We take a pathway to the lower level, then down another hall, to an unmarked room at the end. I hold the raptor tight to my chest and twist so I can press my watch against the keypad. It beeps and I push the door open, to where there’s another door—this one large, gunmetal gray. I give the pad a swipe with my watch and the door slides up. White emergency lights flicker to life, revealing a spiral staircase leading down into darkness.
I put my dinosaur on the top step, the creature struggling to free itself from the robe. Nik lets his go gently to run in after it. Grayson tosses his in carelessly, and it bounces down a couple of steps. I hit the button to close the door before any of them can get their bearings and run back out. There’s scratching and commotion from the other side, but otherwise, it’s secure.
“What the hell was that about?” Grayson asks.
I look down at my hand. The bleeding isn’t too bad and I consider sticking my finger in my mouth but I don’t know where that dinosaur has been.
Grayson takes a step closer. “Are you going to answer my question?”
Nik puts a hand on his chest. “Calm down there, chief.”
Grayson pushes his hand away. “I want to know what’s going on right now.”
Another fun detail: there’s a bulge at his side that indicates he’s carrying a firearm. Do not like that. “Dinosaur poaching is a big industry. But only ever eggs. Never seen someone get out with live ones.” I turn to Nik. “What the hell is going on over at Einstein? They asleep on the job over there?”
“There is no way someone got through security with those things,” Nik says.
“Well, someone did.” I turn to Grayson. “Thanks for the assist.”
He crosses his arms. “You’re January?” He waves his hand around. “You’re in charge of this place? I have to say, this is not the best first impression.”
“Right, because I made three dinosaurs show up and wreak havoc,” I tell him. “It was a welcome gift, specifically for you. You’re not impressed?”
“Since you started without me, I will now formally request a list of every person staying in the hotel so we can vet them.”
“How about you give me the name of the place you get your hair cut. I want to see if I can pull off that look.”
He squints, confused. “I want to speak to your supervisor.”
“Go ahead. Tell him I said hi.”
Grayson turns and leaves, probably to go tell on me. Nik takes my hand and looks at it close. “You need to get that seen to.”
“I just need a minute,” I tell him.
“Okay,” he says. “Sure. Take a minute. I got things covered.”
We step into the hallway, where Ruby is waiting for us. “Call off the lockdown,” I tell it.
It assures guests that the problem has been contained and they are welcome to move freely about the hotel, then to me says, “Would you like me to alert Tamworth about your injury?”
“Yeah, please,” I tell it. “Just…need to take a breath.”
Ruby floats stupidly as I step into the women’s bathroom.
* * *
—
My footsteps echo off the hard gray-and-white surface. I glance under the stalls to make sure I’m alone, and head for the line of sinks, twist a knob to cold, and hold my finger underneath. Red coils of blood swirl down the drain. It stings, but once the wound is clean, I can get a good look at it. The little monster barely got me. A little bandage and I’ll be fine.
I pump a big glob of soap into my hand and hear the toilet flush, which makes my heart stutter. I look into the mirror as the door of the stall directly behind me swings inward.
Out steps Mena.
She sees me and smiles.
That recognition. My insides catch fire.
“You look like you are having a day,” she says, in her Brooklyn-by-way-of-Puerto-Rico accent.
Is this something she said to me, or to someone else? It was not an uncommon thing for her to say to me. I have a lot of days.
Her brown hair is long, down past her shoulders, and she has blond highlights, which means I can roughly place which version of Mena this is. Six months before she died.
Not that I know she’s dead. Not right now, not in this moment.
Because, yes, this was her talking to me. I see it in her eyes, reflected in the bathroom mirror. That recognition that cuts to my core. I’m ready to throw my arms around her, to say the things I only said when we were alone, to beg her to hold me tight, so tight it hurts, but when I turn, the bathroom is empty again.
Just me and the bright lights and the sound of the water running in the sink.
I cross to the door and lock it, then sit on the floor with my back against it. Wrap my hands around my knees. There’s soap on my hands. Now on my pants. I don’t care. I just want to sit for a minute. Look at that stall door, still cracked open. She was just there and I feel like my chest is contracting and then…
…Mena interlaces her fingers with mine. She says: “This is the most important thing you will ever see.”
The Art Institute of Chicago is almost impossibly crowded, people jostling for space, peering into the expanse of the painting hanging in front of us on the eggshell-colored wall. The horde makes me feel claustrophobic, but as I look into the painting, I feel them dropping away.
“A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte,” she whispers into my ear, her breath so warm on my skin it sends a trickle of cold water down my spine. “Painted by Georges Seurat in the late 1800s. His most famous work. Dead at thirty-one.”
It’s a painting I know. One of those paintings I’ve seen before, I just didn’t know the title or the artist. A verdant slope covered in people wearing fancy clothes, many of them holding umbrellas, looking to the left, out over the water. As the crowd shifts, Mena grips my hand and we step closer.
With each step, the image becomes more grainy. The green of the lawn, the blue of the water, the deep, deep shadows. They reveal themselves for what they are: an accumulation of dots.
“This is probably the most famous example of pointillism,” Mena says, extending a long finger, tipped by a nude-painted nail, toward the center of the painting. “Pointillism is the contrast of tiny dots or small brushstrokes that, from far enough away, the brain processes as a single hue. The space in between all those little dots makes the picture more vivid. I think it’s because you have to work harder for it.”
We take another step and the breadth of the scene disappears into a collection of smaller parts.
“That’s the great thing about the human brain.” Mena snakes an arm around my waist, pulls me close. “It excels at taking all this chaotic information and smoothing it out, so you can comprehend the entire picture. But that makes it easy to forget the really beautiful thing.”
Another step. The crowd closes in on us, people holding up phones and digital cameras, searching for the perfect angle, the best lighting. Leaning into their own shots to prove they were here.
“The beauty is in each individual dot,” she says.
She pushes into me when she says this and the sharp bone of her hip presses against mine.