That was where Ana drew the line.

The smell is revolting, she said, buttoning her blouse.

Arousing, he whispered. He licked her neck and put two fingers on her chin. I find it complex, like…a Merlot.

She pulled away.

Enough, she said and went to the sink and washed. A glossy ibis stared from one of the jars, light glowing through the liquid.

No one will ever accuse you of being a romantic, she said.

He was buttoning his shirt. He had a gleam in his eye.

I’ll take you to dinner, he offered.

I’ve lost my appetite.

Soon Ana put an end to their after-hours activities. She was sure they’d get caught. She was only an intern still. But more than that, the collection rooms felt slightly possessed, with all those dead birds from centuries past sealed inside eight-foot steel cabinets. Even during the day when she walked through them, the rooms remained half-lit and deserted, the marble eyes of owls and godwits staring from old glass cases. One could hear the echoes of museum goers on the other side of the thick concrete walls. Out there, in the halls of the museum, the public wandered completely unaware of the rooms hidden inside the heart of the museum—where nearly a million birds lay entombed. That was the strangest part, the laughter and noise that came from behind the walls. She always felt as if she were walking inside a crypt.

All of that seemed so many years ago to Ana, when Russell had seduced her with stories about early bird collectors, men who’d died from arsenical soap or in the bush or fallen from cliffs while collecting swallow nests. Some shot or murdered in the far reaches of the globe, there only to capture an unknown bird species. He too had the fever. He explained it as a mania for going out and gathering in the world. Was it not a way of showing one’s love for everything out there? he maintained. A strange way to show it, Ana quipped, by killing it.