Devon Hartford - Painless

Christos laid down his brushes like they weighed a ton each. “Sure,” he mumbled, sounding exhausted. I knew it was the stress.

“May I break, Christos?” Isabella asked demurely in her Portuguese accent.

“Sure,” he huffed dismissively and walked through the French doors to the back deck.

“Isabella,” I asked, “do you want a sandwich?”

“Please,” she smiled.

It wasn’t at all weird to me anymore that Isabella sat naked in front of my boyfriend on a regular basis. The jealousy I’d felt the first time I’d been in the room with Christos painting her nude had shrunk to almost nothing. It helped that she seemed to have lost interest in him, which was odd because before she’d been all over him. Maybe she had met a cute guy of her own. “I’ll go make those sandwiches,” I said. “Care to join me in the kitchen?”

She followed me and we chatted while I pulled ingredients out of the refrigerator.

“Have a seat,” I said, motioning to the chairs at the kitchen table.

“Oh, no sitting. I sitting all day. Now I stand,” she smiled. “Standing good.”

“How’s the modeling up in Los Angeles?”

“L.A. is good. I busy, all the time busy.”

“That’s good,” I smiled as I pulled a loaf of sourdough out of its paper sack and sliced off several pieces with a bread knife. “I imagine you’re making good money?”

“Very good. Also nice to work here with Christos. No cameras. He make me perfect without the Photoshop.”

“Yeah,” I grinned. “Christos is an amazing painter.”

“I thought I heard you in here,” Spiridon said as he walked into the kitchen.

“Do you want a sandwich?” I asked him.

“Please,” he smiled. “Isabella, can I get you anything to drink?”

“Agua, por favor?” she said. “Oh, uh, I mean the water, please?”

“We have plenty of água,” he winked at her as he pulled out the pitcher from the fridge.

A loud crash echoed in from the studio.

I jumped where I stood at the counter, “What was that?”

“I don’t know,” Spiridon said, setting the pitcher down. “I’ll go look.”

There was another crash.

“Fuck!” Christos shouted.

Was he hurt? I dropped the knife I’d been using to slice a tomato and ran past Spiridon into the studio.

Christos held the painting of Isabella over his head.

“Christos! What are you doing?” I gasped.

He smashed the painting into the cement floor, splintering one corner of the wood frame. Then he bent over, grabbed the broken pieces of the frame, and tore the canvas halfway down the middle.

“Stop, Christos!” I pleaded.

“I can’t stand this piece of shit!” He snatched the broken painting off the floor, barged past me and stomped through the house to the front door, which he ripped open. I was surprised he didn’t yank the door off the hinges, he pulled so hard.

With a growl, he threw the floppy remains of the ruined painting out into the entryway. He shouted a primal roar and chased after it, kicking at the heaped ruin of the broken canvas.

I jogged up behind him, “Christos, stop! This is insane.”

“No, it’s a PIECE OF FUCKING SHIT!!!” He clutched one corner of the remains of the painting in both hands and beat it against the driveway like a rug. With each swing, he shouted, “PIECE! OF! FUCKING! SHIT!!!”

I backed off. He was in a rage, There was no point in trying to stop him. I couldn’t even if I’d wanted to. Christos was ten times bigger and stronger than me.

Christos continued beating his painting to death. I noticed Spiridon and Isabella standing behind me. Spiridon had a pained, sad look on his face. Isabella’s eyes were popping out of their sockets.

A car I didn’t recognize turned down the driveway and drove toward us while Christos pulverized the last shreds of the painting.

Christos was yelling, totally oblivious.

The glare from the sky overhead made it impossible to see who was in the car.

Christos bundled up the wad of torn canvas and the shattered wooden frame. He threw everything over the roof of the garage with a final primal roar. “PIECE OF FUCKING SHIIIIIIT!!!”

The car doors of the random sedan opened and two occupants stepped out.

“Sam?” my mom asked nervously, “is everything okay?”

Oh, fuck, no fucking way.

“Are you all right, Sam?” my dad asked.

Christos stormed back into the house, shouting “GOD DAMN USELESS MOTHER FUCKING PIECE OF SHIT PAINTING!!!”

I stared at my parents.

My fucking parents.

How the hell did they find me in San Diego?

Maybe I should’ve checked that voicemail they’d left weeks ago.

SAMANTHA

Spiridon walked into the living room from the kitchen and handed a glass of fresh squeezed lemonade to my mom. She sat next to my dad on the couch in the Manos’ living room. I sat on the leather chair opposite them.

“Thank you, uh…Spiridon?” my mom said, taking the glass from him. She hadn’t gotten used to his name. I could imagine her thinking it sounded hippie dippie. Whatever.

“This is good lemonade,” my dad said after taking another swallow.

“Thank you,” Spiridon smiled. “There’s plenty more. A warm day like today is perfect for it.”

I never imagined my parents inside this house. Ever. It felt wrong, like my privacy was being invaded in the worst way possible, like my hope for a new life was being undermined by their presence. I wished they would go. Like, now. I beamed ESP suggestions to my mom:

you left the stove on

Dad left the back door unlocked

your pipes will freeze and burst because you didn’t leave the faucets on a slow drip

GO THE FUCK HOME!!!

Nothing worked. Oh well. Maybe I should just tell them to leave? I could say, “Mom, Dad, you guys are such big jerks, I was thinking you could turn around and fly back to D.C., okay? It’s only a six hour flight.” Yeah, maybe not. I sighed to myself, fresh out of ideas.

“How are you two enjoying the warm weather?” Spiridon asked. “I bet it’s not this warm in Washington D.C.”

My mom smiled her office ass kissing smile, “I was just telling Bill on the drive over that the weather is so nice, maybe we should move here.”

My eyes bulged out of my head. No, please no. I buried my chin in my chest, hoping to hide my expression.

Dad said, “It was a smart move for you to choose San Diego, Sam.”

I nodded in mundane horror as my lips peeled back over my clenched teeth.

My mom chuckled fakely, “You never told us San Diego was so nice, Sam.”

Maybe because you never asked? Duh. All my parents cared about was whether or not I was taking all my Accounting classes in the right order and getting A’s. The weather? Irrelevant. My desire to become an artist? Irrelevant. My wonderful boyfriend? Irrelevant. My parents were in total denial.

“If you had,” my mom grinned, “we would’ve come to visit sooner,” she chuckled.

Yeah, because me and my mom were totally besties. Was she insane? I was waiting for Rod Serling to walk out from behind a piece of furniture and welcome us all to the Twilight Zone.

I searched around the armrests of my chair for one of those James Bond control panels. I was hoping there were ejector seats beneath my parents so I could shoot them through the ceiling. Or maybe trapdoors that dropped down to a dungeon filled with ravenous grizzly bears or a shark tank. I hadn’t yet found that control panel, but the leather chair had rivets on the front of the armrest, so I began meticulously pressing every single one. I was sure one of them was the trapdoor button.

“Sam, what are you doing?” my mom scoffed.

“Nothing,” I said defensively as I folded my hands in my lap. Sadly, I don’t think any of the rivets were switches.

Mom turned to Spiridon and chuckled, “Sam always was fidgety.”

Dad joined in with the good times. “I remember when Sam was a baby, she always wanted to play with my old adding machine. Once I showed her how to make the paper tape spool out by adding numbers together, she couldn’t get enough of it. She’d play with that adding machine until she’d used up the entire roll of tape. It was then that I realized my daughter’s love for numbers. Just like her father.”

I rolled my eyes. Was he serious? My dad was so oblivious. I don’t think he realized that adding machine had been far more responsive to me than he ever had. I was now convinced the stork had dropped my baby basket off at the wrong house nineteen years ago. Maybe my real parents were wizards like Harry Potter’s mum and dad. I rubbed my scalp, hoping to find a lightning bolt scar hidden there. Nope.

“Are you okay, Sam?” Mom frown-smiled. “Have you been using your dandruff shampoo?”

“I’m fine, Mom,” I groaned. Where was my magic wand? Oh yeah, Christos had taken it with him when he went for a walk earlier. Yes, the wand in his pants. I repressed a secret smile.

“What’s so funny?” Dad asked.

I needed to take some spy classes so I could learn to make my secret smiles more secret. “Nothing,” I groaned.

“Where did Christos go?” my mom asked.

“I think he went for a walk,” Spiridon said. “He’ll be back sooner or later.”

Christos had stormed past my parents after they’d arrived without saying hello, and gone out the driveway to who knew where. I couldn’t blame him. I wasn’t happy to see my parents either. It was for the best. My parents had been in shock for at least a half an hour after watching Christos murder his painting.