Chapter 1
The woman seated in Harry’s office looks like what I can only describe as a time traveler — as if they took Nicole Richie and Paris Hilton circa 2005, put them both in a special machine to combine them, and then turned the dial to the visible thong setting.
Harry is laughing so hard he’s crying.
I have never seen him like this. Harry, with his pocket protector and color-coded filing system, has never once displayed any kind of emotion stronger than mild dismay directed at the office Keurig.
“Oh my god, Ash!” He waves me in, wiping his cheeks with his sleeve. “You have to meet Tiffany!”
Tiffany turns and immediately stands and hugs me. A full, committed, arms-around-me hug before I can deploy any of my usual deflection tactics, which include but are not limited to: the handshake lunge, the clipboard buffer, or simply turning away.
I am not a hugger.
“I’m sorry, do I know you?” I ask, though I would have definitely remembered her. I would have remembered the dangly belly button piercing hung with two purple butterflies which match the glittery plastic clips in her tousled bleached blonde hair.
“Isn’t Harry just the best?” She giggles, snapping her gum and readjusting her Coach shoulder bag before putting a hand on her fake-bake midriff.
“No Tiffany, you are the best!”
Harry is charmed. Pants off. But it’s almost like he’s hypnotized. Possessed by whatever is emanating from Tiffany through a cloud of Tommy Girl.
“Soooooo,” I start, flicking my eyes back and forth between them.
“Meet your new assistant,” Harry says.
“I didn’t hire...her.” I pause. “I requested someone...with experience.”
He shrugs, still under some kind of Tiffany-Tommy-Girl-spray-tan spell. “These hires just come in through the system.” He rolls his eyes at Tiffany conspiratorially, like they’ve somehow already become best friends. “Gift horse, ammiright?" He says to her. "And, Ash, you need an assistant like yesterday. Plus Tiffany is an absolute scream!”
Tiffany then literally screams in delight. Harry screams back.
“Oh my god, so excited to be starting!” She grips my hands and drags me into the hallway, blowing Harry a kiss over her shoulder.
“Harry, can you confirm she’s actually my assistant?” I call behind me as Tiffany’s French manicure digs into my palm and I’m jerked toward the stairwell of the western art wing at the Boston Museum of Art.
Here is what you need to know about me: I wear the same thing to work every day. Black pencil skirt, black silk button-down, black suede Jimmy Choo Romy 85′s, and Cartier Juste un Clou earrings I bought myself after I defended my dissertation on Hieronymus Bosch. The only color I incorporate is Ruby Woo lipstick, which I buy in bulk in an unfounded fear that it will be discontinued. Most people think this makes me boring or obsessive or that I have an undiagnosed disorder. What they don’t realize is that it makes life significantly easier. If everything in your closet matches, you have so much more time for much more important decisions.
Isn’t this why Obama only wore navy?
I tell you this so you understand, on a molecular level, what it means that the woman now descending the stairwell ahead of me in Juicy Couture is about to become my assistant — on the same day my new boss arrives, and the same day I have to tell him that I drunkenly impersonated our department director (him) to secure a loan from the Museo de Prado, for one of the most famous paintings in the world. A painting that has never left Madrid.
A painting that will be arriving in two weeks.
For a person like me who lines their lips with a precision that Nasa engineers might say is a bit much. This is the perfect storm. My own personal World War Three.
And it's not just her. It's her aura...which is echoing off the walls: the the clonk of her gold platform sandals, the jangle of her chunky bracelets, the snap of her gum. It combines with the chaos in my head, and it all begins to sound like a fork in a garbage disposal.
“This is, like, the first time I’ve ever been in a museum,” she says. “I mean except in middle school when we’d go to those places where they churn butter. Boooooor-ing.”
We exit into the galleries. She seems to know where she’s going, which she shouldn’t. I watch her in suspicion. Is she casing the joint? About to pull off the second most famous art heist Boston has ever seen? It would be ingenious. No one would ever suspect the girl in Juicy Couture.
When we get back to my office, I check that the letter is still there.
I read the response again: We are happy to approve the loan of our most coveted painting…
Nine months ago, after a bottle of wine and what I can only describe as a moment of magnificent delusion, I wrote a loan request to the Prado — pretending to be the director of our department, which I am not. It's the only way they would have approved something like this.
I shove it back in the drawer.
My new boss is going to skewer me for this.
I’d tried to Google his name — Derek Plant — but only came up with stodgy articles on Chippendale furniture. Likely an old, self-important man. I
The last thing I need is Tiffany playing The Pussycat Dolls at full treble on the old intern laptop I just gave her.
“Can you turn that down?” I plead.
"Oh my god, for sure, girlie!" she chirps.
Suddenly my desk phone rings. As I pick it up, I watch as she returns to the project I assigned her: scanning and filing six months of backlogged loan paperwork, which she is doing with the efficiency that makes no sense for someone who has, by her own admission, never set foot in a museum.
And who has a Playboy Bunny tramp stamp.
The call is from reception. Someone is downstairs. First day. Doesn’t know where to go. They gave them my name.
This has to be my actual new assistant hire. Tiffany is an elaborate prank. I am about to be completely vindicated.
I set off through the European salon — on a Monday morning, it's a full obstacle course of school groups and stroller clusters. After successfully navigating the chaos, I gallop down the marble lobby stairs in my three-inch heels — a daily practice, that combined with my thrice weekly hot Pilates, has given me legs of steel.
At reception I look around for someone showing signs of first-day nerves.
The desk agent points to my right.
He’s older than I expected — forties, salt and pepper hair, black t-shirt stretching across a broad chest with a blazer slung over his arm. How is someone this smoldering working beneath me? Shouldn’t he be at a zoo of sorts, his placard reading: Handsome North American Male?
“Dr. Baker,” I say, extending a hand. He takes it. Warm. Calloused.
I check his ring finger. He notices.
My cheeks go warm, and then — against my will and better judgment and entire professional identity — my brain produces a split second of him not working beneath me in the organizational sense but actually beneath me, hands guiding my hips in a slow rythym, dark eyes not looking away.
What the hell was that?
I clear my throat.
“We don’t have much time,” I say, cutting him off before he can introduce himself. Pleasantries can happen later, with Harry, in a controlled environment. “Today is basically the worst day for you to be starting, which isn’t your fault. We have a new director coming in — stuffy decorative arts guy, apparently,” I add under my breath.
“Bummer,” he says, with a cock of his brow.
“Yes, well. Follow me.”
We set off through the galleries at my usual pace, which is that of a seasoned mall speed-walker. He easily matches my stride.
“Kindergarteners, nine o’clock,” I tell him when we reach the Degas sculpture. “You go right, I go left.”
He pivots on a dime. We continue to dodge school groups and ladies who lunch before reconvening at the elevator at the end of the long gilded gallery. I hit the button, smooth my hair, and try to quell whatever his jawline, biceps, and puppy dog eyes are continuing to stir.
I have not had this reaction to a person in years. I chalk it up to nerves. Today has been anything but predictable.
Inside the elevator, it’s quiet for the first time all morning.
I notice a few tattoos snaking up his forearms. My eyes freeze on one in particular. To the unstudied eye it might look like a vague, art nouveau design. To me it is immediately, unmistakably the back splat of an eighteenth-century Chippendale side chair. “Is that—” I shudder. “Chippendale?”
He quirks a knowing smile as realization washes over me. He wordlessly slides on his black blazer, thrusting his arms forward, adjusting the fit and smoothing the fabric. The elevator doors glide open.
“Good eye,” he finally says. “I’m Derek, by the way. Stuffy decorative arts guy. Your new director. Nice to meet you."
