The Lost Art: A Romantic Comedy

by Jennifer Griffith

  Ava nodded. These “don’t leave town” edicts—she never thought she’d hear so many of them directed at her. And the trial wouldn’t be for months. She could really use a vacation. Maybe, say, Niagara Falls?

  “Meanwhile, Miss Young.” Mr. Phelps sat up straighter. “You’ve done a marvelous job at managing the ins and outs of this very unusual situation with this high profile exhibit and the delicate details of keeping big donors happy. Thank you for that. Of course, I’d like to give you my thanks in some way. With the vacancy of Friedman’s corner office, it makes sense that I give it to you. I’d like to, in a perfect world, give you charge of all upcoming exhibits. However…”

  “However?” Ava’s heart had risen and then sank again, like a balloon on the wind.

  “It’s a shame. There’s someone with much more seniority than you have, Miss Young. And she did handle things masterfully here at the office during the crisis.”

  “Madge?” Ava managed. Madge’s pince-nez glasses floated on her nose in Ava’s mind.

  “Madge. She was the face of the museum during your absence. And while I know that you gave of yourself in sacrifice to keep the exhibit open, I am likely the only one who knows this.” Mr. Phelps made a grim line with his lips. “I fear there would be rebellion among the other employees were I to promote you to Friedman’s position with the way things must look to them. You understand.”

  Ava nodded. She had no choice but to understand. “Madge will be the soul of efficiency.”

  “I couldn’t agree more.”

  The little balloon floating on the wind popped. Ava had given all of herself to this exhibit. Not that she expected any kind of promotion, but it did sting a little to think that all her efforts had to be kept mostly secret.

  Maybe this was a different kind of consequence to her efforts to change her appearance. While she’d been respected and made to stay aloof in her former way, now the warmth and kindness she exuded gave others a chance to overlook her in a different way.

  She couldn’t win.

  Dejection made her leave the plate of cake on Mr. Phelps’s desk.

  Later, at the water cooler, Ava overheard the buzz about the takedown of Agent Ford.

  “He was so snooty when he interviewed me. What a jerk, making me feel accused when that loser was the one who took the painting in the first place. I’d like another shot at that interview now.”

  “Did you see how the cops ransacked Nigel Winterthorn’s desk? Made it look like twenty raccoons had a rave there. Who’s going to clean that up, I wonder.”

  “I heard the girl at the front desk was dating the fed who stole the painting.”

  At this Ava spoke up. “Harmony was completely unaware he’d gone rogue. And let’s just leave her out of it. The whole thing is a very sad affair.”

  After that, the gossipers scattered.

  Well, at least Ava had that power she could exert. She might not get the corner office and the title of The New Friedman, but she did have the respect of some of her colleagues. If she’d done that before (which she wouldn’t have because she wouldn’t have dared, nor would she have bothered to defend Harmony, truth be told), the trash-talking water cooler people would have given her the sneer and kept on talking.

  In her mind she was ticking up scores. For the water cooler incident, mark one point for the New Ava. But for the deal with Mr. Phelps and the corner office, deduct one.

  A net zero.

  But then there was the smile from the guard. And the budding friendship with Harmony—or at least the budding mutual toleration. And the way she felt when she saw her posture in her reflection in the dark glass doors when she walked up the front steps of the museum. Three for New Ava. So not a net zero.

  Old Ava wouldn’t have gotten the office, either, though, if Ava were completely honest with herself. If it hadn’t been for New Ava, chances were they wouldn’t have secured the sponsorship from Kellen McMullen for the exhibit in the first place. Not on Old Ava’s watch. Frankly, none of this whole affair would have happened. No exhibit, no meeting Kellen, no meeting Rick, no stolen painting. It wasn’t Ava’s fault, necessarily, but her box of Clairol “Bright Blonde” might have been the bleach that launched a thousand ships. And a criminal FBI man would still be extant in the agency, and Nigel would still be sniffling and plotting crime in the museum.

  Score one for New Ava.

  She checked her phone for missed calls for the fifteenth time since lunch. No calls, but one text from Kellen.

  Going out of range. Don’t expect to hear from me for a while. Chilling out. Call you soonish.

  Humph. What year was that song, “Why Do Fools Fall in Love” popular? 1959? The same year as the “Snare a Man” book?

  Deduct two from New Ava—for not getting the dinner date, and for being a fool.

  * * *

  Days that felt like weeks later, Ava stood again in Mr. Phelps’s office.

  “Well, Young, I’d like to commend you again. These chocolate chip cookies are incredible.”

  “Harmony Billows made them.”

  “No.” He took another bite. “They remind me of the ones my grandma used to make.” He craned his head to peer through the glass at Harmony, who looked markedly happier in the past few days. She’d taken over the job of office bakery specialist. It was working out nicely.

  “Was there another reason you asked me in here?”

  “Have you heard from McMullen? You’ve been point of contact with him for the museum.”

  “Not since before the painting was officially recovered, sir.”

  Mr. Phelps frowned. “It hasn’t hit the major news outlets yet, but they’re saying he took his plane to Alaska and hasn’t been seen. I was hoping you’d know something.”

  Ava shook her head slowly, her mind racing and her stomach doing acrobatics that would make a circus hire it. “I wish I had, sir.” He’d promised dinner, and then when he didn’t call that day or the next or the next, and only texted five or six cryptic one-worders that didn’t correspond to what she’d sent, she went through four-fifths of the grief cycle: denial, anger, bargaining, depression. Twice. Not that she’d hit the catharsis part, where she accepted it as irrevocable yet, but she did everything she could to wrangle her feelings into submission. In fact, she’d graduated to only checking her phone for texts from him every five minutes now.

  It’d been a month, a whirlwind of romance in a month. He’d swept her off her feet. He’d taken her places she’d never gone. He’d opened up to her. His kisses were her first and the best. She’d felt like herself with him.

  She might have fallen for him, if she dared admit it. Zoe had fallen for Clancy after an even shorter time, and it was paying off for her. Their relationship rode a bullet train toward forever at this point.

  And Ava’s had completely derailed. Her mouth was too dry to answer Mr. Phelps.

  “Well, despite his mysterious disappearance, which I suspect won’t last long, I needed to thank you for the numbers on attendance. It really skyrocketed when the painting was returned.”

  “Everyone wanted to see the painting stolen by an FBI agent.”

  “Right. Well, compiled with the information from Finance, I wanted to tell you that this exhibit has broken even now. Everything else from here on out is gravy. You may not have that corner office, but you’ve definitely got a raise. And I’m not giving that to Madge,” he added in a lowered tone.

  “Thank you.” Ava loved a raise. Really. But it was weird to have Mr. Phelps act like she was in competition with Madge. “Like Madge says, good things can come out of bad situations, and this financial boost for the museum is proof of that, sir. Frankly, though, I’m just glad the exhibit is safe.”

  And she was.

  “Why don’t you stay and see it tonight. I know you haven’t had time, with all the drama going on. I’ll let security know you have special permission to view it.”

  “I don’t know…” Part of her wanted to, but part of her wanted to hide f
rom it and the memories.

  “Look, I’m sorry I brought up the fact they’re worried about McMullen, if that’s what’s bothering you. Forget about it. He’s going to be fine. You’ll see. The painting was safe. He will be too.”

  “Like I said, I’m glad the exhibit was safe.”

  Now, if only Kellen were safe. Her heart pounded with worry for him. He hadn’t been the subject of the tabloids this week. But if he were to disappear, he’d be the front cover of more than gossip magazines. And Ava might catch some heat from that too, since she was the last woman he was seen out and about with. The brewing storm unsettled her.

  Why didn’t he contact her? Well, call. Or text. Why not? She craved that sense of humor, that voice, those unusual vocabulary choices. A handful of 140-character bursts of cyber-info couldn’t solidify a relationship or a girl’s sense of stability.

  The suspicions that she’d just been a diversion for him went back into the question mark column, putting a deadener on her brokenhearted angst at his neglect of her. He’d promised dinner. And soon. How many days constituted “soon” for a man like Kellen McMullen? Ava didn’t know. But this many seemed like “not soon.” And they also smacked of “I’ll call you,” that phrase that men would casually toss as a life preserver to a girl they intended to cut the rope on and leave adrift in the lake.

  Had she been so blind as to believe Kellen wouldn’t do such a thing?

  That afternoon she couldn’t concentrate. She spent her time combing the internet for flight patterns for bush planes in and out of remote areas of Alaska, ratcheting up her worry-o-meter simultaneously with her self-pity.

  She’d been duped.

  Or had she? She started trolling headlines of old tabloid articles about Kellen, back in his fast-and-loose days, or so they were painted. The headlines splashed large and scandalous, all of them. Naturally, a billionaire bachelor who made himself familiar on the dating scene would require such treatment.

  However, as she dug deeper into the articles, most of the titles headlined empty stories. While at first glance it seemed like Kellen roamed from woman to woman faster than Don Juan, breakup story after breakup story was detailed with hollow filler content, mostly about the girl du jour giving Kellen the heave-ho for one reason or another. But then when pressed for a reason, the girls usually didn’t say why.

  Ava’s worry-o-meter cranked up yet another notch. Something could seriously be wrong with Kellen.

  Until, finally, she came across something written in a more serious report than the usual daily celebrity gossip sites. In it, the writer interviewed a woman Kellen dated last year, asking thoughtful questions and getting thoughtful answers.

  Reporter: “A lot of women give up on Kellen McMullen. You’re one of them. Why?”

  Girl: “Kellen is as lovable as they come. But the scandalous truth is that none of us have broken up with him. He just tells the press that. That he’s the one getting dumped all the time. I’m probably the first to be honest about it.”

  Reporter: “What makes you brave enough to admit it?”

  Girl: “Kellen is a good guy. He’s a better guy than any of the gossip sites give him credit for. He wants every woman he’s dated to feel precious, he says. I think he deserves some credit for that. It’s why I’m being honest. I want his reputation to be as untarnished as his true character is.”

  Reporter: “So, he ended the relationship. And asked you to say you ended it. And he’s done this before.”

  Girl: “Time and again. But he’s a gentleman. And a bit of a throwback. He’s saving himself for his wife, for another thing. And I guess he dumps the girlfriends as soon as he finds out they’re not wife material. Which is really actually pretty kind. Not that it didn’t hurt to find out I wasn’t his type. I only wish I had been. Maybe if I’d been a little more of a throwback myself…”

  Reporter: “You’re not a throwback?”

  Girl: “No, and I suspect none of the other girlfriends were either. I’ve been in contact with a few of them. A few he got closer to, and then the women suggested maybe moving in together, trying things out. But he said no, and they balked, and then he dumped them. It went like that. Things never got that far between us, so I don’t know how I would have handled that situation, and I’ll never find out.”

  Reporter: “What do you think he’s looking for, then?”

  Girl: “I wish I knew. It’s not me, obviously. But I’d guess it’s probably a woman who can put up with all his old fashioned thinking.”

  The article went on. Suddenly, a few things about Kellen made more sense. It was comforting to know he didn’t toy with girls’ hearts but dumped them fast. That was, actually, kind, like the girl said.

  But why hadn’t he dumped Ava yet? Maybe just not calling her was his way of saying it was over. The “no call means we’re done” breakup. She was on freeze-out, right after the classic “see you soon.” Why hadn’t she seen it coming? Maybe he’d give her the option of telling everyone in the whole world she’d dumped him.

  Not that they’d ever really been dating. At least not to where she dared admit it to herself.

  Why, then, did it sting so much?

  She closed the screen with the old article and traced the edge of her desk with her fingertip. Kellen. Kellen. Kellen. His name bounced in her mind like a ball. It matched her heartbeat. It wrapped her up like a grape leaf at the Lebanese restaurant.

  Oh, my heck. I’m in love with him.

  The thought jarred her. It sent a shockwave from the top of her head to the tip of her toe. She wanted to shake it off, pretend it wasn’t real, pretend she’d never let herself think such a ridiculous thing as the idea that she’d fallen in love with a billionaire flirt.

  Who hadn’t called.

  * * *

  At closing time, she’d accomplished nothing for the whole afternoon. It had been a bust. She smoothed down her teal suit’s jacket and decided to take a stroll through the exhibit. It was her first It’d been her focus for nearly the last year, and yet she’d hardly taken time to view it, let alone bask in the beauty of any of the timeless masterworks she’d worked so hard to bring to her hometown. It was a travesty, and she didn’t intend to let another day go by without seeing them.

  A lot had happened since she’d taken on the responsibility of this exhibit. The museum had changed because of it—but more than that, Ava had transformed. And not just her outward appearance. It was nice. Being kind and open to people felt good. Regret bounced around in her that she’d let years go by being closed and too professional to care about people. Never again. Yeah, there were days when she ached to just throw on her clogs and put her hair in the bun, but that demeanor made her push people away. For her, pink was the new charcoal, teal was the new navy, white was the new black. And she liked it. Even if Kellen never came back to her. No regrets.

  It was dark out, and the janitors had even gone home. She had no dinner plans, again. She could go look at her leisure now without getting in any patrons’ way, and not feel rushed at any selection she wanted to gaze at for an hour. Maybe she’d sleep tomorrow night.

  Her phone chimed a text while she stood beneath a George Inness landscape of fall leaves and a brook with cattle grazing on its banks. She ignored it, entranced by the beauty. The only text she’d like to get was from Kellen, and he was lost in the Alaska tundra as far as she knew. It was summer here, but he must be cold there, surely.

  After drinking deeply of that New England landscape, Ava moved to the next one, a Kensett of Crawford Notch, Vermont. So many of these masters chose that location as their inspiration that she vowed she’d go there someday and see it for herself.

  Her wanderings took her past two Thomas Coles, a seascape of New York Harbor by Edward Moran, and finally a pair of Jasper Francis Cropsey renditions of Castle Garden on the Battery at different hours of the day. She paused to examine the maritime setting under the dramatic daytime and nighttime skies.

  Another chime sounded from her phone. S
he considered turning it off. This was her hour to bask in art, not to be distracted from it.

  Soon she rounded the bend and stood at the crossroads of the hallways. One hall led to more oils of the upper Hudson. The other led to the main attraction of the whole exhibit: Niagara. When she and Kellen had passed it by before, she’d almost blinked and missed it. Later, he’d promised to make it up to her in a variety of ways, but maybe now he never would.

  She paused a long time at the crossroads. Going to see the Frederic Edwin Church that had caused her so much consternation two weeks ago should not take this much courage. It was a brilliant piece of art. She would learn everything about brush stroke and composition and grandeur by seeing it live. She’d longed to see it in person for years. It called to her with the billows of mist and the falls so majestic she could almost hear the thunder just viewing a print of it in a book. Niagara. Just even a short viewing would set her up for a good, long time.

  But there was so much emotion hovering around it, like an oily green gas over an extensive lawn on a humid summer afternoon. She needed someone to shove her if she was going to take a step in its direction. She turned away from it and gazed down the hallway toward the much easier choice, the path of less resistance.

  “Ava. Come on.” A man’s familiar voice beckoned. “What are you waiting for?”

  With a spin on her heel, she saw him, down the hall.

  “Kellen?”

  “Don’t look so surprised.”

  “I’m not surprised. I’m flabbergasted.”

  “Flabbergasted.” He came toward her. “That’s a good one.” He stood at her side, towering over her, blue eyes ablaze. “I need to add that to my vocabulary.” He now reached a hand out to her, and she placed her hand in his. He led her down the darkened hallway toward the room she’d been so hesitant about a moment ago. “Why flabbergasted? I’ve been texting you for the past hour, waiting for you. Didn’t you get them? Is that why you didn’t answer? I hope so, because I was actually getting worried you were mad.”