liquor. They could hear the music from the next room seeping in through the metal ventilation grates that sat above the oak skirting. It was the same music that had played every day since she had started. She didn’t know what it was called but it was classical, sometimes the melody would run through her mind as she tried to sleep at night. She looked over at Parker, noticing him trying to take it all in, looking up and down, occasionally uttering an exclamation at something he had seen.
‘So incredible,’ he muttered. She got the impression he didn’t mean to say that out loud. Usually when people learned what Abbey did they pulled a face and said something like ‘Oh, that’s nice’ in the worst impression of a sincere voice they could muster, the idea of stuffing dead animals was completely repulsive to them, although they were entirely missing the point. Parker’s response was a refreshing change, she was proud of her occupation; it was all she had.
‘We basically operate on something similar to the Dewey decimal system, so the first two numbers correspond to a continent, then the next three numbers the species, followed by—’
‘Yes, I know how it works.’
‘OK, sorry.’
‘No, I didn’t mean to be rude, please, just ignore my … personality, sometimes I can be a bit … I’m sorry. Thanks for taking the time to explain it to me. Carry on.’ He fumbled for words, this time she couldn’t help but smile a little.
‘You need to mark the animals down against the numbers on this register and then you need to mark whether they are to be kept or not. Anything that can be restored needs a yellow sticker and put a red one on the ones that are beyond saving.’ She handed him the stickers.
‘Nothing is beyond saving,’ he said thoughtfully as he stared at the coloured sheets in his hand, his eyes looking through the paper and beyond. She studied his face for a moment, unable to look away. His skin was so pale and his hair so black against it. The gentle curls undermining his angular bone structure. He looked up quickly, drawing in his breath, as though for a moment he forgot he was not alone.
Abbey watched Parker working. Once he had begun to work he had not uttered a single word to her. She occasionally heard him mumbling to himself but essentially it was no different than working alone. The silence was not strained or awkward, it was just silence, something they were obviously both comfortable with. From time to time he would pull out a well-worn leather pocket book and scrawl something inside it, then put it back in his inside pocket. She wondered what he was writing, what was his paper about?
The day was drawing to a close, the natural light from the high-set windows changing to an orange glow as the sunset drew closer.
‘Parker!’ Abbey called for the fourth time, trying to snatch his attention as he scribbled furiously in his notepad, engrossed. He looked up, startled, almost scared, then his face softened into a smile as if he’d just awoken from a nightmare and pulled back into reality.
‘What time is it?’ He looked up at the windows, almost surprised at the warm dusk light that had crept up on them.
‘It’s seven p.m. now, I don’t normally work this late but we did make a lot of progress, you have been a great help.’
‘Yikes! Seven! I should get home.’
‘Sorry, I should have thought, your wife must be worried.’
‘Yes, Sally will be worried … and she will probably want feeding and some exercise.’ He smirked at Abbey’s confused and slightly embarrassed face. ‘She’s my dog.’
Abbey blushed, hoping to God he didn’t think she was fishing for information, she wasn’t, she wouldn’t. Somehow she knew the thought never crossed his mind.
After Parker’s departure, the museum was desolate. Abbey was just leaving when she walked past the front desk. The samurai was standing ever poised in his glass case by the entrance. The hairs on the back of her neck stood up on end as she allowed herself to properly look at him in this light. He was still, he couldn’t hurt her or anybody else, but still she felt him staring, his hand on his katana.
‘Still here?’
She spun round to see Shane right behind her, he was just wearing a white vest, the anthology of his life exposed in the form of tattoos. The ink consisted of tribal markings and thorny roses, a clichéd assortment. He flexed his muscles as he pulled his shirt on, she was unsure what he was trying to achieve, was he trying to frighten her? Even though she was alone she didn’t feel scared of him.
‘I’m just leaving now.’ She moved towards the door.
‘I saw you with that weird guy, the new one.’ Shane smiled and moved in closer as he did up the buttons on his shirt. ‘He’s too good for you. You know that, don’t you?’
Abbey put her hand on her bag; it wouldn’t take much to just glide her fingers inside it. Her tools were in there along with her trusty scalpel. He wouldn’t even feel the blade sink into his skin, the steel was so sharp it would only occur to him when he saw the blood and clutched at his throat, desperate to stop his life from ebbing away. She knew where to cut him so it would be quick, she knew her way around a scalpel. She wondered if the arterial spray would even show up on these hideous red walls. She moved her hand away and placed it on the handle to the external door.
‘Don’t forget to lock up,’ she said as she slipped outside, her heart thumping. She looked down the museum steps to see Parker standing there, waiting. ‘I thought you went home?’
‘It occurred to me you were on your own in the museum with Shane, and I can see you don’t care for him much.’
‘How do you know that?’ Abbey said as she walked down the steps towards him. She didn’t like the idea that anyone knew what she might be thinking or feeling, that those things might be obvious in any way made her feel exposed.
‘I just notice things like that,’ he said quietly, before taking a deep breath. ‘I thought maybe I could walk you home, it’s almost dark.’ He shuffled uncomfortably.
‘What about your dog?’ Abbey looked back up at the museum and saw Shane coming outside hurriedly, she saw his eyes searching until they met hers and brightened a little, before his gaze shifted a little and he saw Parker standing next to her. Shane’s disappointment was evident as his lopsided sneer turned into a scowl.
‘She will get over it, we have an understanding.’ He smiled and followed Abbey, she turned to see Shane walk in the other direction as Parker remained oblivious to his presence.
For the next few weeks Abbey and Parker worked in silence. His enthusiasm for the task was unrelenting, every day he would be there early, ready and raring to go, working through lunch and at the end of the day he would wait for her outside and walk her home. He never bothered her with silly questions or idle small talk, for most of the time Parker was lost in his own world. At work he would often pull out his little black pocket book. Sometimes she would watch him and smile as he struggled to get the words on to the page fast enough in his excitement.
‘So, why here? There are plenty of other museums that have big archives like this one, bigger even,’ she finally broke the silence one day during what was supposed to be the lunch hour. She had taken to bringing her sandwiches into the dusty old store room, feeling guilty that he would be sitting in there alone if she went to the cafeteria.
‘When I was a boy my parents brought me to this museum. I spent a lot of
