Page 22 of The Winter Princess
For her, too. Freja subsides into the chair, props her chin in her hand, picks up her chopsticks, and stabs into a take-out box. I watch a tidy collection of noodles travel to her mouth. The cherry and currant lips purse as she chews.
Frustration, I remind myself, brushing a hand through the air. Freja makes me feel frustrated. “There’s not a prayer we’ll get a hundred thousand, let alone two.”
She looks down, and her eyelashes settle against her cheeks. She holds the tip of her tongue between her teeth until she looks up, resolute. “I’m sorry about that. I should have thought up a more reasonable number.”
She says this with the bravery of a French aristocrat mounting a tumbrel. I’m a sucker for brave apologies.
“He wouldn’t have settled on a reasonable number,” I concede.
Freja’s lips twitch. “Are we agreeing? Do we agree on something?”
I push my fingers through my hair. “Three months?”
Her slight smile vanishes. “Three months. I won’t go down without a fight.”
I think of the women in Sondish fairy tales. Viking maidens with braided hair down to their feet, woven girdles resting on their hips. Unafraid. Often armed with a weapon. Freja looks like one of these, and I wonder where she might be hiding the dagger. I blink the image away. I don’t believe in fairy tales.
I return to the sink and wash up. Perching on a tall rolling chair, I pick up a razor-sharp scalpel and begin separating the edges of a canvas patch from the back of a painting. The gentle scrape of my work goes on. Freja moves from the desk chair to a battered sofa I’ve pushed up against a wall.
It’s better to occupy my hands with this simple task than think about the way she sinks into the sofa and crosses her legs.
I switch the scalpel for a simple cotton swab, working in tiny concentric circles with a weak solvent. The glue isn’t reversible. It won’t ever come completely off, I think, switching the cotton swab for the pad of my thumb, the friction of the skin on the canvas doing a delicate job of removing waste and residue.
This is a simple, straightforward task. I know which steps come next and how to shift with each new obstacle. I don’t even know where to begin getting two hundred thousand visitors through the museum doors.
I glance up. Freja is watching me. An electrical charge races through my veins, and I have to consciously tell myself how deeply to breathe, how slowly.
After a moment, I say, “We’ll have to tell the other department heads tomorrow.” I return to the canvas with eyes that hold her image—an image too strong for my simple studio. I shake my head.
“Rik is going to have a stroke.”
I hide my smile. “Agnes is going to blame you for destroying the entire museum.”
“Do you blame me?”
My hands pause. We’ve been at odds—and maybe we will be again—but something in me recognizes the uncertainty, the vulnerability, in her. “You saw a way forward and took it. SinceNeerTorbald made that deal, we have to make him wish he hadn’t.”
Brave words. Steady employment and a successful citizenship test go hand in hand. I should start looking for apartments in Pavieau now.
“He was right about one thing, though,” she says. From the corner of my eye, I register her stretching, the lithe form filling out the gown, twinkling lights dancing on the edge of my vision.
I pick up the cotton swab again, every nerve alive to each fiber in my hand. “What’s that?”
“The museum is always empty. If its purpose is to preserve cultural heritage and artifacts, we’re not really accomplishing anything if people never come to see it.”
I grunt. “He’s still availys.”
9
Low-grade Euphoria
FREJA
“Vailysor not, if we take the prime minister’s definition, The Nat isn’t a great museum.”
Though the studio is dim, a task light illuminates the side of Oskar’s face. He grins, I can see the edge of it even as he keeps his head bent over his work. At least we’re not fighting. We can’t afford to fight.
“Give me an example of one that’s great,” he says, brushing his thumb on his apron.
