It began, as most ambushes in publishing do, with a calendar invite titled simply
“Meeting: Ava.”

That was all. No surname. No context. Just the quiet threat of intrigue.

My boss, a man who can make optimism sound like regret, informed me that a “guest voice” would be joining In My View. Her name was Ava Maren. I was to meet her, assess compatibility, and report back.

“What’s her background?” I asked.

He frowned, as if checking his memory for contraband.

“She’s… a critic. You’ll see.”

The Meeting

Ava arrived precisely nine minutes late, a power move disguised as punctuality.

She swept into the café like a film still from 1947, crimson coat, dark glasses, and that faint scent of something both expensive and flammable.

“Ava,” she said, shaking my hand like a witness about to testify.
“Roger,” I replied, trying not to sound provincial.

She took off her glasses. Her stare was the professional kind, clinical, amused, faintly disappointed.

“So,” I began, “why do you want to write for In My View?”

She smiled. Not warmly, accurately.

“Because your magazine pretends to love art, and I pretend to hate it. Between us, we might tell the truth.”

I wrote that down immediately. Not for print……..for self, defence.

The Conversation

Ava wasn’t built for small talk.

She moved through opinions like a scalpel through butter:

• “Art is like perfume ,intoxicating, invisible, and often wasted on the wrong people.”
• “Criticism should be a crime of passion, not an invoice.”
• “I don’t review exhibitions; I stage autopsies.”

Somewhere between her third Martini and my first existential crisis, I asked,

“Do you actually like anything?”

“Occasionally,” she said. “But only when it’s brave enough to fail spectacularly.”

I ordered the bill.

The Bars of Ponsonby

She suggested we continue “somewhere with lighting more forgiving of truth.”
Which, translated from Ava, speak, meant a bar.

The first stop: a Ponsonby haunt where the martinis are designed for absolution.

She ordered gin. I ordered something that didn’t require confidence.

Ava spoke of the art world like an ex she still stalked online, with equal parts fascination and disdain.

“It’s a mausoleum run by trust,fund vampires,” she said of one gallery.
“Another? A beige hostage situation.”

When I asked what she thought of the New Zealand art scene, she sighed.

“It’s like someone tried to paint with politeness. Beautiful, but bloodless.”

I laughed. Too loudly. She didn’t.

The Descent

We’d been in the bar twenty minutes, two or three martinis, depending on your preferred calendar, when Ava leaned across the table with the kind of focus usually reserved for interrogations or flirtation.

“Tell me, “She said, lowering her voice to a conspiratorial purr,

“about that… thing you’re involved with. The secret one. The online experiment that claims to love culture but treats it like a patient in intensive care.”

I blinked. “You mean?”

She waved a hand, slicing the air like a painter correcting a mistake. “Don’t say the name. I like mystery. But everyone’s whispering about it. You’re building some kind of refuge for people who still want to think.”

“It’s meant to be a home for film and art that don’t fit the algorithm,” I said, trying to sound unbothered.

Ava smiled, slow and feline. “That’s adorable. You think art wants a home. It doesn’t. It wants an argument. It wants to sneak into your house at night and rearrange your furniture.”

Then she drained her glass, as if punctuation required gin. By midnight, the gin had made us philosophers.

She leaned in again.

From there, the night disintegrated beautifully.

At one point she lectured two curators on “the moral cowardice of conceptual sculpture.”

At another, she convinced a film student to quit mid degree, “for the sake of integrity.”

By 3 am, she’d declared herself  “Queen of the Arts Precinct.”

By 4, I was trying to negotiate peace with gravity.

Outside, as dawn flirted with the skyline, she leaned in close. Her perfume was part gin, part threat.

“We’ll make the arts interesting again,” she said.

Then she kissed my cheek a perfect red signature in lipstick.

The Morning After

I woke technically alive but emotionally posthumous.

The lipstick mark remained ……. permanent as shame.

At the office, my boss barely looked up. “Well?”

“She’s extraordinary,” I said. “And?”
“Possibly uninsurable.”

“Perfect,” he said.

The Reflection

Later, I reviewed my notes. A few quotes. Several receipts. A line that simply read

“Ava vs Ministry = bloodbath.”

And between the chaos, something real:

She understood what art had forgotten it’s not about reverence; it’s about friction.

Ava didn’t talk about art to admire it. She talked about it to interrogate it to drag it out of the gallery and demand,

“Why do you exist?”

Maybe that’s what In My View needed: not another essay, but a woman who could turn criticism into theatre.

The Epilogue

Two days later, her first piece arrived. Subject line: “THE CULT OF NICE.”

The opening line:

“New Zealand art is like a well, behaved dinner guest…. charming, punctual, and utterly terrified of spilling anything.”

I sent it straight to layout with one note: Run it.

But you’ll have to wait for that till next week.

That night, I walked down Ponsonby Road again. Same bars. Same lights.

And through the glass, I could’ve sworn I saw that crimson coat.

I didn’t go in.
I’d already lived the art.