The Unnoticed

She watched them. Sometimes the man, sometimes the woman. As if they were misplaced floating among the ordinary passersby in the gallery. Some days stopping to stand in the corner, others poised on the bench staring at the painting on the wall. Scribbling.

It wasn’t…how would she say…normal. The violent, scratching motions relegated to a moment before the book would snap shut echoing though the exhibition and within seconds, they would disappear. Three o’clock on the dot. Every day.

They had come to see the masterpiece sitting before her. The one she had dreamt about as she sat on the floor, her childish fingers pouring over coffee-table books of the Masters: Rembrandt, Picasso, Monet and Degas, captured by the colors, the lines, the magic of their work. How she wished to draw, to paint, to be one of them. Her captivation not even quelled by logical pushback as her parents countered her desire to attend the finest of art schools with six simple words: “How will you make a living?”

Her hand glided across the page attempting to mimic the work in front of her. “Attention to detail,” her professor had snarled, slinging her sketches back across her desk. His harsh critique bringing her to fill the museum’s part-time janitorial vacancy for better access to the gallery. Bringing her to stare at the looming Rembrandt incessantly for the past three months. Bringing her to the space shared by the two intriguing individuals.

She’d mentioned the couple to security before. How suspicious, how odd. Day after day, the timing, the routine. The snap of the book. The way they stared at the piece. Just that piece. Something wasn’t adding up – or maybe it was…The guards chuckled at her imagination. How could anything go awry with the safeguards in place? It had been a small relief security had jotted down anything at all. Until she had seen the note, carelessly tossed in the trash as she pulled the bag out to replace it. They hadn’t even spelled her name correctly.

Her sketch of the Rembrandt snagged as she ripped it from the binding. How was it no one noticed them? She huffed, crumpling the paper, starting another try. Her teeth tugged at her lower lip. But she knew it wasn’t true. Someone had noticed. She had noticed.

Every line, every angle. The way the woman’s handbag draped in the crook of her arm or that his scarf seemed a bit too tight for the heat of the summer afternoon. How his thin face sunk under a dark, heavy eyeglass frame or how her glistening wristwatch begged for desire. How their gaze never strayed except to mark in its pages. A small, black book tucked into a pocket, only to reveal itself from the hours of one to three.

She pressed hard into her sketchbook. Her lines were never crisp and smooth, as if her jagged emotion poured into the page’s woven indents. She scoffed. “Detail…” If only she were memorable, then maybe she could understand detail better. Like the timeless masterpieces adorning the stark-white walls. Her pencil scraped across the paper and snapped at the end of its curve. Memorable like them.

She raised her eyes to the vacant room, then toward the clock. Five after three and to her anticipation, they were gone.

She slid the sketchbook binding shut. Perhaps she was wrong. After all, detail wasn’t her strength. She zipped her pencils into their case and wedged the sketchbook into her overflowing bag. Tomorrow, the painting would leave, shipping out to London, and so would the two encapsulated by its trance. And she would arrive, first to empty the trash, then to study the Degas painting that would take its place. Just like clockwork that no one seemed to notice.

* * *

The early morning commuters hardly noticed that her jacket didn’t fit no matter how much she tugged at its lapel. If only her sister had grabbed the right one. Nothing had seemed right. Her keys weren’t where she’d left them and she’d nearly fallen from tripping on the sidewalk as she stumbled toward the bus. Luckily, she’d escaped only with a scuff of her shoe and a bit of heavy breathing as the doors creaked shut. She dared to place blame on the happenings as the morning had seemed so out of place, but she knew the oddities were only obscuring the real distraction floating in the back of her mind.

The couple wouldn’t be there today. The Rembrandt would be gone. A Degas would be sitting in its place. And even with such a change, the rest of the museum would go on with its daily routine: the other collections sitting in their same cozy spaces while people milled about caring more about the change in carpet patterns than of an artist’s ability. No one would notice one painting in place of another. So, why did she care?

The jacket shifted into a somewhat comfortable position. It was only a few more minutes until she’d have to take it off anyway. She shook her wrist to get a clear look at the time, but it didn’t matter. The bus had already made her late.

The museum was quiet as she entered; the door locking as it shut. No one sat at the welcome desk, but that wasn’t a surprise. Security took breaks on the half hour and the museum wouldn’t open for another two. She checked the clock. If she settled in quickly, there was a chance she could get back on schedule.

She worked the bag out of the bin, tying it tightly and placing it on the cart. With rhythmic ease and a satisfying pop, she tamed the replacement to fit the confines of the metal can. Her routine had become comfortable over the past months, taking the trash from each gallery flicking the lights on as she went.

Pull. Tie. Snap. Flick. It was well known that Degas had studied, even imitated, Rembrandt’s works in his early career before defining his own style.

Pull. She wondered where to begin.

Tie. Should she focus on the details?

Snap. A comparison of the master to the student.

Flick. But which detail?

Her hands reached toward the transparent green plastic and stopped. Her fingers hesitant as she lifted it from the trash. There was no way she was mistaken. It was heavier than she’d expected, whatever lay beyond the cover of the black book. It was only natural that she reach toward the wall. Flick.

The emptiness of the room filled her body as the air left her lungs. They were gone. Every wall blank aside from the Rembrandt, pristine and untouched. Her eyes darting between the masterpiece and the book in her hands. This couldn’t be happening.

Her thumb traced its binding as her muddled thoughts tried to figure out what to do.

The strangers were gone. The paintings were gone. The black book was there. Left with the Rembrandt. Left with her. There had to be a connection. There had to be answers.

She opened the cover and started flipping through sketches, each one gaining greater detail with more significance. There was one of Carl’s smile, the man she visited in the nursing home, and one of the café where she ate breakfast every Wednesday. Another of the way she wedged her bus pass into her pocket, sloppy and without concern. Each drawing as if she’d documented her life, mimicking the realness of the Rembrandt, but with her style. The lines jagged, much too like her own. Turn after turn – her birthday, Saturdays, trips to the park – until she paused, caressing the portrait by her fingertips. It was all too real.

A woman with a scuffed shoe and a jacket a size too small. A distracted gaze sketched quickly with harsh lines, each one filled with emotion. A gaze wondering of Rembrandt. Wondering of them.

It was her. Down to the way she pressed into the page. The questions of why and how couldn’t even cross her mind before papers scattered to the floor.

She’d flipped to the last page. The inside cover adorned with three simple words - For your services.

Services? She looked at the Rembrandt on the wall that she’d gazed upon for months. The lines as known as the back of her hand. Foreign, yet familiar. The work of an amateur, ensnared by details, blinded by distraction. Their distraction.

She scooped up the items strewn across her feet. A passport, a plane ticket, and a cashier’s check for 20k. For your services.

Her innocence melted as the words began to make sense. How had she not noticed?

It had not been the delicate lines of the masterpiece, nor the intricacies of the colors, but the subtle detail outside of the frame that had drawn them to that place. The one that sat hunched, staring and scribbling, every day from the hours of one to three. So commonplace that no one would really notice.

They had watched as she had arrived and as she had taken out the trash. Noting the keys that she kept on the ring with her bus pass, the access she had to schedules, and the coincidence of her starting the week the Rembrandt was hung. They had planted the book – a book that she would find first. Each sketch as if she’d constructed it with her pencil. But how had they known each of her lines? The trash. They must have looked at her drafts she had thrown away in frustration. Each line perfectly mimicked, the same kind of lines used to recreate the work on wall.

It was the craft of a forgery, but not of the master. Of the student. The student who sat day after day, scribbling away, unaware of the pawn she had become. A meticulously calculated setup. A Degas to take its place.

She wished it weren’t true as her thumb half-covered the passport photo matching her face with a new name. Her eyes moved to the adjacent page, reading the simple script: No one would notice. I’m sure you could run. Why had they given her an out?

A noise started in the distance. The wail of sirens beginning to fill the halls as flashing lights spilled though the transom windows. Red and blue splashing an empty canvas with the bloodstain of crime.

They were coming.

She thought of the couple as she traced the book’s cover with her finger. They would get away with it all. A neatly wrapped case nestled inside the pages of that black book and she would be the one to take the blame.

She wedged the documents into the book, snapping its crisp binding, sealing her fate.

Incriminating. Inevitable. Unless…no one would notice.

Blood pulsed through her ears, the yelling from outside closing around her.

Unless…

Her eyes danced to the clock. Fifteen seconds to the hour, just like clockwork. She stared at the passport, eyes darting to the ticket.

Twelve.

With every pulse of the second hand, her grip around the black book tightened. No one would notice.

Seven.

She could hear the beating as they fumbled for the keys. The doors would only hold so long.

Three.

No one would notice.

Two.

I’m sure you could…

Run.