{"id":6397,"date":"2023-02-12T10:58:26","date_gmt":"2023-02-12T10:58:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/?p=6397"},"modified":"2023-02-12T11:01:15","modified_gmt":"2023-02-12T11:01:15","slug":"lovers-on-a-bridge-by-alexandra-seidel","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/?p=6397","title":{"rendered":"Lovers on a Bridge<\/em><\/strong> by Alexandra Seidel"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Lovers on a Bridge<\/em><\/strong> by Alexandra Seidel (Past Tense<\/em>, 2020) opens with Gretchen looking at a painting (Woman at the Window <\/em>by Caspar David Friedrich) which is displayed in a place she does not recognise. Then, as she tries to work out where she is, there is the sound of footsteps in the darkness that surrounds her. She flees, and later comes upon another painting (Rembrandt\u2019s Philosopher in Meditation<\/em>), and sees a man sitting on a bench in front of it. He tells her that she is no longer in the Louvre. Shortly afterwards, he adds:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n

\u201cI\u2019m The Curator, by the way. It is very nice to meet you.\u201d
\u201cGretchen,\u201d Gretchen says.
\u201cOh. That reminds me of the fairy tale, the one with Hansel and Gretel, lost and alone, and a witch, no less alone, but a good quantity more hungry.\u201d The Curator smiles warmly at Gretchen. He indeed sits there as if it were a sunny Sunday afternoon in Central Park, not pitch black night in a strange room with a painting that shouldn\u2019t give off light but does anyway.
\u201cAh . . . \u201d
\u201cHeh. In case you worry I might eat you, don\u2019t. After all, you walked into The Gallery because you could, and that makes you a guest.\u201d
Gretchen\u2019s hands roll themselves tight. \u201cOut of curiosity, can guests leave whenever they want to?\u201d
The Curator\u2019s face drops, not in an angry way. He looks almost like a beaten dog, and Gretchen, for some silly reason, finds herself feeling sorry for him. \u201cThey can. Whenever they so desire.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

The rest of the story sees the pair wandering around this strange place looking at other works (The Starry Night<\/em> by Vincent van Gogh; Impression, Sunrise<\/em> by Claude Monet; The Luncheon on the Grass<\/em> by Edouard Manet; Witches at their Incantations<\/em> by Salvator Rosa; The Lovers<\/em> by Sandro Botticelli; Bacchus and Ariadne<\/em> by Titian; The Ambassadors<\/em> by Hans Hohlbein the Younger, etc.), all of which give the impression they may be portals to other places. During the tour Gretchen becomes attracted to the curator, but also starts having flashback images and fears she may be dead.
Finally (spoiler), the man reveals to her (a) that the Gallery (a supernatural entity, I presume) must have a curator who is not an artist, and that person cannot leave until they recruit a replacement, and (b) that she is his. The Curator baulks when it comes time to leave her though, and his exit closes. The story ends with an artist painting the now-lovers and joint curators standing at the apex of a bridge.
This is an okay piece but a slow moving one, and I\u2019m glad it didn\u2019t go for the obvious switched persons ending. That said, its multiple painting and mythology references will probably be of more interest to fine arts graduates than they were to me (I could only visualise one, the van Gogh).
** (Average). 4,900 words.

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Lovers on a Bridge by Alexandra Seidel (Past Tense, 2020) opens with Gretchen looking at a painting (Woman at the Window by Caspar David Friedrich) which is displayed in a place she does not recognise. Then, as she tries to work out where she is, there is the sound of footsteps in the darkness that […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1486],"tags":[17,296,1487,1489,1491,1490,1488,1038,12],"class_list":["post-6397","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-alexandra-seidel","tag-17","tag-296","tag-alexandra-seidel","tag-art-gallery","tag-classic-artwork","tag-human-guardians","tag-past-tense","tag-portal-fantasy","tag-short-story"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6397","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6397"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6397\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6419,"href":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6397\/revisions\/6419"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6397"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6397"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6397"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}