Page 10 of Handle with Care
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 upcomingLondon Designexhibition, 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.
