The Wanderlust Museum

                                        THE WANDERLUST MUSEUM

She knows what it is about the painting that makes her want to crawl into it or peek behind it. It’s the light. The moon has its own light source. The stars are shining pin pricks. She stands in front of the painting, stepping closer and closer. She tilts her head to the side. Steps closer and can smell the paint, or maybe the frame, or maybe the wall. She is lost in the moment. She feels herself disappearing into the painting when she hears a voice. Not near. Behind her. On the other side of the room?

           “Are you alright?”

           She doesn’t move. She closes her eyes and wonders if she can incorporate the voice into the painting so that it doesn’t pull her out of it. Make the voice come from the man standing alone on the dark bridge, looking down into the river sparkling with the light of the moon. The moon that has its own mysterious light source. The voice again.

           “Um. Hey. Are you alright?”

           She opens her eyes and realizes she is standing so close to the painting that the pointed collar of her raincoat is touching it. She startles and jumps back. Is the man a guard? Is she going to get thrown out of the museum for behaving inappropriately? Again. She turns slowly, clutching her coat to her throat. She smiles at the man who is standing across the room. He is not a guard. He is just a man. She nods, steps away from the painting.

“Fine. I’m fine.” She takes a step to the right and realizes that she has forgotten from which direction she entered this room, one of many rooms of The Wanderlust Museum of Art. So many rooms, big and small, and so many halls, long and short. She has become lost in here before. She gets lost just about anywhere, but this is one place she is happy to do so. She tells her roommates when she gets home beyond her expected time; I was at The Wanderlust Museum. I couldn’t help it. It is a place to get lost.

           She looks left, right, behind her, then at the man. She smiles. “I’m okay. I guess I’m just a bit lost.”

           He takes a step toward her. His nice smile loses some of its worry. “I get lost in here all the time. It is a place to get lost.”

           She blinks at the familiar words. “Yes. It is.”

           He takes another step toward her. A tentative step. Is he afraid she will be frightened if he approaches her too quickly? Is he afraid she will step too quickly toward him?

           She turns back to the painting. “I love this one. I think it might be my favorite.”

           He is just behind her now. She smells him. Eucalyptus? Maybe.

           “Do you? I’ve seen people stand in front of it for ages trying to figure out where the light is coming from. It makes them nervous; I’ve heard them say.”

           She laughs and turns to face him. “It makes them nervous? Because they don’t know the source of the mysterious light? That’s what I love about it. It’s magical.”

           “I think so. Do you ever feel the urge to pull it off of the wall to see what’s behind it?”

           She looks up at him, from the corner of her eye. He’s tall but not too tall. Cute but not too cute. He’s not wearing a raincoat so his blue buttonfront shirt is wet at the shoulders. His hair is brown, his eyes. . . green?

           “I do. Every time I come into this room. I even slid my fingers under the frame a couple of times, when no one was watching.” She looks over her shoulder at the empty room. “It comes away from the wall,” she whispers.

           “It does?” He looks around the room then reaches for the frame. He touches it then pulls his hand back. He laughs. A very nice laugh. “I feel like a kid in a cake shop, trying to swipe a finger-full of frosting.”

           She laughs too, then slides two fingers under the frame. She pulls it away from the wall, just an inch. Maybe two. She smiles up at him and brings her shoulders to her ears. “Oh my God. Are we going to do this? Should we do this? Do you think alarms will go off?”

           “I doubt if The Wanderlust has the funds for an alarm system. It might be closing down soon, you know.”

           She drops the frame. It clanks against the wall. She looks around. Nobody. They are still safely alone.

           “Close down? It can’t close down. Where will all the paintings go?” She steps to the middle of the room and spins around in a circle. Her gaze falls on the purple-upon-purple-upon-purple abstract that fills one wall and the lavender cat that fills another. She puts her hands to her hips. “They can’t. Can they?”

           He shrugs. “I guess they can. Whoever they are.”

           “But.” She stops. She doesn’t know this man. She thinks she might want to. But she doesn’t. Should she tell him? “But this is where I go.”

           “Go?”

           “When I need to find myself. When I need to lose myself. When I’m struggling. Like when I have a question, I go sit with that painting in the brown room of the Goddess draped in the leopard skin cape—you know that one?”

“I know that one.”

“She finds the answers.” She looks at him to see if he might laugh at her. He doesn’t.

  “When I need to cry. When I’m sad, I visit that lovely painting of the field of flowers in the yellow room—you know the one?”

           “I know the one.”

           “I stood in front of it and cried. For an hour. When my dad died. I even cried to it when I lost my job. I need that painting. It absorbs my tears.” She takes in a breath. “I can’t believe I just told you that. You now must think I’m crazy. Or lonely. I’m not. Crazy or lonely. Not really. Well, maybe a little.”

           “You know which one makes me cry?” He steps closer to her. Yes, his eyes are green. And soft, and kind. “Now you’re going to think I’m crazy. The one in the orange room. With the orange river that flows through the yellow hills like it’s searching for something. Something it will never find.”

He blushes and she thinks it must be the most beautiful thing she has ever seen. Which makes her blush. She lowers her head and puts her hands in her coat pockets. She finds a couple of peppermints. She pulls them out and pushes them toward him. He takes one. They both twirl the paper off their candy. The sound echoes. They pop them in their mouths at the same time. He smiles. She gets tingly.

“The Wanderlust can’t close down.” She turns right and walks toward an arched passageway and into the next room. The walls are soft green. The paintings are all green. The green room. Not one of her favorites. He follows her through to the next room. The blue room. The paintings are all of the sky. They stop and they both spin.

“Where will they put all of this sky? What other museum is going to want all of these beautiful sky paintings? Or the orange river? My field of flowers? The moonlight painting? They won’t fit anywhere else. They won’t go. And any other museum would insist that they have titles. Wouldn’t they? I love that they don’t have titles. I love that they are all signed on the back so we can only imagine who painted them. Everything about this museum is a mystery. I love that.” She feels a tear roll down her cheek.

“I know what you mean. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to ruin your visit.”

She walks up to him and rests her head against his chest. She cries. She thinks she should stop. She worries that she is getting his shirt wet and then remembers that it is already wet and that makes her cry even harder. He wraps his arm around her. She can feel his heart beating against her cheek. He pats her back. There, there. She can’t help but smile. She thinks she wants to live here forever. In this blue sky room, wrapped in this lovely man’s arms. Feeling his heart beat.

She puts her hands against his chest and pushes herself away a bit. She looks into his soft, green eyes and asks, “What’s your name?”

“Jordan. What’s yours?”

“Shanda.”

“Well, Shanda. You know what I think we should do? I think we should go back to the moonlight painting and see if we can find the source of the light. Don’t you?”

She nods, swipes the back of her hands across her face, takes his hand, and runs out of the blue room, through the green room and back into the purple room to stand in front of the moonlight painting. They stand for minutes. Holding hands. She loves the feel of his hand in hers. It is rough but not too rough. Big but not too big. He holds her hand tightly but not too tightly. The lights overhead flash, once, twice a third time. They look at each other.

“Closing time,” Jordan says. “I guess we better hurry if we’re going to do this.”

Shanda looks up to the ceiling. The lights flash again then grow dim. She looks back at the painting. The moon is even brighter now in the diminished light. The stars look like they could shoot out beams of white light to land on their faces. “I don’t want to know.”

“Okay.”

She turns to face him and takes his other hand. “Would you like to get a cup of coffee? My favorite bistro is just a few blocks from here. We could walk.”

She reaches up and touches his damp shoulder with her fingertips. “Oh, but it’s raining. You don’t have a coat.”

“I don’t need a coat.”

And she thinks he probably doesn’t.

“I would love that, Shanda.”

The lights go almost dark as they leave the room. Shanda turns back to take what she hopes will not be her last look at the painting that brought her so much joy, so much wonder. So much.

Jordan rests a hand against the small of her back.

He snaps his fingers.

The moonlight turns purple.