Prancer

Walking with the cast on is slow going, and I'm exhausted and sore from the effort. But I'm getting a little stronger every day, and my mood is not as black as it was. The holidays are a distant blip, a fading bruise.

What's more, after weeks of cold and rain, we're presented with the gift of a mild, sunny day. People are suddenly frolicking about in shorts and little skirts. You wouldn't know we're in the middle of a pandemic. The museum is full of visitors. It's the last week of the Egypt show, and the galleries are packed.

The show consists of a bunch of artifacts relating to Queen Nefertari (not to be confused with the more well-known Nefertiti, whose name brings a smile to schoolchildren and immature adults alike). Not much is known about her, aside from the fact that she lived thousands of years ago and was married to one of the Rameseses. It's all the typical Egyptian stuff; stone sculptures, wooden sarcophagi, bits of ancient detritus scavenged from some hole in the desert. If I was a kid or had never seen this kind of stuff before, I'd probably be thrilled; as it is, I've been spoiled by the Egyptian collections at the Met and the Brooklyn Museum, and in comparison these dusty relics look like props in a TV detective show. The lion-headed queen, carved of black stone, watches over the procedings, looking regal but somewhat disinterested as the crowds swarm around her. There exists a pair of mummified legs -unfortunately not included in this show- which are believed to belong to her. I imagine what my mummified legs could teach future archaeologists. "This poor sap had some serious foot issues," the scientists will say, shaking their heads at our primitive forms of medicine.

The show has been popular though, and I'm always glad to see people coming in to enjoy the art. Glad from a distance, that is. We do require that visitors wear masks, but even so, I personally wouldn't want to be in the middle of that throng, especially with the lateset variant spreading with breathtaking sped. I'm grateful that I'm able to watch from the safety of the control room. I feel for everyone working in the galleries.

In the early afternoon, the phone rings in the gift shop. One of the clerks answers. The man on the line says he's calling from inside the store and that he has COVID and is going to rip his mask off and infect everyone. He says he can see the clerk from where he's standing. The clerk looks around but doesn't see anyone on a cell phone. Regardless, the shop goes on lock down for an hour. The police are called; they suggest we block the number.

I take my break outside for the first time in months, perching on one of the gray concrete blocks that squat in a row outside the museum. They're meant to be used as benches but they are as uncomfortable as they are ugly. A hundred-year-old chestnut tree once shaded them but the wind took it down a few years ago. They had a local woodworker fashion the wood into a bench, which sat out for the public for a little while before being hidden away in a mechanical room. A woman walking past tells me she hopes my foot gets better. Another woman, seeing my staff badge, grills me about ticketing. Her questions are reasonable but she sounds angry and defensive, and unfortnately I don't have the answers she's looing for.

I notice the museum's pest control guy skulking about, taking photos of the base of one of the blocks. He resembles Bruce Dern in one of his more grizzled roles. His company is a family business; for years his daughter used to come by once a week to check the traps and spray for bugs. I saw her on one of the dating sites once. Her profile mentioned that she had a teenage kid but not that she was the heiress to a pest control dynasty. She finally quit to pursue a career in environmental science. These days, her parents alternate weeks. They're pretty friendly folks, considering the brutality of their chosen profession. I say hi to the patriarch and ask what he's up to. "If they haven't already, the rats'll make a nest there," he says, pointing at a recession in the dirt which, now that he mentions it, does look like it would make a nice entrance to a cozy burrow. "I would have never have even noticed that," I say. "Well, that's because you don't think like a rat," he says, and scuttles off to inspect his traps.

That night, as she's crossing the park after work, one of my co-workers gets accosted by a man who chases after her. She runs back to the museum and waits inside until the man departs. She's unhurt but understandably shaken. Someone waits with her until her ride shows up. I've complained before about how much I hate when people gripe about how dangerous things have gotten downtown, that it's a stinking cesspool of crime and garbage, etc. But I can't deny that things are getting pretty weird out there. 

In any case, the next morning the rain starts up again as I stagger off to work. I take my time, enjoying the reflections, the shimmer. Downtown is quiet, traffic is light. Six floors up in one of the apartment buildings, a reindeer made of Christmas lights still twinkles. Every twenty seconds or so it slowly fades out, only to reappear again like a specter glowing in the early morning darkness.