Then the Junk Box Incident had happened.
Nell put her thumb on the right bottom corner of the Fra Mauro reproduction she’d just printed, to cover the small, unobtrusive logo. Seven letters in a faux-ancient font: CLASSIC. Every one of their products had the little word somewhere, to indicate that the map was indeed a known copy of the original and not attempting to pass itself off as the real thing. She didn’t know how anyone could mistake an ancient work somehow printed onto matte-sheen finish poster paper for the real thing, but she ensured the logo was on every printout just the same. It was her only way of apologizing to the priceless originals.
“I don’t know how you get here so early with the trains like this,” a booming voice cried, preceding its owner. A moment later, Humphrey trudged around the corner into the office. “Do you just sleep here?”
“Obviously,” Nell shot back, without looking up. She could tell by the rustle of fabric that Humphrey was still in his coat, his face probably pink from the walk from the subway station in the crisp spring weather.
They were an artist’s perfect study of opposites. Nell was young, short even in heels, and in desperate need of some sun, topped off with a mop of mousy brown hair and tiny enough to completely disappear into an oversize cardigan, leaving only her glasses behind; and even though tall, bearded, warmly tanned Humphrey had to be in his sixties at least, everything was still huge about him—his voice, his build, his energy—and also his patience with her.
“So, what do you have for me today?” Humphrey was asking, leaning over Nell’s desk.
“The Fra Mauro,” she said. She spun it around and held it up by its corners. “I fixed the frame so the crackle will look perfectly accurate now, even under the matte finish and a layer of glass.”
Next to her mouse on the desk, her mobile phone lit up suddenly as a call came through. The glow caught her eye—a job, perhaps?—but she resisted looking in front of Humphrey just in case. That was always her first, most hopeful thought when she got a call at work. But she hadn’t applied for anything lately, not that she could remember, although after the first few hundred attempts, the applications all started to run together. The cartography field was small, and it always ended the same way. Once a potential employer realized who she was, and that none other than the elder Dr. Young himself had banished her from the industry all those years ago, she always stalled out at the next stage in the process.
“It’s good,” Humphrey nodded thoughtfully.
For a moment, Nell started to smile.
But then he said what he always did. “But we need it to look older.” He curled his meaty hands into claws as if to indicate—something. A crumpled pirate treasure map, or ancient sand running through his fingers, or trash. “Like much older. Gimme another hundred years, plus storm damage or something. I want it to look like it went on a dangerous voyage, then was smuggled to us in a sunken treasure chest.” He laughed. “You know?”
“That doesn’t make any sense,” Nell argued. Her phone lit up and buzzed again, a second call, but she continued to ignore it. “First of all, the Fra Mauro map was drawn on vellum, which lasts much longer than paper, and second of all, it wasn’t a pirate map. It was created by a monk in the personal offices of his monastery, and stored there for the entirety of its existence until it moved to the Biblioteca Nazionale Marciana, making it one of the best-preserved specimens we have from the fifteenth century—”
“Nell, Nell, Nellllll.” Humphrey sighed over her, gesticulating dramatically. “Historical accuracy, due respect to the original work, the code of conservation, a cartographer’s honor. Spare me for once. It’s not even nine o’clock in the morning yet. This isn’t the Smithsonian. Our customers don’t want perfectly accurate reproductions. They want old, mysterious, antique-looking things.” He plopped the draft down on her desk, where she watched it halfway unfurl and come to a rest against her keyboard. He spread it out a little more, and caressed its minimally tarnished, historically accurate surface. “It’s more romantic that way.”