After lunch

Shown around.

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Once again, Bing has trouble getting everyone’s hair correct. And it likes beards. If the day comes when this is more frustrating than fun, I’ll probably stop with the illustrations. But that day is not today!

After we had finished, I said, "Mr. McLichtensen?"

"Hmm?"

"You said you'd show me where I was to work after lunch."

"I did?" He sounded surprised. "So I did." He looked at me. "Are you sure you don't want to wait until tomorrow to look at it? You still look a mite peaked."

"I'm fine. The soup was excellent. I'm ready to start working as soon as possible."

"Tomorrow," Mr. McLichtensen said. "I will show you the work, then have Belinda show you your room." He smiled down at me, then glanced around the room. "One moment," he said, and darted over to another table, where a man sat eating alone, and making notes in a sketchbook.

I started. I hadn't noticed him sitting there. I had thought we were in the room alone.

"Mattan," Mr. McLichtensen said, "the idea of you eating here is to be with other people, not back here by yourself."

The man—Mattan?—looked up with a frown on his face. "I'm working on that re-design we talked about, Tolly. Needed some quiet. Didn't feel like cooking, so I came here." He glanced over at me, and added, "Who's your lady friend?"

Mr. McLichtensen glanced back at me, and I stepped forward, and gave a formal bow to the man, who stood up hastily.

"Very pretty," he muttered under his breath. I doubt I was meant to hear it.

"Mattan," Mr. McLichtensen said, "I'd like you to meet Glorina Hoi. She is here to catalog my—that is, the restaurant's—art collection."

Mattan snorted. "Big job, that. Do you think she's up to it?"

Stung, I was about to reply that I'd cataloged the collections of several major libraries, when Mr. McLichtensen looked back at me. "Hush," he murmured. "Pay him no mind. He means naught by it."

I swallowed my words, and reminded myself to pay attention. What was wrong with me?

"And, Ms. Hoi, this is Mattan Olmin. One of my oldest friends." He gave a warning glare to Mr. Olmin, who snorted, then said to me, "If you want anything fixed, or want to have some sort of one-of-a-kind item made, he's the one you want to go to. Mattan basically keeps all the machines in the kitchen running for me."

I smiled at Mr. Olmin, while trying to hide my sudden surge of panic. This Mattan Olmin wasn't in any of the files! If he was indeed Mr. McLichtensen's oldest friend, and one who worked in the kitchen as much as was implied, he should have had at least a passing mention. More like several pages. A waitress who'd only been there a month had a couple of paragraphs.

"Are you feeling all right, Ms. Hoi?" Mattan said to me.

Mr. McLichtensen looked sharply at me. "Still feeling a bit ill, Ms. Hoi?" he said. "Perhaps you should go to your room now and lie down. The work will wait."

"No, no, I'm fine," I said. What had they seen when they looked at me? I should have been able to control my face better. I could control my face better. But what else was missing from the files? Would it be something that would make me fail? I knew what happened to the girls who failed their missions. None had lasted as long as I had.

"As you say," Mr. McLichtensen said, nodding. "Well, you're likely to see Mattan coming in and out frequently, and at odd hours. He's harmless."

"Mostly," Mattan added, half growling.

"I'll consider myself warned," I said lightly.

Mr. McLichtensen laughed, and Mattan grinned, which changed his whole face. Suddenly his face looked light and merry, not dark and brooding. I had thought him older and plain, but when he smiled, he looked younger, and almost handsome.

"Don't mind me, Ms. Hoi," Mattan said.

"Please, call me Glorina," I said.

"Glorina, then," Mattan said, much to my relief. "I'm afraid I forget my manners from time to time. The old man's right, I do tend to be off by myself too much. But anyway, Ms. Hoi, Glorina, I hope you enjoy your stay with us."

"I'm looking forward to it," I said.

He held out his hand, and I clasped it warily, remembering what had happened when I had done the same with Mr. McLichtensen.

He pulled back at my touch, and examined me with widened eyes.

"Oh!" I said, startled by the realization that he had blue eyebrows, and blue eyelashes framing his brown eyes. How had I not noticed that before?

His eyes narrowed again as he continued scrutinizing me. "I'd be careful, if I were you, Ms. Hoi," he said, as he pulled back his hands, and wiped them on his shirt. "Odd things happen here in the RingGelf Forest. Particularly to holders of magic."

Magic again. Why did that keep coming up? I had never worked magic in my life. I glanced up at Mr. McLichtensen, who was beaming down at us. Where Mattan's words a threat or a warning? Both? I couldn't read his face. Which left me disconcerted. I was usually good at reading faces. Was I losing my touch?

"Let's go," Mr. McLichtensen said.

I gave Mattan a little half-bow, just folding the hands and bobbing the knees, and followed Mr. McLichtensen.

He led me back through the kitchens, snagging a key-card from Belinda on the way.

"There's a stairs and elevator from your room level back to here," he said. "So you won't have to go through the kitchens every time you need to come down. And a hallway around. I suggest that you do that when you come down on your own. I just use this as a short-cut, myself. No one dares complain about that to me. But they might to you."

"I understand," I said. He was the owner; I was just an interloper.

"You'll find a map to the place in your room," he went on. "Or you can ask someone where you should go. These old buildings aren't always built in a way that makes sense. Especially when they've been restored and rebuilt as often as this one has."

I'd noticed that hallways and stairs didn't always line up like I might have thought they would. But I liked this building. It felt . . . friendly. Like it liked me. I dismissed the idea. I had no time for fancies.

We came out to another small lobby in the back, this one far plainer and more utilitarian than the one in the front. The white light shone starkly on the ivory walls, and lit up a line of hooks, some holding jackets. on one wall, and a line of lockers, with scattered locks in different styles, on the other.

Mr. McLichtensen caught me looking around. "The back door, to the parking and alley, is over there," he said, waving. "Most of us come in this way." He stepped off to a hallway on the right, and opened a door that led to a small elevator. "There are stairs that go down to the lower levels as well," he said. "But this is the only elevator. And you need a keycard to open it."

I nodded.

"I don't get to show off my art to people very often," he said. "Not the real ones, anyway. Sometimes I lend it out to museums. Most people are content to admire the replicas."

"They are well done replicas," I said.

"I'm not trying to fool anyone, Ms. Hoi," he said. "There's a small line in the menu stating that the art-work is all reproductions. And if anyone asks about it, they are specifically told. I just want to find the line between protecting the art, so it continues, and letting people enjoy it, like the artists intended." He paused. "Though I doubt many of the artists cared about having people in general looking at it. And almost certainly they didn't think about people all these centuries later."

I laughed politely, since it seemed to be indicated, but I didn't see the point. I wasn't used to considering art to be something to be enjoyed. Investment, maybe. Something for scholarship. But for ordinary people to look at, enjoy, criticize? I knew so many artists’ work, could recognize styles, everything. I had always been a quick study. I had to be. But enjoyment?

I glanced up and found Mr. McLichtensen looking down at me again. "Is something wrong, Ms. Hoi?" he asked.

"No, of course not," I said. "Why do you ask?" I reminded myself to gain control of my face again. Since I'd walked in the door this morning, I seemed to have lost all control of myself.

"You looked . . . pensive." He shook his head. "Or wistful." Then he turned away as the door opened. "Never mind, Ms. Hoi. Don't mind me. I'm just a foolish old man."

Now I was really confused. As far as I could tell, he was neither. So I let the confusion show on my face.

He looked down at me, shook his head, and murmured "Never mind," again.

He led me down a short passageway. I noted the security cameras at both ends. Tolly pushed his keycard into the control panel of the big white door at the end, then swung it open with a shy smile, and let me step through first.

The lights came on as I entered. I stood blinking in what appeared to be an ordinary sized room, with just a table, and a couple of stools. High stools, I noted. I wondered where I was going to work, and why they bothered to lock up an almost empty room.

Then my eyes adjusted, and I realized that two of the walls actually were the ends of aisles that reached more than twice the length of the room itself. I went into one of the aisles, and saw that there were innumerable vertical slots on both side of the aisle, arranged in three tiers, one at ground level, one at about eye-height, and one far over my head. It looked like it'd even be high for Tolly. I went to the nearest slot, and looked in, and saw a framework set on wheels, and pulled it out. There was a painting delicately supported within that frame. The next slot had two. I looked around and took in the size of the place, and the value of the paintings I'd seen. My mind did a quick calculation. "Wow," I said.

Mr. McLichtensen looked pleased. "Is this better than upstairs, then?" he asked.

"Better? This is wonderful. The work of a lifetime!" I looked around again. "Several lifetimes. How long—"

"Like I said, I—or rather, the restaurant—have been collecting artwork for a very long time." He looked around again. "Occasionally we clear things out, and sell off the items which are of lower quality. It's been too long, we need to do so again. If we wait too much longer, the Crypt might explode."

"Explode?"

"Figure of speech, Ms. Hoi. Canvases are in all the available slots, sometimes even two or three in a slot, more than they're supposed to handle. I've got some even piled along the back, until I can figure out where to put them."

"Piled?" I quickly walked to the other end of the aisle, where it joined to the other one again, and sighed in relief. They weren't literally piled, just placed in frameworks lined up against the back wall.

Mr. McLichtensen followed me at a more leisurely pace. He continued, "Mattan was down here not that long ago, and said I had to do something, or I'd lose a good portion of my investment. I couldn't keep piling things up like this."

"Mattan? Mr. Olmin?"

"Right. He built the place some years ago. It was a big project; he didn't do it all by himself." He smiled in memory. "That was . . ." His eyes lost focus for a moment. "How odd."

"What?"

"Never mind. It doesn't matter."

I walked back through the aisle, occasionally pulling out a painting at random. "So, this place is full then?"

"Yes, very. No more room to put anything else. That's one of the reasons I wanted to hire you, Ms. Hoi, when I heard about you. To see what we have, what we could stand to get rid of to leave us with room to get more."

"Have you ever considered stopping collecting? To be just content with the art you have?"

He laughed. "Stop? But it's just getting good." He shook his head. "I do try only to collect the best of the eras I'm interested in, but there are so many good ones still out there, waiting to be discovered." He paused, then muttered, "And more that have been lost forever, because no one thought to preserve it."

I don't think I was meant to hear him.

"I can see just where I'll set up my equipment," I said, smiling up at him. "The setup is almost perfect." Especially since he'd be short several paintings by the time I was finished. I managed not to glance askance at the high stools around the table. I'd manage them somehow.

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