Warrior in the Shadows

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Authors: Marcus Wynne
Stan. Just a little," Kativa Patel said to the museum technician struggling to hold a heavy framed nineteenth-century watercolor up in the tight space she had left after laying out the exhibit.
    "We're almost there… there," she said in satisfaction. "Let me mark that for you."
    Stan was old enough to be her father and a bit slow but sweet. "I'll get it hung right for you, Miss Patel."
    "I know you will, Stan. Thanks for being such a dear."
    "That's why I like working with you, Miss Patel. You always take the time to get it right."
    "That's the way my old dad taught me, Stan. If it's worth doing it's worth doing right."
    She patted the old man on his arm and hurried back through the vaulted ceiling galleries and then the main lobby into her office, her low sensible heels clacking and resounding in the empty hallway of the administrative section. It was slow for a Sunday, but then it was late in the day. She waved to another curator working in her cubicle, and stopped to fill her coffee mug, a beautifully hand-thrown ceramic mug, a gift from an old boyfriend in Cape Town, with black French roast from the coffeepot before she went into her own office.
    Her office was tiny but immaculate in its organization. Even the stacks of correspondence piled on the floor for lack of filing cabinet space were neatly set edge to edge and in the most reasonable simulation of order she could create. She kept several pieces of art from the archives in her space: a hand-rubbed copy of a spiral stone carving from Dajarra, Queensland, and a variety of prints from modern Aboriginal artists in the Cairns area, some of them originals signed by the artists she had gotten to know while doing her postgraduate work there.
    She sat at her desk, leaned back in the old secretary's chair she preferred, and put her feet up on her desk, her hands cradling the hot coffee mug and slowly sipping with the delight she brought to things of the senses. She'd loved the time she'd spent in Australia, bashing around the outback in a tired 4© 4 in the Laura region looking at and looking for new and old rock art in the area. Looking at the pictures reminded her of that time, and how it had been so good to be in a country that reminded her of home, yet without the fears that plagued South Africa. Cape Town was one of the most beautiful cities in the world, but the remains of apartheid, the unbelievable surge of crime after Mandela took office, and the flight of the professional class had led to her leaving, first to Australia, then to the United States, to one of the coldest states in the lower forty-eight, a fact that jarred her every time she stepped outside to enjoy the beauty of the trees surrounding the park and the Sculpture Garden across the street, the bite of the air just barely muzzled now, but ready to be bared within weeks.
    She thought of Australia, and wondered if she would get the grant she'd applied for to go back and continue her research on the Laura area, to continue her interviews with old Percy Tracy, the avuncular old pilot and artist who'd done so much of the original work on the Laura rock art.
    Julie, the barely twenty-one-year-old secretary, who'd celebrated her birthday with the museum staff only nights before, stuck her head around the door frame and said, "Kativa? Your friend Mara is here. Should I send her back?"
    "Of course," Kativa said. She set her feet down and stood up. "Tell her to come in."
    Kativa followed Julie into the hallway and saw Mara and the tall man she dated standing patiently by the reception desk. She'd first met Mara on a gallery crawl, one of those fun affairs organized by local artists that consisted of a walking tour of the local galleries downtown interspersed with stops in the local drinking establishments. South African college life and then Australian outback living had taught Kativa to enjoy a good drink, and she more than held her own with the hard-drinking Minnesotans. Mara was a painter who had some odd sources

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