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tonight."
    "Where am I? Who are you?" His voice
is small and high, and echoes a little off the cold stone.
    "You're in the Field Museum. I have been
sent here to show you some things you can't see during the day. My name is also
Henry. Isn't that funny?"
    He nods.
    "Would you like some cookies? I always
like to eat cookies while I look around museums. It makes it more
multi-sensory." I offer him the package of Oreos. He hesitates, unsure if
it's all right, hungry but unsure how many he can take without being rude.
"Take as many as you want. I've already eaten ten, so you have some
catching up to do." He takes three. "Is there anything you'd like to
see first?" He shakes his head. "Tell you what. Let's go up to the
third floor; that's where they keep all the stuff that isn't on display.
Okay?"
    "Okay."
    We walk through darkness, up the stairs. He
isn't moving very fast, so I climb slowly with him. "Where's Mom?"
    "She's at home, sleeping. This is a
special tour, only for you, because it's your birthday. Besides, grown-ups
don't do this sort of thing."
    "Aren't you a grown-up?"
    "I'm an extremely unusual grown-up. My job
is to have adventures. So naturally when I heard that you wanted to come back
to the Field Museum right away, I jumped at the chance to show you
around."
    "But how did I get here?" He stops at
the top of the stairs and looks at me with total confusion.
    "Well, that's a secret. If I tell you, you
have to swear not to say anything to anyone."
    "Why?"
    "Because they wouldn't believe you. You
can tell Mom, or Kimy if you want, but that's it. Okay?"
    "Okay"
    I kneel in front of him, my innocent self, look
him in the eyes. "Cross your heart and hope to die?"
    "Uh-huh           "
    "Okay. Here's how it is: you time
traveled. You were in your bedroom, and all of a sudden, poof! you are here,
and it's a little earlier in the evening, so we have plenty of time to look at
everything before you have to go home." He is silent and quizzical.
"Does that make sense?"
    "But...why?"
    "Well, I haven't figured that out yet.
I'll let you know when I do. In the meantime, we should be moving along.
Cookie?"
    He takes one and we walk slowly down the
corridor. I decide to experiment. "Let's try this one." I slide the
bookmark along a door marked 306 and open it. When I flick on the lights there
are pumpkin-sized rocks all over the floor, whole and halved, craggy on the
outside and streaked with veins of metal inside. "Ooh, look, Henry.
Meteorites."
    "What's meteorites?"
    "Rocks that fall from outer space."
He looks at me as though I'm from outer space. "Shall we try another
door?" He nods. I close the meteorite room and try the door across the
corridor. This room is full of birds. Birds in simulated flight, birds perched
eternally on branches, bird heads, bird skins. I open one of the hundreds of
drawers; it contains a dozen glass tubes, each holding a tiny gold and black
bird with its name wrapped around a foot. Henry's eyes are the size of saucers.
"Do you want to touch one?"
    "Uh-huh."
    I remove the cotton wadding from the mouth of a
tube and shake a goldfinch onto my palm. It remains tube-shaped. Henry strokes
its small head, lovingly. "It's sleeping?"
    "More or less." He looks at me
sharply, distrusting my equivocation. I insert the finch gently back into the
tube, replace the cotton, replace the tube, shut the drawer. I am so tired.
Even the word sleep is a lure, a seduction. I lead the way out into the hall,
and suddenly I recollect what it was I loved about this night when I was
little.
    "Hey, Henry. Let's go to the
library." He shrugs. I walk, quickly now, and he runs to keep up. The
library is on the third floor, at the east end of the building. When we get
there, I stand for a minute, contemplating the locks. Henry looks at me, as
though to say, Well, that's that. I feel in my pockets, and find the letter
opener. I wiggle the wooden handle off, and lo, there's a nice