Chapter 5
Chapter Five
Tuesday morning ought to be cancelled.
The first reason is because I stayed out late at the bar, then went dancing till close, and one thing led to another, and I ended up with about two hours’ sleep.
No regrets, though. Raj was as fun off the dance floor as he was on it.
The second reason is because when I show up at work, impressively only five minutes late, given my late night, my desk and chair in my corner of the Curatorial team section are occupied.
By Mr. McLaren. Because of course they are.
I groan.
It can’t be helped. I’m too tired to pretend to be fine with it, especially with that aura of breezy nonchalance Mr. McLaren always has, like worries are for lesser people.
There aren’t any other free seats at our bank of desks, because we were at a—happily—full set of Curatorial staff on my team.
Now, we have the plus-one that nobody—at least me—didn’t want.
Especially not in my chair.
Dee lifts her head from her laptop, headphones in.
She smiles as her gaze flickers over to Mr. McLaren and back again, with an apologetic half shrug.
Meanwhile, he’s made himself all too comfortable in my chair, leaning back, long legs stretched out, tea in hand and a plate of biscuits already leaving crumbs all over my desk.
He’s probably left greasy fingerprints on my keyboard.
He elegantly pops the last of the biscuits into his mouth and dabs at his lips with a cloth napkin that came from who knows where, the muscles of his jaw working as he chews.
Naturally, he has an enviable jawline. I do my best not to stare. Or curse.
Before I have time to properly pout or get upset or figure out where to put my things, Lily sweeps in. “There you are, Dylan. Perfect timing.”
“Is it?” I ask, already feeling the five minutes and some distance behind whatever’s going on this morning. I should have gone straight to the tearoom myself. Caffeine would help. It must.
“Good morning.” Mr. McLaren acknowledges my existence at last, now that Lily’s here. He gives me an easy smile, which is annoying, and more so because he’s even more attractive when he does, and he’s smug because he obviously knows he is.
Asshole. The thought’s becoming imprinted every time I look at him.
He sips his tea.
It’s everything I can do to keep from ripping the mug from his hands and downing it myself to ward off exhaustion. Except no amount of caffeine’s going to turn this right. First, he takes the parking stall next to the director. Now my desk. What’s next?
“Never mind desks, we’ll sort that out,” Lily assures me, already tracking my too-transparent thoughts. I flush. “At any rate, we have somewhere else to be this morning. Let’s go into the meeting room with Will, shall we?”
This time, I barely keep myself from scowling.
Mr. McLaren is positively triumphant, all proverbially bright-eyed and bushy-tailed and probably with a very sensible eight hours of sleep under his belt after a demure night in.
Probably spent doing something respectable, like reading a book.
Or working out in some fancy gym. Or interviewing for a lifestyle magazine, or maybe by a social media influencer—if he isn’t one himself—because he has aspirational written all over him.
And so it is in short order, with a detour via the tearoom for me to put the kettle on, it’s the three of us in the meeting room.
I’m bracing myself to find out that Will’s replaced me for good.
That I’m now shuffled over with the Development team.
Like I know the first thing about raising money, other than I’m nearly always broke, especially coming to London, where everything seems to cost double what it did back home in Canada.
And Canada’s not exactly a cheap country.
My flatmate told me to stop doing currency conversions in my head.
“Get your tea, Dylan. We’ll wait.” Lily pauses in the entry to the tearoom.
“Do you want some?” I ask. “I can make a pot.”
She raises her mug in salute, already several steps ahead of me, smiling. “See you in a few minutes.”
Fuck.
What a morning. Can I go back to bed? How can the day already be a disaster when it hasn’t even begun?
My therapist back home would say I’m catastrophizing and immediately going to the worst and most dramatic possibility. Other than Mr. McLaren’s now on our team and literally in my seat. That’s a real enough catastrophe.
With a sigh, I make a sturdy cup of tea and join Lily and the others in the meeting room. Lily and Mr. McLaren are talking and laughing like they’re old friends. I come in like a man arriving at his funeral, dragging.
I’m supposed to be the boisterous one.
I sit, sip my tea, and promptly burn my tongue with a wince. “Ow.”
Lily and Mr. McLaren give me sympathetic looks. “Alright?” she asks.
“Fine.” Hell, my tongue could fall right off, and I’m still going with fine.
“You must be curious about what’s going on.” Lily gives me an encouraging smile, like she’s been waiting for this moment. “It’s good news, I promise. A great opportunity for both of you.”
“Is it?” I try gamely, looking from her to him and back again. My eyebrows rise as if under their own steam.
Lily chuckles. “We’re a bit behind schedule with the exhibition.
Not because of you, don’t worry. It’s one delay after another, and we’re only a few weeks from the opening, and there are still too many exhibits to source, finalize, and prepare for the installation, which is less than a month away.
I invited Will to join us to help. He kindly said yes. ”
Mr. McLaren practically basks in the attention.
“Will, we’re putting together exhibits for our upcoming London Design exhibition, a retrospective of architecture, design, and fashion over the last two centuries.
So, this is what I need you both to do. You and Will are going to work together on tracking down the remaining exhibits,” Lily explains, turning on her laptop and syncing it to the large screen on the wall.
She pulls up an intimidatingly color-coded spreadsheet with a long list of objects, their descriptions, where they’re meant to go in the exhibition, where they are being loaned from, their insurance value, and more.
Much, much more.
My head spins. It’s not a great time for two hours’ sleep.
“Wait. You want us to work… together?” I ask belatedly, too stunned to feel more than numb at the moment. I’ll be outraged after some sleep, I’m sure.
“Yes.” Lily nods, adjusting her glasses. She peers from the screen to the pair of us. “That’s the most efficient option. And Will can shadow you to come up to speed.”
Will still reads the list like it’s the most fascinating thing he’s seen in ages, and he’s very studiously not looking at me. His profile is graceful. Why the hell would I notice that? Stupid. Clearly sleep-induced delirium.
“You can use this room as your base as often as you like, given the lack of desk space,” Lily says.
“We also have the prep room, though it doesn’t have the projector.
Or windows. But you should still get signal there for the network.
At any rate, I imagine you’ll both need to travel mainly around London to pick up objects.
Nearly everything has had loans agreed at this point.
Some will be delivered by art couriers from their home institutions, some will arrive with fine art transporters.
A few things we still need to buy. The rest of the items the pair of you will need to pick up from their lenders.
And you’ll need to coordinate the rest. I’ve reams of lists to help, and I’ll check in regularly, but I’ll leave it to you two to take the lead on this.
” Lily smiles warmly at me. “I know you won’t let me down, Dylan. Both of you.”
She trusts us with this? It’s daunting. It’s exciting but terrifying too.
Lily focuses again on the projected screen, as full of spreadsheet as the day—especially this day—is long.
“This is the master tracking sheet and the most important part to keep updated. Here’s a column for the status of each exhibit.
And here’s the column to mark when it arrives and where it’s currently being held.
I’ll email you details about the budget for your travel and how to submit expenses.
Keep all receipts. I realize I’m throwing a lot at you both, but I have all of the faith that you’ll make an excellent team together. ”
My eyebrows lift again. I sit back in my seat. Meanwhile, Mr. McLaren leans forward, looking at the spreadsheet in awe. “How many objects are there?” he asks.
Lily scrolls and scrolls. “Three hundred and twenty-seven.”
I splutter on my tea. Even Mr. McLaren looks alarmed. Three hundred and twenty-seven of anything is a lot, never mind things that need loans and pickups and more.
“How many of these things are already here?” I ask, after I clear my lungs of inhaled tea.
She scrolls again. “I’d say around seventy-five.”
“Seventy-five,” I echo, stunned. That’s a big difference from three hundred and twenty-seven. On the margins of my notes, I try to calculate through my hangover, something that should be so simple. It’s definitely over two hundred, though.
“We have limited storage space till the current exhibition closes and the gallery space is free,” she explains.
“Which is why we don’t have more items here yet.
The techs also need swing space to take out the current show, along with a staging area.
Everything has to be timed down to the hour.
Many of these items are yet to be purchased outright or borrowed from around the city.
The museum’s been in touch with them, but you need to finalize pickup arrangements. ”
Both of us are appropriately wide-eyed. We nod.
Three hundred twenty-seven. What’s three hundred twenty-seven minus seventy-five—other than too many exhibits? We’re doomed, for all kinds of reasons.
The clock at the end of the boardroom ticks ominously. I stare at the pale hands over its dark face, probably some fancy design object that’s worth more than our stipends put together.
“Dylan, please show Will the curatorial ropes. With your background and experience, that should be easy enough for you.”
This is probably not the moment to say I don’t know a thing about project management.
And I hardly feel charitable about the idea of showing Mr. McLaren what to do.
Then there’s the issue of Mr. McLaren and how useless he’s going to be and how much work it’s going to be to cover for him: it’s going to be nothing but damage control.
Or we split this work so we can avoid each other.
Does the man even have any museums training aside from a hot second over in Development? I might have a museum studies degree, but I know only a little about exhibitions. And nothing about spreadsheets from hell. Or project management. Or budgets.
God. I can’t mess this up. Too much is riding on this, like my future job hopes and generally not going down in an epic disaster.
What exactly have I gotten myself into—and with Mr. McLaren too?