The Ozone Smell of Tuesday
The dust in the Restoration Wing didn't usually dance; it hung, suspended in the stale air of history. But on that Tuesday, the particles were vibrating.
Elara adjusted her jeweler's loupe, her tweezers hovering over a fragment of a first-century funerary urn. She felt the pressure in her ears change, the same way it does right before a massive thunderstorm. Then came the smell—clean, sharp, and entirely out of place in a room that smelled of damp stone and chemical solvents.
"You're still using the paraloid B-72?" a voice asked. It was a baritone, rich and slightly amused. "I told you, it's going to yellow the edges of the terracotta."
Elara jumped, her tweezers clicking shut on thin air. She turned, expecting to see her supervisor, Dr. Aris. Instead, she saw a man who shouldn't have been there.
He was leaning against a stack of acid-free boxes, wearing a worn tweed jacket that looked like it belonged in the 1950s, but his sneakers were modern. He looked solid—painfully solid—yet there was a slight vibrato to his outline, like a heat haze on a highway.
"Who are you? Security is supposed to have the wing locked," Elara said, her heart hammering against her ribs.
The man checked a silver pocket watch, frowned, and then looked at her with a smile that felt like a warm hearth. "I'm Julian. And don't worry about security. To them, I'm just a drafty corridor."
"Julian," she repeated, the name tasting like copper. "Are you a ghost?"
"God, I hope not," he laughed, stepping forward. As he moved, the light in the room seemed to bend around him. "Ghosts are memories. I'm a persistent physical anomaly. Big difference. Do you have a coffee? I haven't had a drink in what feels like five minutes, but my watch says it's been fourteen days since I last saw someone in this room."
Elara backed away, her hand reaching for her phone on the workbench. "Fourteen days? I was here yesterday. This wing was empty."
Julian's face softened into a look of profound, practiced loneliness. "For you, it was yesterday. For me... it was a heartbeat ago. I was standing right here, watching a woman in a lab coat—you, I assume—leave for the evening. I blinked, the sun moved six inches across the floor, and suddenly you're back, your hair is longer, and you're working on a different urn."
He reached out toward the workbench, but his hand passed through a roll of bubble wrap as if it were smoke. He winced, pulling back.
"I'm losing my density," he muttered. "Listen, Elara—I saw your name tag—I don't have much time before the phase shifts again. You're the first person in three cycles who hasn't screamed or called an exorcist. Stay? Talk to me?"
Elara looked at the phone in her hand. She could call security. She could run. But she looked at Julian—at the way he held himself as if he were made of glass—and she felt a sudden, inexplicable grief.
"I have a thermos of Earl Grey," she said, her voice trembling. "It's not coffee, but it's hot."
Julian sat on the floor, crossing his legs. "Earl Grey is perfect. Tell me everything that happened in the world since... well, since five minutes ago for me. Did we finally land on Mars? Is the library still standing?"
Elara sat across from him, the two-week gap between them feeling like a canyon she was suddenly desperate to cross. She didn't know then that this was the start of the longest, shortest year of her life. She didn't know that by December, she would hate Wednesdays with a religious fervor.
She just poured the tea, watching the steam rise and disappear into the man who wasn't there.