For the record, I never wanted to go on the freakin’ Disney Cruise.  We’d busted our humps years saving eleven thousand dollars toward a house; I didn’t want to blow a dime on anything frivolous.  But my partner Gail blazes her hazel eyes at me — in that way femmes have, right? — so I figure her and Mollie, our kindergartener, will go do princess things while I write in the cabin.  Screw it — we ring in 2008 on the Mickey Mouse Boat.  Don’t get me wrong, it was a dream — even the reality of cold, hard cash melts away — forgetaboutit, because they won’t accept it aboard ship; show your Key to the World Card (your cabin key), sign, and done!

As the ship’s horn plays Jiminey Cricket’s tune, y’know: “When You Wish Upon a Star,” we drop Mollie off with the mostly British Masters-in-Education super nannies on deck five. Give ’em the kid, take a beeper, everyone’s happy. I had to drag Moll screaming out of Neverland 11 pm nightly just so she’d sleep.  She’s afraid of “bighead characters,” right?  First night, she fights her heavy eyelids, babbling about Peter Pan. Captain Hook, Donald Duck she’s terrified — but she says she got her picture made with old Pan “who has a real people-face.”  I wink at Gail and say, “Roulez bon temps, Peter Pan!”

Four days into the cruise, we discover the daily art auctions run by Park West Gallery — follow the FREE MARTINI signs, OK?  After an apple-tini, a cosmo or two, don’t you feel big and buzzed, envying the Chagall bought for eighty thou, or whispering snarkily about the endless series of Willardsons (think Warhol meets Disney characters and paint spatters)?  You ever let the snotty little Tinkerbell inside you out to play?  Oh, it’s mean fun!

A Krasnyansky came up. Kind of like Guernica forgets war and morphs into a colorful circus of Harlequins. I bid, lost — a good thing in retrospect — then this dark-bearded, saddle-shoe-wearing dandy asks in a Paul Lind voice, “Were you bidding for the art or the frame?”  His snotty little Tinkerbell needed a cage, because I really liked that piece. Gail comes up, asks him, “Really, hon, saddle shoes?”  That killed the Wendy-bird.

We had a blast!  Did a hundred different cruisy things!  But all too soon, it’s Friday.  Twenty-four hours left, and I’m like, “Hey, Doll, let’s go see what the art people held back for the last round.”  The auction’s in this swanky Sinatra lounge.  Gail beams from her chair as we sink into our cups.  We love lots of it, but we’re only here for the free martinis, casual art education, and pretty pictures.

All’s well ’til the last lot; they set these six frames on easels, backs out.  And the auctioneer starts talking.   In 1946, two legendary artists collaborated on a project…

The auctioneer’s husband flips a frame to reveal:  a sketch of elephants!

Gail whispers, “Bet Disney drew that.”

…Walt Disney heard the song, “Destino,” and wanted to animate a film to go with it…

I salute with my drink.  As if the Willardsons weren’t enough, Disney’s for sale.  Imagine that, on a Disney boat!  Another frame turns.  Eyeballs reaching for a woman. — Eyeballs reaching… — I manage to breathe, “Aw hell!  That’s a Dali!”

Gail squeezes my hand, our eyes meet.  I think of our Salvador Dali tarot deck on our altar back home.  She’s got the electricity too. We yearn to know:  How many hundreds of thousands will this be?

The auctioneer confirms it:  Dali and Disney met at a cocktail party.  Mutual admiration.  Later his surrealist pals accused him of selling out, but Dali punched a clock — and I doubt it was melted — at Disney studios sketching Destino until the money ran out in ’47.  It’s locked in a vault and forgotten.  But it’s rediscovered circa 1999.  Disney’s computer animators digitally copy the original sketches and complete the film.  Imagine Dali paints a love story, but then the painting comes to life.  That’s what this is.  It makes the award circuit, wins top prizes all through 2003, 2004.  Meanwhile, limited edition Dali Destino prints get released in waves.  Sitting before us (all six are flipped now), is wave 3, which appraises at over $22,000. But you can have yours, with appraisal and shipping, for eleven. Keep in mind folks, the Destino film has not yet been released to the public….

I slug my apple-tini.

Gail presses my knee as they add a seventh sketch and a copy of the film at no extra charge, mouthing, “Let’s do it.”

Oh, I want to.   It’s one of those auctions where if your number goes up, you’re guaranteed one of the limited edition sets — you’re committed to buy one.  “But that’s our house,” I whisper.  I mean, it’s exactly the same amount.  Only now, we’re also down souvenirs, airfare, the cruise — it’ll take forever to save that much again.  I want a plot of land with a house on it.  I want this art.  I want so furiously all these things that are just out of grasp….

Gail nods toward the prints, smiling.  “That’s our house.”

You need to know, I classically play things safe.  I’d've never gotten my MFA, for instance, if Gail hadn’t said, “Grad school?  Why not?  Fill out the papers — make them tell you no.”

I’m thinking of this and a hundred other chances she’s encouraged me to take — all to the good — as I close my eyes and put our number up.  It’s so dark behind my eyes.  Sounds change shape — like right before you pass out?  My arm stretches into the Milky Way.  I hear our number called.  Open my eyes.  We’re back in the bar, nailed into place by the auctioneer’s hammer.

It’s ours.  I’m elated! Gail’s beaming!

Then I’m drowning in numbers.  First words out of my mouth:  “When Destino gets released we can sell one of the seven to pay for it all…”

Gail shakes her head at my naïveté:  “We won’t be breaking up the set.”  I figure we’ll discuss that later.

And hey? To make good your bid, show the auctioneers your Key to the World card!  Merely settle your account with paradise before you leave the boat Saturday morning — which finds me standing before a desk while Gail entertains Mollie in a giant porthole nearby. Our savings card only debits thirty five hundred per day.  Two thou and my CapOne’s maxed.  My Wamu’ll only hold three thou.  Ms. Aussie behind the guest services desk smiles sympathetically.  I’m not the only one who’s scrambled this way.  I wave Gail over.  “I need your card, too.”

Gail smiles, hands it over, squeezes my arm.  “We just won’t eat out so much.”

But it’s not OK.  We’re dangling over the abyss — I don’t think I’ll ever eat again.  Not even the beans and rice we’ll buy in bulk at Sam’s Club for eternity.  I sign the bill and find Mollie’s crawled under a chair.  She doesn’t understand why we have to leave the boat.  I end up carrying her and two backpacks of carry-on crap. “I don’t want to go home,” she says. Strange to say it, but neither do I.

#

We land at home.  I move money through our shoe-strung accounts like a master banker, and, heigh-ho, off to work we go.  It’ll be weeks before we see the art.  I imagine signing for it in triplicate then rushing to insure it.

By late March, we’re so stressed by bills it’s like we never went on vacation.  I’m the sunshiny kind of Tinkerbell who’ll point that out.  Day’s end, coming home, our little family makes for our brownstone and the foyer — it’s about half the size of this stage — it’s full of immense, flat boxes.  Five foot by five foot by six inches.  On that order.  And there are:  two, five, seven of ‘em, all marked FRAGILE.  To reach our door, I move three of these giants to the front porch, while Mollie hops around singing Happy Birthday to herself.  Gail’s gone in to stress mode, loss and shell-shock ride her usually cheery features.

“What is this?”

“I never thought the Fed-Ex guy would just up and leave it,” I say, grinning, “But this is our Art.”  You ever feel exhilarated and sick at the same time?  We leapt off a cliff three months ago, hand-in-hand; now we’re in freefall, and Gail turns to me — the question in her bewildered face: “What the hell do we do now?”  I shepherd her to the sofa, order Mollie into her room while I wrestle it all in.  My fingers touch boxes holding reverenced art that we own.  We open it box by box, cardboard dry on our fingers, right?  We inspect each piece — some are pencil sketches, some full color paintings, all amazing — then carefully, breathlessly slide it back into the box until we can hang it.  We watch the Destino DVD.  It’s the stuff of dreams.  And it’s ours.

And then my friend and colleague, Megan, sends this breathless email: did I read about Park West Gallery and Art Auctions at Sea in the New York Times? They’re accused of fraud, and it’s in international waters so there’s almost no way to win against them in US courts and can I please, please, please tell her that this is all nonsense so she can be happy again, otherwise we are so going to SUE THOSE MOFOS TO DEATH!  Or words to that effect.  With that, the good news fairy flies away — uh, hangs up the phone.

I’d scouted around right after the cruise, but this is the New York Times, July 2008 — real journalism, not some idiot blog potshot — it gave me the green belly.  Eleven thousand dollars and maybe it’s all fake?

But I swallowed the bile and surfed deeper: I remembered the appraisal for the Krasnyansky bid I lost — it’s in line with what similar works are fetching.  It would’ve been OK.  There’s not enough information to say anything about Destino, except that Disney’s fine art people say on their own website that they handpicked Park West as their sole agent — pretty good bet it’s genuine.  So what is the Destino set worth on the open market?  I’ve clicked around; no one else is actively selling it.  Art prices change over tastes and time; frankly, it’s too soon to say.

Many folks say art comes from a bipolar place.  Yeah.  It was an up-rush when we slugged our apple-tinis and bid.  Now it’s a down-rush right as we scramble for dimes.  Just recently we leased a bigger place so we’d have wall space to hang the art.  It’s still in boxes while I unpack the kitchen.

But if it was strictly about money, we’d've never bid.  Don’t get me wrong.  I’m not a person who can laugh at losing twenty bucks, let alone eleven-thou.  But it’s worth the risk — being a complete and utter fool, if you ask anyone with sense — to speak, for once, against my usual nature and let passion win over fear: “Forget the light bill, forget future mortgages, we’re getting something we love and if we burn our asses as a sacrifice to art, so be it.”  And with that first step, the fool carries on.

This story previously appeared on content partner Cellstories