Contest Winner
Stephanie Howard
When Franklin Hayworth clocked into work at midnight on March 18th, he had not expected to find himself tied up and bound to a wall pipe that ran along the wall.
Behind him, also tied to the pipe, was his idiot coworker Richard. Richard, who took this job as seriously as the cartoons he’d watch while working. Richard, who smelt like beer from the St. Patrick’s Day celebrations earlier that evening mixed with the general stench Franklin had come to expect when working with him. Richard, the moron who ignored the security protocol and buzzed in the cops that had knocked at the museum door, who weren’t cops at all and had tied the two of them up and were currently cutting paintings out of their frames.
How did this clown manage to stay on this long, Franklin wondered. A Pomeranian would be better at this than him.
After being buzzed in, the cops had pointed their guns at Franklin and Richard to force them into the corner where they were now tied. One of the fake cops, who had introduced himself as Officer Badgley, which really should have been their first clue that something was up, had stayed behind to watch the two guards while his two cohorts made quick work inside the museum.
“This is a robbery,” Fake Officer Badgley had told them, whipping off his uniform hat and costume mustache in dramatic fashion.
Richard had started bumbling, saying some nonsense about how he wouldn’t try to stop them, just please don’t shoot him, he wouldn’t say anything to the police, just please don’t shoot. Franklin felt his long-standing irritation with Richard threaten to bubble over. If he had a free hand, he might have grabbed the gun and shot Richard himself.
“Quiet!” Fake Officer Badgley yelled. “Don’t make me gag you!”
Please feel free, Franklin thought. Please for the love of God gag him so I never have to hear another word come out of his mouth.
When Fake Officer Badgley had first flashed the gun and forced Franklin out of his desk chair, he had felt a wave of fear and gut-twisting panic wash over him. Now, forty-five minutes and a dramatic monologue into the heist, he regarded the pistol with the same morbid interest as the fire alarm above his desk. He’d watch the intermittent green blips for hours on end and wonder if setting the alarm off would even do anything, if the deafening screeches would get drawn into the same quiet black dullness as everything else around him. Looking at the gun, he’d wondered if getting shot would hurt, if the shot would zap through him like lightning and leave him writhing on the floor for hours, or if the pain of the bullet would just fizzle out as he lay there.
In the end, no one was shot or gagged. The thieves had gotten in at 1:28 and were out before the clock struck 3:00. Franklin thought it had to be a record of sorts. The World’s Shortest Heist. He and Richard were tied together to the pipe for the rest of the night.
***
Franklin had been working as a night security guard at the Ernest Carmichael Museum of Art for the past four years. He’d graduated from college with an art history degree, then gone to the trouble of getting a master’s, only to spend a year living with his parents. His job prospects had shown no signs of looking up, and Franklin had swallowed his pride and applied to be a night guard. It was meant to be temporary, the first step in his career, but ended up sticking. He outlasted every other hire, and the museum seemed perfectly happy to keep him on as their best, longest-serving night guard.
The work was long and boring, and working nights made Franklin develop habits not unlike a monster from hell. He would wake up at three in the afternoon, run his errands before everything closed, then eat lunch when everyone else ate dinner. He got to work ten minutes before midnight, and would then stare at cameras and walk around a dark building for a while before clocking out at 8 a.m., going home, passing out, and doing it all again. His nights were accompanied only by Rockstar Energy and a rotating cast of other night guards, who would inevitably quit when the monotony and nocturnalism didn’t work out for them. When Franklin drove home, he had to wear sunglasses. Otherwise the morning sun would throw off the demonic circadian rhythm he’d so carefully cultivated.
He thought about quitting every day, usually at six a.m. when he could hear the morning commuters getting started, and he wondered what he was doing with his life. In one fantasy, he’d collect his acrylics from their place in the closet and paint “I QUIT” in big words all around the dingy security office. In another, when the museum director would call him in last-minute asking him to cover someone’s shift because they had quit, he’d tell the director to get fucked and that he could sit in the dark himself. Franklin could never bring himself to do it though. Work was draining, but it was routine.
Besides, what other job could he find now that he couldn’t four years ago that would let him get as close to the art? He could quit tomorrow, but it’d mean only getting to see the art on display when he paid to come in as a visitor, held back by the velvet ropes that blocked off the public. On his rounds, he could get close enough to the paintings to see the texture of the canvas underneath, see the way the light from his flashlight was slightly refracted in the pieces with the thickest coats of varnish. They smelled like dust and old wood with a hint of a chemical sharpness.
This night, however, had been truly taxing on his patience. The guards for the morning shift had been surprised to be denied access to the building, and called the police, as per protocol. When the police arrived and saw the sorry state of Franklin and Richard, Franklin didn’t feel any relief at being rescued. He wanted to be untied and sent home, where he could sleep, and then have a riveting conversation about what had happened with his cat. Instead, he had to give a statement, sit with a sketch artist, and be told point-blank by the museum’s director that he was temporarily furloughed until further notice. Furloughed was a nicer word than laid off. He supposed he should feel grateful. Richard had been fired.
“We’re not blaming you,” the director said. “This is so you can recover from what happened. The museum will be closed for some time now anyway.”
Can’t I recover with PTO at least? he wondered. An I’m-sorry-you-got-held-at-gunpoint bonus? But he smiled and said, “Thank you.”
When he got home, after the robbery, the questioning, and the furloughing, it was two p.m. He couldn’t feel his face. His phone had hundreds of texts and missed calls from his parents, and a few from his sisters. He set it on the kitchen counter, used what little presence of mind he had to feed his cat, Monet, before face planting in bed.
***
He was furloughed for three months. He would receive unemployment for those three months. He almost told the HR representative “I love you” when she said that. For the sake of routine, for the first two weeks of the furloughment, Franklin attempted to stick to the schedule he’d had for the last four years. He continued to wake up at three in the afternoon, and mucked about all night, until going to bed at nine in the morning. The furloughment was meant to give him time to recover, process the trauma of what had happened, but Franklin felt fine. He’d zoned out during Fake Officer Badgley’s monologue about the esotericism of art museums and giving art back to the people or whatever, watching the minute hand on the clock behind him instead. Fake Officer Badgley had talked for eighteen minutes about why he was doing it, when Franklin didn’t really care. He just hoped the art would be taken care of, treated properly. Sold to people who would respect it and keep it safe. Franklin felt fine, but he was glad for the time off anyway. Since the museum was closed, that meant he had three guaranteed months of not being called in. The unemployment checks meant he was getting paid for it. And so, feeling he had no trauma to work through, Franklin played video games and watched chaotic midnight infomercials until he could feel his eyes drying out.
“I used to hate my life!” the cheerful lady in the infomercials said. “But now, with my state of the art air fryer, breakfast’s a breeze!”
“An air fryer,” he said to Monet, who was curled up on the opposite end of the couch. “The answer to my problems.”
On week three of the furloughment, Franklin abandoned trying to keep up with his schedule. The morning sun continued to poke through his curtains while he was trying to sleep, as if saying, Come on. Come out. You can’t hide forever! He figured it would be all right. He set up the sleep schedule for Dracula once, he could do it again when it was time to go back to work. This was his time to briefly rejoin the land of the living. It was his reward for having worked so long and with such dedication, only to be the one scheduled the night of a heist. Being nocturnal was acceptable when he worked the night shift, but when he saw the red numbers of his clock switch to four a.m. as he played Halo, he felt a little too Mom’s basement-y for his liking.
Day one of rejoining the land of the living, Franklin woke up at eleven a.m. He’d gone to bed early, thanks to melatonin. The bottle recommended one gummy before bed. He took five. He’d blinked awake, after a night of weird dreams involving Pomeranians with a promising future in security, and found himself baffled by the quiet business of the morning. He stood up, and slowly walked over to his window. The city was never quiet, even at night, as he’d come to know, but something about busy mornings was more pleasant to him than the busy afternoons and evenings. The honk of car horns seemed almost musical to him, rather than angry, and the light that covered the cityscape and the trash-covered streets seemed softer than the harsh afternoon sun. If afternoons were done in acrylics, he thought, bright with clean, bold lines, then the mornings were watercolor, a soft wash of color and gentle light falling over the city. He hadn’t had the time or energy to paint in years, but now, he could feel the itch to get the easel out from his closet.
When he left his bedroom, Monet stared up at him like she couldn’t believe what she was seeing.
“Even you know I’m not normally up this early, don’t you?” Franklin said before bending down to scratch her head. Monet stiffened up at first, like she didn’t trust this was actually her owner, before allowing herself to be petted. Then, seeming to have had enough attention, she darted past Franklin and disappeared into his bedroom. Franklin smiled to himself before making himself breakfast.
If only I had an air fryer, he thought, as he got down the Lucky Charms. Franklin ate his breakfast over the sink, looking out his kitchen window to the view he had of the apartment building across the street. It was an old, rundown, brick monstrosity, but he found himself oddly charmed by it today. It was a deep but dusty vermilion.
After breakfast, Franklin felt inspired, and got out a chair so he could tear apart the top shelf of his closet. When he got his paints down, he saw that the dust that had collected made the orange look brown and the brown look browner. Monet came by to investigate, and glared at him accusingly.
“I know what you’re thinking. ‘You paint? What the hell is this?’” Franklin said to her. He leaned down and met her eyes before gravely saying: “I’m very sorry for keeping this from you.”
Monet let out one of her weird meows that sounded more like a chirp from a bird than a cat. She seemed to accept the apology and jumped onto his windowsill. Franklin smiled at her while he set up. Outside, the sun had taken over, cranking up the saturation, the bright cityscape done in those clean, bold lines. This was fortunate, since Franklin only had acrylics. The dust from four years of neglect covered his palms as he twisted open the cap to a raw umber, and the sharp, acrid scent hit him with a vengeance, daring him to put the paint away again.
***
At the end of the first month of the furloughment, Franklin figured he should probably visit his parents. They’d been scared out of their wits when they’d heard the museum was robbed. The day after, he’d spent the better part of four hours on a phone call with them assuring them he was perfectly fine, unharmed and unconcerned. He told them about the furloughment and his mother’s voice had changed tone completely. No longer worried, she radiated joy over the phone.
“You must come over and visit us! You’re our only child who lives in town, but that job of yours makes it so we never see you!”
Franklin, despite being their only child who lived in town, didn’t often visit his parents. They had good intentions, but the conversation always ended with them asking if he was still sticking with that job of his when he could be out fulfilling his dreams and realizing his potential. He didn’t need the reminder.
Still, Franklin wasn’t the kind of person who’d ignore his mother after her only son had been the victim of a robbery. And so, weeks after being invited, Franklin got into his canary yellow 2006 Nissan Sentra that reeked of years-old cigarettes and drove across town to visit his parents.
***
“Honestly, Franklin, in a weird way I suppose we should be thanking those robbers! If they hadn’t robbed your museum, you wouldn’t be over right now, now would you?” his mother chattered as she spread some green sludge on his face. “I was worried sick about you when your father and I watched the news, but you’re all right, aren’t you? And with this time off, you can finally visit your poor old parents. That job of yours, it takes up so much of your time, and when you do come and see us, you’re always miserable! When you said you’d come over, I was so excited to give you a facial with some of the new products we’ve gotten at work and liven you up, but you look better than I had expected! I thought to myself: ‘Wow! I haven’t seen my Franklin so energized since he was a boy!’”
“I’ve been sleeping better,” Franklin said. His mother had already steamed his face (it would open up his pores, she said) and was now putting slices of cucumber over his eyes as he laid down awkwardly on the smaller couch.
“It’s great to see you, Frankie,” his father said from the bigger couch. He had a layer of pink, glittering sludge on his face. “If you couldn’t tell, your mother missed you.”
“Oh, hush, you. I’m just excited to see my son! Aren’t you?”
“Of course, I am. Really, Frank, if I’d known all it took to get you out of that place was a little robbery, I’d have broken into the joint years ago. Sell one of those drawings to cover the car payment.”
“Please don’t break into where I work,” Franklin said from his little couch. “You know it’s not like I’m in jail. I get to walk around at night when there’s no visitors, look at the pieces real close and personal. I see the new stuff before anyone else does. I can’t go anywhere else and do that.”
He heard his mother stop mixing whatever skincare potion she was currently concocting. “I know, sweetie, and we get that. You’ve always loved your little paintings. It’s just—well, like your father said, we never see you.”
“I’m pretty sure that you said that, Margie.”
“Oh, hush. You know your father and I support you no matter what, right? We just want you to be happy, and well. We’re just not so sure that you’re happy.”
Franklin frowned. It was a little hard to do, as the green stuff was starting to dry on his face. It crinkled when he moved. If he was a painting, he thought, the resulting crackling would have been called craquelure. He meant to tell his mother what he always told her, that work kinda sucked, kinda was the worst thing in the world, but it was mostly fine so please stop worrying about me, but felt his voice catch in his throat. He swallowed hard before hearing himself speak.
“I don’t think I am either.”
When he got home that night, he spent a long time staring into the mirror. He wasn’t sure if he was imagining it, but whatever his mother had put on his face really did seem to brighten his skin. He raised a hand to his cheek. It felt baby smooth, rather than the dry, cracking skin of a man whose face never saw sunlight, free of the six o’clock shadow a man who barely had the time or energy to shave would sport. Franklin stared at his reflection. The skin under his eyes was gentle, beginning to sag and wrinkle as he crept closer to his thirties, but was otherwise clear. He thought about the talk with his parents, how the conversation had pretty much died after that. Dinner had been oddly quiet.
Franklin didn’t usually stare into the mirror, but when he did, the face of a haggard ghoul would greet him, his undereyes a ghastly gray sinking into his face. When he went back to work, when the furloughment ended, would his revived appearance end, too? Would he go back to avoiding the morning light so he’d be able to sleep? Would he be sucked dry of his time and energy, his paints collecting dust in his closet? The face in the mirror was one he barely recognized, a young, clear-skinned man with misty eyes.
***
“What do you mean?”
“I mean that the security system was updated quicker than we expected, and the robbery strangely affected our publicity. Everyone wants to come to the museum now that it’s been in the national news. We’re opening on Monday, and as our longest-serving night guard, you’ll no longer be furloughed. We’d like you to come in this weekend, though, so we can guide you through the new security measures and get you up to speed.”
“It’s Friday.”
“So it is!” the director chuckled. Franklin felt the beginnings of a migraine. “Can you come in tomorrow, so we can show you the ropes? The new ones, that is?”
Franklin sighed. “Of course.”
The new ropes were natural improvements on the old ropes and took less than thirty minutes to go over. They were all fairly intuitive and really should have been implemented years ago. The director shook Franklin’s hand and said they were glad to have him back, before retreating to his office for a meeting.
He left Franklin in the Blue Room, where works by some of the more well-known artists were kept. The thieves hadn’t wasted their time in this room, where the paintings lived behind glass cases. Franklin was thankful for it. It meant they’d left behind his favorite painting, one of the museum’s prized Monets: Fields of Tulip With the Rijnsburg Windmill. It was a simple landscape painting, with fields of bright red and yellow tulips growing in an orderly fashion as far as the eye can see. Standing above the fields of flowers was a windmill. The brushstrokes were done gently, almost blurred so it looked like the windmill was moving. It wasn’t a particularly deep or meaningful painting. Landscapes often weren’t. Still, it had always drawn Franklin in, the soft skies with their fat, pillowy clouds that appeared in a haze. He could feel the gentle breeze that pushed the windmill, could hear it creak softly as the sweetness of the tulips drifted past him. The flowers were painted with thick globs of paint. He’d always wanted to reach out and pluck them.
He thought about having to come into work on Monday and about the way all the lights in the museum were turned off. He thought about the quiet, only cut into by the hum of the air conditioner. He thought about the cold air hitting his face when he did rounds, how the sound of his footsteps would echo through the empty hallways. He thought about how he’d fumble with his keys in the dark before coming back into the stern square room. He thought about the godforsaken fire alarm, and its beeping green light, how it felt to stare upwards at three in the morning and to see no stars, to only see the steady pulse of that tiny green speck, while the air conditioner whirred and the old analog clock tick-tick-ticked away. He thought about looking at a reflection of a man with eyebags so big and so constant they were becoming eye boxes. He thought about the past few weeks, waking up in the mornings to look at the sunlight, painting his cat, eating dinner with his parents, and then suddenly, he couldn’t feel the air in his lungs. He turned swiftly on his heel and fled the Blue Room.
The director technically wasn’t his boss, the Chief of Security was, but Franklin wasn’t convinced the Chief of Security was a real person. So Franklin held on to his momentum from the Blue Room, stomping up the museum stairs until he got to the fourth floor. Franklin continued stomping to the director’s office, as if his footsteps lightened he’d lose his nerve.
He knocked on the door and didn’t wait for an answer before opening it.
“Yes, our collection of Baumgartners is quite extensive. They’re not a big draw, unfortunately. We’re hoping that restoring them and then displaying them in an exhibition will garner some interest,” the director said. He looked up. “Oh, Hayworth. Do you need anything?”
“Yes, I did actually,” Franklin huffed, out of breath from stomping up four flights of stairs. “I wanted to tell you that I—I’m sorry, were you talking about the Baumgartners?”
“Yes, Mr. Greene is one of the restorationists we have on the project. We’re planning to restore our collection and re-debut them,” the director said. “Is that what you came up here for?”
“Oh. That’s nice. I always liked Baumgartner. Really good dynamic movement. I hope that’s not lost in the restoration. No, I came up here to tell you something.” Franklin straightened up, smoothing down his shirt. He looked up from the ground, looking over the room’s desk to look the director in the eyes. “I just wanted to say—what is that?”
Franklin pointed down at one of the prints on the director’s desk. There was a pile of printed Baumgartner works, covered with notes for the restorationists. On top was a print of one of the simpler figure drawings, one the paint had been falling off of for decades.
The director frowned down at his desk. “That would be one of the pieces we’re having Mr. Greene and his team restore. Now Mr. Hayworth, could you please get to the point? We were in the middle of a discussion here.”
Franklin furrowed his brow. “You’re drawing it wrong, though.”
The director let out a short breath. “I beg your pardon?”
“You have the arm of the figure pointing to the left in your notes. It should be going to the right.”
“Mr. Hayworth!”
“Now wait,” said a third voice. “What makes you say that, Mr. Hayworth?”
Franklin turned to his left, finally seeing the restorationist the director had been talking to. Mr. Greene was a short, middle-aged man, an eyebrow raised behind the frames of his bifocals.
Franklin swallowed. “When you look at the canvas where the paint has flaked off, it’s mostly blank. But there’s still small collections of paint in the crosshatching of the canvas. They’re caught on the left-hand side, which means that Baumgartner probably painted the arm from left to right. If he painted from left to right, that means to create the dynamic movement he’s known for, the arm would have to follow the movement of the brush. So the arm should be pointing right, not left.”
The director did not break eye contact with Franklin while he drew in a deep breath. He then turned to Mr. Greene with an amiable smile. “My apologies, Mr. Greene. Mr. Hayworth’s one of our night guards here. He fancies himself something of an artist.”
“I have a master’s degree.”
“Mr. Hayworth!” the director snapped. “I have long appreciated your service to the museum. However, if you don’t want to be fired, I suggest you leave.”
Franklin blinked, first in shock, then in realization. “Wait, seriously? Is this really happening?” He laughed, then looked the director in the eye, smiling. “I can’t believe I get to do this. Okay, here it goes: You can’t fire me. I quit!”
He nodded briefly to Mr. Greene, to apologize for the disruption, then left.
***
“You what?”
“I quit.”
You quit?” his father asked. “You quit?”
Franklin shrugged, trying to seem casual about it. “Yeah.”
His mother stared at him, bug-eyed. His father had both brows raised. “Okay then,” his father said. “Why?”
“I went in so they could show me the updates, and I found myself really, really not wanting to go to work on Monday. I guess the general suckiness finally started to outweigh my love for the collections. So I went and found the director to tell him I was quitting. I was going to put in my two weeks, so I could look for another job in the meantime, but he threatened to fire me for disturbing the meeting he was in. So I told him he couldn’t fire me because I quit.”
His parents stared at him a bit more, before his father burst out laughing. “Really, Frankie? I thought that only happened on TV! That’s great!”
His mother looked over at him while his father continued laughing. “Well, sweetie, I’ve told you before, if you’re happy, we’re happy. But are you sure you’ll be all right?”
Franklin smiled over a forkful of mashed potatoes. “Never been better. I think—I think I’ve needed to do this for a long time.
***
Not a day into being unemployed, well and truly this time, Franklin’s cell phone rang. He looked over from his computer, where he was perusing job advertisements. He’d been considering the trials and tribulations of a career at JCPenney, when an unknown number lit up his phone screen.
“Hello?”
“Hello! Is this Mr. Hayworth?” asked a cheerful voice.
“This is. And you are?”
“This is Raphael Greene. From the Ernest Carmichael Museum yesterday? I got your number from Director Blankfort.”
Franklin sat straighter in his chair. “Yes, of course, Mr. Greene, hello. Um, to what do I owe the pleasure?”
Mr. Greene chuckled over the phone. “Relax, Mr. Hayworth. As I’m sure you know, I do art restorations. My team works with a variety of clientele, including the Ernest Carmichael Museum, to return artworks to their original appearance.”
“Uh-huh.”
“And I was just calling you, Mr. Hayworth, because one of my team members is looking to retire next month. And I would like you to have the opportunity to apply for the opening on our team.”
Franklin’s jaw fell open.
“Of course, we’d still like you to go through the application process, for fairness’s sake, but between us, you seem more than qualified. You clearly know what you’re talking about, and after you left, I convinced Mr. Blankfort to give me your file. I looked up your graduate work, including some of your own pieces. You certainly know how to paint, too, young man.”
Franklin let himself be stunned for a moment more before he realized what was happening. “Wow. Um, yes, yes, of course. I’d love to apply. Thank you so much for your consideration, Mr. Greene. Um, where can I do that?”
He could hear Mr. Greene smile as he spoke. “What’s your email, Mr. Hayworth? I’ll have my secretary send you what you need to apply.”
Franklin dazedly told Mr. Greene his email, an artifact with an AOL domain, before hanging up. There was a lot he wanted to do. He wanted to get up and dance, but he wasn’t the kind of person who did that. He wanted to stick his head out the window and tell the world, but that was too much for Sunday morning joggers. He wanted to call his friends, but he didn’t really have any. So, in lieu of anything else, Franklin closed the tab to the website he’d been using to look for jobs.
Monet chirped from the floor, brushing against his feet. He scooped her up, setting her in his lap and patted her head. She butted her head against his chest, and he stroked her back with one hand, refreshing his inbox with the other.
Stephanie Howard is in her junior year, with a double major in literature and creative writing, and currently works for Residence Life. She is from Belgrade, Montana, and spends her free time crocheting, watching horror movies, and avoiding responsibilities.
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