Devon Hartford - Painless

About ten hours and a million hacks later, Hairball was finished. I stepped up to the teller window and opened my mouth to speak.

What came out was a hack. Stupid Hairball. It really was catching. I cleared my throat several times. When I finished, the teller was looking at me like I had tuberculosis. I probably did. Thanks, Hairball Hackmaster.

“Ahem,” I hacked a final time. I wrung my hands together. I was going to do this. I needed ten grand. My heart was pounding. It was time to ask for my money.

“Can I help you?” the teller asked like she was about to call the Center for Disease Control so she could have me quarantined.

My throat was tickling again, but I willed it to relax. “Yes,” I said hoarsely, “I need to speak to someone about getting a loan?”

“Certainly,” the teller fake smiled dryly. “I’ll have one of our loan officers speak with you. If you could take a seat over there,” she pointed to the far corner of the bank, “someone will be out to talk to you shortly.” She couldn’t wait to get me out of her breathing space.

“Thanks,” I said and sat down in one of the chairs. My throat was still tickling, but I refused to start hacking again while I waited.

It was ten in the morning, and I’d decided to cut classes today and try to solve my money problems. I mean, what was the point in studying if I couldn’t pay my tuition bill when it came due?

Sadly, I hadn’t been able to find a single job online, and the scholarships weren’t looking any more promising. I still hadn’t told Christos about losing my museum job. It had been two weeks already, but the last thing I wanted to do was bother him with my money problems. With all of the paintings he needed to finish for his next gallery show weighing down on him, he had more than enough stress already, and it was eating away at him. His continued drinking was proof.

When the loan officer finally called me into his cubicle, I was bummed to discover I needed a cosigner for a $10,000 loan.

Great.

Where was I going to find a cosigner? My parents? Ha! That was the funniest thing I’d ever heard. Christos? I couldn’t ask him. It was one thing to live in his house rent free, another to make him liable for a huge chunk of change. I couldn’t do it. And I couldn’t ask my friends. They didn’t have any money to spare.

Maybe I needed to head to Las Vegas on the weekend and pour some money into the slot machines? Oh, wait. I didn’t have any money to blow on gambling.

Wasn’t there some kind of college hooker organization that represented young college women like myself, and only paired you with hot guys? Nah, I think I read that in a romance novel somewhere. It couldn’t possibly be real. Besides, I had a boyfriend.

I was out of options.

Sane ones, anyway.

I sat in my car in the parking lot outside the bank and cried while I leaned my head against the steering wheel. My hair draped around my face and stuck to my wet cheeks. When I was out of tears, I drove to UTC, the shopping center just east of SDU. I walked from store to store, asking about jobs, just like I’d done with Romeo a few months ago.

No one was hiring.

Not even Hot Dog On A Stick. I considered waiting around until one of the hot dog girls took a break so I could knock her out and steal her multi-colored uniform. I was so desperate, I would gladly wear one of their clown outfits and re-subject myself to smelling like hot dogs if it meant I had some money coming in.

Since UTC was a bust, I drove to Mission Valley and hit up the Fashion Valley Mall, Hazard Center, and the Westfield. I filled out several applications and left them behind with promises from the managers they’d give me a call if anything opened up.

When I went home that night, I was exhausted. I had job searched for nine hours straight. My feet were killing me.

I checked the studio for Christos but he wasn’t there. I trudged upstairs and found him passed out in our bedroom. He reeked of booze. He was getting sloshed every day now.

When in Rome.

I was so tired and hungry and frustrated and disheartened from my failed job search today that I decided to get sloshed myself.

I drove to the grocery store under the cover of darkness and bought an armload of ice cream. When I got back to the house, it didn’t take long for me to stuff myself so full of ice cream that I was sloshing when I walked into one of the downstairs bathrooms. I unloaded my freshly consumed ice cream in private and prepared for round two. I walked back to the freezer and pulled out another pint.

Mmmm, ice cream.

Gag.

I ate two more pints before I’d had enough and went to bed.

A few days later, between Sociology 3 and American History 3, I spent several hours studying in the Main Library. When it was time to head to my history lecture, I closed my laptop and headed for the stairwell door.

There was a huge staircase that spiraled around the square cement tower that supported the fourth through seventh floors of the Main Library. From the outside, the Main Library resembled a squat cement squared-off oak tree with a narrow base that supported the four floors on top.

Going down the stairs inside the three-story base always reminded me of descending into a giant crypt, like in the pyramids, but without cool hieroglyphics on the walls. It was gray and dreary.

Too bad I wasn’t going to find any gold sarcophagi at the bottom of the stairs, or whatever other treasures grave robbers always found when they broke into pyramids. Oh well.

At least it was exercise.

When I walked out of the stairwell next to the elevators, I passed through a corridor that had glass cases on both sides. The cases contained an ever-changing collection of museum style exhibits of all kinds of things: old antique books, ceramics, folk art objects, or sometimes actual art. Today, I noticed that there was a new display in several of the cases.

To my surprise, when I read one of the placards, I discovered it was original art from the Dennis the Menace comic strip.

I stopped to look at the art more closely. I had only ever seen Dennis the Menace art in the pulpy newsprint paper my dad looked at every morning. Up close, the original inked art was magnificent. The lines were so precise and crisp, yet stylized and very geometrical. I would never have made an observation like this before I’d started studying drawing so intensely six months ago. I used to just think of Dennis the Menace as a cartoon with cute drawings. Now I had something vaguely profound to say. I was so proud of myself.

Maybe I had found treasure at the bottom of that library staircase.

“Hank Ketcham is amazing, isn’t he?” Justin Tomlinson asked.

“Oh!” I gasped. I’d been so engrossed in the art, I hadn’t noticed him walk up. “Hey, Justin.”

Justin wore a sporty lightweight leather jacket over a V-neck print tee, and skinny jeans. He looked like he was ready to walk up to the podium at the Grammys and accept an award for best male vocalist.

“The library just got the art in this week. I’ve been dying to see it in person,” he said.

Art? What art? I was busy admiring Justin’s impeccable fashion sense. He was stylish and hip without over doing it. I bet he had his own personal dresser and style consultant. His hair was carefully mussed in a sexy way that looked easy and relaxed but probably took an hour to arrange.

One look at Justin and my profound art observations had flown right out the window.

“What do you think of it?” Justin smiled.

His hair? It was amazing. His smile? Even better. “Uh…”

Justin frowned, “The art? What do you think of the art?”

“Oh! The art! Yes! The art is amazing!” I think it was common knowledge that guilty people ended every sentence with an exclamation point. Not that I was guilty. I wasn’t guilty of anything. So what if Justin was adorable?