Fiction: Art Lover
By Annette Taylor
arttimesjournal April 21, 2018
The Chrysler Museum of Art re-opened after a sixteen-month renovation with more paintings, sculptures and glass art displayed. Tall, lanky Ames Monroe came to enjoy the new installations with other patrons on Saturday. He stood in front of Gustave Jean Jacquet’s painting, Lady With a Fan. It depicted a young woman dressed in black peeking through stage curtains at an unseen audience. She held a pistol-shaped fan in her hand. Ames loved that painting. He planned to steal it tonight.
He grinned as he thought about cavorting through the Chrysler’s two floors alone. Two young women stopped beside him to admire the painting. He turned his bespectacled gaze upon them. They did a double take at the neat-bearded man with shoulder-length brown hair. He stopped grinning because, having seen his grin in a mirror, knew it made him look lunatic. The women hurried away, whispering to each other. He watched them leave the gallery then returned his smoke-colored eyes back to Lady With a Fan.
His father, a career diplomat, took him to museums where he expounded on the various artworks in easy-to-understand language and encouraged his son to express his opinions, “Daddy,” little Ames asked, “Why don’t those ladies wear clothes?”
“Because they’re free spirits.” His father smiled down at him.
“Then why aren’t the men naked, too?”
“Men aren’t as free-spirited as women, son.”
Little Ames gazed at Le Dejeuner Sur L’Herbe (Luncheon on the Grass) and stated, “I’m only going to like paintings of women, daddy.”
After a museum visit, they would have lunch at a restaurant that would not tax a child’s system.
Ames’ thoughts emerged from the happy past to the Chrysler. He had a spot already picked out for Mr. Jacquet’s painting with proper lighting, too among art already installed in his private museum reachable only through a secret passageway in his home office. He tuned out all distractions—footsteps of other people, their subdued talking—then made mental inventory of his art collection: Adolescence, a gouache by surrealist Salvador Dali, La Musicienne an oil painting by art deco painter Tamara de Lempicka both stolen from the Scheringa Museum for Realism in The Netherlands. Portrait of Maria Teresa de Apodaca de Sesma a Goya, from Argentina’s Museo Municipal Estevez. He had a particular fondness for Gainsborough and had at least six along with a Fragonard, some Ingres, additional Goya, some John Singer Sargent . . .
A tingle surged through his body. All his ladies! The one before him on the wall would join her sisters late tonight. He ogled the painting several seconds longer.
On the way out, he observed a woman looking at a painting on the far side of the gallery. She stood with cocked hip and hands clasped behind her back. He went over more interested in her than the painting. Her posture intrigued his artistic sensibilities.
“Don’t mean to intrude, but do you like Picasso?” he asked.
“Not really. I came for the Chrysler’s re-opening,” she said, observing his brown hair with sections of gray streaming from his temples.
“Well, enjoy. Nice meeting you,” he said.
“Same to you,” she replied.
He left the gallery for the museum restaurant as was tradition.
The woman’s gaze and thought followed Ames.
Just try to steal it, FBI Agent Butler thought. I’ve waited for this moment. You won’t escape me this time.