Waiting for Sunday

chapter 10 - through the fog

Museums have always intimidated Felix. Something about the towering, thick walls that throw your voice back at you if you so much as whisper unsettle him, make him wish he could vanish into thin air. Since he was a child he's always been afraid that if you talked too loud in one of these places you simply lost your voice to the void of these colorless walls and never got it back.

The art museum where Quincy works as a curator is as much a masterpiece as the art housed inside it. The High sits on a grassy slope, a maze of stairs and ramps winding through the courtyard and up to the entrance. From the outside it almost resembles something extraterrestrial, a glittering white spiral dancing up towards the blue sky.

Felix asks the employee at the front desk if Quincy French is here, though he knows she is, and that she'll come here as soon as she hears he's waiting for her. Until she does, Felix rifles aimlessly through the brochures next to the info desk, though he's seen them all before. This atrium is the safest place here, where the sounds of voices pepper the air and keep him afloat. In one corner there is an elderly couple poking around the gift shop, the woman in a yellow beret, the man wearing rain boots. In another corner a rosy-cheeked schoolteacher gently ferries her elementary school tour group towards one of the children's exhibits. The children scream and laugh and run about freely. He vaguely remembers when he used to be that loud. That was a long time ago.

"Felix?"

He turns, brochure still in hand. Quincy, too, is dressed like she pulled the art directly from the walls and wrapped it around herself. The sweater she wears is so bright it almost hurts Felix's eyes. "Hey, Q."

"Weirdo," she says, linking her arm in his and dragging him away from the hubbub, towards the glass wall that looks out into the gardens. She shifts her red clipboard to the other hand, holding it under her arm. "You could have just called me. Did something happen?"

"I can't just come talk to you for the sake of it?"

Quincy just looks at him.

"Fair enough," Felix says, folding the edge of the brochure down. "There's something I need to tell you."

"Where's the body?" she asks automatically. "Are there fingerprints?"

"What? Quincy, no. I didn't murder anyone."

She almost looks disappointed. "Boo."

"You really think I'm capable of something like that?"

"Yes," Quincy says. "And don't look at me like that. It's a compliment. Now, go on. Talk your shit."

"Remember that poetry reading we went to a while ago? And that woman read all the stuff about rain?" He waits for Quincy to nod before he keeps going. "I met her. I talked to her. Her name's Lillie, and...and she thinks she might be cursed, too."

Quincy's brows tug in. "What do you mean?"

"She told me that stuff she's been writing in her poetry is coming true, without her control, and it's kind of a long story, but we both figure that figuring all this out together makes more sense than doing it alone, or ignoring it."

For a moment, Quincy blinks at him as if he has not spoken words just now, but spouted off an array of arbitrary formulas. The blankness of her expression terrifies him, like he's suddenly been left alone in the dark. "Q?" he says. "Q? Are you there?"

"I knew you were thinking about it," Quincy says. "I don't think we would have been at that poetry reading in the first place if you weren't maybe-sorta thinking about it. But I don't know. I guess I just never thought you'd really do it."

Felix sighs. "Thanks."

"Oh, come on, Felix," she says, tearing a hand back through her hair. "You know as much as I do that you live in your comfort zone. Even when I force you out of it you go running back as soon as the opportunity arises."