The Lost Art: A Romantic Comedy

by Jennifer Griffith

  It took about an hour and a half of surfing the internet, but eventually Ava narrowed her three billion possible matches down to three definite leads.

  First, there was eBay. No, she didn’t intend to auction off herself as a slave for $11 million, although the thought briefly crossed her mind. Instead, on the auction site she found a painting for sale. Of course, the site had a whopping 60,000 paintings for sale today, but this one was special: it was a William Hart, one of the core group of the Hudson River Masters painters. If she could contact the seller, and find a way to discover the identity of the buyer, she might have a lead—a very good lead.

  Already the bidding on this Hart oil, a stunning landscape in cool greens and blues, and featuring Hart’s signature cattle prominently in the foreground wading in a shallow river, had approached $5,555, and there were still several days left in the auction.

  The second lead turned up by surfing through cyberspace was shakier: a blog with a dozen contributors who discussed the merits and demerits of American landscape artists of the early 19th Century. They called themselves The Society for Tonalism, another name for the style perfected by Thomas Cole and his peers. It wasn’t much, but it might be a start. Ava made a comment on one of the entries, leaving her phone number and a professional but desperate plea for help.

  Her last lead made her skin crawl.

  In the art society world, there were a few collectors who collected for the sake of investment. Instead of appreciation (on any level) of the artistry, the buyers simply looked at the canvas and its accompanying oil and pigments no differently than a hunk of aging beef hanging in a butcher shop—something to be bought and sold. Or worse, as a consumable good. Beauty never entered the equation for these art enthusiasts.

  Even digging around for names among this crowd, Ava felt indescribably uncomfortable; however, among this crowd, she kept tripping over good old Kellen McMullen. Ugh.

  Kellen McMullen’s name splashed itself across the society pages of at least three major cities in the nation, in addition to Scottsdale, which lay just a skip down Camelback Road from the Phoenix Metropolitan Museum of Art. He looked like a surf bum, all muscled and tanned (but not “Mr. Golden Sun” tanned like Enzio Valente), with masses of fair hair atop his head. His tastes for cars and restaurants and exclusive parties were the stuff gossip columns were made of. Last year he made an unsuccessful bid to purchase the Arizona Cardinals team just after the Superbowl, but negotiations stalled when discussion of cheerleader uniforms came up.

  And he liked art.

  Sort of.

  As much as anyone like Kellen McMullen could.

  A few tries to his company yielded only the directive to “text him directly.” Ava debated. Be professional or be “fun?” She had to know her audience—and fun must be on the menu, or he probably wouldn’t respond well. With that in mind, she physically plugged her nose and texted him in her perky voice which she kept on reserve—under all her layers of professionalism.

  “Hey, Kellen. Wanna buy an art exhibit?”

  She decided to play it cool and leave a little mystery to it. Maybe he would respond, maybe not. It was easier this way than going through his layers and layers of alleged agents and staffers. She didn’t have to “add Kellen McMullen as a friend” on the site in order to simply send him a message, and she’d rather choke on her own bile than give him the distinction of being her “friend.”

  However, desperate times called for desperate measures. And this was one desperate girl.

  After typing it, she felt an insuppressible urge to go wash her hands, so she headed for the ladies’ room. On the way, she passed the sneezing maniac again. He looked to be headed toward the water cooler, and she made a mental note to steer clear of the area, holding her breath while she figured she was anywhere in his sneeze-droplet zone. There was, after all, a chance his allergies would prove to be more than simple hay fever, and the last thing Ava needed right now was a head cold.

  On her way back, still shaking the moisture off her so-called hand dryer dried hands, she came around a corner and crash, nearly collided once again with Enzio Valente of the heavenly tan.

  “Oh, h-hi.” Ava’s stammering reaction was instantaneous—faster than her knee’s reflex when the doctor hit it with a little hammer at her annual checkup. “Enzio, right?”

  Enzio looked down at Ava, shook his head briefly, patted his left lapel and then asked, “Yeah. Am I wearing a nametag or something? Er, have we met?”

  “Ava Young. We bumped into each other before, on your first day.”

  He looked at her like it didn’t register. “Sorry. I’m bad with names. Nice to meet you anyway.” And he squared his square shoulders, turned that well-tanned face toward the finance department and walked away from Ava, who stood staring in abject misery.

  How could he not remember her? How, when his smile made her knees into that jelly that surrounds Vienna sausages?

  Ooh. That was a gross analogy. Her brain must have really gone empty when she collided with him. The past couple of days had been a whirlwind of stress and focus on the colossal task before her, but something in her subconscious kept dancing around the idea of the very fine Enzio Valente. In spite of all the terror of losing the entire exhibit, she never did shake that smile from her mind.

  And he didn’t remember her?

  For the first time all day, the little buoyant breath in her chest collapsed, the one that kept her up and happy and alive to life. She always thought of that buoyant breath like the little firefly of life force that motivated her and allowed her to feel joy. And with his careless apathy toward her, Enzio seemed to have snuffed out the little firefly’s glow.

  She couldn’t help it. Tears welled in her eyes, and her nose began to run. Ava turned around and headed back to the ladies’ room for a good cry.

  * * *

  “There are things we do to live and the things we live for,” Zoe said over the crunching of whatever it was she was eating. Probably a carrot stick.

  Ava, on the other hand, sat on her sofa among a smattering of confetti made entirely of different mini-candy-bar wrappers. Mounds, Cadbury Dairy Milk, Almond Joy, Fifth Avenue, Heath. For some reason, none of them made her feel better.

  “For so long, Ava, you’ve gotten all of your joy from work, and recognition in your career, and all that success there. You’ve been living for the thing you have to do to live.” Zoe, a career girl herself, had always known her own priorities: personal over work. It made sense for Zoe, though, Ava thought. Zoe had a personal life. Even though she was five hundred miles away, she still served as Ava’s best counselor.

  “So the way I look at it, now, along comes this random guy, and suddenly your soul is reminded that there’s more out there in life than just your job. It’s completely natural, girl. The most normal thing in the world.”

  “But, Zoe! I don’t even know the guy. And he has made it abundantly clear he doesn’t know me—or want to. Please. He’s the handsome Italian.”

  “Never trust the handsome Italian.”

  “Exactly.” She left out his previous double whammy of bad handshake and calling her “sir.” She didn’t want Zoe to know how low she had stooped in her crushage. “I don’t know why he’s getting to me so badly. It’s ridiculous. It makes no sense. I hate it when I can’t make my feelings match the things I know in my head. Who is this guy anyway? Nobody but a good tan.”

  “And a devastating smile.”

  “Not helping, Zoe.”

  “Right. Sorry.” So Zoe wasn’t always Ava’s perfect counselor. At least she listened fairly well. Ava took another mini-pack from her giant serving bowl of chocolate choices—Milk Duds this time.

  Milk Duds turned out to be a mistake. Her teeth stuck to them, which made her mouth kind of water, and she smacked while she talked. Zoe caught her.

  “Oh, Ava. You’re not in a total chocolate pig-out, are you? Don’t do this to yourself. It’s going to catch up to you someday. I’m serious. Find an
apple. You have one in the crisper.”

  “Fine.”

  Zoe was right. Ava found a Braeburn sitting alone in the crisper next to a stalk of wilted celery, which she chucked in the trash can.

  “Listen. It’s going to be okay. You never know. Ernesto Las Valentes, or whatever his name is, Viva Las Vegas, might surprise you. Next thing you know he might be the one falling for you.”

  Right, like that would happen anytime in the next thousand years.

  That night, Ava sat alone in her living room, away from the chocolate, and stared at the blank wall. When she bought the condo a few years ago, she had intended to paint this wall—not just paint it, but paint it, with a mural or a large still life or a cityscape.

  Something.

  But that was the problem. She didn’t quite know what to put there. Every time she decided on something, she got nervous and changed her mind. In a burst of resolve one time she had pulled out her brushes and oils from college and made the horizon line, so that the background took up nearly the top three-quarters of the wall, and the foreground just a quarter. She made the background a clear sky blue, and the foreground the traditional burnt umber, but that was as far as she had gotten.

  The unfinished wall annoyed and agitated her at once.

  Enzio Valente, or any other guy on planet earth, had no interest in Ava Young, no matter how much of an aching hole he wore into her heart. When she should obviously be digging in and focusing all her attention on the titans she needed to conquer at work, here along came this Enzio, looming up, and sucking away all her will to think. She stood up and stared in the mirror on her wall in dismay. He would never give her a second look. Whatever it took to catch the interest of a male human of eligible status, to “Snare a Modern Man,” Ava did not have it. And she would never have him.

  * * *

  Back at the office the next day Ava reapplied herself to efficiency and organization. She worked like a honeybee writing letters requesting grant money—a money tree Friedman had apparently never shaken—and stalking through the office purposefully to make copies and send faxes to possible donors. Anyone who said hello got nothing more than a brief wave or a hurried nod from Ava. Not that that was unusual. She always liked efficiency.

  After a ridiculously chocolate-filled lunch, a reply waited for Ava in her email inbox. The seller of the William Hart had answered her question about provenance.

  “Thanks for asking, aggie252. You must know your stuff. So, yeah. The painting comes with an impeccable provenance. It’s a real masterpiece. Must see to believe.”

  Red flag. Anyone who, up front, made big gushing promises about the ownership history of a painting could be selling a fake. Ava looked at the list with a skeptical eye.

  “Title: Under a Clear Sky. Artist: William Hart, signed faintly in the lower right hand corner with a Wm Hart.” Well, so far okay. “W slightly smudged. Ownership as follows. Painted 1823. In the possession of the artist and the artist’s family until 1891 when it was sold to collector W. R. Hearst. In 1941 it was sold to another collector, I. Stewart Gardner, in Boston, and kept by that family until now. Thanks for looking! Sincerely, golddigger91.”

  Flag on the play. A dozen flags on the play. It was so egregious that she sneezed six times in succession at it. Anyone in the art world would know this whole list was a phony. For one thing, William Randolph Hearst? Ha. Not likely. And Hearst selling it to Isabella Stewart Gardner? Big ha ha. Not remotely. Sure, both of them were famous art collectors in the extreme, but not in the years listed. Isabella Stewart Gardner died in 1924, with explicit instructions that not one thing in her museum could be moved or added to. That was why the famous stolen Vermeer still left an empty place in so many artophiles’ hearts to this day, just as it left an empty spot on the Gardner Museum’s wall there in the heart of Boston.

  Ava wouldn’t expose golddigger91’s so-called Hart masterpiece today. There was no tactful “A+++ eBayer” way of accomplishing that. Good old caveat emptor, let the buyer beware, would have to prevail here, in spite of the price now driven up to a dizzying $22,325.

  Rolling her eyes at the loss, and not knowing how to get in touch with all the unhappy bidders to tell them to spend their money more wisely by donating to her effort toward getting real Harts and Coles and Durands out of cold storage during the Glastonbury remodeling, Ava checked her Facebook account and frowned at the still empty inbox with no message from Kellen McMullen. What was she expecting, though? She sighed in frustration.

  Her phone rang, and caller ID showed the Glastonbury.

  “Hi, Miss Young. Dwight Huggins here.” Shoot. The Glastonbury Museum’s very own Dwight Huggins, director of traveling exhibits. Not Ava’s favorite person, and definitely not the guy she wanted to shoot the breeze with just now.

  “Just to let you know the Glastonbury is on schedule for remodeling beginning late next month, and we’ve got the exact shipping date of all the various pieces now scheduled. I want to confirm August fifteenth with you.”

  Oh! Mercy. That was two weeks sooner than she had anticipated.

  He sniffed a sniff Ava knew all too well, and she waited for the inevitable insult which always followed a Glastonbury sniff.

  “Also, Miss Young. It’s not clear to me how exactly these masterpieces are going to be displayed. I realize you must be doing your best, surrounded by the staff you have, but out West I’m afraid the patrons simply won’t ‘get’ the grandeur of the style of this artistic movement. You’re going to do a massive education campaign in the newspapers and on the radio and on local television, I assume.”

  He jumped from patronizing to control-freak with true finesse.

  “Now. As for the marketing.” The director of the Glastonbury kept her pinned to her seat and making acquiescing grunts for the next twenty minutes, all while the clock burned a hole in her day.

  “Finally. There is the little matter of money.”

  Ava gulped audibly.

  The Glastonbury man continued, “I realize money is always a delicate subject, but our accounts receivable department is going to need the third installment deposited by the end of this week, so please ask your people to make the disbursement if they haven’t already.”

  It took all of Ava’s will power not to spill the beans about the pullout of Horizon. With this pressure as a catalyst she finally got the gumption to get off the line with Dwight Huggins here, imagining him to look exactly like Dwight K. Shrute from TV. They sounded suspiciously similar, that was for sure.

  She took a little walk, her clogs making a good clomp as she went.

  “Hypothetically, Mr. Phelps,” she began, standing in front of his desk and uncharacteristically shifting her weight from foot to foot. “Hypothetically, what could the Glastonbury do at this point if we cancel the exhibition?”

  Mr. Phelps stroked his beard thoughtfully and frowned. “It’s never happened to my knowledge, but I believe they would have grounds to sue us for breach of contract.”

  “Us personally?”

  “No, the museum, the trust, the trustees.”

  Ava felt sick.

  “Yes, Young. You should turn green at the thought. We are most definitely in a tight spot here. Please, tell me some money has been forthcoming.”

  “Well, sir, our fundraising total since yesterday lands right at $29,000.” She tried to sound confident, competent. It wasn’t working.

  “I am not impressed with small progress.” He turned and looked out his office window at the searing sun on the cocoa-colored jagged mountains. “If I didn’t have a bigger problem I’m dealing with I’d work on finding the funding myself.” He trailed off. Ava wondered what could be bigger than the potential financial demise of the entire museum due to breach of contract, but she didn’t ask.

  “Thanks, Mr. Phelps. Back to work.” She didn’t tell him about Dwight Huggins’s call, or about the demand for payment. In her sweating palm she carried the request for disbursement and haltingly made her way toward accounts payable
to turn it in, even though she knew just how futile and hilarious a $1.3 million request would be.

  Merely holding the request in her hand it felt heavy, a lead weight. How could she give this to them? Before turning the corner to approach that department’s area, she paused and leaned against the grey-white wall, and stared at the black and white photograph of early Phoenix on the opposite wall. It looked like a simpler time.

  While she stared and gathered her courage, she heard voices approaching, men’s voices. Unintentionally, she listened to their conversation. She simply didn’t have the energy to shut it out.

  “So, yeah. Bunch of hotties here on the staff, you know?”

  “You’re not serious.”

  “Aw, come on. Surely you’re up for a little office romance sometime, right?”

  Idle words about interoffice crushes? Uh-oh. Against her better judgment, Ava’s curiosity trapped her. What exactly did the men of the office think of the female staffers of the Phoenix Metropolitan Museum of Art?

  “Me? Here? Not likely. I mean, I’m new, and who knows how long I’ll be here.”

  “Exactly. Exactly. Now who catches your eye? Chick at the front desk? Harmony?”

  “Uh, not so much. Kinda old for me, don’t you think?”

  Ava’s ears started to burn.

  “Oh, I don’t know. Older women? Heh heh.” The speaker guffawed. “She’s got something, dontcha think?”

  “Oh, she’s a sexy beast, no doubt.”

  Yeah, emphasis on beast, Ava agreed. Oh, why was she listening? She wished she could walk away. But she couldn’t.

  “Hannah in Acquisitions?” the buddy pried.

  “Oh, yeah.”

  Eavesdropping wasn’t her thing. Ava was starting to have a yucky feeling—yuckier even than before—and decided to walk away.

  “Then there’s Ava.”

  Her own name halted her. Fear’s sharp talons clutched at her heart, while nausea wrested her stomach. She should turn and go. Now. But she didn’t.

  “Who? Ava who? Sounds familiar.”