The Cloisters(14)

Rachel leaned back in her chair. Satisfied. “They taste even better when they’re free.”

I looked around again to make sure the waiter wasn’t there to notice me eating the rest of the half she had given me, but instead my eyes lingered on a carved figure set in the wall—a winged woman holding a wheel, the relief mottled and softened with age. At each cardinal point of the wheel, figures had been lashed, Latin words engraved on the body of each figure.

“Can you make out those words?” Rachel asked, following my gaze. “Regno,” Rachel said, pointing to the figure at the apex of the wheel.

“I reign,” I said reflexively.

She nodded. “Regnavi.”

“I have reigned.”

“Sum sine regno?”

“I am without reign.”

“Regnabo.”

“I will reign.”

Rachel slipped the sugar cube into her cup and looked at me appraisingly. “I heard that last week, you know. That you read Latin. And Greek, too. Any other secrets, Ann from Walla Walla?”

What is life without secrets? I thought. Instead, I said, “None that I can think of.”

“Well, we can fix that.” Rachel reached across the table and took the rest of my cookie, revealing a flash of red, a satin ribbon around her wrist that cut against her pale skin. I knew where I had seen it. In the library, wound around Patrick’s fingers.



* * *



We began to take breaks together more often after that. While Rachel smoked at the edge of the gardens, I would keep her company, sitting on the cool stone of the ramparts, my feet swinging through the tufts of lush summer grass, tickling my ankles. It was then that she started quizzing me. First about my love life—uneventful, save for a few guys in high school and even fewer in college. Then about my mother—what she did, where she had grown up. And also, about Walla Walla and Whitman—what it was like, what was it known for, if we had county fairs. The enthusiasm of her questions surprised me. She wanted to know how big the town was (small), how long my family had been there (four generations), what it was like (hot, until it wasn’t, then boring), and what Whitman students were like (like Bard students, but from the West Coast).

“I’m obsessed with places I’ve never been,” Rachel said by way of explanation. “And with people’s relationships. There’s so much space to imagine how a story might unfold when you don’t know anything about the setting.”

But whenever I asked about her relationships and family, she always changed the subject, stubbing out her cigarette and saying, “Oh, far too boring,” or “I’d rather you tell me about yourself,” before walking back into the library.

One afternoon, I waited for her on a stone bench in the Bonnefont Cloister, the entire garden flanked by Gothic arches and stained glass. In the terra-cotta pots next to me, frankincense and myrrh grew from gnarled trunks to culminate in feathery white flowers, their scents warming in the late-afternoon sun. I leaned into the flowers and felt them brush my cheek.

“It has thorns, you know.”

He held a bucket of gardening tools and had a pair of worn, tan leather gloves tucked in the front pocket of his jeans, which were smeared with mud, and torn.

“Myrrh,” he said, “it has thorns.” He pushed back the branches to reveal a sea of long black points.

I moved farther away on the bench.

“It won’t come after you.”

“I know that.”

Although I wasn’t sure I believed it. There was something about the things that were housed at The Cloisters—the artwork, even the flowers—that made them seem like they might come alive.

“The Egyptians used it for embalming.”

“Excuse me?”

“Myrrh. It was used to prepare bodies for embalming in ancient Egypt.”

“It was also worn around the neck during the Renaissance to repel fleas,” I said, coming back to myself.

He laughed. “It hasn’t managed to repel me yet. Leo,” he said, pointing a dirty finger at his chest.

“Ann.”

“I know,” he said, reaching down and flicking my ID card. “I’ve seen you around. The new girl.”

I nodded, and he kneeled next to me, holding the leaves of frankincense to the side and pulling out a pair of rusted, creaky shears that he used to trim the dead leaves.

“You working with Rachel?”

“And Patrick.”

“Seems like they’re a package deal these days.”

There was an edge to the way he said it, glib and hard as he placed the clippings in a bucket.

“I like them,” I said, unsure why I was being defensive.

He sat back on his heels, and I noticed for the first time his sturdy work boots, and the way his arms were sinewy without being too muscular.

“Everyone likes Rachel,” he said, searching my face. “What’s not to like?”

It didn’t surprise me that someone like Leo might find Rachel attractive. I imagined the way he watched her in the gardens, surreptitiously smoking, rubbing herbs between her fingers before dotting their oils on her neck. I resisted an overwhelming urge to ask him everything he knew about her.

Instead, I said, “How well do you know her?”

He gestured around us. “She started working here in the fall, during her senior year at Yale. Weekends only until she graduated.”