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Patrick Bringley, a former New Yorker staffer, spent a decade as a museum guard at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. After his older brother was diagnosed with fatal cancer, he quit his career and sought solace in the museum. This temporary refuge became his home away from home for a decade. He guards treasures, strolls labyrinths beneath galleries, and marvels at the works. Bringley enters the museum as a silent observer but finds his voice and his tribe among the artworks, their creators, and the subculture of museum guards—a mosaic of artists, musicians, blue-collar stalwarts, immigrants, cutups, and dreamers. As his bonds with colleagues and art grow, he understands his fortune in this world and how it resembles the best aspects of the larger world to which he gradually returns.