He smiles, shutting the car door. “My trip went well, thank you. The return flight was uneventful.”
Her scowl deepens. “What is this? I thought we were going to your place—”
He rests a hand on her lower back, guiding her up the steps. “Come on, Lili.”
“Is this a heist?”
“You seemed to like art.”
“I do, but this isn’t what I agreed to—it’s closed, anyway—”
“Not for us.”
Lili twists away from the warmth of his hand, storming ahead up the stairs.
Usisn’t a concept she’s yielding tonight.
“This is ridiculous,” she mutters when the guard at the door lets her through. The Great Hall, usually cavernous with noise and people and fascination, audio guides and unfolded museum maps, tourists’ khaki shorts and polos somehow endearing when they’re staring up at the high ceiling, is empty. Serenity laces it, an after-hours sense that hovers between excitement and secrecy.
“Where would you like to go first?”
He’s not even trying to contain his grin. She should turn around and leave. This concept—a museum, the two of them, summer evening—veers too close to the contours of a date.
Except—it’s the Met. It’s the Met, and it’s empty.
Thirty minutes. She’ll give this—whatever this is—thirty minutes, before she pulls him into some corner, gets what she came here for, and leaves.
“Temple of Dendur,” she announces, hooking right towards the Sackler Wing.
His footsteps—too-expensive shoes, hard leather soles—follow, keeping up without effort as she heads into the Egyptian galleries. The museum hush soothes her a bit, as she passes sandstone bas-reliefs, the protective heft of sarcophagi. Funerary art, the direct gaze of Fayum portraits in faded hues of ocher and cerulean, looks down at her from the gallery walls: death, stone, and color alive across centuries.
In her first months in the city as an undergrad, nearly free admissionin hand, she’d dissected the Met down to each of its rooms, a wing each visit. She’d pressed her nose against the glass protecting the long stretch of Imhotep’sBook of the Dead, feet after feet of priests’ hieratics on papyrus chanting out spells, incantations, prayers.
“It’s funny, isn’t it,” she muses, looking over the limestone reliefs. “It’s the same type of stone as the buildings outside. There’s some humor in that—tombs of the living, galleries of the dead.”
“Some similarity in the materialism, too. I’m surprised you aren’t disparaging the pharaohs for their avarice. Buried in their wealth, boats, and chariots, with full wardrobes, retainer sacrifices.”
“Retainer sacrifice, is that what you’re planning to do with Michael?”
Aleksandr raises an eyebrow, amused. “Excuse me?”
“I met him,” she clarifies. “He was in the car, when I left your place last time.”
He frowns. “I wasn’t aware.”
“Apparently, I’m a problem,” Lili informs him primly; Aleksandr laughs, loud.
“Don’t laugh!” she exclaims, faux-outraged.
“I’m sorry, but you sound proud of his disapproval.”
She beams. “He didnotlike me.”
“Michael doesn’t like most people. He’s mostly harmless. He likes to think he keeps me out of trouble.”
“Am I trouble?” she teases.
Aleksandr grins, shaking his head. “I’m not doing my job right if he’s not lying awake at night.”
