The Lost Art
A Romantic Comedy
Chapter 1
Cigarette smoke burned Ava’s nostrils as she picked her way through the clutter of tables and chairs in the noisy bar. For once she refused to sit at the back of a room and blend into the crowd because she had no intention of viewing tonight’s guest speaker through a smoky haze. She wanted to see the presenter’s face as clearly and as closely as possible.
Of course, he’d be blinded by the stage lighting and never take a glance at Ava Young. Not that she’d particularly want him to since it wouldn’t matter anyway. Men never did seem to give her a second look. And who could blame them? She looked nothing like her namesake, the famous starlet Ava Gardner from Hollywood’s golden age. None of the curvaceous lines, the luscious curly dark hair, the sultry eyes. Ava Young kept herself nondescript. It was the best way to get ahead in her job as art curator and climb the career ladder at the museum. Besides, it insulated her—from a lot of things.
But oh, tonight, if this dream guy would give her a tiny gift of eye contact, it would set her up for a long time.
“Ladies and gentlemen, please take your seats.” The emcee at the microphone wore a suit with a skinny tie. Ava wished she’d dressed for the occasion in something besides her grey flannel suit and sensible shoes. She’d better find a seat soon, or she’d be stuck on the sidelines and never see him. Tonight he was going to be speaking on his area of expertise—well, one of them; there were so many—crimes against art. Oh, what an incredible mind he had. She sighed, but then she spied an open table right at the front of the room and made a quick break for it.
And then, there he was at the microphone, making self-deprecating jokes, sporting that hair all mussed up at the edges, speaking about great art heists of the last two hundred years. The audience chuckled, they clapped, all while Ava sat in a daze, her chin on her hand, gazing up at the beautiful face that fronted that incredible mind. She almost didn’t listen to anything he said, just felt the calming of his words washing over her.
And then suddenly, his hand was reaching out to her. He was saying something about Fibonacci and the Golden Ratio, the Parthenon, the perfection of beauty, and he was reaching for Ava’s hand, beckoning her to come up on the stage beside him. She turned to stone—in equal parts fear, shock, and pure joy.
“And so,” he was saying in a voice like melted butter, “I would like to ask this stunning young woman at the front table to come onto the stage beside me. From the moment I set foot in the room, my eye fell on her face, which has the perfect proportions of the Golden Ratio, just as described by Euclid.”
And then she was up on the stage beside him, her breath bated, his eyes a centimeter from Ava’s, his warm hand caressing the curve of her cheek. Her eyes gently closed as the rough hand traced her facial lines until—
A scream from the back of the room jolted Ava, and she pulled away from him. The scream wouldn’t stop, but began to pulsate, and sound more and more like…
Ava’s alarm clock.
Blast! And just when things were starting to get good. She should’ve known it was a dream. For one, she’d probably never go to a smoky bar to hear an art lecture. For another, no real life art lecturers were ever that good-looking. Most of all, no man would walk into a room and have his eyes fall on her. Not unless she was the only person in the room. And on fire.
She punched the alarm clock’s stop button. Seven a.m. She had a meeting with museum security later today. And a staff meeting this morning for the big art exhibit coming up. Sigh. Not something she ought to be late for. Luckily her shower and hairdo and throw-on-a-suit routine took almost no time at all.
Something about how vulnerable she’d felt with that imaginary presenter’s hand on hers made her stomach shake, like an aftershock from an earthquake. But after a few sit-ups and crunches, she steeled it. No one at work should see this chink in her armor—not with all the stress coming at them all from the exhibit of a lifetime hitting the Phoenix Metropolitan in a few weeks. She had to be strength itself, especially for poor Friedman. This thing was his baby.
“It’s trash day, Mrs. Chowder,” Ava called to the elderly lady who lived in the apartment across the way as she headed down the stairs. “Can I take yours down to the road for you?” There was a grumbling mumble from inside the apartment, which Ava took as an assent. Mrs. Chowder was like that. Even when Ava occasionally dropped off homemade cinnamon rolls.
Within a few moments she was done at the dumpster and out in the searing sun of Phoenix, running in her clogs toward the light-rail stop.
After a few minutes of sliding along the electric tracks, her phone sang. Zoe. In full auto-rant about a guy.
“Oh, Zoe, I’m so sorry to hear it. He seemed so into you.” Ava muffled her voice so she wouldn’t be one of “those” people having a cell phone conversation on the train.
“At least for a while,” Zoe sniffed so loudly Ava could almost hear it crossing the Rockies from Denver. “I totally thought … this time.”
A phone call wasn’t the same as a hug for her lifelong bestie, but Ava did her best to console her.
“But Zoe. You have a ton of things going for you. You’re beautiful, smart, talented. You’ve got the best job in broadcasting—anchor-babe at Channel 4. Seriously.”
“Yeah, yeah. You don’t need to say it. Any guy would be crazy not to just snap little ol’ me right up, as my mom is forever saying.” Zoe growled in frustration, and it fizzed in Ava’s ear. Everyone on the train could probably hear it too. “It’s not like some billionaire like Kellen McMullen is going to show up on my doorstep and fly me off in his helicopter.”
Ava almost gagged. That was the last thing Zoe needed—a loose cannon and tabloid hopper like Kellen McMullen or one of his other billionaire playboy cohorts. Incredibly good-looking or not, he was no Daddy Warbucks or Mr. Monopoly. Ava would know. She’d been researching investors for the upcoming mega-exhibit, and she knew this dimwit. He and his pals were like the trailer trash of billionaires, and Ava had grown up in Laveen, so she knew about trailers. If only Honey Boo Boo were in his dating age range, they’d be perfect for each other. She almost did the “loser sneeze” on his behalf. But she was on the train. And Zoe was listening.
“What I was going to say is you’ve got a ton of great things going on. Maybe you should just focus on what’s right in life for now, and not worry about what’s going wrong.” A blur of adobe washed past the window. Phoenix had a lot of adobe.
Zoe sighed. “Sometimes I wish I could be more like you, Ava. You’ve gone through a total dry spell dating, but you don’t seem to let it bother you a bit. You don’t get caught up in all the annoying contrivances the world requires. Vanity, all that. You’re always so self-contained and at peace. How do you have it so ‘together?’ What’s your secret?”
Ava laughed. “Please. Zoe. You know me better than that.” Then she muffled her voice again and looked around. No one was looking at her.
“No, really. It seems like I fall apart at the slightest blip in my social life, if I break a proverbial nail. Maybe it’s all the serotonin from the chocolate you eat or the baking you do, but you’re, like, so calm.”
Ava didn’t want to talk about it today, not about herself. Today the call was about Zoe, and the one who got away—despite Zoe’s desperate grip on the rod and reel.
“I seriously don’t know, Zoe. Everybody handles things differently. But what I want to know right now is this: is there anyone else you’ve met in town who could serve as a distraction while your wounds scab over? What about that old flame, Drew what’s-his-name?” That set Zoe on a diatribe about why Drew would never ask her out again, which at least steered the subject away from Ava for a while.
It never ceased to amaze Ava how easily Zoe could get her hooks into a guy and yet never once drag him into her boat. What did Zoe do wrong? After all, she was one of the most recognizable faces in local television, with her sleek dark hair and her stark red lips. On camera she was poise itself, in spite of her frequent off-camera relationship meltdowns.
“Oh, sheesh. My mom is over the edge about it. She’s so grandbaby hungry I could puke just to fake morning sickness to get her off my case for ten minutes, but I knew that would make it worse. She loved this guy and was all over the situation, but no matter what I did he just got more distant. It’s the same story as always. Is it because I’m basically a poisonous cook? Seriously. When my mom gave me an old vintage book last night called How to Snare a Modern Man from 1959, I could have choked.” Zoe had hit a hysterical note here.
“How about you send me a summary? Or the whole book when you’re done. I could use a laugh. But what I really want to know about is your latest purchases at Macy’s. I heard they had a sale.”
“Please, Ava. I totally know what you’re doing. Changing the subject. You couldn’t care less about my shopping deals. But, hey. I did pick up the most flattering coral wrap dress I’ve ever seen. It is a little too small in the waist and too big in the bust, but I might grow into it, right? For seven bucks on the 75 percent-off rack, I couldn’t not buy it.”
The truth was, Ava had inherited a closetful of Zoe’s shopping mistakes. Some of them would probably be stunning—on someone who cared about clothes or fashion. Ava preferred her usual uniform of loose-fitting tops and trousers, with her brown hair pulled into a tight knot, and her one pair of sensible shoes, the Dansko clogs. It didn’t matter that Zoe pleaded with her on a regular basis to snazz it up a notch. Ava had little use for clothes. They kept her warm in winter, cool in summer, and modestly covered. Good enough, right?
Thirty-five minutes, eleven light-rail stops, and nineteen well-described fashion bargains later, Ava bid her much happier friend good-bye. But as she walked out of the light rail station, Ava stutter-stepped. If a girl like Zoe couldn’t “Snare a Modern Man,” was there ever going to be an iota of hope for a plain girl like Ava?
The odds looked grim.
* * *
In the cool whoosh of conditioned air inside the Phoenix Metropolitan Museum of Art, Ava inhaled deeply. Summer around here could melt the lungs, even before 8:00 a.m. Refreshed, she skipped the elevator and headed toward the staircase to the administrative offices.
Sometimes she took two stairs at a time, but today, with the pedometer strapped to her, one at a time seemed more prudent. She loved the sound of her Danskos, the kind nurses wear but black, on the terrazzo flooring—the clip-clop of their sturdy wood. In them she could hear the Clydesdales’ gallop. These trusty clogs had walked nearly a thousand miles in the last dozen years, and she expected another thousand before she retired them. They were kind of her lucky clogs, and walking in them to and from the distant light rail stops accomplished several tasks for Ava at the same time. One, it saved money for parking and gasoline. Two, she used the walk in the heat to count toward her requisite ten-thousand steps a day. For her heart, if not her figure.
As she entered the administrative offices, unfortunately she was forced to pass the desk of Harmony Billows, resident office skank.
“Ava,” Harmony hissed. “Nice man-suit. They went out, like, five years ago, though.”
Ava decided any response, even the bat of an eyelash, would be energy wasted on the woman; however, she couldn’t entirely stifle the cough that erupted from her chest in the wake of Harmony’s haze of perfume. The woman should be considered a toxic second-hand-alcohol-evaporation hazard. Her face did resemble a chemical spill, like When makeup attacks!
Stepping confidently and proud of herself for not sneering in Harmony’s general direction, Ava paused at the water cooler to quench the parch brought on by her desiccating walk in the summer morning sun. She filled her little paper-cone cup, drank deeply, filled it three more times, then crumpled it and turned around, nearly colliding with a large man who looked like he had spent precisely the right amount of time in the spray-tan booth.
“Excuse me, sir,” the sun-kissed man said. “Pardon me, sir.”
Ava looked up and caught a wash of bewilderment come over the man’s face—a devastatingly handsome face, at that. She felt a blush rise to her cheeks. Where did Mr. Golden Sun come from?
“Sir?” Wait. He called her sir. It jolted her. She glanced down. Sure, she wasn’t wearing pink, but she didn’t look manly. Not exactly. The jolt faded, but his glow didn’t.
“Er, I mean, uh, I mean, excuse me.” The radiant man looked like he wished he could swallow his own head.
“Hi. Ava Young.” She extended her hand and gave a firm handshake to his annoying dead fish. Ava could tell a lot about a guy from his handshake. Darn. A disappointment. Never trust a guy with a limp handshake. Or the handsome Italian. Two of life’s maxims.
“Uh, Enzio Valente. New guy.” Italian name. Chuh—two strikes. But, hey, said he was new. Well, maybe that explained the stammering, the bad shake, the clunky bumping into people. The Italian part he couldn’t do anything about.
Then New Guy smiled, and Ava forgave him all blunders, even the limp handshake. Alakazam—what a smile. It knocked her off balance.
“Nice to meet you, Mr. Valente.” She mustered all her poise. It took a great steeling of the muscles in her face not to break into a goofy grin, but she managed to keep it together. “I work on the team that coordinates visiting exhibits.” But New Guy looked confused, so she expounded, “The art shows on loan from other museums.”
“Ah, yeah.” He cleared his throat and glanced around. “Geez. I don’t even remember my department’s name. Something with money.” Enzio rubbed his forehead like he had a first-day-on-the-job headache. “Hey, I’ll see you, okay?”
Again with the smile.
Ava stood there staring, doing her best not to let her ga-ga-ness over him register on her face. Now it was her turn to stammer as Enzio charted his course down the corridor. Brown hair spiking in all the right places, leaving a trail of clean laundry fragrance in his wake.
“Buh-bye, buh—” she blubbered.
What did he mean, I’ll see you, okay? Did he mean he would see-see her? Or was he just being polite? He looked like a dream, that fantastic olive skin, bright teeth, sharp suit. Hm-mm.
For a moment she watched him go then grabbed another paper cup and stood there gulping the clear Sparklett’s.
Enzio Valente.
Young and handsome, if a little gawky. He looked a year or three younger than Ava, who was pushing twenty-nine herself.
Whoa. What was happening? No. She shouldn’t let it. Why this guy? Ava knew she was perpetually prone to crushes, particularly work crushes. It was a downright plague. Luckily, lately she’d crushed on an imaginary art crime specialist who flirted with her in her dreams. Celebrity crushes were so much safer. Real life crushes, well. Something was always wrong with the guy—too old, too many prison tats, too artsy, too into recycling, too married.
But today, whoa. Despite the limp handshake, just add water cooler water: instant crush!
Enzio Valente…
They’d shared a moment, hadn’t they?
“Young. Come in here.” Mr. Phelps called as she clip-clopped past his door toward her desk.
Inside, he sat her down and smiled grimly. His chair squeaked as his pear-shaped frame collapsed into it.
“As you know, Friedman has been working on the Hudson River Masters exhibit for months.” Mr. Phelps rolled his eyes. “I don’t have to tell you he’s been having some personal problems.”
Everyone knew about Friedman’s recent tumble off the wagon. They could smell the liquor breath a mile away. Pew.
“He checked himself back into the facility this morning.”
Ava nodded. Good for Friedman, poor soaker.
“I’ve given it a lot of thought, and I’m giving you the Hudson River Masters exhibit. Here.” He handed her Friedman’s stack of files. “Now get going.”
“Yes, Mr. Phelps.” She shook her head in disbelief—and concern. The Hudson River Masters? It was the major exhibit booking of the past and the next three years. It was hugely expensive. Dozens of oils from an iconic collection from a museum across the country? Even for a lifelong staffer in the Visiting Exhibits department, this would be a gargantuan task.
And more than that, it took decades to rise to senior staff in the art museum world. For a moment she wondered whether she were up to it; but she considered—for the past six years she had worked tirelessly to establish and prove and reprove her competency. But as a junior level staffer, she could make some serious enemies among the other staffers in the department. Several of them already expressed annoyance at Ava’s considerable efficiency and organization, and their dislike of her was obvious. She could have been warmer to them, tried to thaw them, but she’d been busy. Working. Efficiently. Specifically, she could imagine Nigel Winterthorn’s face when he heard the news…
When she didn’t leave Mr. Phelps’s office right away, he questioned, “Problem? What is it?”
“The other staffers. Will they—?”
“They’ll have to. You’re the one who works like a dog around here. No offense.” He cleared his throat. “The other staffers on the project will have to deal with the fact that you’re younger, but none of them doubt your capabilities, and neither do I. Now, get working on it.”
He looked down at his desk calendar, and Ava knew the conversation had come to an end.
The thought made her stomach churn. No question. She really needed chocolate. Luckily she kept a major stash of snack size candy bars in her desk. The KitKats called to her. And so did the Milky Ways, and the chocolate chips straight from the bag…
Once her nerves were calmed sufficiently by the theobromine, which she always loved that it comes from Latin words meaning “Food of the Gods,” she sat down at her desk, opened Friedman’s jelly-doughnut-smudged Hudson River Masters file, pulled up her own file on her computer, and began evaluating what had been done and what needed to be done.
It took her three hours, but Ava finally digested the enormity of the task.
First, the paintings. Sixty-five large oils were slated to arrive on a Wednesday, at 4:45 in the afternoon. They would be shipped by special freight, most likely by DHL or Guardian Armored Car van service. The seventy-nine smaller paintings would come separately, possibly by FedEx Air. The Glastonbury had never before loaned out this particular collection, and was only doing so this fall for the Phoenix Metropolitan Museum of Art because of a massive remodeling project they had planned for their large gallery.
This would be the first time these incredible landscape pieces would be displayed outside of New England. Ava felt a shiver of excitement just thinking about it.
And fear. Security was going to be a major issue. She’d better set up a meeting with local law enforcement as soon as possible. Or even maybe with someone higher up.
She had always loved the Hudson River School, which was actually an artistic movement and not a school at all. It began in the early 1800s in New York state, and the painters mostly focused on depicting the Hudson River Valley, the Catskill Mountains, the Adirondacks, and nearby areas. Ava adored their romantic views of the grandeur of the new, fresh areas of early America, and there were times she almost wished she could sink into the pictures alongside the green hills, the towering trees, the cattle and the broad sky.
Her favorite among the masters had to be Albert Bierstadt. Or maybe Thomas Cole. Unless it was William Hart. Bierstadt created the best mountain scenes; oh, but Hart’s paintings always included the cattle, and she loved that. All of them—really, all of them—with their brushes and oils, created in Ava’s mind a sense of what heaven might look like.
Looking at the Hudson River artists’ work also set her wishing—wishing she could create something beautiful and inspiring and grand with her own set of brushes that now lay long unused in their jar on her shelf in the closet. Not a brush stroke had been made by those horsehair bristles since she graduated from art school seven years ago.
She sighed and looked through her catalog from the Glastonbury again.
Four small paintings by Asher Durand would be in the exhibit, plus his sprawling and famous engraving of the signing of the Declaration of Independence. This piece alone should bring in an estimated 35,000 patrons to the Phoenix museum. At $15 a ticket, the financial impact became quite significant.
In addition, the list included several by Church, who also painted South American scenes, a few by Kensett, and four from Cropsey.
However, the real prize in the display would be by the master of the masters: Frederic Edwin Church. His grandiose mural of Niagara Falls stretched nearly eleven feet long, and looking at it even in the catalog, the viewer could hear the crash of the water descending its way to the roiling depths at the bottom of the falls. It was incredible. It was a masterpiece.
And it was coming here!
Ava caught her breath in happiness.
More than just her job was on the line here. She had been charged with the duty of protecting a national treasure—nay, a worldwide treasure of artistic beauty, more valuable than anything else she could imagine. It both exhilarated and terrified her. This major booking promised to be a patron draw as big as the Vermeer exhibit three years ago.
So, that would do for the paintings. At least on that front, she felt ready. The shipping details were set, the provenances all accounted for, the audio-tour had already been written and recorded in a local sound studio. Friedman at least finished up that much before his troubles reappeared. The order of the paintings merely needed to be arranged.
Other details swirled before her eyes.
Gallery space. Placement of the art pieces. How to make a crescendo for the patrons. What color to paint the walls where the art would hang. Advertising. Friedman did have notes about an underwriter, so maybe that was solid. She hoped.
Paying! Now that detail felt like a gut punch. Fundraising had always been Ava’s least favorite part of this job, but when the economy had a blip so did museum funding, which was why she’d been trolling the internet for billionaires. This exhibit might be one of the most expensive she’d ever heard of. Sure, some of the recent showings of European masters had racked up the cost, but the sheer quantity of pieces this time eclipsed previous shows. Booking this showing was a coup d’état, but it could end up being a coup de grâce, a deathblow, if no one came to see it to offset the cost.
Things were tight.
Ava sent a meeting notification to the other staff on the Visiting Exhibits team and set to work on her forte: details.
* * *
The next morning, Ava arrived twenty minutes early for work. To her surprise, Harmony Billows already sat at her desk, busily applying her daily cake-up.
“Ava Young. You again.”
“Good morning, Harmony.” Ava responded—a bit terse, perhaps, but polite. Maintain a working relationship. That was her goal.
“Fine. Yeah. Good morning. Well, it is for me, anyway. But you look like death warmed over. What happens to you at night? Do you ever, ever sleep?”
“I sleep fine, Harmony. Thank you for your concern.”
“A little toner or moisturizer or foundation—ever heard of it?—could really do wonders for those dark circles, Ava.”
All this exchange occurred in the moments between Ava’s first step onto the top of the staircase and final turn past Harmony’s workspace. Three insults in a five second span. Not a record, but Harmony was in fine form. Ava decided not to suppress the sneer this morning, the special sneer reserved for the resident hoochie mama. Out of the corner of her eye Ava noted Harmony’s fishnet stockings and six inch heels with eleven black leather straps. Ridiculous.
The truth was, however, Ava hadn’t slept well at all. Stress from thinking about the project drove all restfulness from her soul, and she tossed and turned most of the night, getting up almost hourly. She felt like Harmony said: death warmed over.
And warmed was right.
At this early hour the Phoenix sun already seared its way into the sky and heated up an already hot town. Overnight the low had settled in the high 90s and Ava’s clothes stuck to her like those old iron-on patches of yesteryear. The water cooler called to her again.
Unfortunately, in line ahead of her stood another early bird. This one made a disgusting sniffling sound and sneezed directly onto the entire stack of paper cone cups. Ava recognized the guy, vaguely, as an under-curator for the photography collection, someone whose path hers seldom crossed. Dang it. And now their breath had crossed. She wrinkled her nose and forgot the idea of the drink of water for now.
“Allergies?” Ava inquired politely.
“I don’ dow. I dever haddem befo.”
She felt bad for the guy and decided to say something. “A lot of people who never had allergies before moving to Arizona get them. It’s strange but common. Good luck.” She shrugged, and the mucus monster walked away blowing his nose. Ick.
Now a dilemma presented itself. Yes, she was dying of thirst. No, she did not want to drink out of one of the cups SnotNose just sneezed on. It took her three seconds of pondering before she decided to spring for the bottled water from the Dasani machine down the hall. It was colder anyway.
The staff meeting went much better than expected. No one openly rebelled against her, not even Nigel the art hack who’d worked as an appraiser at Christie’s and never let them forget it. Sure, he frowned a lot, but he didn’t scream “No!” when she asked him to begin selecting the order in which the paintings would be placed to create a pleasant experience for the viewers. Harrumph, da; screaming in open rebellion, nyet.
“What are you planning to do about the gift shop items, A-va?” The big haired grand-dame of the team chewed on Ava’s name like it was taffy.
“Yes. Would you please head that up, Madge?” Ava handed it right back to the asker. “We will need to have postcards made up of all the most famous pieces, as well as several reproductions of all sizes. Can you get some local artists working on those now? Work with the gift shop staff on the other items.”
Madge frowned, peering over her tiny wire frame reading glasses on a chain, but nodded yes.
A dozen other issues came up and were delegated in the meeting, which, to Ava’s satisfaction lasted just under forty minutes—the very definition of a successful meeting.
Back at her desk, she looked at the details she had kept for herself.
To her dismay, no one had stepped up to the challenge of the final fundraising needs. Other than Ava’s minuscule internet searches, Friedman had always taken care of those himself, and everyone claimed ineptitude. Which left Ava holding the beggar’s plate. She still needed a cool fifty thousand to round out the coffers for all they needed to do to complete their plans.
Glancing over the list of donors, she saw lots of names she recognized—from private citizens who supported the arts, to corporations who wanted the tax write-off and the publicity.
Which of these appeared most likely to donate again to make the final details happen? The Traxler Charitable Trust? The Saguaro Institute? Horizon? Horizon had already given so much. She hated to ask them for another penny. But it had to be done. She started at the tippy top of the big donor list.
“Hello? This is Ava Young from the Phoenix Metropolitan Museum of Art. Whom would I speak to about charitable donations?”
The hole in Friedman’s note-keeping annoyed her. She had the donor list but no specific names from any. Friedman glad-handed everyone and remembered the name of everyone he’d ever met. He must not have needed to write down the names.
“Donations?” The Horizon receptionist dissolved in guffaws and hung up.
That was strange.
Ava dialed the line again, but this time her call went into voice mail.
She decided to try them again later.
Suddenly $50,000 seemed like a much larger amount of money.
Instinctively, Ava began chewing on her fingernails. When two of them had been bitten down to the nub, she still didn’t have any ideas.
Except fresh chocolate. Lots of it.
Over at the vending area, she fed twelve quarters into the machine and then pushed various combinations of letters and numerals and watched in relief as the candy bars dropped: Charleston Chew, Uno, Hershey’s Kisses in a bag, Special Dark, Snickers.
She ate the Snickers by the time she got back to her desk. Then she arranged the other candy neatly on her desk calendar. There, beneath the corner of the silver wrapped Uno gleamed the day, just two months away, when all her fears culminated: the opening of the Hudson River Masters exhibit. Between now and then her life belonged to the museum.
She opened the Kisses and unwrapped them as fast as she could.
“Ugh! Do you know what you’re doing to your body, Ava?” Harmony Billows wafted past. “It’s self-defeating, you know. Those carbs and fats will definitely catch up to you someday.”
Harmony would know. Years and years of Danishes seemed to perch atop some sort of painful looking underwear making a roll of fat just under her shoulder blade. Ava could see it through the both-tight-and-sheer shirt Harmony sported today. Could fashion go any lower? Hard to imagine. But if it could, Harmony would descend.
“Oh, and Ava?” Harmony glanced back as she flounced away. “Mr. Phelps needs to see you in his office. Pronto.”
Again? Not Mr. Phelps’s style to belabor a point. Good news he delivered by email, bad news in person. The feeling a person gets when she sees flashing red and blue lights in the rear view mirror washed over Ava. Her heart pounded, blood drained from her face.
“Sit down, Young.”
She obeyed.
“Now. I know you’ve had a lot to deal with in the last day.” He paused and fiddled with his tobacco pipe that he could no longer smoke indoors since the Clean Air Act a few years ago. The silence stretched until she had to sit on her hand to keep from biting another nail. “And I heard your meeting this morning went fine.”
“Yes?”
“But I have some bad news. The Hudson River Masters exhibit for this fall just had one of its major sponsors pull out.”
Ava’s stomach jumped into her throat. She made a sound like a wounded ostrich.
“I’m sorry.” Mr. Phelps’ lips pressed into a thin line.
“Which sponsor?” Please, please don’t say Horizon, she pleaded silently as she glanced down at her ankle, which was looking water-retentive in those white socks.
“Horizon, I’m afraid. You saw the news at lunch, I assume.”
She shook her head. Ava always kept a hawk eye on the news, but lunch today she spent at the vending machine. Too much to do here.
Horizon! The Big Donor. The big donor. Oh, no.
Ava made an attempt at zen breathing while Mr. Phelps explained about the embezzlement charges, the scandal of the CEO and the impending implosion.
“It’s bad. Very bad news. Honestly, we ought to grieve for them, but it’s hard to focus on their feelings at the loss when we ourselves will feel such shocking repercussions.” Mr. Phelps shook his head while Ava chewed yet another fingernail and crossed and re-crossed her legs.
“But, look. Chin up. We’ve already done a huge advertising campaign, so that’s a sunk cost. I’m not going to pull the Hudson River exhibit from the website just yet, and I don’t want you to notify the Glastonbury Museum until you’ve given it a couple of days’ trying to round up more support. The money is out there, I’m sure.”
Mr. Phelps didn’t sound sure.
“And Young? Find it. Find it now.”
In his voice she filled in the blanks. Find it or find another job.
In a daze, Ava walked back to her desk, barely noticing when Enzio Valente walked past to the water cooler. That’s how distraught she was.
In less than two minutes, she ate the remainder of the chocolunch splurge, plus the Riesens from her fanny pack. Normally, Riesen chocolate-covered caramels were so stiff they took five minutes apiece to chew through, but she downed them all in record time.
From this morning’s efforts, she knew Horizon was the major underwriter of the exhibit. With the minor burst of courage the chocolate effected in her, Ava cracked open Friedman’s file to see exactly how much money the laser of death on Horizon evaporated from her Hudson River account.
Creeeeak. She peeked into the file. Oh, man!
Suddenly $50,000 looked like chump change.
Where, oh where would she ever be able to make up that kind of cash?
Nowhere.
The exhibit was doomed.
And so was Ava’s career.