Devon Hartford - Painless

He smiled, “Okay, then I’ll massage everything.”

“Deal.” I walked around to look at his charcoal sketch. “Holy shit! You did all that in just twenty minutes?” It looked like a rough black and white photo of me. Some of it was still unfinished, like the hands and feet, but the face was totally me. “How’d you get my face finished so quick? It looks just like me!”

“I have your face burned into my brain. I see it in my mind every time I close my eyes.”

“You can remember it that well?”

“Beauty like yours is impossible to forget,” he cocked his dimpled grin.

When my break was over, he asked, “Do you want to try the pose with a Viking helmet now? I’ll do another sketch and we can compare them.”

“We don’t have a Viking helmet,” I said.

“Yeah we do, up on that top shelf over there.”

I loved how we were using the word “we” to refer to things in our studio. I followed Christos’ gaze and noticed a Viking helmet sitting between a gladiator’s helmet and a knight’s helmet, the shining armor kind. “Where’d you get those?” I asked.

“My grandad bought them forever ago. It’s always good to have props around. Now we can finally use one.” He walked over to the shelf and pulled the horned helmet down. “Here, put this on.”

We walked over to a six foot tall full length mirror in the corner that was built into a frame on wheels.

“Why do you have this?” I asked.

“It’s for painting full length self portraits. Lots of painters use them. You can also use it to look at your painting in a mirror image, which makes it easy to see flaws.”

“I didn’t know that,” I said thoughtfully. “Have you ever used the mirror for your own self portrait?”

“I haven’t.”

“You totally should! Hey, what if you painted yourself into my portrait?!”

His eyes lit up. “That’s not a bad idea. But do I have to wear a Viking helmet too?”

“It depends how it looks on me,” I snickered. “Can I try it on?”

He handed me the helmet and I set it on my head. It was way too big. It completely covered my eyes. I tilted my head back to look under the helmet’s brim at my reflection in the mirror. I was nude from head to toe. In a Viking helmet. Maybe not.

Christos snickered. “It’s perfect. A total winner.”

“Shut up!” I took the helmet off.

“Put that back on! We’re totally painting you with the Viking helmet. Nude.”

I rolled my eyes. “Fine, it was a terrible idea. But what about you and me together? We could call the painting The Lovers.”

He grinned and started nodding, “That’s actually awesome.”

“Don’t we make a great team?”

“We do, agâpi mou ,” he smiled and kissed me on the lips.

I wrapped my arms around his naked waist and leaned my head against his chest.

I gazed at the two of us in all our naked glory standing together in front of the full length mirror. “I like how this looks,” I whispered.

“Maybe instead of calling it The Lovers,” he smiled, “which sort of sounds temporary, we just call the painting LOVE, which is eternal?”

“I like the way you think, agápi mou ,” I sighed.

I had the best boyfriend ever.

Despite all my problems with money and Tiffany, I was managing to balance my entire schedule: classes, homework, my new job helping out Nikolos in his studio, and posing nude for Christos.

Working for Christos’ dad turned out to be awesome. He was totally flexible about my hours. He worked all the time, so he didn’t really care when I decided to come in, as long as I got everything done. And there was a lot to do.

Nikolos was always starting new paintings or running out of one color paint or another. So I was either mixing fresh paint, stretching new canvases, or cleaning hundreds of brushes. He went through brushes like water.

As promised, Nikolos had written me a check for my tuition payment. I was set until the next payment was due. But that wasn’t until after mid terms, so I wasn’t going to worry about it until I had to. With any luck, I’d figure something out.

At the moment, I was in the gardner’s shed behind Nikolos’ house. It was more like a gardner’s house or three car garage, because of its size. It had several rooms, tons of windows (most of which were open to let in a steady breeze), two big outdoor sinks, running water, gardening tools, a riding lawn mower for the giant backyard lawn, sacks of fertilizer and plant food, and everything else the gardner, who I’d met several times, used to maintain the grounds three days a week. Everything in the room was neatly arranged and created a pleasant atmosphere.

I stood at a big work table against the open windows, busily mixing paint. Cadmium red medium, to be exact. Because you weren’t supposed to inhale the dry pigments, I wore goggles, a face mask, and gloves. Despite the safety precautions, I enjoyed myself. From what I understood, the paint pigments were far less toxic than Tiffany Kingdumb-Cuntmouse, who had managed to find me at my previous jobs and give me grief. I was pretty sure she’d never find me way out in Rancho Santa Fe at Nikolos’ place.

I was adding dribbles of linseed oil to a pile of red pigment dust on top of a thick glass slab, mixing them together into buttery goop with a putty knife. It was sort of like making toxic cake frosting because you definitely weren’t supposed to eat the paint. Maybe I could make a toxic cake and deliver it to Tiffany’s house for her birthday. She’d never know it was me. Wicked grin.

There was a trick to getting the consistency of the finished paint just right, but I’d been doing it for a few weeks and was getting pretty good at it. When I was finished mixing, I scooped the finished paint into empty metal tubes with those screw top caps and crimped off the ends with pliers.

Nikolos leaned his head in the doorway. Bright clear blue sky silhouetted him. “How’s that cad red coming along?”

“Just finished,” I smiled, pulling off my gloves, mask, and goggles.

“Ready for a break? Dad made some fresh lemonade.” He was referring to Spiridon, who was over to sit for his portrait again, which Nikolos had almost finished.

“What is it with your dad and lemonade?” I grinned.

“I have no idea,” he chuckled. “You should ask him.”

I carried the finished tubes of cadmium red in a cardboard box as we walked back to the house together.

Spiridon walked out of the house with a pitcher of lemonade on a tray that also held three glasses filled with ice. We sat down at an outdoor table beneath an awning. Spiridon poured for everyone and served.

The view from the back of Nikolos’ house was breathtaking. The house was high on a hillside and looked down at the rolling hills of a beautiful canyon. It was probably the nicest view I’d ever seen in a person’s actual house. It was quiet and you couldn’t hear any sounds of cars or modern human cacophony. It was just nature. Birds chirping now and then, and a soft, warm breeze. The usual word people used for a place like this was Paradise with a capital P for perfect.

I had thought Spiridon’s beach mansion was awesome. This was the next level.

“How is your plein air painting class going, Samoula ?” Spiridon asked before sipping his lemonade. “You said the professor was Katherine Weatherspoon?”

“Yeah,” I said.

“She’s good,” Nikolos said.

“You know her?” I asked.

“I know most of the faculty in the art department at SDU,” Nikolos said.

“Wow, you guys both do, don’t you?” I grinned.

“Pretty much,” Spiridon smiled. “How are you enjoying painting outdoors?”