In the third week of March, the snow around the museum was crusty and pockmarked with dirt and gravel thrown up from the street. In places where the wind had carved the snow down to brown grass, pieces of trash blew around. Plastic bags, inflated with cold air, floated through the streets. The sky was the color of dirty water, like what might be left in a bucket after scrubbing a kitchen floor.

The museum employees came to work in winter clothes that felt scratchy and smelled a little bit like the Chinese restaurants or taco houses they’d dined in over the weekend. No one wanted to get their coats or wool sweaters dry cleaned before the end of the season. Hair was not washed as often and nails were let go to unseemly lengths. Fingers had hangnails. Stockings had tiny runs fixed on the fly with clear nail polish.

Although the consumption of treats and snacks had been rampant over the holiday, the employees now settled into a new kind of eating. While holiday eating is tinged with joy, abandon and camaraderie, this late-winter eating was desperate and pathological, full of angst and worry that things would never change: the sky would always be so low to the ground. The tree branches would always be bare sticks. It was comforting to eat chocolate and gingersnaps and slices of cheese while condemned to such bitter grayness.

In that third week in March, the staff lounge became a place to seek solace, a cup of green tea and something to munch on back at one’s desk while looking at copy for the next issue of Art Beats or a spreadsheet or CraigsList. And there was no shortage of food up for grabs. The week’s menu was as follows:

Monday
A tin of chocolate-covered toffee left over from Christmas (a bit freezer burned)
A bowl of Greek olives
A flourless chocolate cake with side dish of raspberry sauce for drizzling
A bag of cheese puffs

Tuesday
A bowl of tiny sandwich cookies in the shape of leaves, with a nice maple cream pressed between them
The bag of cheese puffs, half empty (or half full, if you prefer)
Brownies with bubbles of unmixed powder in them (Princepessa took a bite out of one and released a puff of baking soda and coco that floated down all over her Jones New York blazer)
A wheel of baked brie

Wednesday
Two dozen bagels and three tubs of cream cheese
A box of chocolates
A mini crate of tangelos
Rice cakes
Pretzel rods

Thursday
Glazed donuts from Daddy O’s (gone in 20 minutes)
Sliced cantaloupe, grapes and kiwi (left over from a board meeting)
Cranberry scones
An array of sugar cereals (brought in by Corey Feldman, who was starting a new diet)
Molasses cookies

Friday
Muffins (left in their paper bags and tossed on a table; by the end of the day the leftovers had compressed to form one giant Muffin Mass)
Three dozen bagels and four tubs of cream cheese
Hummus and pita bread
A paper plate of salmon spread pinwheels
Two boxes of Junior Mints
A loaf of French bread

By 3:00 on Friday, the lounge was deserted and ravaged; crumbs from the week’s bounty covered every available surface. People quietly rinsed their coffee mugs, shut down their computers and left. Next week would be better, they told themselves. Next week, the sun would shine at least one or two days. They would get haircuts and start wearing pieces from their spring wardrobes. It might be time to start talking about gardening and biking and grilling large pieces of meat on the barbeque. At the very least, they would no longer have the urge to eat chocolate covered cherries while thinking about curling up in a tight ball and weeping.

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