achingly familiar.
Certainly that was all it was.
Pushing her scattered thoughts away, Mikah considered the building that had housed the Glasgow Exchange a century before.Historic Scotland, the historic preservation organization that was a driving force behind much of the cultural life in Scotland, must have had a bit of a laugh placing a modern art museum in a building that was reminiscent of a Greek temple. Or the Lincoln Memorial. It was an interesting juxtaposition.
Rushing past a bronze statue of a military man on his horse—both oddly wearing orange traffic cones on top of their heads—she made it through the doors of the museum in a record time for four-inch heels and into the blessed chill of the well air-conditioned building. A deep breath of relief drew the cool air in.
Thank God!She sighed and pulled her blouse away from her chest several times to air out her damp skin as she glanced around the lobby. It was incredibly easy to imagine the place as a busy hub of investments and trade. Almost too easy.
All the feelings of familiarity were beginning to make her apprehensive.
The muffled chorus of Queen’sYou’re My Best Friendsounded and with a grin Mikah pulled her phone from her purse, answering the call with a bright, “Hey, Kris!” without even looking at the screen. “You must be up early.”
“Haven’t been to bed yet,” Mikah’s longest and dearest friend yawned out. “I just wanted to wish you good luck with your meeting. This is the big one, isn’t it?”
“Aw, Kris, you really do listen,” she teased. “That’s so good to know.”
“Funny, Mikes,” Kris yawned again. “I’m going to get some sleep, but call me when you’re done.”
