You are in a museum

This story appears in my new book We Had It Coming – available now.

You are in a museum

They drove up to Salem to be somewhere different for a little while. Anywhere different. 

Salem was usually a magical place for them but not because of the whole mess every October. She could take or leave the Salem of it all so it was refreshing being there before the throngs of tourists who would be arriving shortly. 

They naturally considered themselves the good kind of tourist.

The magic comes when you’re not expecting it they both knew. 

Stumble onto a random cobblestone street and there before you will stretch a block that you could convince yourself had remained unchanged for hundreds of years. That this is still what the world is. You might believe albeit briefly that you were standing there in 1700 and then you’d crumble into dust and blow away on the wind because the life expectancy back then was like 38. Which happened to be what they were.

This can happen sometimes in Boston too but so much more rarely now. 

They walked around the main commercial area and it was bright and beautiful out when they turned left down a small street that the sun couldn’t find and she swore to God that all of the leaves on the trees looked like they had just fallen moments ago and were resting dead on the ground. That the temperature had dropped twenty degrees right then and there in August. 

Down at the end of the block there was a squat brick building that must have been a few hundred years old. She thought whatever had once gone on inside of there was none of her business. 

Well this can’t be normal she thought with the leaves crunching underfoot and so they turned heel and shortly thereafter all of that sense of foreboding was deflated after walking by about fifty different shops selling witch t-shirts and witch tchotchkes.

They got a lot of witch bullshit out already she said. I’m not sure what else I was expecting she said. 

She thought about how awful it must have been living under the thumb of a draconian authority who ruled with suspicion and revenge as their entire animating principles. 

Next walking into the Peabody Essex Museum. There was an exhibit of South Asian art focusing on the effects of British occupation on Indian self representation and one on maritime art from around the world with a focus on Salem’s seafaring history. He thought looking at all the paintings and objects more than anything that being on a boat any time before relatively recently in history must have fucking sucked. Getting violently sick and then probably drowning. All for some other guy’s profit.

Pretty much sucks now too for that matter.

There had been a shooting recently so she felt on edge being in a crowded public space. 

Seven members of a family in Ohio including a nine year old boy were shot in the head execution style. The shooter had become irate when the family asked him to stop firing off his AR-15 recreationally in his backyard so he killed most of them. Three of the other children survived. They were found covered in the blood of their mothers who were both killed while laying on top of them. Throwing their bodies in front of the bullets. 

They safely hid a two month old under a pile of clothes.

Do you ever think about a shooting she asked. 

By which she meant do you have a little pilot light of anxiety always burning somewhere inside. A little seed of dormant foreboding. Something strapped to your back like a heavy satchel.

I think about it more often in the aftermath of a bad one he said. I feel a bit more on edge in large public gatherings or in malls or wherever. 

When do you ever go to the mall? 

The proverbial mall. You know what I mean. But they happen so frequently now the reprieves in between don't last very long.

They were saying on my phone last night that you have to be prepared at all times like a soldier. Be prepared to kill anyone you see she said. 

Fuck that he said. I refuse to think like that. 

Sorry sorry he said speaking more quietly now. Remembering where he was. 

I am aware of my surroundings he said. I don’t take any unnecessary risks or instigate any stupid confrontations. But I will not give in to that way of thinking. 

I look for exits more frequently now she said. It's just like looking both ways before I cross the street. It's automatic. I read someone say that somewhere. A habitual tensing. 

They were quiet for a while after that and wandered into a large hangar-like room for what was supposed to be a show-stopper of a piece. It was called All the Flowers Are for Me and it was a giant floating cube of sorts constructed so the light from within reflected all over the walls in precise and ornate floral patterns. 

It was the type of cube where you’re not sure if it’s going to impart some kind of ancient wisdom as you gaze into it or if it’s going to absorb you into its horrible eternal gleaming she thought. Maybe both. 

Mostly it was the kind of piece that people want to take Instagrams of which she did. 

She shuddered suddenly thinking of three red throbbing pillars off the coast. 

Moving on to an exhibit called Down to the Bone. Photographs of polar bears scavenging the remains of dead whales in an Inupiat village in Alaska. How tiny the giant bears looked climbing along the stripped-clean bones of the leviathans. She thought the skeletons seemed like they must have been arranged just so by the artist but then figured it’s more likely they fell together like that in an accidentally beautiful deathly architecture.

“We have lots of bears here in Kaktovik because they have no place to go,” a quote from a hunter read on the text card. 

“The bears here are climate refugees. Soon we will be climate refugees too.”

He stood looking on dumbly over her shoulder. 

I don’t know he said. 

What?

I don’t know if I’m any good at going to museums anymore. I try but I just don’t really get uhh transported anywhere he said. Not like I do just standing on an old street. Like the one from earlier he said. 

Which street she said. 

I don’t know. 

He thought that museums necessarily strip away a few of our senses. Nothing smells like anything and you usually can't touch or thankfully taste anything so that just leaves the looking and sometimes the listening. 

With so much quiet it's hard for me to block out the part of my brain that’s operating in the background going you are in a museum. 

You are in a museum and it is time to be moved by art.

They left soon after and rode an elevator up to a hotel rooftop bar that was just fine. Perfectly ok. Everyone seemed to be enjoying themselves drinking their frozen strawberry habanero margaritas and eating their roasted shrimp tacos with jack cheese and corn salsa and poblano crema. 

At the bar the staff had a flyswatter out and they were using it to try to kill some bees that had found their way all the way up there.

I know this is probably stupid but it had never occurred to me that bees could fly up this high into the sky he said. I had always assumed they operated on a relatively low to the ground kind of deal. Occasionally flew up into a tree at the end of the work day. 

I think this is probably about as high up as they can make it she said. 

Five stories up he said. All the way into the sky and we’re all acting like everything is normal? It occurred to him that he didn’t know anything about nature or the world at all. Who designed all of this shit? Who made it all just so he thought and then thwack they got one. Then another. 

Thwack. Thwack. Thwack. Thwack.

The bartender was on a hitting streak now. The rest of the staff and all the day drinkers were cheering him on. He couldn’t miss. He couldn’t stop now if he wanted to. 

The elevator dinged and someone was striding out of it now with purpose. They both turned on their stools. It was just some guy. It was no one at all. 

Order We Had It Coming here.