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Her laughter stopped cold. “Wait a second. I’ve seen this before.” She pointed to my best, most-liked find, the one that had more or less made my name and fame on the social media site where we terrible-art-finders posted our best discoveries. “Did you actually find this yourself, or did you get this off a fan site like Awful Art in Thrift Shops?” Her eyes narrowed. “You’re not faking this and downloading other people’s finds, are you?”
“Hey. It’s not a screenshot.” I pulled my phone back. “I actually bought that one. It’s under my bed to protect the world from the grotesqueness of the clown’s hernia.”
Amanda placed a hand at the side of her head and closed her eyes. After a sharp intake of breath, she pulled out her own phone, pressed a few times, and then pushed it at me.
The screen glowed, almost exploding like fireworks as familiar picture after familiar picture swept past my view. She couldn’t be. No! Now I was the one putting a hand to the side of my head. Our eyes met. “Amanda, you’re …”
She nodded, her eyes widening. “I’m PokerDogs. And you’re …”
I rolled my eyes to the ceiling then looked back at her. “Yep. VelvetElvis.”
My arm dropped, and we stood staring at each other for a long moment before she did one of those two-lip raspberry laughs, a splutter followed by a cackle. In a second, she fell against my chest, her forehead pressed against my clavicle. She was shaking with laughter, the vibrations rolling through me. It was sexy and hilarious and I couldn’t get enough.
But the proprietor shot us dirty looks, so I pulled her to me and sped her out of the store.
We headed down the board sidewalk, and I couldn’t even speak. Amanda Starkey was PokerDogs? This beautiful, staid, blonde-curls-in-a-tight-bun woman who back in Reedsville never stopped working and could’ve won an audition for stand-in as an ice sculpture was PokerDogs? Poster of all my top favorite terrible art pieces?
“It’s like we’re guest-starring in an episode of Scooby Doo.” She accepted the ice cream cone I bought her from the street vendor. “We’ve taken off the rubber masks and we’re both the culprits.”
“Have you posted all your finds? Do you pop them up there immediately?” Personally, I held some back so I could share a steady trickle. “Or do you ration like me?”
“I ration.” She took a big lick of the side of her cone, a mesmerizing event. “I’m dying to see what else you have. Are you willing to let me have a sneak peek?”
“I’ll show you mine if you show me yours.”
She swatted my shoulder. “No dirty talk. I’m not that type of girl.”
Truly, she wasn’t. Which was yet another thing that made her unattainable and impossible to ignore. “Here.” I handed over my phone and accepted hers. “They’re all in my folder called Classicism and High Renaissance Art.”
She snickered. It was a bad joke, but the courtesy laugh felt good because it came from PokerDogs.
“Oh, my goodness.” She sat down beside me on a park bench. We’d wandered into a lovely park with tall eucalyptus trees and pines near the base of Ben Lomond. “I’m in love with this one. Oh, and this one’s a classic. You got quite the comment thread for that—something about grilled cheese sandwiches for the queen.”
She remembered that? Every little outburst from her sent my insides off to ride the Gravity Experience plane. “I liked this one of the King Charles Spaniel with vampire fangs.” I flipped through her pictures. They were almost all familiar. “And here’s a winner.” I paused on the painting of the haystacks with disembodied arms sticking out.
Her phone screen did a little jump, a glitch. Suddenly, I wasn’t looking at terrible art but good art. Very good art. Fantasy-like waterfalls mostly, but some were of sparkling crystal palaces or snow-capped mountains with glaciers juxtaposed against green.
My eyes misted, as if I’d just seen my first Rhinos goal. “Whoa. These were in Second Handers? Downtown Reedsville? No way.”
Amanda looked over, and then whipped the phone out of my hand. “Oh!” She dropped her ice cream cone ice-cream-side-down onto my thigh, smearing my jeans with cold vanilla soft serve. “No one has seen those.”
“What are they?” I swabbed the vanilla smear with a paper napkin. “Do you know the artist? You’re sworn to secrecy?” Then it hit me. “Wait. Those are yours.”
Her face was as red as her sweater. Happily today she’d ditched the cosplay and worn a simple sweater and skirt. “I don’t really show them to anyone.”
“Why not? They’re good.” I meant it. “Do you have more?”
Slowly, she relinquished her phone. “I like to try different styles.”
Sure enough, there was everything from fantasy to Art Deco, from modernism and cubism to puffy computer-generated-imagery, from Japanese animation style to Renaissance religious. “These are all your work?”
Curling in on herself she nodded. “I dabble.”
“I like how you dabble. Like a consummate professional.”
“I copy what I see. In Paris I spent a little time in the Louvre and liked the triptychs of the Holy Family and all the bishops, so that’s where these came from.” She took her phone back and tapped on another Renaissance-style piece. “I’m a mimic. A shameless parrot.”
“It looks to me like you can do anything.” And then the dawn broke. “You want to be on the creative team.”
