In the Bag Read Online Free PDF Page A

each other’s bags: You are one clever lad. And I hate to sound like a total drip, but . . . I’m trying to get into an honors college program, and I need a luggage-stealing charge on my record like I need herpes. So what do you think about just finding a way to exchange bags when we get home? I live in Chicago (that’s the CHI in my e-mail). My mom and I fly back on Saturday. (That’s this coming Saturday, six days from now.)
In the meantime, I’m all for taking the $500. You should, too. This IS an inconvenience, after all. (No offense to you or your clothes.)
Gotta go. Never heard of Antoni Gaudí. I’ll Google him when I have more time. Right now my mom’s standing on the sidewalk, tapping her foot, and glaring at me. Roll on, graduation. . . .
Euros truly,
Coco (We could talk at length about sadistic parents and how they name their children) Sprinkle
P.S. Almost forgot: I only peeked in your bag long enough to know it wasn’t mine!
P.P.S. Hey, the left-the-cell-in-my-locker line is cute. But how do I know you’re not really some creepy 50-year-old international playboy trying to chat up a high school girl? Answer at your leisure. I probly won’t be able to check e-mail till tmw.

CHAPTER 11
    Andrew
    T he exhibit was at the Palacio de Cristal, also known as the Crystal Palace, in the center of Retiro Park. The building itself was gorgeous. Built in 1887 to showcase exotic flora and fauna from the Philippines, then a Spanish colony, the Crystal Palace still felt like an imperial greenhouse with a fanciful domed roof.
    But all that natural light made it the exact wrong place to stage a postmodern exhibit that relied heavily on darkness. How were visitors supposed to see the digital images on the screens and monitors? Plus, someone had neglected to notice that the Crystal Palace wasn’t exactly rainproof. The roof included several spans of mesh screen for air circulation. Fortunately, it didn’t look like rain. But it was one more thing to worry about.
    I was never invited to serve on site selection committees. My job always began after a venue, usually the wrong venue, had been chosen. My challenge, then, was to design temporary rooms—walls, ceilings, lighting grids—to display a particular exhibit to its best advantage.
    For this show I’d designed a dome within the already domed Crystal Palace to create a more intimate space. Even with that, I’d still had to devise a system of electronic blinds for the windows that would block out the exterior light.
    Much of my job was monkey work. I always subcontracted out anything that involved running cables or hanging drywall. But I saved for myself the job of placing art. To my mind, that was the most important part of any job. If I had any talent at all, it was knowing where to put things.
    It was an instinct, I guess, this ability to know where something belonged, how it fit in with the whole, why it belonged in one place and not another. I suppose that’s why I’d felt compelled to hide the note in Ms. 6B’s bag. It belonged there. I belonged with her.
    Okay, so maybe I didn’t. Maybe that’s why she hadn’t responded to my invitation to strike up an e-acquaintance. I was still trying to shake off her rejection as I walked through Retiro Park.
    When I finally arrived at the Crystal Palace, I saw a dozen grim-faced men in coveralls, marching in and out of the building with armloads of cables and power tools. Solange was standing inside, dead center in the middle of the antiquated greenhouse.
    She was a small woman—I bet she didn’t weigh a hundred pounds—but feisty as hell. She was close to sixty years old and still the most sought-after freelance curator in Europe. Museum boards paid her hefty sums to put together temporary shows intended to generate a lot of revenue and good publicity. We’d worked together on several shows. I respected her enormously—and liked her, too, except when she was on a tear, which she clearly was when I