Episode 15 · Room on the Wall

On Monday morning, Soles woke expecting stone beneath his cheek.

His pillow was damp. He moved his left hand and found the bandage where it belonged. No blade, no men waiting for him to finish dying. Beyond the bedroom door, Maxim was telling Lucky that a breakfast abandoned for ten seconds was still private property.

Soles stayed where he was until he could hear his cousin clearly.

He remembered wanting another minute. That had belonged to the king. It belonged to him too, whenever he thought of the kitchen before the shooting.

At breakfast, he told Maxim he had dreamed about somebody else.

— Another soldier?

— A king.

— Of course. Ordinary people would be beneath you now.

The answer helped more than Soles expected. He managed some toast before explaining the part about the knife.

Maxim listened, then asked whether he had told the hospital about the dreams. Soles had mentioned the garden. He had not known how to explain dying in somebody else’s body without sounding as though he had decided what it meant.

— Start there, Maxim said. The part about not knowing.

Before leaving for work, Maxim watched him send Krista a picture of the fixing he meant for her frame. Soles added that he could come after lunch if she still wanted him to explain it.

Bring the drawing. I’ll provide the hands.

He showed Maxim the reply.

— See? Someone else believes I can behave.

— She’s known you a few days. Give her time.

The pavilion stood beyond the botanical garden’s bridge. Soles crossed it slowly that afternoon, keeping his good hand on the iron railing. The channel below was narrow enough to make the bridge seem built for somewhere else.

Krista had cleared a table in the exhibition room. Frames leaned against the wall, and sheets of printed text lay beneath a metal ruler. She looked at the folded drawing rather than taking the tools out of his hand. He had brought none.

— An excellent start, she said.

He showed her how a small plate across the back would carry the strain past the damaged corner. She fitted it while he held the drawing flat. When she lifted the frame, the joint stayed square.

— Is this what you do at work?

— Usually with things that make more noise when they fail.

— And you draw everything first?

— The things I want someone else to make correctly.

She looked from the paper to the repair, then asked where the load would go if the other joint loosened. It was a good question. He showed her instead of offering to check every frame himself. For a while, he could be useful without anyone needing to move a chair closer or lower their voice.

— There. Now you can charge admission to that corner.

— I’ll put the sponsor’s name beside it.

She carried the frame to the wall. Soles moved a chair so she could stand on it without reaching sideways. He held its back while she hung the picture.

The photograph showed people beside the same bridge he had just crossed. Water filled the banks beneath them. A boat rested near the steps, its rope loose in a man’s hand.

— That explains the bridge, he said.

Krista stepped down beside him.

— Before they diverted the river. People came in from the landing, visited the garden and left on the next service.

— It looked better with water.

— Here it did.

She brought another photograph from the table. Floodwater stood inside a greenhouse. Broken pots and branches had gathered against a door.

— There was a reason they changed it.

Soles looked between the pictures. The same steps were almost hidden in one and crowded with visitors in the other.

— Are those the people you’re trying to name?

She nodded toward the group by the railing.

— Everyone who opened something gets a caption. The people who kept it alive are usually “staff.”

She said the word with enough dislike to give it a weight of its own.

— My father would have hated being called staff.

— What would he have wanted?

— To be left out of the photograph. Then to complain nobody remembered him.

Krista laughed, and Soles felt the familiar ache of having said something Kale would have enjoyed.

She showed him the proposed arrangement. The flood photograph had been left on the table; the sponsor portraits filled the clearest space beside the entrance.

— Move that one, Soles said.

He pointed to the largest portrait.

— He’s paying for the printing.

— Ask whether he wants to sponsor the flood. It’s larger than his head.

She looked at the portrait, then covered a smile with the back of her hand.

— You can ask him.

— I’m already in trouble with one man from this place.

— Then let’s not make you responsible for my second problem.

She moved the photographs on the table instead, trying the flood beside the workers and leaving space for the donor’s caption. Soles watched her discard an arrangement he had liked because it made the dates read in the wrong order.

— You remembered which year each was taken?

— Yes. The visitors haven’t seen them before. They need the dates where they can find them.

She wrote a replacement label for the printer and set it beneath the ruler. The new arrangement kept the sponsor and made room for the flood.

Her phone rang while they were standing back from it. She listened, confirmed a time and thanked the caller.

— Thursday after lunch, she told Soles. The archivist will see us together. Photographs first. We ask him separately about the admission decision.

Soles took out his phone and sent Maxim the appointment before putting it away.

Krista noticed.

— He worries?

— We’re trying to do it in advance now.

At the public gate, she asked him to send the drawing file so she could repair the other frames without him. He promised, then waited for his taxi rather than following her back with another question.

That night, he fell asleep remembering the king’s hand on the arm of his chair.

In the garden, the broad leaves caught a light he could not find in the sky. Beyond them stood the king, younger than before. Soles touched the broad leaves. Then they were gone, and he was dreaming a council room, a long table, an argument.