She answered it with a snappy, “This is the Garfield Memorial. Marjorie Klinker, docent, speaking,” and proceeded to ignore me completely. Fine by me. With her busy pretending she knew all there was to know about James A. Garfield, I was free to follow him (or at least what was left of him) out of the office, through the entryway, and into the rotunda. Only it wasn’t the rotunda. Not exactly, anyway. When last I saw it, the memorial rotunda looked like it always looked with its marble floor and columns, its thirteen stained glass windows, and that big, honkin’ statue of the president on the marble dais under the dome, his head high, his chin up, his shoulders back, staring steadfastly at whatever it was he was supposed to be staring steadfastly at. Now, the whole place was filled with mist that shimmered like moonlight on water. The swirling mist curled softly around the bases of the columns and arched over my head. It blocked out the light of the stained glass windows, and made it so hard for me to see more than a few feet in front of me, I felt like I was inside a shaken snow globe.
