I didn’t sound nervous, did I?
“See what I mean?” he said casually, “It doesn’t take long for the average person to fall short. Most people don’t get past the Mona Lisa. Beyond that, about the only other thing people remember is Picasso’s Blue Period, because it sounds funny.”
Oh geez, he was dangerously close to putting the clues together. I needed a distraction quick! Guilty exclamation point! D’oh! I meant, d’oh. I’d already used my body to full effect in the bedroom, and it hadn’t stopped the inevitable. All I could do now was string together the first ideas that popped into my head. I said, “I know, right! A blue period? The first thing I think of when I hear ‘blue period’ is pulling my tampon out one day and it’s Cerulean blue! And that’s like, the most expensive paint of all, right? I could turn myself into a paint factory if I bled Cerulean blue! But I could only sell paint once a month because it’s such a rare color!”
What was I saying?!? I was crazy!!!
!?!?!?!?!?!
Guilt! Guilt? Guilt! I needed to have my brain removed! ASAP?
Christos chuckled, “Blue period. Have I ever told you how much I enjoy your bizarre ideas, agápi mou?”
Bizarre was too kind a word. I giggled nervously.
He put a loving arm around my shoulders. “All this talk about blue periods has got me thinking. I need to come up with my own thing, like Picasso. Have any ideas? I bet you could think up something no one’s ever thought of.”
How about a red slash period? Oh wait! You already thought of that!?!?!?!?!
I was three seconds away from collapsing into a puddle of tears. I couldn’t take it anymore. I cracked like fine china on cement.
“I DID IT, CHRISTOS! I WIPED AWAY YOUR SLASH OF RED GENIUS YESTERDAY! I’M SO SORRY! BUT YOU WERE DRUNK! I THOUGHT IT WAS A MISTAKE! I WANTED TO CLEAN IT OFF BEFORE IT DRIED AND RUINED YOUR PAINTING!!!”
I sobbed.
He wrapped his other arm around me. “What are you talking about, agápi mou?”
After I calmed, I looked into his loving eyes. They welcomed me with warmth and affection. I wiped tears from my cheeks and sniffled, “When I came home yesterday, you’d fallen asleep drunk. There was a big red slash of paint on the canvas. I cleaned it off, thinking you’d done it by accident, but then I thought maybe you hadn’t! Now I’ve ruined it!” I sobbed some more.
“A red slash?” he said thoughtfully. “I don’t even remember that.” His face darkened into a frown.
Oh no, this was it. This was the moment he realized what I’d done.
He smirked, “I feel like an idiot, agápi mou.”
Him?
I thought I was the idiot.
He shook his head with disgust, “I’ve been drinking so much lately I can’t even remember what I’m doing anymore.”
Hope. Maybe I hadn’t snipped off Christos’ red slash period at the bud.
“So,” I said, “you don’t think you put the red slash on the painting on purpose?”
“Are you kidding? I was probably so loaded I didn’t even know what color paint was on my brush,” he chuckled.
“So I didn’t destroy your genius?”
“My genius?”
“It was a pretty awesome red slash,” I quipped.
His face went serious and he arched an eyebrow, “Then maybe you should’ve left it alone? Sometimes genius works in mysterious ways…”
Gulp. I wondered if I could commit suicide by holding my breath until I suffocated. It was the only escape option I had while wrapped up in Christos’ arms. Tears welled in my eyes, so I buried my face in Christos’ shirt out of embarrassment and guilt.
Guilt!?!?!?!?!!!!!!!
I inhaled deeply. Christos had been drinking so much, I assumed he would smell of booze, and I was hoping I could inhale enough booze fumes to get a contact buzz and finally calm down. Nope. Apparently, he’d sweat all the alcohol out of his system during our vigorous lovemaking earlier. I would have to go back to holding my breath until I suffocated. But, after our shower, he now smelled like the sexiest man on the planet. There was no way I could hold my breath if it meant not getting to inhale more of his manliness at close range.
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.”
Chapter 18
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 abstr
act 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.
Sadly, before my dad had started going downhill, his house had been a painter’s paradise. Now it was a drunkard’s tomb. I hated it.
I pulled my Camaro to a stop in front of the house. It was still nice on the outside. It was only about eight years old. Give it another decade, and it would show signs of wear if he didn’t do any maintenance, which he probably wouldn’t. He couldn’t even keep himself showered and shaved, let alone take care of a huge mansion. Eventually the outside would catch up with the inside.
“Oh my gosh,” Samantha gasped, “is this your dad’s house? It’s huge.”
“Yeah.” Should I warn Samantha what awaited us inside? Or let it hit her like a hammer? I didn’t think it mattered.
“How long has it been since you were here?” she asked.
I squinted into the sunshine, “At least a year?”
“Are you nervous?”
“That’s an understatement,” I said sarcastically.
We walked up to the cut glass front doors. I rang the doorbell. It played a Bach piano sonata or some shit. The things people did with too much money.
I could see the silhouette of someone walking up to the front door.
Moment of truth.
The door opened smoothly and silently. None of that horror movie creaky hinges shit. Yet. Give it time for the rust to set in.
“Paidí mou!” my dad beamed, all smiles “So good to see you!” He attacked me with a bear hug and slapped my back. “It’s been a long time since you’ve been here! I’m so glad you’ve come.”
I hugged him back, but after a second, I said, “All right, Dad. I think you’re going to break something.” He seemed even stronger than when he’d hugged me in court at my trial. And he looked even healthier.
He released me, “Are you getting soft on me?”
“Yeah, as if,” I quipped. “But I think you’ve been hitting the weights again. Am I right?”
“I have,” he smiled.
Man, I don’t think I’d seen my dad this happy since before my mom left. But something told me this was all an act and the second we walked inside the dungeon, the truth would come out.
“Samantha!” my dad said. “So good to see you again!” My dad went in for a hug, but I think he saw that Samantha was a little overwhelmed, so he patted her gently on the shoulder. “Come inside, you two. Can I get you something to drink?”
I almost said, “Something without alcohol?” but I bit my tongue. Since I was old enough to know better, my dad’s drinking had driven me nuts. I’d always given him shit about it in the past. Who was the asshole now?
“Sure,” Samantha said. “I’m pretty thirsty.”
We walked into the huge entry hall with the big spiral staircase. The chandelier overhead was the size of the Eiffel Tower if it were made of crystal and hanging from my dad’s ceiling. Everything in the room was so damn bright and white.
What happened to the dungeon?
We walked down a marble hallway to the big kitchen. It was clean too. No booze bottles anywhere. My dad opened the Sub Zero. No bottles of vodka. Just bottled water, fruit juice, and milk.
“What can I get you two?” Dad asked.
“I’ll take a water,” Samantha smiled.
“What she’s having,” I said.
My dad uncapped the waters and poured them into clean glasses from the cupboard.
“Dad,” I asked, “what did you do, dip this place in a bottle of bleach?”
He chuckled as he poured the second water. “No, that much bleach would’ve burned a hole in the ozone layer,” he chuckled. “I’ve got a maid coming in five days a week. She’s got elbow grease to spare.”
“Five days a week?” Samantha marveled. “How much are you paying her?”
My dad frowned but smiled. “You really want to know?”
“Err, I mean,” Samantha stammered, “I need to find a job. I used to work at a convenience store but that didn’t work out.”
“A convenience stor
e?” my dad gawked. “That sounds terrible.”
“It was,” Samantha groaned. “But maybe being a maid would be better. I wouldn’t have jerky customers coming in all day long. Anyway, I just wondered what a maid gets paid.”
“I pay the maid well. I hired her from an agency. I can give you their number and put in a good word for you. Maybe they can find you some work.”
“Really?”
“Sure. But I imagine most maids work during the day,” Dad said. “Don’t you have classes at SDU?”
“Yeah,” Samantha sighed.
“Well maybe the agency has some of those maids who clean office buildings at night. I’ll look into it.”
“Could you?” Samantha asked hopefully.
“Definitely,” he said. “Hey, I’ve got something I want you to see, son.”
“I’m all eyes,” I quipped.
My dad smirked at me and nodded. “Funny. You know, Samantha, this boy of mine is quite the character.”
“You’re telling me,” she smiled as we walked through the house.
He had so many rooms and hallways it was like walking through a museum. For the first time in years, there were paintings everywhere hanging from all the walls.
“Man,” I said, “there’s a shitload of paintings in here. It’s starting to look like the Sistine Chapel.”
“Is this all your art, Mr. Manos?” Samantha asked.
“Call me Nikolos,” Dad smiled. “Some of the paintings are mine, others are from fellow artists. I always like to trade paintings with artists I respect.”
Sam joked sarcastically, “Is that why I don’t see any of Christos’ paintings?”
“Whoa!” Dad laughed, “she has a tongue, doesn’t she!”
I sort of expected that to rub me the wrong way, but Samantha said it with such affection, it was obvious she didn’t mean it harshly. And my dad had no idea what I’d been going through lately. At least I hadn’t told him. Maybe my grandad had? It didn’t matter. I wasn’t going to bring it up.
“So what did you want to show us?” I asked.
Painless (The Story of Samantha Smith #3) Page 32