“A bit later, when the crowd shrinks, I will be showing you what I’ve saved back till ye were of an age….”

“‘The Human Heart’?”

“You get a goodly checkmark, sir. I’ll give a hint, you with the High Owl Q. You can walk right into this one.” As usual, I kept trying to picture.

Muriel always seemed calmer in the deserted parts of a museum. Here red fire extinguishers hung undisguised and seemed part of the Pre-Cambrian detail. Fire hatchets were framed behind “Break Glass Only for Emergency.” Sunlight swarmed with specimens of dust motes spelt out in tweedy, milky blocks. In such still vaulted afternoon chambers, the day itself seemed trapped, and then capaciously exhibited. Radiators clanged with a zoo’s fitful pounding. In the late and silent sunlight, one glass case, one clear side of it, would bring into focus all the sun’s off-color energy. At the far end, beyond the Hall of Birds, a single pane of brightness burned, and soon that winning pane, with its Latin label on the lifted tail of some stuffed extinct rodent, was so attended by stray spectator brilliance, it seemed about to burst, most wonderful, to flame.

The only other people you ever saw here were either lost or scary, hidden by choice. You heard their rubber soles long before they appeared, and there was often something wrong with them. (How must Aunt and I have looked to them?) They’d come past carrying too much luggage or hiding birthmarked faces or walking with brave rectitude on some squeaky built-up shoe. They were other avoiders, seeking contact with a world made just a little safer by the art of taxidermy, by glass, by frame, by art.

I would stare at Aunt through the foyer-sized showcase. Between us, “Birds of Paradise” posed. They were South Sea creatures, stuffed now, their tails unlikely, iridescent, as exaggerated as bad afterthought fibs. Aunt told me that their brown glass eyes were fake, but those seemed the realest of anything. Their topknots were impractical as tiaras, but actual as my own stubborn cowlick.

“One sees such wonders.” Muriel pointed to a bird particularly cursive. “But one doesn’t always know what to do with them, quite. I myself have never mastered all of this. Still, I can imagine how it’s done. You will, though. The details are everything and more. You will know, won’t you, His Honor His Owl?” My shoulders rose as my head came down quick. I both shrugged and nodded. Yes, Muriel.