“It’s an interesting moment over there. They’re serious about merging education with commissioning, curation, forms of display . . .”

“Yes, I know,” she said.

“I could do a series of interviews, like we discussed. Find out what’s happening on the ground. Write up a report. A book, even.” I paused. “I’ll need someone with me.”

“Let’s not get ahead of ourselves.” She checked my eyes. “Well, it does sound good. We might be able to spare one of the interns. Melissa, maybe? Anyway, there’s a lot we’d need to figure out first.” She unclasped her hands and one of them inched toward her mouse. “Funds, for a start.”

Melissa was a confident, demure intern who dressed in short skirts and over-the-knee boots. She gave bland visitor tours and was starting to write content for the website. She was liked by staff and public alike. She never put a foot wrong. I balked at the idea of spending two weeks in London with Melissa. But it was a good sign that we were already talking about details. With Claire being the bighearted person she was, I thought there was a chance my request would be granted.

“Dig up the proposal,” she said. “We’ll see what we can do.”

•  •  •

I ran across Alison frequently after that, as though our encounter had rendered her visible. She spent her lunch breaks in the galleries, or the ground-floor shop, flipping through books. One day I came across her, arms folded, in front of The Silence That Lives in Houses. She glanced at me suspiciously.

“Do you like that painting?” An inane question. I’d banned the word like from my teaching sessions.

“I think I know what he meant,” said Alison.

“Who?”

“Matisse!” she snapped. “Who else?”

I left a long pause. She had no idea how to talk to a line manager. “What did he mean?”

“Well,” she began, “it’s bright and noisy outside the window, but what you want is to be indoors, where you can look at your book and your globe and think about what’s out there. See, the trees are solid but the interior is all outlines. The people are outlines. They’re facing away from the window. They’re facing the vase of flowers. The book they’re looking at is blank . . .” She stopped. Her voice lost its animation. “I don’t know,” she said, sullen again.

“You really love this, don’t you?”

Alison pushed her glasses up with one finger. “When I started here, I thought, Oh, it’ll be great, I’ll be near the art. What a joke. It’s just a customer-service job. I might as well be working in a drugstore.”

“In my day you could work your way up. There were federal positions. My master’s was run out of a town house in Foggy Bottom. Now, to do anything interesting, you have to have at least an MA. And even then—”