The Lost Art: A Romantic Comedy

by Jennifer Griffith

  She could only imagine. Suddenly, the whole financial future of the museum was on the line. What kind of endowment did the place have to rely on? Could the coffers be raided to pay the Glastonbury for the loss? Or was the museum insured against such disasters. She didn’t know.

  Her scampi suddenly didn’t taste very good.

  And some of the glow left Enzio’s aura. He wasn’t the man she expected him to be. His personality didn’t quite have the same glow as his skin. She needed to get him to open up about things. She might be able to worm a clue out of him if she got his guard down.

  “Tell me about where you come from, Enzio. Your life. Where you see yourself five years from now.” It was worth a shot. And, yes!, his eyes did light up at the question.

  “Have you ever heard of a little place called Illinois?” He went on to describe the delights of the Central time zone, how much he missed wearing a nice sweater in the winter, and how it’s too cold there for cockroaches to exist. He got pretty animated talking about home.

  “What brought you to the sunshine? Surely you don’t get as much of it there.” The sun god would be attracted to the sun, surely. “The art museum? You’re into art?”

  “Nobody gets as much sun as people in Phoenix. They even named their basketball team after it.” Then he went on to debate, mostly with himself, the strengths and weaknesses of the Suns versus the Chicago Bulls, naming great players over the years, and going into detail about whether the Kevin somebody was a better player than someone who also played in the Broadway musical Pippin. Or else that was just the way Ava let it come through her filtering ears. Oh. Scottie Pippin.

  Despite a valiant effort, she couldn’t get him back on the topic of art. It was almost like he avoided it on purpose, or else he sincerely had zero interest in art. She went through the motions of the conversation with him. It bore no fruit.

  She let her mind go elsewhere. On the possible location of the Niagara.

  Where could it be? She said a silent prayer it hadn’t crossed the border into Mexico—or worse, Nevada, by now.

  Please let it still be nearby.

  * * *

  When she got back to the museum, she mentally crossed “go on a date with Enzio Valente” off her list of things she dreamed of in her life. Not that she counted today’s lunch as an official date, necessarily. Although he did pay for her food. The whole thing ended up bankrupt. She couldn’t go back to Agent Ford with even a crumb.

  Now, her first order of business was to see Madge.

  “Tell me about the staff meeting this morning.”

  “What’s to tell? I assigned out the tasks and everyone complied. It ended in minutes.”

  “You’re so efficient, Madge.” But not very forthcoming with information, thought Ava. “Do you have a list of the assignments?”

  Madge tapped her temple. Nice.

  “It’s amazing what a strong mind you have, Madge. I envy your total recall.” Ava wondered if the Snare-a-Modern-Man tactics had any sway over a bullying woman.

  “A gift. Had it since birth. I can remember exiting my mother’s womb.”

  Ava paused to blink. “Okay. Well.” She just needed the information from the staff meeting, but she got an earful of childbirth description for a full five minutes before that was possible. Patience stretched thin. “Thank you,” Ava said at last. “Did you assign anything to Nigel? How about to the Finance Department?”

  “Mr. Phelps should have given the exhibit reins to me, Ava. You and I both know that.” Madge’s voice hit like a hammer on an anvil. Ava’s ears rang for a moment. The sound penetrated and hardened a little place inside her.

  “And there have been scores of times in the last two days when I wish he had, believe me, Madge.” Ava was wearing her red dress for a reason, red being a power color. She stood up straighter, her stilettos making her a full six inches taller than Madge. “But he did. The responsibility is mine. Please be forthcoming with information about the staff meeting now.”

  Madge rolled her eyes and huffed a few times, but eventually the information from within that gifted memory tumbled out.

  “Finance sent that clod Valente. I didn’t dare assign them anything but paperwork. Phelps is handling press liaison matters. I’m still handling things with group tours as well as interaction with the Glastonbury.” But that had been Ava’s job all along. Still, she wouldn’t mind skipping a conversation or five with Dwight Huggins. “Nigel insists on aiding me with that.” Whatever. He and Dwight could be very happy together. And while her strong suspicions about him had waned as she’d heard other possible leads—he could’ve been smoking a hookah with a weird beard stranger, after all—she still didn’t trust him. “You, of course, will be managing the security problems.”

  “Of course.” Which was both good and bad. It meant she had even more responsibility for the loss and locating of the painting, but it also meant she had an excuse to spend more time in contact with Agent Ford.

  After that, Ava could soften again at last.

  “Thank you ever so much, Madge. You were a lifesaver this morning when I had to meet with the FBI instead of run the meeting. The only person I trusted to handle things was you, and you did beautifully.”

  Madge paused a moment, a blank stare on her face, but then she accepted one of the proffered lemon bars, pushed her pince nez into her blouse’s pocket and took a bite of the lemony treat. “Naturally,” was her only reply.

  Make the other person feel like they’ve won, and you both can win. That’s what Zoe’s book excerpt said. Cloying speeches and batting eyelashes wouldn’t work on Madge, but praise did. Especially well deserved praise they both knew was true.

  Alas, within a few minutes of being back at her desk, Ava looked up and saw Enzio stood above her again, another file in hand.

  “Ava. Thanks for lunch. I wanted to, uh, say that.” He bumbled about for a minute before handing her the file. “These are the insurance numbers. Mr. Phelps wanted you to have them.” He shifted his weight. “And I had such a good time today. Can I take you to dinner?”

  Ugh. No. She’d rather eat cardboard and listen to the latest tween pop star music all night. It’d be more physically and mentally nourishing.

  “I made reservations at The Landmark, and it’s my sister’s birthday. My mother is on me to bring a date, and since I don’t know a lot of women in town yet, I’d be glad if you’d help me out.”

  The sob story. She was a sucker for the sob story, she discovered. Having lived the sob story every day of her life up to the last month, she understood all too well how that side of life felt. Besides, she loved The Landmark. Her parents had taken her there for dinner after her college graduation. The food at least wouldn’t taste like cardboard.

  “That would be fine.” She smiled at him, and silently begged him not to talk sports. This was what she got for taking the How to Snare a Modern Man advice and looking straight at him when he spoke, nodding, resting her hand on his, and telling him he was so intelligent for thinking of all those basketball analogies. Even though she hadn’t understood or listened to a single word.

  Those tactics worked. Too well.

  A little knowledge was a dangerous thing.

  Relief and pleasure dawned on the sunrise of his face. He was, actually, pretty cute when he tried to be. And she could probably forgive the gold bracelet—as long as he left ESPN out of the evening. It’d be fine.

  Zoe stepped out of the elevator that Enzio stepped onto. Ava watched, and Zoe’s eyes didn’t even flicker to Enzio’s gorgeous form.

  Something was up.

  “So, did you end up getting your interview?” A thousand prickles hit Ava’s skin at what Zoe might say next. She wanted to hear her say she broke him wide open and exposed him for the crooked fame-hog she’d always known him to be. But no.

  “Isn’t he wonderful?” Zoe floated dreamily across the terrazzo and lit like a butterfly perching on the edge of the other chair at Ava’s cubicle. “I mean, the way he can
smile and just melt your very soul? It’s incredible. It was like he could see into me and feel everything I’d ever felt. The sad thing is he seems so unavailable. Breaks my heart in a thousand pieces.”

  Unavailable, she’d said. It twinkled in Ava’s head, but she peered at the yellow legal pad in Zoe’s hand, the one she always took interview notes on. It was blank.

  “So you asked him about the painting? And?”

  “He really likes art. And stuff.”

  Hope for intelligent conversation fled. In no universe had Zoe cracked open a story proving Kellen McMullen stole Niagara. Ava might as well ask her the other salient point Zoe had brought to the surface.

  “He’s unavailable?” That, at least, meant something to Ava. He might have given Zoe both the come-on and the brush-off at the same time. Some men did that, at least in movies. None in Ava’s not-so-vast personal experience. But Zoe might have pressed him for details about who his real girlfriend was. Even in her dreaminess, she wasn’t going to let an important clue like that go uninvestigated. Especially if she called him “wonderful.”

  “Totally. I mean, how insensitive can a guy be, spending the bulk of a conversation with a beautiful, single woman talking about another woman?”

  Ava gulped.

  “He didn’t talk about the art?”

  “No. It was killing me.” It didn’t look like it was killing her. She was admiring her nails one second and twirling her hair the next. “I mean, sheesh. I thought of him as having more game, you know? More ability to focus on the girl at hand. I mean, he did. For a bit. Long enough to totally send me into full-on crush-dom. But then he wouldn’t shut up about the girl he’d been waiting for all his life.” Zoe sighed.

  Now who was killing whom? Ava might explode. Her knee bounced like a jackhammer, while her mind bounced through grocery store tabloid photographs of the past few months featuring Kellen with girl after girl. She felt played. He’d been previously committed all the time he’d been wooing her. Sure, she’d guessed all along that he was joking, just playing a part because of the museum exhibit. And that would have been fine—if the kissing hadn’t happened.

  She could kick herself for letting herself be kissed. At least so often and so well. The first one she could hardly have helped. The tingle of it still played across her lips from time to time. Even right this second, if she were honest about it.

  “But before we could finish our interview, a bunch of other reporters caught sight of us and came crashing our little party. If I’d had a machete, I’m pretty sure I’d be in jail for multiple murders by now. Of course, the jury would’ve downgraded it to manslaughter when they saw him.”

  “And his bank account.”

  “That beautiful bank account.” Zoe got all dreamy again.

  Ava couldn’t stand the suspense anymore—like that old cartoon of the fish swimming in water in a blender. She tried her best “conspiratorial girlfriends” tone to get Zoe to spill the fact.

  “So.” She leaned in closer. “Did he tell you who this girl-of-his-dreams is?” The one he’d waited so long to finally meet. “And don’t worry about me. Sure, I agree he’s wonderful, but my feelings aren’t on the line here. Lay it on me. I can take it.”

  Zoe’s mouth opened, nonplussed. “What is wrong with you?”

  Ava snapped back against her chair, all formality again. “Well, I know you hate gossip. It’s why you got into news, and why you turn down the job offers from TMZ every time they call. Sorry. I just thought—”

  Zoe shook her head. “You. Are such. An idiot.”

  Ava blushed. Suddenly she grasped Zoe’s meaning.

  “He does not like me. He’s full of hot air. He treats every woman like that.”

  “Like what? I’d sure like to be treated that way, whatever way it is he treats you. I mean, I know he’s spent time locking lips with you. He wouldn’t stop talking about how much you taste like cherries. Almost made me go buy myself a cherry lip balm just to lie in wait. He went on and on about your cooking. You bake for men now? Since when? And something about how you dance? Since when do you dance? You are a mystery, Ava dear. Hiding all these secret skills you’ve used to turn one of America’s most notorious bachelors into a pile of goo.”

  “Pile of goo. Hah. Very funny.” Ava rolled her eyes. “He’s just a flirt. An incessant flirt. He does this to get his way with things, like the sponsorship of the exhibit. And other stuff.” What other stuff, she didn’t know, but it seemed like a well-practiced technique for sure.

  “Well, I can see why you’re downplaying it. It’s another tactic—hard-to-get. Or whatever it is you’re doing. It’s working. He’s insufferably into you.”

  Insufferably? The word had a bit of a barb to it. For the first time in their friendship, Ava sensed a twinge of jealousy emanating from Zoe. It wasn’t pretty.

  “Oh, Zoe. Don’t tell me you’ve got an iota of envy going on.”

  “No. I don’t. Not an iota.” She frowned and looked at her lap. “It’s more like a boatload. Like an aircraft-carrier-sized boatload.”

  “Come on. All these years of our friendship, and you’ve had any guy you’ve ever wanted ask you out. It’s not like you couldn’t get Kellen to take an interest if you really wanted him to.”

  “If someone didn’t already have prior claim to him.” Zoe pouted a bit. “Oh. I see. So that’s what you were talking about. You meant a prior claim on Kellen that you were harboring. Against me. You wanted to see if I’d honor it, your prior relationship with him. See if I were a good friend or a disloyal friend when it comes to men I have an interest in. I see how it is.”

  “It’s not that at all, Zoe.” Ava wasn’t sure how to explain. She wasn’t sure quite what she meant yet. “The ‘prior claim’ conversation had nothing to do with Kellen. It was something different entirely.” It was Harmony Billows’ prior claim on Riccardo, but now wasn’t the time to go into that. “Look, Zoe. You’re gorgeous. You’re talented and smart and have everything that any man would want. And you’re more than most men deserve.”

  Zoe pouted, not appeased.

  “But you and I both know your big complaint is that things between you and the guys you choose tend to be short term. Well, shorter term than you,” and her grandbaby hungry mother, “would want.” She reached out a hand, but Zoe backed away. “Look logically at Kellen’s reputation. He’s not really the type of man to change that pattern.”

  It was the best advice Ava could give her friend. And she was able to deliver it untinctured by the slightly mixed up feelings she herself had for Kellen. Part of her knew that this assessment of him wasn’t wholly correct, that the tabloids painted him slightly more of a player than he seemed when he and Ava were together, but still. Zoe didn’t need to be wasting her time on another dead end. And several things pointed to this being a dead end for Zoe.

  Not that she cared. Anger and hurt blazed in her face.

  Zoe stood up and put her hands on her hips. “I’m going out. I didn’t have time to go out to lunch with the handsome Italian because I was too busy listening to the handsome billionaire spout sonnets about your beauty and your cherry lips. Come to think of it, I don’t feel like eating. I’ll just go downstairs to the stink lounge where I belong. See you later, Ava. Good luck choosing between your conquests.”

  Ava controlled her breathing. What just happened? The elevator slid away, taking her best friend and a cloud of discontent, leaving wafting billows of it behind.

  Speaking of Billows, it had been just the same reaction from Harmony when she thought Ava had moved in on her man.

  She needed some water.

  At the water cooler, three men loitered in front of the paper cup stack. When she approached, they stepped aside, curbing their conversation. One of them said, “Hi, Miss Young. You having a good day? I like your dress. Red looks good on you.”

  Another elbowed him. “Everything looks good on her.”

  Ava gave a wan smile in return. She didn’t need another guy’s
attention right now. It was enough to juggle the men she already had. And the women who claimed them. Ava had never been good at juggling. The oranges always fell on the floor and got bruised.

  Back at her desk, a stack of files awaited. Enzio had been by and dropped them off. Atop them was a Post-it with his signature under the words, “CU 2nite.” Four spelling errors in an eight-character message. Had to be a record.

  All her energy for going out to dinner evaporated. When things were rocky with Zoe, Ava’s whole world tipped on its end. Zoe might still be seething mad, so going downstairs to approach her was probably a judgment error, but what choice did she have? Until things got smoothed over there, Ava couldn’t concentrate.

  On the staircase, she considered chickening out, just sending a text. If Zoe was still a-boil, a face-to-face wouldn’t help. She pulled out her phone and stared at the texting app. Nineteen more unread texts? All from Kellen?

  Sigh. She sat down on the step in the secluded stairwell and opened them one by one.

  I missed seeing you today. Are you avoiding me? At least he spelled out the word today.

  When I told your boss I wanted to see you, I meant it. He told Mr. Phelps more than that. He said he wanted Ava to “go somewhere” with him. And there was a financial threat attached.

  Okay, so maybe I was coming on too strong and gave you a bit of a scare. It’s just you don’t seem to be the scare-easily type. She couldn’t emotionally evaluate the truth or inaccuracy of that statement. Was she the scare-easily type? She always had been in the past. Sort of. At least in social situations. But now?

  Come on, Ava. Don’t leave me hanging. I need to hear back from you. There were a half dozen of these pleadings. How odd that she’d been causing him distress without even being aware of it. She’d just accidentally left her phone at her desk while she went to lunch. With Enzio.

  Enzio. Hmm. Why did she agree to have dinner with him? She should back out of it. Oh, but there was the sob story. She was stuck.

  You stranded me with your friend? Stood me up and left your girlfriend as a sub. That’s a total guy move. Was it? Wow. She’d heard of that before. In fact, she’d been the friend that went in as substitution for Zoe on one occasion. It didn’t play well. Hence the “no sloppy seconds” rule. Forever.