The Lost Art: A Romantic Comedy

by Jennifer Griffith

  “Shoot, Ava. I know all about the Hudson River School.”

  He did?

  “Bierstadt is my favorite artist. I bought a thousand of the U.S. postage stamps with his painting of Yosemite last year. Gonna use those like the rest of my life. Glad he painted a zillion different paintings, you know? I plan to own one someday, if one comes up at Christie’s or Sotheby’s.” His voice started sounding lost in the topic, and he got a far away look.

  “But I seriously dig all the Luminists, even if they’re like the second generation of the Hudson River painters, after Cole, who was basically high priest of the style, died his untimely death. I’d argue that Henry Cheever Pratt should be included in the group. His style is so similar to the rest of those geniuses. But Jasper Cropsey, Frederic Edwin Church, George Inness, William Hart, I’m totally into those carefully detailed landscapes and the vastness of the skies. My soul really resonates to them.”

  Ava sat dumbfounded, flabbergasted. Completely gobsmacked.

  When she collected herself she asked, stuttering, “Wh-which is your favorite painting coming from the Glastonbury, then?”

  “Easy. Totally easy. Frederic Edwin Church’s Niagara. It’s huge. Vast. Imposing. Thrilling and dangerous. I look at that and I can hear the thundering crash of the falls and it’s terrifying. I have wanted to see that painting up close and often ever since I transferred my allegiance to the Hudson River masters about a decade ago.”

  “Why didn’t you just go to the Glastonbury and see it yourself?”

  “Aw, who has time to go staring at paintings in New England every day? What’s there to do in New England? I like to have it here, nearby to Scottsdale where there are great things to do even when the museum shuts its doors for the night. Like hitting The Cold Toad, with a gorgeous blonde with this amazing sparkling hair that just covers her one eye and is driving me absolutely wild. So listen up, Ava baby. Nine-thirty. Meet me at the door. Gotta bounce.” He gave her cheek a brush with soft lips, whispered something indistinguishable but breathy in her ear, and then started to leave.

  But he quickly turned around, embraced her, and murmured: “Bring your A-game and I’ll fork over enough cash to cover the rest of the exhibit. I really want that Niagara here, Ava-Ava-Ava Young and sweet.”

  And then he was gone.

  Whoa. Kellen McMullen knew his Hudson River. She couldn’t have been more surprised if he had said he was from Mars. And flossed his teeth with barbed wire.

  She flipped through the pile of information from the Glastonbury again. Wow, sometimes when she looked at these paintings, she wanted to shrink right down and live in one—or do like Mary Poppins and the chalk paintings, just jump right in and have a jolly holiday. Among the photos of the art, she found the one Kellen so lusciously described, Church’s Niagara. His description fit perfectly. The dark, roiling waters with the clouds of white spray, the deep blues and greys, the imposing danger of the exposed rocks, the tiny horizon in the far distance across the cataracts of crashing water. It did frighten her, just like Kellen said.

  She shut the folder and sat there, all amazed. Whoa. Who would have guessed Kellen McMullen, king of the tabloids, would have such poetry in his soul and feel so strongly about art? Not she. Ava’s cheeks burned red when she thought of her complete underestimation of Kellen.

  And she had really underestimated his kissing.

  Not that she thought of it before. But she could hardly think of anything else now.

  It took all her will to shove that out of her mind and get back to work on the projects she had fallen so far behind on in her absence. Things had piled up, and she dug into the piles. It was nice to focus on reality. She didn’t even have time to get home for lunch. When her stomach growled in protest, she nearly reached for her stash—the chocolate stash in her drawer. Emergency. But then she smoothed the lines of her dress where it covered her unfamiliarly full bosom and took those mini candy bars and set them on a counter near the water cooler. Ava still didn’t actually believe the hokum about CBTAS, but she also didn’t intend to take any dangerous chances. Luckily someone had left a bowl of fruit there, and she grabbed an apple then bought a dry roast beef sandwich on rye from the machine. Not satisfying, but not sabotaging, either.

  All afternoon, she felt like she lived in a prairie dog town. Every few minutes or so, a head would pop up over the top of the cubicle dividers, take a look at her, and then pop down again. Finally, a coalition of her female coworkers came sauntering by. They tried to act nonchalant as they stopped at Ava’s desk. The tall brunette, Tawny, acted as spokeswoman.

  “Hi. You must be new. We’re from the Educational Outreach department.” They introduced themselves. Ava knew these women because they were hired at nearly the same time she was, and they had gone through training together. “So, we’re so glad you’re here. What’s your name?”

  “Hi. How nice of you ladies to stop by. I’m Ava Young. We’ve met before.” She gave a little shrug and a warm smile. “It’s been a while, though, so thanks for telling me your names again. I’m so bad with names sometimes. Would you like a cinnamon roll? They were fresh this morning, but it’s been a few hours. You could warm yours up in the microwave, maybe?”

  None of the women took a pastry. They just looked back and forth at each other and then smiled in a conciliatory manner and kind of backtracked in conversation.

  “Well, Ava. So sorry. We totally should have recognized you. But you’re right. It’s been forever. You look fantastic. And seriously. We should do lunch sometime or something.”

  “Sure, if I get a chance. Sometimes I’m so swamped here in Visiting Exhibits I hardly get to leave. Today I had to eat the driest sandwich this side of the Petrified Forest.” She laughed and glanced at the ceiling. “It was a two alarm Dasani to just choke it down. Seriously.”

  They laughed too, took a cinnamon roll each on a napkin and said good-bye. The three women must have spread the information around the entire office because no one else came up to her like she was a stranger, but dozens more came to peek at her over cubicle walls. Strangely, she felt like the Phoenix Metropolitan’s most popular exhibit of the day.

  Unfortunately, Enzio Valente’s face was never among them. She’d like him to see what his barbs had accomplished. And eat his heart out.

  Finally, in the afternoon, when her just-recovering health began to tell her to head for home, she gathered up her things. Part of her wanted to make one last ditch effort to saunter through Enzio’s department and see if she got any kind of a reaction at all from him. But she was exhausted, on the verge of collapse, and she didn’t know if she could keep up the flirtatious female act in the event of an actual Enzio Encounter of their fourth, and hopefully vastly different, kind.

  What the heck. What did she have to lose? She slung her white satin hobo purse over her shoulder, stopped by the ladies room and reapplied a generous coating of shiny lip gloss, reapplied her eyelash-sprouting mascara, and sauntered toward Finance.

  In the Finance Department, several cubicles all clustered together in the center of the room, and she couldn’t figure out a casual way to make a pass through the area to check for him. Her mind raced while she stood at the door trying not to bite her newly painted (though still short) nails and listened to her heart pound in her ears. Why should this make her so nervous? She had flirted outrageously with a billionaire, even kissed him, this morning. Enzio was nothing more than a tan, right?

  The door flung open, and a man emerged. For a second, Ava thought she might faint. Then she saw it wasn’t Enzio at all, but his jerk friend who said the mean things about her near the drinking fountain that last day before she got sick. A frown instinctively sprang to her lips, but she noticed and forced it away. Be the girl, she shouted at herself in her mind. Her teeth appeared, and she tried to make her eyes crinkle up just right. It was hard to smile when she didn’t feel it. Smiles weren’t a facial feature. They were a feature of the heart.

  “Heyyyy,” the Jerk Friend
cooed. “Can I help you?”

  It repeatedly amazed Ava what a hugely different reaction her new persona received all the live-long day. This Jerk who never gave Ava a second thought was now caressing her with his eyes and staring at her in all the wrong places and ways. It made her face burn, but she didn’t let her smile droop into the irritated grimace she felt.

  “Um, I was just wondering, um—” She might as well go for it. “I was just wondering if you could tell me. Could you tell me,” she took a step closer and rested her hand on Jerk Friend’s arm, “if a guy called Enzio is around today?”

  Jerk Friend’s jerk face fell from its interested leer to a look of apathy. “Enzio. Yeah. Uh, he’s gone. Not here for now. Or tomorrow. Or a while. I guess. Uh. But, I’m here. Is there anything I can do you for?”

  “Oh, no, thanks, sweetie, but you’ve been kind. Would you like this last cinnamon roll? I’ve already eaten one, and I don’t want to take it home. Baked fresh this morning. Do you like frosting?”

  He took it eagerly. “Sure. Thanks a lot. What’s your name?”

  “Oh, hon. You know me. I’m Ava.”

  “I know you? Ava who?” He shook his head in disbelief. “I assure you, I don’t know you. But I’d like to. Mmnh. This is a good roll. Wow. You baked this?” This last part he said through a mouthful of bread. “Ava who?”

  “Ava Young, silly. The robot!”

  She turned on her espadrille and sauntered away, intentionally letting her hips do some communication of their own, and as she turned to check she saw Jerk Friend’s eyes staring at them and getting some kind of a message loud and clear.

  * * *

  “You’re telling me George Lazenby was the best Bond.” Kellen McMullen shook his head. He was hard to hear over the din of The Cold Toad, but Ava had almost adjusted to the noise of the crowd and the band’s steel guitars now. “No. Fuggedaboutit.”

  “Come on. He was handsome, and In Her Majesty’s Secret Service is one of the best Bond plots.” Ava actually had no opinion on the topic, not a strong one anyway, but she was enjoying seeing the ire rise in Kellen. “It’s the one where Bond got married. I like it best.” She gave a little shrug, a feminine one, the kind that she assumed men would find hard to argue with.

  “Please. Lazenby was a male model. From Australia. He couldn’t live up to Connery. Or even to Roger Moore as Bond.”

  “Timothy Dalton wasn’t bad.” Oh, she might as well give him a little slack.

  “Now you’re making sense. Timothy Dalton was fierce. He was the best Bond. Far outstripping Lazenby. I’m just embarrassed that you are a Lazenby fan. I’m not sure we can be friends.” Kellen sat back and crossed his arms over his chest. “Next you’ll be telling me you prefer Ford over Chevy.”

  The band took five, and it was easier to converse now, although the crowd still generated quite a racket.

  “My Dad is a Chevy guy, but I’ve always had a thing for that 1974 Mustang.” Ava reached over and patted Kellen’s hand. “I mean, Mustang II.”

  This made Kellen almost fall off his chair. “What? Not the ’74. Unless one of Charlie’s Angels came with it, that is the most universally reviled ’Stang of all time,” he spluttered. He was kind of cute when he spluttered. “This is low. Very low. You’re disappointing me left and right, Ava Young. I thought we might have something beautiful, you and I.”

  She shouldn’t tease him like this, although it was kind of fun watching him get worked up. A guy with a billion dollars and a strong opinion about Ford versus Chevy? Hard to believe. Surely he could see through her fake assertion—no one liked the Mustang II. Or Lazenby.

  “I see your eyes crinkling at the edges, Ava Young. You’re making fun of me.” Kellen pushed her shoulder, and kept his hand resting there. She gently took his fingers and placed them back on his side of the table. “I should have known. Smart girl like you, you’d get in a jab or two.”

  “I do like some of the older Mustangs,” she conceded. “But you’re right about the 1974. It’s hideous.”

  “It’s like the real Mustang had a love child with the Pinto.”

  “Bad crossbreeding.”

  They covered topics from best hair of a Hollywood starlet of all time—which went on a tangent to best TV hair, a knockdown drag-out between Jennifer Aniston and Farrah Fawcett until at last they agreed on Lindsay Wagner. Then it flowed to worst U.S. presidents. He made a real case for Andrew Jackson, while she maintained her stance about Andrew Johnson. They both agreed that Andrew wasn’t a lucky name for a president.

  Ava kept the topics light—not taking Kellen anywhere serious or controversial. She had an art exhibit sponsorship hanging in the balance and wouldn’t dream of jeopardizing it. But she couldn’t deny the fun in keeping him a bit off balance. He might be a bit of cotton candy as a person, but he did have a billion dollars and killer blue eyes.

  Against her will, she was starting to kind of enjoy herself. Maybe the “flirt” side of herself had achieved dominance for five minutes. Just as she let herself steal a long stare at those intensely blue eyes, up came three long-legged women in scanty dress. The girl in black ran a hand across his shoulders, making Ava cringe.

  “Well, if it isn’t Kellen. You haven’t been down here in ages. What brings you back?” They studiously ignored Ava, as if he weren’t there. Kellen tugged at his collar, and gulped visibly. “You used to come see us.”

  When the girl in purple made a move like she was going to sit in his lap, Ava popped to her feet.

  “Oh, look at the time.” She went for the door. Kellen popped up right after her, extracting himself from the bevy of floozies. He chased her down.

  “Ava. Wait.”

  She kept walking until he put a hand on her shoulder. He was a donor. She had to be kind—and use extra care and patience. Even though it shouldn’t bother her the teensiest bit that the women in the bar knew him, she worried her acting skills weren’t quite up to this monumental a task yet. Still, the exhibit, her job, the whole museum depended on her being cool at this moment.

  Kellen stooped and took her hand. He planted a soft kiss on it.

  “I’ll send the remainder of the payment for the exhibit first thing in the morning.”

  Chapter 5

  The next morning, Ava rolled over in her bed and slapped the buzzer on her alarm clock. It was such an unpleasant sound, and such an unpleasant hour. And she’d been having such a lovely encounter with the imaginary art expert again. Or was it Kellen McMullen? Faces blurred in dreams. Anyway, an Arizona dweller had to get up pretty early in the morning to beat the sun in the summer, and Ava wanted to curl up in a ball and wait for a bright shining ray to sear her eyelid open before she responded to the information that it was morning.

  Then she remembered—it was Day Two of her experiment. And Day One had been an unmitigated success, right down to The Cold Toad with Kellen McMullen. She smiled when she thought about how coolly she had kept him at a distance, and how hotly he’d appeared to want to get nearer. But she succeeded, kept him guessing, laughed at his jokes, refused to discuss art “off the clock,” and spent a little less than an hour in his dangerous company. Dangerous because she didn’t want to admit how much she liked that liplock yesterday morning.

  She bounced out of bed in her new pink satin pajamas and headed for a steamy shower before getting down to the business of becoming the Very Sultry Ava Young, whom no one in her office recognized as the old Ava. And she wanted to keep it that way.

  While she applied her eye shadow, she evaluated the events of the day before. Sure, she had difficulty staying, as Ms. Fishbeck would say, “in character.” She didn’t want to smile when she saw Jerk Friend. She didn’t want to treat him like a human being instead of the cretin he was; she didn’t want to speak to Harmony Billows without a sneer in her voice; she didn’t want to keep her hand at her side when it should logically have been slapping Kellen McMullen’s cheek for taking liberties with her at their first meeting.

  But she had
stayed in character. She had “been the girl.” And the results were surprising. Sure, some of the annoying come-ons were to be expected. But her female coworkers’ kindness toward her surprised her. She knew a lot of it was probably initially just a reaction to her new appearance, but when she thought about it, she concluded it couldn’t all be the way she looked. When she spoke to them, with kind tones, and tried to be genuine—that was when the response toward her had thawed considerably. A physical change alone wouldn’t have been enough. The personality softening was what she thought made the real difference.

  “T-minus one week and counting.” She pulled this morning’s concoction from the oven, two loaves of quick bread, a banana loaf and a lemon loaf—with a lemon glaze drizzled down into holes she poked with a skewer. One week until the paintings would arrive from the Glastonbury. The construction on the display area nearly complete in the exhibition wing of the Phoenix Metropolitan was even better than she had pictured it. The team really had done a bang-up job. Nigel’s oversight of the construction had created a well-placed maze that would house all the oils, and would do justice even to those of tremendous size, like Church’s Niagara. That would please Kellen, for sure.

  Kellen.

  She decided not to think of Kellen. He called her once in the evening, after The Cold Toad, but she let it go to voice mail. He kind of scared her, and she didn’t necessarily want to see him again before the exhibit opened. Something about him was eerily persuasive to Ava. Would he show up when the shipment arrived next week? She wondered.

  With her hair in a loose flow of golden waves, and her makeup set in tones of warm bronze, Ava returned to her newly stocked closet to find the right dress for Day Two.

  When selecting her wardrobe for the week on Sunday, Ava kept the upcoming exhibit in the back of her mind. Nigel had told her he wanted to arrange it in a sort of crescendo for the viewing satisfaction of the patrons. Ava decided to take his advice and arrange her wardrobe in a similar way. Yesterday’s sweet little white cotton sundress and pointelle sweater had been her cute entry into the week. Today she went for sweet.