portraits was my specialty. Over the years, I’d drawn countless pictures of Bobby, Johnny, and James. Movie stars. My favorite authors. People I passed on the street. I even used to do superheroes, back in my younger, more foolish days.
Secretly, I longed to have my works hang next to the other masterpieces inside the Bigtime Museum of Modern Art. But it was a dream I kept to myself. I didn’t know if I had the talent to be a real artist. It was a completely different sort of skill set than designing clothes. Fiona would disagree with me, of course, but anybody with a needle and thread could sew, however poorly. Not everybody who picked up a pencil could draw with it.
Besides, the one time I’d attempted to break into the art world, I hadn’t exactly been greeted with open arms. Heartbreak was more like it.
“Do not drop that unless you want me to use your head as a bowling ball.”
Abby’s sharp voice pulled me back to reality. It was Friday, the day before the benefit, and we stood in the new wing of the Bigtime Museum of Modern Art. The two of us, along with Hannah, were overseeing the installation of the pieces for the Whimsical Wonders exhibit, while Grace and Joanne had headed over to Quicke’s to make sure everything was coming together at the restaurant.
The burly guy that Abby had just admonished wrapped his whole beefy hand around the Ming vase he’d been carrying, instead of just sticking his fingers in the top of it. Abby nodded her approval and checked off something on her enormous clipboard. The event planner was in her usual getup today—cargo pants, a camisole, and a flannel shirt.
And the vest.
No matter how fancy or simple the party, Abby always wore a khaki mesh vest to any event she planned. It reminded me of something a fisherman would wear, although with more pockets and zippers and hidden compartments. Pens, highlighters, note pads, a water bottle, a stun gun. That was just the stuff I could see hanging off the front. Abby had more supplies hidden in the inner pockets, and the vest had to weigh ten pounds if it weighed an ounce. She could probably survive in the wilderness for a month with all the gear she had crammed into that thing.
I’d dressed down today, wearing my favorite pair of jeans and a blue-striped oxford shirt. Hannah was a different story. Instead of jeans or khakis, she sported a wraparound silk top and pencil skirt in a deep burgundy color. Gold sparkled around her neck and her fingers, and she looked as put together and polished as ever. She stood off in a corner, shooting looks at all the art and murmuring into her cell phone.
My eyes drifted over the rest of the wing, which had opened a month ago. The area, done in white flecked marble like the rest of the building, rose seven stories into the air and was three times as wide. The first floor featured a vast, open space with black granite benches set in front of particularly significant or popular pieces. Greek-style columns marked recesses in the walls that people could wander through and examine rotating exhibits. Three scalloped archways allowed access to the other, older parts of the museum, while stairs set in the corners led to the upper floors. Each story sported a wraparound balcony that overlooked the main exhibition space. Diamond-shaped panes of glass crisscrossed with silver solidium beams comprised the pointed ceiling far above. Natural light filtered in through the glass and let people see the art as it really was. Clean white. Bits of color in the marble. Smooth curves. Round, soft edges. No matter how many times I visited the museum, I never tired of it. The architecture itself was a work of art, along with all the paintings on the walls.
“Will you look at that?”
Abby stabbed her pen at two guys up on ladders in one corner of the room. A large, rather gaudy picture of Elvis hung between them. Painted on velvet, of course. That had been one of Joanne’s donations. If it had been anyone else, I
Secretly, I longed to have my works hang next to the other masterpieces inside the Bigtime Museum of Modern Art. But it was a dream I kept to myself. I didn’t know if I had the talent to be a real artist. It was a completely different sort of skill set than designing clothes. Fiona would disagree with me, of course, but anybody with a needle and thread could sew, however poorly. Not everybody who picked up a pencil could draw with it.
Besides, the one time I’d attempted to break into the art world, I hadn’t exactly been greeted with open arms. Heartbreak was more like it.
“Do not drop that unless you want me to use your head as a bowling ball.”
Abby’s sharp voice pulled me back to reality. It was Friday, the day before the benefit, and we stood in the new wing of the Bigtime Museum of Modern Art. The two of us, along with Hannah, were overseeing the installation of the pieces for the Whimsical Wonders exhibit, while Grace and Joanne had headed over to Quicke’s to make sure everything was coming together at the restaurant.
The burly guy that Abby had just admonished wrapped his whole beefy hand around the Ming vase he’d been carrying, instead of just sticking his fingers in the top of it. Abby nodded her approval and checked off something on her enormous clipboard. The event planner was in her usual getup today—cargo pants, a camisole, and a flannel shirt.
And the vest.
No matter how fancy or simple the party, Abby always wore a khaki mesh vest to any event she planned. It reminded me of something a fisherman would wear, although with more pockets and zippers and hidden compartments. Pens, highlighters, note pads, a water bottle, a stun gun. That was just the stuff I could see hanging off the front. Abby had more supplies hidden in the inner pockets, and the vest had to weigh ten pounds if it weighed an ounce. She could probably survive in the wilderness for a month with all the gear she had crammed into that thing.
I’d dressed down today, wearing my favorite pair of jeans and a blue-striped oxford shirt. Hannah was a different story. Instead of jeans or khakis, she sported a wraparound silk top and pencil skirt in a deep burgundy color. Gold sparkled around her neck and her fingers, and she looked as put together and polished as ever. She stood off in a corner, shooting looks at all the art and murmuring into her cell phone.
My eyes drifted over the rest of the wing, which had opened a month ago. The area, done in white flecked marble like the rest of the building, rose seven stories into the air and was three times as wide. The first floor featured a vast, open space with black granite benches set in front of particularly significant or popular pieces. Greek-style columns marked recesses in the walls that people could wander through and examine rotating exhibits. Three scalloped archways allowed access to the other, older parts of the museum, while stairs set in the corners led to the upper floors. Each story sported a wraparound balcony that overlooked the main exhibition space. Diamond-shaped panes of glass crisscrossed with silver solidium beams comprised the pointed ceiling far above. Natural light filtered in through the glass and let people see the art as it really was. Clean white. Bits of color in the marble. Smooth curves. Round, soft edges. No matter how many times I visited the museum, I never tired of it. The architecture itself was a work of art, along with all the paintings on the walls.
“Will you look at that?”
Abby stabbed her pen at two guys up on ladders in one corner of the room. A large, rather gaudy picture of Elvis hung between them. Painted on velvet, of course. That had been one of Joanne’s donations. If it had been anyone else, I
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