The Portraits on the Studio Wall

The Portraits on the Studio Wall.


I found myself sitting at a seaside bistro with five people I had never before met.

What we had in common, which we learned easily as soon as we compared invitations, was that we were all painted between ten and twenty years prior by Claude Happer, the renowned local portrait artist.

Two of the others were brothers, real estate agents for very fancy properties, or had been at the time their portrait was done. They had been drawn sitting next to each other, on one canvas. The third was a brash older woman who once ran a posh nail salon and whose clients, at that time, were local celebrities. The fourth was a technologist, ridiculously wealthy and as uncharming. He seemed to think this was a private meeting with the painter and surprised that we were there. He knew the two real estate agents, but still acted as though this meeting, if it was indeed that, was a waste of his precious time. The fifth person was the youngest, the only one of us under thirty. She was quite stunning and a wealthy travel and fashion influencer. She was as charming as the tech entrepreneur was not. I learned that her portrait was done when she was a child, commissioned by her parents.

There's nothing special about me, except that I am probably one of the luckiest people in the area and just as popular for that luck. My story with Happer is that I found one of his paintings at a garage sale and, for unknown reasons, thought it to be exceptional. I say unknown reasons, not because others wouldn't have found it extraordinary, but because I have no eye for art. Anyone with an actual eye for art would have been instantly magnetized. Simply put, it caught my fancy so I bought it for five dollars and later when I searched for the artist, I realized that it was worth many thousands and had been lost, that the subject had been searching for it for years and there was a generous reward. This is what put me in touch with Happer and led to him painting my portrait as part of the reward. Since then, I have ended up with four other valuable items, one each from a junk store, a flea market, another garage sale, and underwater. The fourth I spotted while snorkeling near this very seaside, a small jewelry box from a 1758 shipwreck. Inside was a collection of rings and pendants worth hundreds of thousands, as well as a signet ring from one of America's early explorers, which was evidently priceless, though the museum managed to find a good price to trade for my luck. I kept one of the amethyst rings from that find and wear it constantly.

The maître D said we could not start the meal until the seventh guest arrived, who we expected was Happer, since this is the one thing we all had in common, but the tech entrepreneur bullied him to serve us the starters while we were waiting. It was a seafood restaurant, so the starters were mainly that, even though much of the fare was not local to this area.

As we waited, we discussed our relationship with Happer and determined that not only had we all had our portrait painted, but that his process was to create a rough first version, a watercolor sketch which does not serve as the underpainting for the final oil version, but remained separate. While Happer sent us the oil portraits, eventually, he must have kept all the initial sketches, since none of us had those.

The other thing we discovered was that all of us had suffered wild swings of fortune and financial distress since having our portraits painted. While this felt like the slings and arrows of fate to us individually, the fact we all had this in common seemed more than coincidental.


The two former real estate agents had just formed a new endeavor, a wine storage and auction business, which was struggling. Even though they had gone their separate ways over the years, their fates seem to ebb and flow at the same times, even personally. The loss of a parent would be understood, and this happened, but both getting divorced and both losing a child was more unusual.

After the starters, the waiter announced that neither Happer nor the expected seventh guest, which until then we didn't know was to be two separate people, were able to join and that we could order our main courses. He explained that the meal had been prepaid, with a generous tip for the wait staff and chefs, so not to worry about either of those items.

The tech entrepreneur was irate and, after claiming the gathering, Happer, the seventh unknown guest and even, unfairly, the waiter to all be equally and separately "bullshit", stormed off. We were happy to see him go and, though disappointed that we would not see Happer or the mysterious seventh guest, all decided to enjoy the meal and try to guess at the reason for this unexpected gathering.

We made no headway and the waiter knew only what he had described already.

After the meal, and after we all had a chance to outline the inconstancies of our fates and fortunes, three of us decided to set out immediately to find our missing host: the young influencer named Charlotte, one of the two former real estate brothers, Steve not Gary, and myself.

Finding our errant host and final guest was not a challenge, as Happer and the seventh guest were waiting in Happer's studio, sipping from a decanter of port. There were a couple of mostly empty plates on the small library-style table in front of them as well as the requisite silverware and napkins, so it was clear that neither of them had ever planned to join us for the dinner. They had dined in the studio.

I am not usually brash, but I couldn't help asking, even before we followed Happer's hospitable wave to join this smaller gathering, "So, you had no intention of joining us?"

Happer spoke quickly and gently. "No, none." Then he smiled and added, "Please do sit." The other two had already taken a chair, leaving a single club chair for myself. The port glass in front of my seat was already poured.

I dutifully sat.

Happer was just as you expect for an eccentric older gentleman painter. Tweeds and long gray hair and even a colorful, floral scarf. The sitting room, where guests or family would wait, was the same. Outdated, but eminently comfortable, with botanical and ocean prints and paintings in the spaces between library shelves, which were filled with painting reference books and classic literature.

Happer waited until we were all seated and had all taken at least one sip of the port, slightly too sweet port for my taste, before introducing our seventh, until now absent, guest.

The seventh guest was a fiction writer, specializing in murder mysteries, and while I didn't know her name or work, Charlotte, our young influencer gasped and declared, "Betrayed in Bordeaux" and "Lost in Loire." The writer smiled as the influencer added, "I simply screamed about your books the last time I was in France. It was like I was living in them; they captured the area so perfectly."

The writer nodded and said, "I appreciated your posts and saw a nice spike to sales of those titles that month."

Happer was the most pleased, raising his glass of port and saying, "So nice when two of my favorite portrait subjects are able to share their pleasures."

A reflective silence followed and the former real estate agent and now wine auctioneer, who was not drinking his port, finally broke the silence. "Good that we are a bit acquainted, but why did you draw us together and leave us to connect over dinner without your two presences?"

Without any explanation, Happer rose and walked through a small blue door, which slid aside like the entry to a barn. We followed him inside and saw a wall full of preliminary sketches, including mine and Charlotte's. Steve searched for his and his brother's but could not find it. Charlotte surprised all of us, not the least the mystery writer, named Edith Baugh but pen named E.D. Boxletter, by tapping near one of them, declaring "This is my favorite mystery writer's image," and winking at the writer. The watercolor was one of the oldest, drawn perhaps thirty years prior and I had to focus to see the resemblance of a vivacious, thin-faced thirty-something with the sixty-something more stocky librarian persona in front of me.

Charlotte's infectious enthusiasm, which made us all at that moment feel like insiders in the discovery, helped me understand why Charlotte had such a large and lucrative following. Though, as I had learned during the dinner, she had to reinvent herself twice in the past decade, once needing to overcome a wave of online hatred that sent her into a two-year seclusion. Charlotte had emerged triumphant and more popular than ever in her new incarnation.

Steve asked, "Where am I?" He was looking at the artist, Happer, but the mystery writer, Boxletter or Baugh, responded. "Ah, that is the million dollar question. Maybe literally."

Steve was annoyed. "This evening is getting frustrating," he stated. "First you stand us up at dinner and then when we hunt you down, we get led into a room staring at drawings of ourselves and my picture isn't even present."

Charlotte laughed, "It's a mystery. Lean into it."

He glared at her.

"And," Charlotte added, "our Painter host did pay for a lovely dinner."

I tapped the wall. "Here is the drawing of the tech asshole," then began to restate, "I meant-" but Charlotte cut me off. "No, just call a spade a spade. He's an asshole."

Steve cut in, "Maybe he just had a little less patience than us." But then like in that game of spoons when you notice that one of the spoons is missing and you are, in fact, now playing a different game, the three of us, Steve, Charlotte and I, noticed that Boxletter and Happer were smirking and watching us closely.

"Are you beginning to understand, yet?" Boxletter asked.

I shook my head and looked at the other two and could tell that they, too, did not yet clue into the mystery of the dinner or ... but before I could even have this second thought, Charlotte's beautiful brown eyes then clicked wide open. She smiled and nodded slowly.

"Can I solve it?" she asked Boxletter.

The mystery novelist responded simply, "Yes. If you can."

"Let's find Steve's picture first," the influencer challenged.

There were numerous frames piled up near the base of the wall, so I started looking there. I was about to turn over the frame with his and his brother's sketch on it, had it in my hand actually, but hadn't yet flipped it over to reveal his image when everything clicked into place and I understood. It was coincidental, when I asked, frame in hand and without knowing I was in fact, holding Steve's own portrait, "The higher up on the wall, the better our fates?"

The mystery writer clapped in approval, then clarified, "One the wall, towards the center, and at eye level."

Charlotte cackled. "So if we are on the wall, our fates are fortunate. If we are in a prime position, our fates are exceptional. And if we've been relegated to the floor-" She paused and looked serious, asking two questions at once to Happer. "How often do you change out the placement?" Then more demanding, "When did you realize this?"

The artist laughed. "Why, my dear, I am not even sure this is, in fact, true."

Boxletter shook her head in slight frustration like a teacher with a slow pupil, "It's confirmed." She gestured at the influencer and myself. "Your two fortunes are in the upswing, correct?" We both nodded. "And yours?" she looked at Steve who was furrowing his brow, now more angry than impatient.

I had, by this time turned over the frame to share that I was holding his and his brother's rough sketch. Steve snatched it from my hand, said "This is impossible!" and yet he was about to swap it with a random portrait of a child when Charlotte, said, "Not there." She tapped the image of the tech entrepreneur and smiled devilishly, "Put it here."

Boxletter laughed. "I take it that our gentleman friend did not make such a favorable impression during your dinner."

"This is impossible," Steve repeated, and this time there was darker, more thoughtfully bitter tone to the comment. But he did as Charlotte suggested and swapped his and his brother's sketch with that of the tech entrepreneur's. He handed that drawing to me. I felt bad putting it onto the floor, so was looking for another place to put it, but the wall was entirely full.

Charlotte pushed her hand out to me and glared, though in an enticing and friendly way. I hesitated, but she was not to be denied, so I handed her the frame.

"What if I break it?" she asked Boxletter.

"Don't," said the artist, Happer, adamantly. It was the only unpleasant comment he made all night.

"Sorry," said Charlotte abashed. "My mistake. It's still incredible art, even though the subject is a dick."

She placed it upside down on the pile of frames on the floor. Then resorted the pile so the tech entrepreneur's painting would be on the bottom.

"This is impossible," Steve said for the third time. "There is no possible way the placement of these images can affect our fortunes."

"And yet," Charlotte teased.

"And yet," Steve acquiesced with a different meaning, as he straightened his picture on the wall. It was just under eye level, a fortunate spot.

Edith Baugh explained how she learned of the manifestation, mainly speaking to Charlotte who had asked the two questions. "Claude and I often arrange this wall with both new and old images and, while I love my own portrait being in a place of focus, I had often lowered mine or moved it to the side to make room for others. I noticed over time that when I gave myself a better or worse location, the success of my novels seemed to follow suit.

"I didn't dare put my picture on the floor, fearing for the readership of my novels and, I'll admit it, vanity, so each of my books was at least somewhat successful. Before the release of 'Lost in Loire,' my only best seller, I gave myself the prime position. I believed this mystery to be one of my best." She then tapped the portrait on the dead center of the wall and we all gasped. Boxletter laughed. "Yes, I do not have a novel coming out right now, so I relinquished this placement to, well, you certainly know who this is." The image was a younger version of this year's breakout actor, starring in the two most popular streaming shows. Her star had not only risen but had soared this year.

--

Several months later, Steve arranged for a discussion, over drinks, at the same seaside bistro where we met originally. When I walked in, only a few minutes late, he was already sitting with Charlotte at a small table in the middle of the bar area. They were sharing a bottle of wine.

He stood up when he saw me enter, though other than that it was not a joyous welcome. He had something on his mind.

We first caught up and found that all three of us were well. Charlotte had just returned from Morocco and was glowing, possibly from a successful journey (recall that she was an influencer) or possibly from a new beauty regimen. He eyes, hair and face shared similar latte-colored highlights. She looked, in fact, as she had been somewhat computer generated.

Steve let me know that the wine auction and storage business he shared with his brother had, in his words, "turned the corner" and was thriving. He made it clear that this was due to a new shipping offering where customers could pre-pay restaurant corkage, "plus a slight additional fee", and they would send the bottles to the restaurants where the customers were planning to dine. He tipped some of the bottle into my glass, likely demonstrating the results of his new app. It was an exceptional bottle. I wondered at its cost.

I shared news of my recent finding, as Steve shook his head in disbelief at the ease in which my career, as it were, progressed. This finding paled in comparison to the shipwrecked jewelry box, but fetched enough at auction to add more of a buffer to my already healthy retirement savings. He chuckled distractedly when I said retirement.

The conversation turned quickly from pleasantries to the topic at hand with Steve explaining that Gary would be joining us later.

He started with his refrain from our previous gathering, "It's impossible. It's impossible that the placement of our portraits on his studio wall could change our fortunes." While I agreed with him, Charlotte wasn't so sure. Before she could speak, he added, "But now we're trapped."

We knew what he meant, but he continued, mixing metaphors at a very high level "There are no atheists in foxholes because there's no reason not to bet on that horse."

"Pascal's Wager," I commented.

Steve was frustrated at my interruption and got to his point. "I brought us together, and Gary is on his way, because we need to do something about it. And Gary agrees."

Charlotte, to my surprise, had heard of Pascal's Wager, showing that I underestimated her, likely due perhaps to her beauty or career choice. But that's not a stone I should have thrown, I chastised myself.

She said, prescriptively to Steve, "Why not take Pascal's Wager and run with it? Who cares?" And then she laughed, somewhat derisively, "You actually do think there's something to the wall."

Steve put his head down in contemplation, all the fire dissipating from his demeanor. Charlotte's laugh increased and she said bluntly, "I'm wasting my time here except for this exceptional wine."

Steve looked at me and asked, "What do you think?"

I explained that I agreed with him, but also that I didn't believe in coincidences so I was in irons.

What Steve said next came as a surprise. "I know I belittled your career as a, I don't even know what you call it, a 'Finder'?, and apologize for that, since I now and suddenly realize that you had to search online to see if your purchases had any value. You could have just stuck that first found Happer portrait on your wall and enjoyed your five-dollar find and no one would have been the wiser. Same for the book."

Charlotte added her thoughts, but on another point. "Until we visited a couple months back, we had no idea that the placement on the studio wall changed our success. So there is no self-fulfilling prophecy here. No magic string that makes us able to swim." This was a reference neither Steve nor I got, but she continued on. "And you (she indicated me) didn't even have a painting on the wall when you found that first portrait, the lost one, so your luck could not have been due to wall placement."

Gary, who was more casually but far better dressed than when we met him at the first gathering, was sitting down and reaching for the wine before we even realized he had arrived.

He was stony and his first words were, "Steve and I both lost a child due to that mystery writer's meddling. This is no game." Steve and Gary were identical twins, but Gary seemed to have suffered more since he looked older and was more haggard, or we were catching him on a tougher day.

Gary had actually met with Edith Baugh, the mystery writer, since our first visit. He had asked her how she realized that the placement of the frames changed the fates of other subjects besides herself and she admitted she had tried the experiment and that we were the unwitting participants, since we were local and it was easy to follow our respective careers.

The discussion did not go well and, from Gary's initial comment during this visit about the loss of his and also Steve's child, I could certainly understand why. What Charlotte and I lost was recoverable with time and effort. In fact, I lost nothing, but I simply didn't find anything when my watercolor was off the wall. What Steve and Gary lost couldn't be replaced.

Steve started, "We don't blame her for-" but Gary cut him off, saying icily, "I do. I do blame her." Then Steve continued, "Though we both agree that something must be done."

We discussed that something over a second bottle of wine and the seafood appetizers, which somehow Steve had ordered without my noticing.

--

I had left the gathering upset, as had Charlotte, so we were meeting separately to discuss. I found it odd that we started with a potential group of eight and then were down to five and then four and now two.

We met, of course, at the same bistro, but this time sat in a quiet booth in the corner. It was a month later and I had, since then, with Steve, visited the studio to ensure our images were still on the wall. Nothing was moved. The tech entrepreneur's picture was still on the bottom of a pile on the floor. I wondered how he was faring and found that his business was facing some issues with government scrutiny. Plus his model girlfriend was now dating someone else. Since he didn't know we had moved his portrait off the wall, again, it was not catastrophizing. I wonder how angry he would be if he had known. Likely angrier than Gary, but with far less reason. To be honest, I felt guilty we had moved his sketch and, perhaps, caused his setbacks. While I still didn't intellectually believe that portrait placement on the wall had any real effect, it was getting harder and harder to shake from my gut.

Charlotte wanted to talk more about my lucky findings than the wall plan, so we did.

"People don't think my career is real, either," she commiserated. She had lost some of the latte luster of our last visit and now had fuller lips and doe-like eyes, more classic and less tropical. I no longer doubted how hard she worked to stay engaging. Her every movement felt like a collage of curated photos instead of natural actions. "But I do think what you do is work. And that it's not just luck." She added quickly lest I get insulted (which I would not have been), "There is luck in everything. I am lucky to be photogenic, I know that. Make-up works for me in ways it doesn't for others. And the camera likes my bone structure, also in ways the camera doesn't for others. But, like you, I also work hard. Very hard." She raised her glass, "To luck and hard work, the perfect combination."

I attributed most of my success to luck, so this was more flattering than I deserved. That being said, I did know my luck was partially manufactured in that I looked for luck and these found items, purchased at low prices or stumbled upon, were often triggered by seeing something out of the ordinary, or exceptional. Something that was 'above' all the other items in the room. Even if I did not understand why.

"Before we talk about our portrait situation," she negotiated, "promise that you will travel with me." She quickly added, "Not in any romantic way. I will make sure we have separate rooms, which you will want since I need space for my work, but to come along on a week's journey."

I agreed with no reluctance. As you might have guessed, my life did not have many obligations. Also, it was flattering that she would want me around, though I wondered if I could keep up.

Steve and Gary's plan was two-fold. First was to affix all our portraits on the wall in way that they could not easily be removed. He did not elaborate on how that might be. Second was to pay back the mystery writer for her manipulation. They did not think she would agree to a penalty for meddling in our lives, so they planned to do this without her approval. The range of punishment was somewhere between moving her portrait for a period of time to destroying it entirely.

I told them that I would agree to taking it off the wall just prior to her next book's launch for a period of two months, but, as Happer was not party to the original experiment, destroying his artwork was not something I could tolerate or support. Gary, was adamant she deserved more than a single book's failure for her crimes, if that indeed would even happen, and basically told me that he didn't care what I thought. He was mollified since Steve mentioned that the visit to Claude's studio after the first dinner had been my idea and we'd all have been less the wiser had we simply, as Steve and two other guests had done, gone home. "OK," allowed Gary. "I will take this into consideration. Even though I expect Happer would have searched us out again. It was his dinner invitation after all." Before Steve could object anymore, he added shortly, "I said 'OK'".

Charlotte offered a solution during our tete a tete. We would break into the studio and remove Boxletter's portrait before Steve and Gary could do so, and, to assuage my guilt, replace it with the technologist's. She felt that we owed him nothing and that people like him should not be rewarded, but she knew that I wanted his punishment undone.

I was now feeling a little bit of madness, thinking that the placement might actually make a difference in our lives. And I felt most for Gary, since he has certainly fallen into the abyss that I now hovered over. Or, to be honest, had settled a bit into. And, if it were true, his and Steve's punishments were Job-like. Mine were, well, more of a lack versus a loss.

I wondered how we would stop Edith Baugh (which is what I called her since I had yet to think of her by her pen name as Charlotte did) from removing all of our portraits. Charlotte assured me that Edith would accept her punishment, if we told her, out of fair play. And that, so long as we promised to replace the drawing before her following book launched, she would sit on her hands. We would never tell the brothers that we had the mystery writer's drawing, Charlotte explained, and Boxletter (which is what Charlotte always called her) would have no reason to do so either.

--

The plan worked well. And we soon found ourselves in the mountains in Spain where we were tasting and blending wine, as well as shopping for local fashion.

Charlotte had an assistant who did all the planning and driving, so my role was to sit back and, I suppose, keep Charlotte company. Perhaps act as a human mirror.

Early in the trip, she posted of picture of me on her social feeds, captioned the "The luckiest guy on earth. Just a friend, though, so maybe not a lucky as he could be." Viewer engagement was far lower than her other posts, so that was my one and only moment in her virtual sun, as it were.

Charlotte hung Baugh's portrait on the wall of her hotel room. She and I both wondered if this would prove to be a positive or a negative for the writer's fortune. One important thing to note, though, Charlotte had not mentioned to the mystery writer that she was going to steal the sketch, so no one knew we had it. It wasn't an oversight; she had decided not to do so. She had simply broken into the studio, stole the picture, and left.

She had put the tech entrepreneur's frame back on the wall. Or at least said she did and I had no reason to doubt her.

On the day before the accident, Charlotte took us to a few small town resale shops, which she said were good places for local fashion that shows well on her feeds, and I spotted a silver dress, that looked like it was made from small samurai plates, somewhat art deco, which Charlotte laughed at but threw onto her pile to try once we got back to the hotel. "It's actually metal," she said. "You might have a good eye for this. I might keep you around."

--

The next morning, we had the car accident. It was more of a tragedy for Charlotte, even though I lost a hand, since she punctured her cheek and shattered her jaw, ending her influencer career.

What we learned later was that the brash woman who painted the nails for celebrities spiraled even more than Gary when she learned about the mystery writer's secret meddling. She wanted to punish Baugh and, oddly, also Steve, who she thought wasn't taking the situation seriously enough. This woman was frustrated that Edith Baugh's portrait was missing and convinced Gary to help her burn down the studio.

The flames were licking at our sketches as our driver missed a mountain curve and careened into the rocks some fifteen feet below. The driver was unhurt, which was fortunate. The medical staff declared us all lucky, but I now believed, more than ever, that fortune did not have as much a hand in our accident as the studio fire, which brought bad luck to all six of us. All six of us survived the day, so it is not important to recount the harms done to the others by the fire, except to note that everyone suffered physical damage, proving for the last time that the rough initial sketches, if not their wall placements, were somehow attached to our personal fates.

--

The dress was a 1960's Paco Rabanne which we sold at auction for almost $250,000. Before that, Charlotte wore it only once, for a photo shoot to launch her new make-up line. It was the one time she visually revealed the unrepairable damage caused by the accident.

Steve and Gary sold the auction company, for a healthy sum, and never spoke again.

In all the excitement, Charlotte and I arrived back in the United States having entirely forgotten that we had stolen Edith Baugh's sketch, which everyone else thought was lost in the fire, but which we had hung in the hotel room. For all we know, it still hangs there to this day.

Edith's final mystery novel before her death from natural causes was posthumously her biggest seller. It was titled "The Portraits On The Studio Wall." Readers are supposed to guess who lit the studio fire.

As I am unsure how many of you have yet to read that novel, I lied earlier. It was not the lady who painted celebrity nails. The first and last time I ever saw her was on the night of the dinner party. You will need to read the novel to see who actually did it. And, while Boxletter took many liberties in the novel, that part was accurate.

END