The Lost Art: A Romantic Comedy Read online

  The Lost Art

  A Romantic Comedy

  The Lost Art: A Romantic Comedy

  © 2014

  Stewart Plaid Publishing

  By Jennifer Griffith

  This book is a work of fiction. No characters in this book are real or refer to people either living or dead. No reproduction of any portion of this book, except for short excerpts for the purpose of critique or discussion, is allowed without express written permission from the publisher. No reproduction of this book, either in print or online is allowed without permission.

  For Louise

  Other eBooks by Jennifer Griffith

  Immersed

  Big in Japan

  Super Daisy!

  Chocolate and Conversation

  Hopeless Crush

  The Lost Art

  A Romantic Comedy

  By Jennifer Griffith

  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 yo
ur 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…