Shweiky - Curation of the Apex - Part 10 (animation in attachment)

By the fourth evening, Brody had learned to recognize the last visitor.

There was always a hesitation at the doorway. A glance toward the attendant, checking how much time remained. Then footsteps across the gallery, slowing as the suspended figures came into view.

Tonight, a man in a dark coat stopped just beyond the pale rings of light.

Brody turned toward him.

He turned because the display required it. Every seven seconds, the gallery returned: the doorway, the visitor, the narrow bench against the opposite wall. Then they passed out of sight, and the blue-green alcove filled his vision again.

Henry remained beside him through every revolution.

That was the fact Brody held on to.

Light moved across their bronze shoulders and overlapping arms. It caught the fingers resting against a cheek, slipped along a forearm, and disappeared between their closely fitted bodies. Their feet hung above the luminous rings, arrested in the middle of a movement neither would ever finish.

The visitor walked around the edge of the display.

“How are they supported?”

“A concealed suspension system,” the attendant said.

Brody had heard the answer eleven times that afternoon.

He had also heard remarkable workmanship, extraordinary anatomy, and, once, spoken quietly by a woman who stayed longer than the others:

“They look as though they knew each other.”

That had almost broken him.

Henry?

For a moment there was only the turning.

Then the familiar answer arrived, faint but distinct.

Here.

They had discovered this on the second night. Brody had been repeating Henry’s name into the silence when another thought had interrupted his own.

Neither understood how it worked. Sometimes whole sentences crossed between them. Sometimes only a word.

There’s someone looking at us, Brody said.

There usually is.

The dry reply was so recognizably Henry that Brody almost expected to hear him laugh.

The visitor leaned closer. Brody’s face passed through the light, followed by Henry’s. Whatever the man saw in their fixed expressions made him stop moving for a while.

Then he stepped back.

The attendant checked the time.

A few minutes later, the door closed behind them both.

The gallery lights dimmed in stages. First the far wall disappeared. Then the bench became a dark shape. One warm light remained above the alcove, and the rings beneath their feet continued to shine.

He’s gone, Brody said.

Good.

You hated being stared at.

I hated you noticing.

Brody remembered a hotel balcony: Henry standing in the open doorway, pretending to be interested in the view while Brody watched him over the rim of a coffee cup. There had been sunlight on his face. A towel slipping from one shoulder.

Such an ordinary morning. They had wasted half of it deciding where to eat.

He would have given anything to be undecided with Henry again.

I remember, Henry said.

The memory had crossed between them.

For several turns, neither tried to speak.

Brody concentrated on the places where they touched. The display had made those points permanent, but they still belonged to a gesture made between two people. A hand had reached for a face. An arm had drawn someone closer.

Henry had been there before the bronze.

He was there now.

Stay with me tonight, Brody thought.

The answer came immediately.

I’m here.

Brody let the doorway pass from sight. He stopped counting the revolutions and listened for Henry again.