refocus on the art. Next to me, the couple is having an animated discussion in French as they point to one of the images.
Farther down, toward the beginning of the exhibit, the tall man in the black bomber jacket stares at a photograph.
I wait until he moves on to the next picture, then I approach him.
“Excuse me,” I say. “This is a dumb question, but I can’t figure out what it is about these photos that makes them so special.”
He turns and smiles. He is younger than I’d thought at first. Better looking, too, with his juxtaposition of classically handsome features and edgy clothes.
He pauses. “It seems to me the artist chose to use black-and-white because he wants the viewer to focus on the beautiful form. The lack of color really enables you to notice every detail. And see how he has carefully chosen the light here to enhance the handlebars and speedometer.”
I turn to look at the image from his perspective.
The motorcycles all appeared alike to me at first, a blur of metal and chrome, but now I realize they are quite distinct.
“I get what you mean,” I say. I still can’t figure out what this exhibit has to do with morality and ethics, though.
I move to the next photograph. This motorcycle isn’t in motion. It is shining and new and stands atop a mountain. Then, the man in the bomber jacket walks over to it, too.
“See the person reflected in the side mirror?” he asks. I hadn’t, but I nod anyway as I peer closer at the image.
The buzzer on my phone sounds, startling me. I give the man an apologetic smile in case the noise has broken his concentration, then I reach into my pocket to silence it.
I’d set the alarm on my way to the museum, wanting to make sure I followed Dr. Shields’s directions to leave at eleven-thirty sharp. I need to go.
“Thanks,” I tell the man, then I take the stairs down to the main level. Rather than waste more time getting change, I tuck the twenty into the donation box and hurry out the door.
As I exit the door, I see that Marilyn, the cabdriver, and the guy with the tortoiseshell glasses are all gone.
Cars are driving over the spot where she had lain; people are milling around the sidewalk, talking on their cell phones and eating hot dogs from a nearby vendor.
It’s like the accident never happened.
CHAPTER
THIRTY
Thursday, December 13
To you, this is simply a thirty-minute assignment.
You have no idea that it may spark the unraveling of my entire life.
Since this plan was set into motion, measures were required to counterbalance my resulting physical reactions: sleeplessness, lack of appetite, a plummeting core temperature. It is essential that these base distractions be offset to avoid wreaking havoc with the clarity of the thought process.
A warm bath infused with lavender oil coaxes sleep. In the morning, two hard-boiled eggs are consumed. An increase in the thermostat from seventy-two degrees to seventy-four degrees compensates for my physiological alteration.
It begins with a call to Thomas’s cell phone right before we are supposed to meet.
“Lydia,” he says, pleasure lacing his voice. What would it be like to live the rest of my life without hearing it in all of its incarnations, slightly scratchy when he wakes up in the morning, soft and tender during intimate moments, and masculine and passionate when he cheers for the Giants?
Thomas confirms that he is at the Met Breuer, waiting for my arrival.
However, the pleasure in his tone disappears when he learns a work emergency will require cancelation of our plans to view one of his favorite photographer’s exhibits.
But he can hardly complain. He called off a date just over a week ago.
The exhibit will only be there through the weekend; Thomas won’t want to miss it.
“You can tell me about it at dinner on Saturday,” Thomas is told.
Now you are both in place, set on a collision course.
All that remains is the waiting.
The condition of waiting is universal: We wait for traffic lights to change from red to green, for the grocery store line to advance, for the results of a medical test.
But the wait for you to arrive and relay what happened at the museum, Jessica, isn’t measurable by any standard unit of time.
Often the most effective psychological studies are rooted in deception. For example, a subject can be led to believe he or she is being evaluated for one behavior when, in fact, the psychologist has engineered this decoy to