I walked into the next room, and the next. I weaved in and out of room after room but didn’t see Lonnie and William anywhere. At first, I thought how silly it was; we must’ve been walking in opposite directions, circling each other, but then I started to feel the first twinges of panic set in. I remembered playing hide-and-seek as a kid, the way the game would go from a group of six or seven kids all giggling together and then the sudden devastating shock of no one. I became vaguely aware that my body had broken out in a cold sweat. Without knowing why, I suddenly felt very protective. I worried that something had happened to Lonnie—then, I worried that she was hiding from me, that she had some reason to escape, some reason I didn’t know about, and was leaving me behind here on purpose. At the same time, I knew this couldn’t possibly be the case, but it was as if the actual configuration of reality suddenly existed on a different plane from my body. The real museum, full of other normal people, existed, as did Lonnie—just around another corner—but I was somewhere else, wandering alone through illusory rooms. Or maybe Lonnie was somewhere else, and I was stuck in the real museum with all these loud, tennis-shoed families. I didn’t know which delusion was more frightening.

I found myself back in the room with Repose, having apparently walked in a circle, though it felt more like the room was repeating itself. I swirled around and came face-to-face with another slack-mouthed girl in a painting—this one, a beautiful redheaded child, listening to her mother read from a book. Her face had the curious effect of calming me down as I tried to work out what exactly it was about her I found disquieting. She was sitting on a bed next to her older sister, whose expression was calm and poised. The younger child’s face was dead center, and unusual in its lack of expression. I’d never seen a face like that in a museum. She wasn’t reacting to the book—it wasn’t a look of interest or fear or contentment. It was just the face of a girl not being watched. How could a face like that exist inside something painted by a man? The model must have been young enough to sort of forget that she was posing. She was bored, distracted. It was the face of a girl who was somewhere else entirely.

What disturbed me, I realized, was the similarity of expression between the redheaded girl and the woman in Alexander’s Repose. Was it really only a sideways glance of the eyes that could thrust a face into the realm of sexuality?