Priceless

“Picasso said every child is an artist, but not every child feels the need to graffiti a penis on the back of a bathroom stall door,” thought Belle Grove Art Museum owner, director, curator, and sole employee Mark DeSoto as he scrubbed at the offending image.

The worst part was that the sketch was an exact copy of his MFA thesis painting, Hymn to Atum (a reinterpretation of an Egyptian creation myth), which held a place of honor in Mark’s heart, if not the museum. He’d hung the original where you had to look for it, and some viewers did a double-take or looked away quickly at the detailed anatomical study, but he was still proud of the piece. He’d gotten the shading just right.

Not one of the eight “magic” marker removal recipes ChatGPT suggested had worked. Would he have to repaint the whole door?

His phone buzzed in his back pocket. Mark straightened and dropped the rag with a splash into the mop bucket. He wiped his palms on his jeans, fished out his phone, and thumbed it awake. It was Ellie, his ex-wife.

Don’t forget you’re picking Aiden up in an hour

He checked the time and considered a reply. The truth—that he’d let the cleaner go two months ago and now did the mopping up himself—was not an option, so he simply gave a thumbs-up to her message and returned to glaring at the immovable sketch. Maybe he should leave it and pretend he hadn’t seen it. It couldn’t be worse than the graffiti in the boys’ room at Belle Grove Elementary, right?

As Mark was about to pocket his phone and retrieve the rag for one last scrub, it rang in his hand, startling him. The caller ID showed it was the principal of Belle Grove Elementary, where his 10-year-old son, Aiden, and today’s field-trip group attended school. Bracing for a long conversation, he flipped off the bathroom light, stepped into the museum’s back hallway, and answered.

“It’s not about Aiden,” the principal said quickly. “This time...”

“Okay...” Mark said. He leaned against the hallway wall, the air conditioner humming softly overhead, and steadied himself for a fresh disaster.

“You know we appreciate everything you do for the school,” the principal said. “The Belle Grove Art Museum is our most”—he paused—“economical field trip. The kids especially love that sunflower painting.”

“Thanks?” Mark said. Experience had taught him that principals rarely called with compliments. “My goal is to introduce students to fine art, to spark creativity, and inspire them to create something new.”

“Right,” the principal said. “And that’s the problem.”

“The problem,” Mark repeated, shifting his weight and moving his phone to the other ear.

“Mrs. Dade mentioned you changed some of the content in today’s presentation to her third-grade class. You usually talk about that lovely sunflower painting, but this time you showed them a painting of”—the principal dropped his voice—“a sun with scary teeth? Anyway, it was very upsetting. Two children cried on the bus.”

“It’s part of a series that sets comfort beside unease,” Mark said, beginning to pace and trying not to sound defensive. “The sun stands for warmth and life, but look closer and something’s off—still smiling, still bright, yet unsettling. The point is that what we trust can turn strange when we really look.”

“Mm-hmm,” the principal said. “Be that as it may, the students love the sunflowers. No one’s ever cried over sunflowers.”

“You know that’s a print, right?” Mark said before he could stop himself. “The real Van Gogh is in London. The sun painting is—” He caught himself. Real art, he thought, but the principal wouldn’t care. “Noted. Sunflowers next time.” He ended the call.

Agitation had carried him the length of the back hallway without his noticing. He was already standing in his office doorway when he paused for a breath.

Mark stepped into his office and reached for his keys and laptop bag on the messy desk. The phone, still in his hand, rang again. He tipped the screen up, bracing for the principal, and felt a wash of relief when he saw it was Calvin Lee, his longtime best friend. He answered.

“You’ll never guess who was in my office this afternoon,” said Calvin the moment Mark picked up.

“Who?” Mark asked, already curious. He perched on a tiny, clear corner of his cluttered desk.

“No, seriously, guess,” Calvin insisted, his excitement palpable.

Mark hesitated. The only thing that popped into his mind was the lawyer from the billboards on his drive to work. “Dump Truck Duval?” he asked, hoping it would at least earn a chuckle.

Instead, Calvin burst into uproarious laughter. He laughed for so long that Mark began to wonder if something was wrong. Dump Truck Duval—officially David “Dave” Duval—was impossible to miss, with his billboards dominating Belle Grove’s seedier highways, all broadcasting his infamous catchphrase: “Your pain. Your gain.” He’d earned his nickname after making a fortune on a gruesome dump-truck accident case.

“Yes!” Calvin said, barely able to catch his breath between fits of laughter. “Yes! It was Dump Truck Duval!”

Sensing a longer story to come, Mark came around his desk, sank into his chair, and hooked a foot on the bottom drawer pull, tipping back just enough to get comfortable while he waited for Calvin’s laughter to subside. “Okay, but what does this have to do with me? Or did you just call to brag that you met a local celebrity?”

“Yes! Both,” Calvin chuckled. “Mark, you crack me up. And as crazy as it sounds, this had everything to do with you. It’s kind of a long story, though. Got a minute?”

“Sure,” said Mark, pulling his phone away from his ear for a moment to check the time.

“Okay,” Calvin said. “Buckle up. This is going to sound like an episode of The Andy Griffith Show.” He took a deep breath and continued. “One of the founding partners at my firm, Mr. Hendry, has a standing weekly golf game with Judge Calhoun, who handles probate cases. They were stuck in the rough on the ninth hole when Hendry asked, ‘Had any interesting cases lately?’ Calhoun said, ‘Now that you mention it, I have. Remember that local artist whose awful painting was featured on Antiques Roadshow and sold for thousands?’ Hendry said, ‘Yeah. A lawyer from the firm wrote her will some years back,’ and Calhoun said, ‘Well, she just died, and her estate is in probate.’”

“The artist’s name is—was—Connie Duval. Got all that so far?” asked Calvin.

“No,” said Mark.

“Doesn’t matter,” Calvin continued. “Hendry got back from the golf course and had one of the legal secretaries find the copy of Ms. Duval’s will and drop it on my desk. Most of it is standard, but two things stood out: one, her son and next of kin is Dave Duval, and two, she left something to you.”

Mark blinked and sat up straight. “To me?”

“Well, not to you exactly, but to the museum. Ms. Duval was an artist with—let’s say—a unique perspective, and she left all of her paintings and correspondence to your museum.”

“Connie Duval...” Mark repeated. “I’ve got to be honest, that name’s not ringing a bell.”

“Me neither,” said Calvin. “But then again, I’m not much of an art guy. Naturally, I called Dave first, and we had a meeting to go over the details of the will. When I mentioned being curious about his mother’s paintings, he offered to bring one in. I’ve got to say, it’s not my style, and I doubt it’s yours, either. They’ve got this sort of folk-art vibe. The one he showed me was called Hog Scalding.”

“Yikes,” Mark muttered, leaning forward and resting his elbows on his desk, careful not to create an avalanche of unopened mail. “So... was it any good?”

“Well.” Calvin hesitated. “To my untrained eye, I’d say no, it was terrible. But here’s the thing. Her paintings are valuable. Dave showed me a YouTube clip from an old Antiques Roadshow episode back in the ’90s, where a painting of a possum was valued at fifty grand. And it ended up selling at auction for around seventy!”

Mark sat in stunned silence. After a long pause, he finally managed, “Seriously?”

“Yup. Turns out Ms. Duval was a bit of a recluse,” Calvin continued. “She lived out in West Belle Grove. Dave says he thinks the possum is the only painting she ever sold. The rest, and evidently there’s an entire shed full, belong to you. Well, to the museum.”

“But why didn’t Dave handle her will? He’s a lawyer, after all. And if the paintings are that valuable, why wouldn’t she leave them to him?”

“Not his area of expertise,” Calvin said. “At least that’s what he told me. And maybe she figured he didn’t need the money. The guy drove up in a lime-green Aston Martin. It’s like they got Harry Styles to be the next James Bond.”

Mark got to his feet and began pacing his office as Calvin continued.

“I will say, Dave seemed surprised when I read that part of the will, but he wasn’t upset. Maybe Connie just really wanted the paintings in a museum and not hung on the walls of the Law Offices of Dump Truck Esquire.” He paused. “Forget I said that.”

“So... what exactly do I do?” Mark asked.

“Well, Dave says the paintings and a filing cabinet with some old papers are stored in some kind of shed on her property. I’m supposed to meet him over there tomorrow to check it out. Want to come? Got anything on your calendar for tomorrow afternoon?”

Mark didn’t even have to flip open his calendar app to know he was free. The museum was only open for scheduled tours and field trips, with walk-ins limited to Fridays. “Sure,” he said. “I’m all yours.”

After hanging up, he glanced down the hallway and remembered the graffiti. Fine, he thought. The penis had won. He pulled a sheet of paper from the printer, scrawled “Out of Order” with a fat black marker, snagged a roll of painter’s tape from the desk clutter, and headed for the bathroom.

He pushed the door open and flipped on the light. The stall stood ajar, the masterpiece waiting. Third grade, huh? Mark found himself reluctantly impressed. The kid had even nailed a tricky vein Mark never quite mastered. He couldn’t bring himself to smother the last flicker of creativity at Belle Grove Elementary.

He taped the sign to the stall door, dumped the mop water into the other toilet, wrung the rag in the sink, and set the bucket aside to dry. He flipped off the bathroom light and walked the back hallway to his office, gathered his bag, keys, and jacket, then crossed the quiet gallery to the front. He stepped outside into the mild Florida January air, locking the door behind him.

***

The only thing Aiden DeSoto said to his father between 7 p.m., when Mark picked him up from his mother’s house, and 8 a.m. the next morning, when Mark dropped him off at school, was, “Metamorphosis.”

This was Aiden’s response to Mark’s question about which painting to discuss with a homeschool group visiting the museum that morning. They were sitting at the breakfast table where, as usual, Aiden was sketching instead of eating, drawing what looked like a hot dog with angry eyebrows.

“A good choice,” Mark had replied, knowing Aiden meant Mark’s work, Theme and Variations on a Florida Metamorphosis, a series of images of a dead palmetto bug Mark painted when he was supposed to be cleaning the garage.

But was it the right choice for the homeschool crowd? They could be on the conservative side. Maybe he should stick with the sunflower print, just to be safe.

Mark knew Aiden didn’t like the sunflower print. Not that he’d ever said as much, but Mark liked to imagine Aiden shared his own taste for boundary-pushing art. The truth was, Aiden rarely offered opinions about art or anything else. He barely said a word, which was one reason Mark got regular calls from the principal.

“You should just make him talk,” Aiden’s first-grade teacher had once unhelpfully advised. But how do you make someone talk? Beyond wiring them up to a battery in a KGB interrogation room? Plus, Aiden did talk. Just not much, and never because an adult told him to.

“Maybe he has ADHD,” the principal had suggested during a particularly exasperating phone call. Mark had laughed out loud. Aiden had more focus than anyone he’d ever met.

It was just that Aiden’s focus was completely on his art, which would’ve been fine, except his art was bad and he didn’t care. Any suggestion, whether taking a class or letting his father show him a few techniques he’d learned in art school, met silence. His drawings looked like a younger child’s, awkward and out of proportion, with a few that, Mark hoped only unintentionally, bordered on obscene.

Would Aiden’s silence be tolerated if he were good at art? Mark shook his head, snapping back to his tiny kitchen. That way lies madness.

“You should eat those Cheerios,” he told Aiden. “Before they get soggy.”

Mark ultimately decided against using the Metamorphosis painting for the homeschool group, opting instead for a print of Christ Pantocrator, a sixth-century icon housed at St. Catherine’s Monastery on Mount Sinai.

The homeschool kids and their parents were surprisingly knowledgeable about Byzantine art, and they had an animated discussion about the painting’s representation of its holy subject’s dual nature. Afterward, they moved to the museum’s studio, where the kids made Byzantine-style icons of their favorite Minecraft characters.

It was people like that—who loved and were inspired by art—that kept Mark running his tiny museum, where the art was just prints of masterworks and originals painted by the museum’s sole employee.

After the group left, Mark leaned back in his office chair and gazed at a colored-pencil drawing of a haloed Creeper that one of the children had given him. It, in turn, seemed to gaze back at Mark beatifically from where he’d taped it to the wall earlier.

He unwrapped a packet of chicken-flavored ramen, poured it into a Styrofoam bowl, and started munching the dry noodles. For the moment, life was good.

Mark was crunching away, content, when a knock on the doorframe startled him. He must have forgotten to lock the front door behind the homeschool group. Mark set the bowl down a little too hard, scattering crumbled noodles across his desk.

He looked up to see that the unwelcome visitor was local “investor” Nick Taylor. Titles like “investor” always deserved air quotes in Mark’s mind because real work meant producing something tangible like a painting or a liver transplant.

Plus, Mark was almost positive that Nick was a criminal.

Mark couldn’t remember exactly when they’d met. It was one of the many indistinguishable nights before Aiden’s birth that Mark had spent sitting at the sticky bar in a place called The Beach—eighty miles from the actual beach—getting pre-drunk so the amount of drinking he’d do in front of his then-wife, Ellie, would seem reasonable. The place was a dive, but at least it was within walking distance of their tiny apartment.

Nick had sidled up on the barstool next to him and asked, “Mind if I sit here?”

Mark had turned his body at a slight angle away from Nick and ignored him, which didn’t deter Nick.

“Rough day?” Nick had asked the side of Mark’s head.

When Mark gave no response, Nick had continued, “I had a rough day. Money problems.”

Out of the corner of his eye, Mark had watched Nick look down at his large, gaudy silver watch. “I have one hour to raise just a little bit more capital, or a lot of people are going to lose out on an excellent deal. A terrific deal. Thirty-five percent return. Practically guaranteed. And all I need is another smart investor to buy into the syndicate. But at 6 p.m., if I don’t have the money, then poof. The deal is gone.”

Mark had reluctantly swiveled back toward Nick and said, “Fuck off.”

It had been all the invitation Nick needed. “I like guys like you. You’re smart. You think for yourself. Look,” he’d said, standing and reaching into the pocket of his khakis and extracting a business card, which he’d placed on the bar in front of Mark.

It read, “Nick Taylor. Investor.” An investor looking for other investors? That sounded like a pyramid scheme. Mark had picked up his sweaty beer glass and placed it directly on top of the card, soaking it.

Ignoring the insult, Nick had slapped Mark on the back and said, “I’m off to make somebody a wealthy man today. You let me know when you want that man to be you.” And then he was gone.

But like a mushroom that popped up after too many days of rain, Nick was never truly gone from Mark’s life. He was just occasionally dormant. He was a regular at The Beach and figured out where Mark lived and worked. Nick had even managed to wheedle $500 from a small inheritance that Mark received from his grandmother in 2009. It had been on a night when Mark was fighting with Ellie and hadn’t stopped at just pre-drinking. Of course, the “guaranteed” return had never materialized. Of course.

At least Mark had been smart enough to use the rest of the inheritance to buy the museum property. Still, he rued the day he’d allowed Nick to talk him out of that $500. Mark had needed every dime to quit his job as an art teacher at Belle Grove Middle School, where every project had to be pre-approved by the governor’s office, and transform the former Cajun restaurant into the Belle Grove Art Museum. It had been a mess when he’d moved in. The previous owners had left pots of gumbo simmering on the electric stove in protest of their foreclosure and eviction.

Now it was a true art museum. Small, yes, with a single gallery (the restaurant’s original dining room), and a hallway containing a series of back rooms: the restrooms (original to the restaurant), the studio “art room” (the old kitchen), a narrow storage room, and, at the end, Mark’s office—each a repurposed piece of the former restaurant.

Lately, Nick had been haunting the museum because he’d decided it was the ideal location for a crypto art and NFT gallery he had tentatively named Pixel Vault. Nick’s schemes had gotten progressively more elaborate over the years, evolving from petty scams to more highbrow fraud, occasionally proclaiming, “We could be the next Miami,” as if that was something Mark wanted.

The truth was that Mark did think about selling the museum, assuming Nick could come up with the cash. At times, holding on to the building felt selfish. Selling would offer financial stability for Mark and Aiden, but the light, airy gallery with giant windows that Mark had remodeled himself with only the help of YouTube and his own two hands felt as essential to the museum as the art itself. One day he might have to sell, but not to that philistine.

Nick cleared his throat, bringing Mark back to the present. “I’ve always wondered, is that one of yours?” Nick asked, gesturing toward a print of The Great Wave off Kanagawa hanging in the hallway outside Mark’s office. He took a monogrammed handkerchief from his pocket and buffed an imaginary smudge on the frame, then admired his own reflection in the glass, flipping his floppy hair like a Pantene commercial.

“No,” Mark said flatly. Was he serious?

“It’s a nice one,” said Nick, looking thoughtfully at the copy of one of the world’s most famous artworks. “Maybe if more people made art like this, things would be better for the art museum business.”

“The art museum business is fine,” Mark said, cramming a handful of dry ramen into his mouth to cover the lie.

“Had time to consider my offer?” Nick asked, as he always did when he dropped by.

“Not interested,” Mark said with his mouth open. A shard of noodle escaped and landed on his shirt.

“Sorry?” Nick raised an eyebrow. “What did you say?”

Mark scooped up the last of the crushed noodles from the Styrofoam bowl and slid them into his mouth, chewing slowly, drawing out the messy crunches before finally swallowing.

“Not. Interested,” he said, deliberately pausing between each word.

“That’s fine,” Nick shrugged. “You’ll come around. Need my card?” He produced a silver case seemingly from nowhere, clicked it open, and fanned a small stack of glossy business cards like a magician. How many YouTube tutorials had it taken to learn that trick?

“Nope. I’m sure I have one lying around somewhere,” Mark said, gesturing at his cluttered desk.

“See?” Nick grinned. “You are interested.”

“I’m sorry,” Mark said, dragging his fingernail along the edge of the Styrofoam bowl, producing an awful, high-pitched scraping sound. “You’ll have to excuse me. I’m expecting an important phone call.”

“Right, of course,” Nick said, turning to leave. Then he paused and glanced back.

“Mind if I use the restroom before I go?”

“No problem,” Mark said, carefully avoiding eye contact with the Holy Creeper drawing on the wall. “Just use the stall with the ‘Out of Order’ sign. The cleaner put it on the wrong one.”