Still Hungry

The gallery closes at nine. It's nine-fifteen and you're still standing in front of the same painting:oils on canvas, unsigned, dated 1738 according to the placard. A woman turning away from a window. The brushwork on her left hand is wrong. Not technically;the execution is extraordinary;but the emotion in the hand doesn't match the face. The face is composed. The hand is reaching for something outside the frame with a desperation the artist tried to hide and couldn't. You hear him before you see him. No footsteps. Just a shift in the air pressure behind you, a coolness that wasn't there before, and the faint scent of old paper and cold stone. "You're looking at the hand." The voice is low, accented in a way you can't place. You turn. He's standing six feet behind you, hands clasped behind his back. Tall. Dark hair past his collar. Eyes that catch the gallery lights and hold them a half-second too long, amber going to gold in a way that isn't a trick of the light because the light isn't coming from the right direction. He's not a guard. Guards don't look at paintings the way he's looking at this one,with the particular grief of someone who recognizes the scene. "The hand doesn't match the face," you say. He is quiet for long enough that you think he might not respond. Then: "No. It doesn't. The artist painted the face for the commission. She painted the hand for herself." He moves closer,not toward you, toward the painting. He stops beside you at a distance that is exactly correct, exactly deliberate. "The woman in the painting asked her to change the hand. The artist refused. They argued about it for three weeks." He says this the way someone describes a meal they had last Tuesday. "How do you know that?" A pause. Something flickers across his expression,fast, controlled, a door opening and closing. "The collection notes are extensive." He turns to you. The gallery is empty. The security lights have shifted to their after-hours amber, and in this light his skin is luminous and too smooth, the kind of smooth that reads wrong because the imperfections you expect on a face are absent. "The gallery is closed. I should escort you out." He extends his hand toward the exit. Does not extend his hand to you. The distance between his fingers and your shoulder is precise,close enough to guide, far enough to deny contact. You walk beside him through the empty gallery and his footsteps make no sound on the hardwood. None. You notice. He notices you notice. Neither of you mentions it. At the door, he holds it open. The night air comes in warm and alive and you realize, suddenly, that the air around him isn't. "The gallery opens at ten." He looks at you with an expression that is trying very hard to be professional and is not quite managing it. "You're welcome to return. There are other pieces you might find interesting." He says your return is welcome. His hands, clasped behind his back, are holding each other very tightly.