Devon Hartford - Painless

When I looked up into his loving, affectionate eyes, my guilt eased several notches.

“I’m totally kidding, agápi mou, ” he smiled. “If all it took to make a painting genius was adding a red slash, people would be adding red slashes to everything. Loaves of bread. Smart phones. SUVs. Saucepans. The world would be filled with red slashes. But do you see red slashes everywhere? Nope. And no, this wasn’t the start of a worldwide red slash phenomenon. I think you’re safe.” He kissed the top of my head lovingly.

“You’re sure?” I mumbled inhaling his intoxicating sexiness. I could definitely get drunk or high off of Christos’ manly scent. “I didn’t sabotage the beginning of your red slash period?”

“No,” he chuckled, “I think we’re safe.”

I relaxed into his arms at last.

“But I do need something,” he said.

“Oh, what?”

“I need some fresh ideas, some fresh perspective. Otherwise, I’m going to grind all these paintings into the ground until I can’t stand to look at them or they’re all covered with red slashes. And I don’t mean the kind of slashes that sell paintings. I mean the kind that says, ‘This painting is crap, next!’”

“Where do we go to find good ideas? The idea store? I hear they’re having a sale,” I grinned.

“Funny,” he smiled, “but that would mean everyone would be able to buy the same good ideas. They wouldn’t be good anymore. They’d be run of the mill. I need to talk to someone who really is a genius and can suggest something truly special.”

“Who?” I asked, my interest suddenly piqued.

“You need to talk to your father,” Spiridon said, suddenly standing in the doorway to the studio. “He knows what you’re going through better than anyone.”

I glanced at Christos. He had gone white and his eyes were wide with what looked like fear.

After a long pause, Christos looked down at me and swallowed hard.

In a crackly voice he said, “He’s right.”

CHRISTOS

My ’68 Camaro dipped and bobbed over the picturesque rolling hills of Rancho Santa Fe as we neared my dad’s house. Rancho Santa Fe was an exclusive upscale community hidden a few miles inland from the coast. Suburban three bedroom houses on cookie cutter lots were replaced by lavish ranch style homes surrounded by oceans of acreage.

“There’s a lot of horses and mansions out here,” Samantha observed as she took in the countryside.

“Yeah,” I said.

“It sure is beautiful. How come you don’t go out to visit your Dad more often?”

I glanced at her briefly. It was the only answer I could give at the moment. The subject of my dad was guaranteed to piss me off or break my heart. I wasn’t in the mood to do either. I just wanted to get his advice and get through the visit as quickly as possible.

“Oh, uh, sorry,” Samantha said sheepishly.

“It’s okay, agápi mou ,” I said softly. “Do me a favor, when we get to my dad’s place, don’t mention my drinking, okay?”

“All right,” she said uncertainly.

I wanted to tell Samantha that it would bother my dad if he found out I was drinking all the time. Sure, that was part of the truth. Who wanted to find out their kid was getting trashed on a daily basis instead of making something of themselves? But the rest of the truth was I felt like an idiot for drinking so much. After watching my dad destroy his marriage with his own drinking, I should’ve known better. Right?

Like father, like son.

Man, I had become a fucking cliché.

But it went deeper than that. My dad hadn’t really started drinking until he’d felt bound by his golden handcuffs.

My grandad had once told me that when my dad was young, he’d made a clear headed decision to paint abstract art because he knew it sold well. He had a family to support and he didn’t want to tough it out as a realist painter and hope that he’d make money someday. That’s what my grandad had done. Sure, now my grandad was successful, but in the beginning, he’d had plenty of lean years and my dad lived through most of them as a kid.

So my dad went for the sure thing. Not that Joe Anybody could make money as an abstract artist. Tons of artists tried the ‘easy’ route over the decades and failed miserably. But my dad knew exactly what he was doing. His career blew up from the start and it started raining money.

But it didn’t take long for him to feel bound tight by those golden cuffs. He got sick of abstract real quick. Maybe because it was so damn easy for him. He never did figure out a way to Houdini out of doing the abstract art and transform his career into doing the realistic stuff he really wanted to do. I guess it wasn’t in the cards for him.

Ironically, I’d already made a good chunk of change at my first solo show at Charboneau Gallery selling realistic art. I was living the dream my dad had hoped to live from the day he’d picked up a paintbrush. And here I was, drinking because things weren’t going perfectly.

The last thing I wanted to do was walk into my dad’s house and say to him, “Hey, Dad, I’m doing what you always dreamed of doing, but I can’t hack it because that fuck Stanford Wentworth said my paintings didn’t have any heart, and he was right. So instead of manning up and fighting through the pain, I’m crumbling like a sand castle in a slight breeze.”

Yeah, like I wanted to tell my dad I was pussing out on an opportunity he would’ve killed for twenty five years ago.

Hence, all my drinking of late and my reluctance to face my dad today.

I wheeled the Camaro onto a paved private road and drove until we came to the gates and stopped. The iron gate had a circle set in the center. The circle held a fancy polished gold letter M. I could never decide if it was cheesy or awesome. Mainly, I didn’t really care. My dad could spend his money on whatever he wanted. He’d paid for it the hard way when his drinking had chased off my mom. After she left, he’d painted like crazy and raked money in by the truckload, trying to fill the void. No matter how much he made, all the cash in the world couldn’t replace my mom. Not for me or my dad. Eventually, the drinking took over so bad, my dad stopped painting altogether and just drank.

I grimaced while punching a code into the little box bolted to a pole coming out of the ground in front of the gates.

A second later, the gates swung slowly open.

I’d only been here a few times in the last four years.

Why did these gates make me think I was about to get swallowed? Maybe because the last time I’d been in my dad’s house, it had been a dark dungeon. You could feel the sadness seeping out of the walls in every room. All the curtains were closed, bottles of alcohol were scattered around on every flat surface in the place. Any sign that my dad was a painter was nonexistent. No art hung on the walls. There was no studio space set aside. As far as I knew, all of his painting supplies were stashed in a storage locker in Encinitas. That was thanks to Franco Viviano, the owner of Spada Gallery in L.A. Viviano was the guy who sold my dad’s work and had helped make my dad rich. My grandad had told me the whole story.

Apparently, when my dad had gotten the idea in his head to burn all his paintings and his art supplies in a drunken stupor a year ago, he called Franco and told him he was quitting. That was kind of funny because my dad didn’t work for anybody. Franco just represented him. But my dad told Franco he was quitting and burning all his art and supplies.

According to my grandad, Franco had jumped in a car and driven down from Beverly Hills the second he’d gotten off the phone with my dad. Franco had called my grandad while he was driving south and the two of them met up at my dad’s house. They didn’t want Dad doing something stupid. In the end, after calming my dad down, Franco had hired some guys to remove everything and put it safely in a storage unit in case my dad ever decided to paint again.