At the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum on a chilly Boston spring day, a young woman moves from the hall surveillance into the frame of the first camera in the Dutch Room, DR Int 1. She crosses the screen from left to right with a long, sure stride that pulls the security chief’s practiced eye from his divided attention to his grandchildren’s vacation photos on Facebook.
He feels old now, but the job feels new these days with an amiable crush of tourists excited by the saga of the restored collection. It’s been all over the news and cable TV specials. An anonymous tip, and then somehow a bunch of rich people made a crime into an act of charity. But at least the artwork was back where it belonged.
Now, hundreds of people a day file across the screens he monitors from the camera room, as he has for years. But this girl is someone you notice. She stands out. Someone you can’t not see.
He watches her. She seems familiar, but he can’t place it.
She doesn’t have an audio-guide handset. She doesn’t turn for the Rembrandt or the Vermeer. Everyone goes to the Rembrandt or the Vermeer first. But this one goes straight for the Flinck, back in its gilded frame after all those years, faced out to the far corner of the room as it was before the robbery.
There’s a giddiness as she gets close, an electric bounce in her step that makes her seem, for just a few beats, much younger than she clearly is. She’s at least college-aged, but for a second she’s coltish, not yet grown.
The idea that he’s seen her before tickles again at the back of his mind, a déjà vu feeling that hints at security-camera footage rather than the recollection of an actual encounter. She’s probably been here before. Maybe that’s it.
She pushes aside the plaid flannel shirt tied around her waist to pull a phone from her back pocket to photograph the Flinck. He wonders why. It’s not much to look at and it’s not one of the famous works. She checks her pictures, her hair a long curtain of blue-sheened chestnut that falls from a strong side part as her head bows over her screen under the camera mounted in the crown molding.
She puts the phone back in her pocket.
She leans in over the cordon, peering closely at the left side of the painting. It had been damaged in its years away from the museum and restored so that the break is all but invisible. She doesn’t read the new plaque, but it’s as if she knows what to look for.
The young woman steeples her fingers over her lips and stares at it, back bowed in contemplation. When she pulls her hands away, he’s almost sure she’ll reach out and touch the painting. He can practically feel her yearning to through the lens. She leans in again, plucking at the hem of her T-shirt, shedding nervous energy in the unconscious habit. His hand hovers for the radio to tell the room guard to keep an eye on her. But the look on her face is complicated, reverent. He’s reluctant to disturb her.
She straightens and her shoulders rise and fall in a sigh. She snaps her arms straight to drop her sleeves back into place on her wrists. Something catches her eye and she goes to her knee to tie the lace on her combat boot. She pushes up from the floor, and in the swift arc of her turn for the exit, he almost knows where he’s seen her before. He feels the shadow of a worry in that faint brush of memory, as if she’s in danger. Run! he thinks.
But no. She’s fine. She’s obviously fine.
She crosses the screen, right to left this time. A blur of motion, the math of grace and life. He doesn’t know why this young woman makes him smile. She’s at the edge of the frame, and then she’s gone.