Painless (35 page)

I felt Christos suddenly tighten.
 

“What did you tell them?” he asked cautiously.

“I told them they’re crazy.” I felt him relax and melt against me.

“Thank goodness. I don’t think I could deal with losing you.” There was a tenderness in his voice that pierced straight to the center of my being. “I love you,
agápi mou
,” he said, “I don’t want to live without you in my life. I can’t imagine waking up to an empty bed because, once you leave it, my bed will remain as empty as my heart until the day I die. Life without you would be a dull, gray, tasteless thing without meaning. I would rather die a quick death than live a vacant life without you by my side.”

Whoa. Swoon.
 

Yeah, my mom was totally out to lunch about Christos.

“Oh,
agápi mou,
” I murmured, “I’m not going anywhere.”

===

Two days later, I was back at work at the Eleanor M. Westbrook art museum.

“Samantha,” Mr. Selfridge said, “I need to go out for a little while. I have a meeting with the Provost of Adams College. I’ll be gone for about an hour. Can you handle things while I’m gone?”

“Sure,” I smiled at him from where I sat behind the counter in the lobby.
 

“See you shortly,” he waved as he walked out the front doors.

I really loved my job at the museum and really liked having Mr. Selfridge for a boss. I only wished the museum could give me more hours. I’d asked Mr. Selfridge about it at the beginning of my shift today, but he had apologized that the museum had no more hours to give.

Now that Spring Quarter classes had started, and my remaining loan money had been eaten up paying the first of my monthly installment payments, I needed more cash in a hurry. I’d have to find a second job once again. With any luck my job hunt wouldn’t eat up all my study time. The last thing I needed was for my GPA to drop low enough that my loans got suspended.

With my parents back in D.C., I actually felt a sense of relief, despite my heinous financial predicament. My parents were just one more hassle that I wouldn’t have to deal with. I was going to figure things out without their help.

Somehow.

No customers had come into the museum today, so I had some down time. I pulled out my laptop and started searching for jobs online. As much as I hated the idea, it was time to suck it up and look for a math tutoring job. There had been tons the last time I’d looked for a job.

Unfortunately, it didn’t take long to realize that Sheri at the Financial Aid offices had been right. Jobs in general were scarce these days. The numerous math tutoring listings I’d seen a few months ago were all gone.
 

Great.

I sighed and closed my laptop. I’d do more job searching later. At least I had my museum job, which meant a little money coming in to offset my hemorrhaging budget crisis.

One of the glass front doors of the museum opened and Tiffany Nofun-Poophouse walked inside wearing a tight dress and platform heels. There went my good mood. Not that I had much of one to begin with, but she definitely knocked it to the bottom of a deep and dreary well, the kind of well with slippery slime on the sides you couldn’t climb back out of, the kind where they had to call the rescue crews to pull your muddied mood out.

“Hey, Tiffany,” I groaned as she clacked toward the counter in her hooker heels.

She smirked but said nothing.

“What brings you to the museum?” I asked blandly. At least I didn’t have to say “Welcome to Grab-n-Dash. How can I brighten your day?” And she didn’t have a big drink in her hand to throw in my face. I smiled as I realized there was little Tiffany could do to me here at the museum to actually ruin my day.

“I need a ticket,” she said brusquely.
 

“Are you an art major? Because if you are, you don’t have to pay.”

She slammed her huge purse on the counter and yanked her wallet out. There must have been more than a dozen credit cards inside. She peeled one out of the wallet and punched it at me.

“I didn’t know you liked coming to the art museum,” I said meekly, trying to make conversation. “It’s really nice. I find it very relaxing here, especially if you’ve had a bad day.”

She glared at me.

“Okay…” I muttered and rang her up. When she signed her receipt, I handed her a ticket.

She ripped it from my hand and walked toward the main gallery.

“Oh, um, Tiffany?” I called after her. “You need to leave your bag behind the counter.”

Tiffany stopped in her tracks and slowly pivoted to face me. I was expecting one of those horror movie reveals where her face suddenly looked monstrous, with dramatic up-lighting and dripping fangs, but it was just regular old Tiffany, not that there was a huge difference.

After sneering at me for about an hour, Tiffany stalked toward me and jammed her purse in my hands.

I squeezed it into one of the cubbies behind the counter.

About twenty minutes later, I realized I needed to go to the bathroom to change my tampon. Normally, Mr. Selfridge was always around and I could get him to cover the front desk. But he was still out on his errand.

How long was he supposed to be gone again?

I took a step and could tell I was on the verge of dripping. I hated how a tampon could up and quit on you without any warning like that.

Where was Mr. Selfridge?

I really needed to go to the restroom.

It wasn’t like I was going to change my tampon behind the counter. What if someone walked into the museum? If I had been wearing a skirt, I might have considered it. Might. But in jeans? Not bloody likely! I imagined how it would play out. I’d be squatting behind the counter, my pants around my ankles as I tried to plug a fresh tampon inside the hole in the dam, and BOOM! someone would walk inside and accuse me of public indecency.

No, thank you.

I bit my lower lip and used my ESP to will Mr. Selfridge to walk through the front doors. Where was he? I took a tentative step toward the waist high swinging door at the end of the counter, ready to make a run for the restrooms the second he walked in.

Squish.

Any second now, Mr. Selfridge was going to walk through those front doors…

I really couldn’t wait any longer.

I took another step toward the swinging door at the end of the counter.

I glanced back at the front doors, and switched over to my telekinetic powers. I used them to draw Mr. Selfridge, wherever he was, toward the museum.

Crap. It wasn’t working. My telekinesis was as bad as my ESP.

Another step.

Squish.

This was not good.

Where the fuck was Mr. Selfridge?

I looked at the clock. He wouldn’t be here for at least ten minutes. In ten minutes, I would need to throw my panties
and
jeans in the laundry. But there was no washing machine at the museum and I didn’t have any sweats to wear while I waited anyway. I’d have to go home, but I had classes later today. I wouldn’t have time to make it to home and back before they started. So much for my day running smoothly.

I picked up a pen off the counter top and waved it in the air like a magic wand. I pretended I was Hermione from a Harry Potter movie. It was the intention that made all the difference. “Mr. Selfridge, please appear, so my panties remain clear.” It was the best I could come up with on short notice.

Sadly, Mr. Selfridge did not magically appear in a puff of smoke.

Screw it. I couldn’t wait any longer.

The only person in the museum was Tiffany. What damage could she do while I was in the ladies room? She wasn’t one of those lunatics who would slash a painting with a knife, was she? I hoped not. Besides, I had her bag behind the counter, and I don’t think she had any room in her tight dress for a knife. And I didn’t think she was likely to pull a painting off the wall and carry it out. She hired workmen to do things like that, and I hadn’t seen her come in with a work crew.

Okay. I was going to risk it. I walked carefully out from behind the counter and bee lined for the restroom. I swear I only moved my legs from the knees down so as to minimize possible leakage. There was a lot of heel-toeing involved, but I was amazed by how fast I could move without the use of my knees.

I made it into a stall in the restroom and heaved a sigh of relief when I saw that my panties had but a single red blotch. Apparently, my magic wand waving spell a minute ago hadn’t kept my panties clean. I would’ve made a terrible wizard.

At least the leakage had been minimal. And I’d made it just in time. My tampon was ready to burst when I dropped it into the bowl. I blotted the red dot on my underwear with toilet paper until there was no moisture. Wow, I’d been close to bleeding out, no pun intended.

When I finished my business, I washed my hands and jogged back behind the counter.

The museum wasn’t on fire, the ceiling hadn’t fallen in, and there wasn’t a riot of people throwing molotov cocktails, so I figured everything was okay. Nobody could have gotten into the cash register, because I had the key for it around my wrist on a springy elastic band.

I was good.

I heaved a sigh of relief.

Mr. Selfridge walked in ten seconds later. Good timing, Mr. Selfridge. Not that it mattered.

“How was your meeting?” I asked him.

“Excellent,” he smiled. “Thanks for asking.”

Tiffany walked out of the museum gallery and up to the counter. “I need my bag,” she grumbled.

“Oh, let me get it for you,” I said enthusiastically. I dug it out of the cubby and handed it over.

Tiffany snatched it from me and walked out the front doors without saying thank you. Such a bitch.

Mr. Selfridge frowned. “I guess that young woman didn’t like the museum?”

“I don’t think she likes anything,” I said.

Mr. Selfridge furrowed his brows, confused. “It wasn’t anything you said to her, was it?”

“No, she just has a bad attitude.”

Mr. Selfridge nodded uncertainly. “Okay, then. Well, I’m going back to my office. Ring my phone if you need me.” He started walking across the large lobby toward the side hallway that led to the offices in back.

One of the museum doors burst open.

“You!” Tiffany blurted as she stalked across the lobby to the counter where I stood.

I wasn’t surprised she’d come back. She hadn’t managed to ruin my day, so she was going to call me names or demand a refund because she hated the art in the museum.

Mr. Selfridge had stopped at the other side of the lobby to see what was going on. Tiffany noticed him.

“Hey, you!” she shouted.

Mr. Selfridge was startled. “May I help you, young lady?”

She cocked her hips and jammed her fists against her sides, “Your employee stole my credit card!”

I’d spoken too soon. Never put it past Tiffany to do her very best to ruin my life.
 

Mr. Selfridge walked over to the counter. “I’m sorry,” he said to Tiffany, “what did you just say?”

“I said,” Tiffany huffed, “your employee stole my credit card.”

Mr. Selfridge leveled a look at me over his glasses.

I sighed. At least Tiffany was crazy, and it would only take a second to prove to Mr. Selfridge that I was innocent. I mean, why would I take Tiffany’s credit card? This was proof she had finally cracked.

“She must’ve taken it from my bag when she made me put it behind the counter,” Tiffany growled.

Mr. Selfridge raised his eyebrows at me.

“She’s crazy,” I laughed defensively. “I didn’t take her credit card.”

Tiffany slammed her bag on the counter, opened it, and wrestled with the contents inside like her bag was full of rabid chipmunks. Eventually, she pulled her wallet out. She opened it and presented the missing space. “See? I keep it right here. It’s gone.”

Tiffany had so many other cards of every sort in her wallet, it was like she was pointing at a lawn and accusing me of stealing a blade of grass.
 

More importantly, I didn’t steal it.

“How do you know you didn’t lose it someplace else?” I scoffed. “Maybe it fell out of your wallet. It’s probably in the bottom of your purse.”

Tiffany narrowed her eyes. “I looked,” she hissed.

“Look again,” I sneered.

Mr. Selfridge watched all of this with neutral interest.

“I didn’t take her credit card, Mr. Selfridge.”

“You’re such a liar,” Tiffany sneered.

Mr. Selfridge cleared his throat and said to Tiffany, “Perhaps you’d be willing to place the contents of your hand bag on the counter top, young lady?”

Tiffany glared rusty daggers at me. “Fine.” She up ended her bag and everything spilled out like a garbage truck emptying its load at the dump. I was surprised a cloud of dust didn’t billow up. How did she find anything in there? I thought my purse was bad.

Tiffany spread the contents out on the counter until it looked like landfill. “It’s not here,” she grunted.

“You’re sure you didn’t lose it someplace else?” Mr. Selfridge asked.

“Yes. I used it to pay for my museum ticket. I have the receipt right here.” Tiffany held the slip of paper up to show Mr. Selfridge. “See?”

Mr. Selfridge nodded. “And the card is not in your wallet?”

“No! Do you want me to pull out every credit card to prove it?”

“Yes, as I matter of fact, I do,” Mr. Selfridge said calmly. At least he was on my side in all this. “May I see your receipt from purchasing your museum ticket?”

Tiffany jammed it in his hand.
 

He examined it. “We’ll check the number on the receipt against the cards in your wallet.”

This was such a waste of time. Tiffany had run out of good ideas about how to ruin my day so she was grasping desperately at anything she could think of to piss me off. Whatever. I was over it and over her. She was a nuisance at best.

Mr. Selfridge meticulously matched the numbers on each card with the number on the receipt. When he was finished, he sighed and looked at me gravely. “I don’t see the card here anywhere. Could it be in your pockets?”

Tiffany laughed in his face. “Do I look like I have any pockets?” She motioned toward her tight dress. While it was true she had no pockets, I wouldn’t be surprised if she’d shoved her credit card up her butt just to get me in trouble.