He glanced at the frontispiece and title page, and then the dedication.
“Isn’t that an amazing book?”
Robbie looked up to see the nurse smiling down at him.
“Uh, yeah,” he said, and set it on the table.
“It’s incredible she predicted so much stuff.” The nurse shook her head. “Like the Hubble telescope, and that caveman they found in the glacier, the guy with the lens? And those turbines that can make energy in the jet stream? I never even heard of that, but my husband said they’re real. Everything she says, it’s all so hopeful. You know?”
Robbie stared at her, then quickly nodded. Behind her the door opened. Emery stepped out.
“She’s kind of drifting,” he said.
“Morning’s her good time. She usually fades around now.” The nurse glanced at her watch, then at Robbie. “You go ahead. Don’t be surprised if she nods off.”
He stood. “Sure. Thanks.”
The room was small, its walls painted a soft lavender-gray. The bed faced a large window overlooking a garden. Goldfinches and tiny green wrens darted between a bird feeder and a small pool lined with flat white stones. For a moment Robbie thought the bed was empty. Then he saw that an emaciated figure had slipped down between the white sheets, dwarfed by pillows and a bolster.
“Maggie?”
The figure turned its head. Hairless, skin white as paper, mottled with bruises like spilled ink. Her lips and fingernails were violet, her face so pale and lined it was like gazing at a cracked egg. Only the eyes were recognizably Maggie’s, huge, the deep slatey blue of an infant’s. As she stared at him, she drew her wizened arms up, slowly, until her fingers grazed her shoulders. She reminded Robbie disturbingly of a praying mantis.
“I don’t know if you remember me.” He sat in a chair beside the bed. “I’m Robbie. I worked with Leonard. At the museum.”
“He told me.” Her voice was so soft he had to lean close to hear her. “I’m glad they got here. I expected them yesterday, when it was still snowing.”
Robbie recalled Anna in her hospital bed, doped to the gills and talking to herself. “Sure,” he said.
Maggie shot him a glance that might have held annoyance, then gazed past him into the garden. Her eyes widened as she struggled to lift her hand, fingers twitching. Robbie realized she was waving. He turned to stare out the window, but there was no one there. Maggie looked at him, then gestured at the door.
“You can go now,” she said. “I have guests.”
“Oh. Yeah, sorry.”
He stood awkwardly, then leaned down to kiss the top of her head. Her skin was as smooth and cold as metal. “’Bye, Maggie.”
At the door he looked back, and saw her gazing with a rapt expression at the window, head cocked slightly and her hands open, as though to catch the sunlight.
TWO DAYS AFTER THEY got home, Robbie received an e-mail from Leonard.
Robbie sighed. Already the week on Cowana seemed long ago and faintly dreamlike, like the memory of a childhood vacation. He wrote Leonard a note of condolence, then left for work.
Weeks passed. Zach and Tyler posted their clips of the
Early in September, Leonard called Robbie.
“Can you meet me at the museum tomorrow, around eight thirty? I’m having a memorial for Maggie, just you and me and Emery. After hours, I’ll sign you in.”
“Sure,” said Robbie. “Can I bring something?”
“Just yourself. See you then.”
He drove in with Emery. They walked across the twilit Mall, the museum a white cube that glowed against a sky swiftly darkening to indigo. Leonard waited for them by the side door. He wore an embroidered tunic, sky blue, his white hair loose upon his shoulders, and held a cardboard box with a small printed label.
“Come on,” he said. The museum had been closed since five, but a guard opened the door for them. “We don’t have a lot of time.”
Hedges sat at the security desk, bald and even more imposing than when Robbie last saw him, decades ago. He signed them in, eyeing Robbie curiously then grinning when he read his signature.
“I remember you-Opie, right?”
Robbie winced at the nickname, then nodded. Hedges handed Leonard a slip of paper. “Be quick.”
“Thanks. I will.”
They walked to the staff elevator, the empty museum eerie and blue lit. High above them the silent aircraft seemed smaller than they had been in the past, battered and oddly toylike. Robbie noticed a crack in the
“Where are we going?” asked Robbie.
“The roof,” said Leonard. “If we get caught, Hedges and I are screwed. Actually, we’re all screwed. So we have to make this fast.”
He tucked the cardboard box against his chest, then began to climb the ladder. Emery and Robbie followed him, to a small metal platform and another door. Leonard punched in another code and pushed it open. They stepped out into the night.
It was like being atop an ocean liner. The museum’s roof was flat, nearly a block long. Hot air blasted from huge exhaust vents, and Leonard motioned the others to move away, toward the far end of the building.
The air was cooler here, a breeze that smelled sweet and rainwashed, despite the cloudless sky. Beneath them stretched the Mall, a vast green game board, with the other museums and monuments huge game pieces, ivory and onyx and glass. The spire of the Washington Monument rose in the distance, and beyond that the glittering reaches of Roslyn and Crystal City.
“I’ve never been here,” said Robbie, stepping beside Leonard.
Emery shook his head. “Me neither.”
“I have,” said Leonard, and smiled. “Just once, with Maggie.”
Above the Capitol’s dome hung the full moon, so bright against the starless sky that Robbie could read what was printed on Leonard’s box.
MARGARET BLEVIN
“These are her ashes.” Leonard set the box down and removed the top, revealing a ziplocked bag. He opened the bag, picked up the box again, and stood. “She wanted me to scatter them here. I wanted both of you to be with me.”
He dipped his hand into the bag and withdrew a clenched fist; held the box out to Emery, who nodded silently
