“Someone should call a loved one,” said an excited woman. “Little boy, do you have a father?”
“Of course he has a father,” I said. “What do you think this is?”
“Do we know how to reach him?”
“The number’s on her phone,” Timby said.
“Eleanor?” Spencer came in. “May we borrow your phone?”
“I dropped it in a bait bucket.”
A collective “Hunh?”
“It had stopped serving me.”
“Wow,” said Spencer, and “Wow!” again, the second time spread across three syllables.
“Wow what?” the museum director asked Spencer, for which I was grateful, because it meant I didn’t have to.
“Sometimes she says things,” he clarified… kind of.
“Is she always like this?” asked someone who was met by a round of shrugs. This crowd was sure easy to stump.
“Remind me never to go on Family Feud with you people,” I said.
A huddle had formed near a hulking green sculpture.
“Did it always have this dent in it?” came a voice.
“Dent?” Spencer spun around to look.
“You can go,” I told him, because it seemed like that’s what he wanted. “I release you.”
Spencer bolted to the sculpture. Now the museum director was craning her neck to see.
“You can go too,” I told her. “Everyone who wants to go, go.”
The museum director and the installer scampered over, leaving just me and Timby.
I stroked his hair. “How are you, darling?”
“I wish you’d get up.”
“Then I’ll get up.” I sat up. “Are you happy now?”
“All the way up,” he said, tugging my arm.
“This steel is an eighth of an inch thick,” said someone near the sculpture. “Look at the dent she put in it.”
They all turned to me with grudging admiration.
“Brett Favre!” I announced triumphantly.
“Lie back down,” said Spencer.
“Brett Favre is the quarterback I couldn’t remember, the one with the thumb.”
“That’s really good,” Spencer said. “Just lie down.”
“Don’t,” Timby threatened.
“If you forget a name and you can’t recall it,” I told Spencer, “it could be early-onset Alzheimer’s. But if it pops into your head later, you’re good.”
“I’ve heard that too,” said the museum director.
She had perfect posture. That’s the way I was going to age. Let everything go, but dress with flair and stand up straight. “Living out loud” they call it, unless that’s something different. And those giant black glasses: I’m definitely going to go that route. Like Elaine Stritch. Or Frances Lear. Or Iris Apfel. Where were these names even coming from? I was on fire with useless references!
“Go when you can, not when you need to,” I said.
They all looked at me.
“Advice about going to the bathroom,” I said. “Sound advice.”
Writing me off completely, they returned to their panicky huddle.
“We’re covered,” the museum director explained to someone quietly. “We have liability.”
“For the show,” said the blue hands. “But the show hasn’t started yet.”
“That’s not how insurance works,” the museum director spit back.
“I’d put my money on her,” I called over. “With age comes wisdom.”
Spencer narrowed his eyes at me. The worry patrol situated themselves so I could see only backs.
On the floor. My purse. The set of keys.
D-E-L-P-H-I-N-E.
Oh God.
“Come,” I whispered to Timby. I grabbed the keys and stood up. My head was lead and positioned wrong on my neck. I blinked a couple of times, righting my center of gravity. “See?”
Timby’s answer was drowned out by an approaching siren.
Spencer and the rest were too absorbed in their whisper-fight to notice us slip out.
Aw, Spencer, poor Spencer. I hoped he’d find success one day.
Oh, wait…
The only sign of life as we headed up the Galer Street steps was a bunny hopping around the front lawn.
“Aww,” said Timby.
“Where is everyone?” I asked.
“Raking leaves out back.”
“The whole school?”
“With our homeless buddies,” he said.
An empty school! This played perfectly into my gutless plan: to slip in without anyone seeing, return the keys, and slip out.
What I had done was truly unforgivable. Because of me, some young mom had spent the day half out of her mind searching for her keys. I don’t care how thin or pleased with yourself you are, nobody deserves that.
As for why I couldn’t just admit that I had to learn from the goddamned newspaper that my sister has a daughter, so in a farkakte attempt to get back at her, I stole the keys of a woman with a daughter of the same name…
Would you?
The whole thing left me badly shaken. In the past, I’d often been called crazy. But it was endearing-crazy, kooky-crazy, we’re-all-a-little-crazy-crazy. Stealing that young mom’s keys? Even The Trick couldn’t spin that into anything other than scary-crazy.
I tugged open the front door and crossed through the foyer. The conference room was dark; the table still had an enticing cornucopia of spots in which to tuck the keys and scram. I grabbed the doorknob. Locked!