He sat on the toilet and unrolled it. A bump in the track jogged his hands; it would be so easy to tear it in two. But it looked unharmed by its adventure.
Just as well. Working in the museum back office, you picked up a few things that you couldn’t get from the catalogue. Which offers you politely declined if you didn’t want a visit from the Art Squad, and which donors you didn’t press on paperwork. When to count the spoons after certain people had visited the museum, as the curator liked to joke. Which collectors might be interested in an ancient tablet without asking about the provenance. And could pay.
The train’s vibration was making the tablet tremble. The tiny letters pressed against his thumb: he could almost feel them passing through the pores of his skin into his bloodstream, pumping up his arm to his brain. Slipping into his mind.
The words of Memory, carved in gold
For the hour of your death.
The door banged open and slammed against his knee. Hadn’t he locked it? He looked up.
The protest died on his lips. Ari stood in the doorway, a screwdriver in his hand and a look of pure fury on his face.
Paul would have flushed the tablet down the toilet, but the lid was closed. He moved his hand to his mouth, thinking he could swallow it. Ari was too fast. He grabbed Paul’s wrist, inches from his face, and squeezed until he thought the bones would pop. The tablet dropped into Ari’s palm.
Ari reached back and passed the tablet to someone behind him. Through the open door, hidden before by Ari’s huge frame, Paul saw Valerie standing in the corridor. She snapped the tablet into a metal pencil case, glanced up and down the train, then gave Ari a cool nod.
‘Please…’ said Paul.
He thought at least she might have looked away, shown some hint of regret. But there was nothing. Her dark eyes stared him down until he couldn’t bear it.
‘You made your choice,’ she said.
Too late, he understood what she was. He’d seen her face so many times he should have known — in marble, in bronze, on the goddess in the museum. Utterly without pity, because everything she needed existed within herself and mortals had no claim on her.
The train went into a tunnel, and the world swallowed him.