Painless (49 page)

“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?”

“It’s the best!” I beamed. “I’m always thinking how awesome it would be to paint outside for a living.”

“Pretty awesome,” Spiridon smiled.

“That’s right! You painted all those landscapes over the years!”

“I’ve spent most of my life painting outdoors,” he said.

“I still can’t get over the fact that’s your job.” I sipped more lemonade and started crunching an ice cube. Normally, I wouldn’t have spoken with my mouth full, but that was with my parents. Spiridon and Nikolos were so laid back, I didn’t even realize I was breaking the rules.
 

“Hey,” Nikolos said to his dad, “remember that time you took me up to Yosemite, and you were painting by that river, and you thought I was a deer?”

“What?” I asked, confused.

“That’s right!” Spiridon chuckled, “You were a deer!”

Nikolos smiled broadly, that same dimpled grin that Christos had, and said, “Oh, you should’ve been there, Samantha. I was just a kid. My dad was busy painting, but I wanted to play.”

“You were probably, what, seven or eight at the time?” Spiridon said.

“That sounds about right,” Nikolos smiled. “So, there I was, tugging on my dad’s arm every five minutes to show him another pine cone I’d found or maybe another fancy rock, and I’m walking back toward where he’s set up by his easel to show him something else, and I see a full grown mama deer walk up behind my dad out of nowhere, followed by her two babies. The mama was two feet behind Dad, and she was one big deer. I was so scared, I couldn’t even speak. The next thing I know, that mama deer is nipping at the back of my dad’s jacket.” Nikolos glanced at Spiridon, “Didn’t you have an orange or something in your pocket?” Spiridon nodded agreement. “Anyway, Dad is so busy focusing on his painting, and without turning around, he says to the deer, ‘That’s wonderful, Nikos, beautiful. Now go see if you can find another one just like it.’ He didn’t even know it wasn’t me!” Nikolos cried laughter.

Spiridon, already laughing said, “I did when that mama deer leaned over my shoulder and licked my palette of watercolors!”

“You should’ve seen him jump!” Nikolos laughed, reliving the memory. “He turned around and that mama deer was staring him right in the face, not two inches away! He jumped out of his camping chair at least four feet in the air!”

“No way!” I said in disbelief.

“It wasn’t four feet,” Spiridon laughed. “But I sure beat feet when I realized it wasn’t you.”

Both of them threw their heads back and chuckled heartily.

Spiridon wiped tears of joy from his eyes. “Do you remember that time we were visiting your aunt in Mykonos?”

“Which time?” Nikolos grinned.

“The one with the pelican on our rowboat.”

“Oh,” Nikolos chuckled, “you mean the pelican who wanted your lunch?”

Spiridon nodded.

“You tell it,” Nikolos smiled.

Spiridon leaned over to me. “So, we had ridden bicycles from my sister’s house in Mykonos down to Ornos for the weekend. This was back before all the hotels started taking over the island.”

“Where’s Mykonos?” I asked.

“It’s in the Aegean sea, southeast of mainland Greece,” Nikolos said.

“So,” Spiridon continued, “I had gotten the brilliant idea of setting up my easel on a rowboat. I should’ve known better, with this one around,” he cocked a thumb at Nikolos, “but I wanted to paint the town from a view on the water so I could capture the white plaster buildings against the sapphire blue of the ocean. Nikos and his cousin Helena were busy swimming all morning. When it was lunch time, my sister pulled out the picnic basket she’d brought to feed everyone. Nikos and Helena climbed out of the water, soaking wet. They were dripping over everything. That should’ve been my clue I was asking for trouble painting watercolors in the middle of the bay, but all I could think about was my sister’s scrumptious gyros waiting for us. Once the food was out, a giant pelican landed on the prow of the boat to see what was on the menu. Nikos wanted to shoo him off, but I said it was okay. The next thing I know, I had set my gyro down only for a second, and the pelican hops off the stern and snatches up my lunch like it was a fish and swallows it down! Before I can stand up, Nikos shouts ‘I’ll get it’ and lunges for that bird. The pelican flapped its wings furiously to escape and knocked my painting right into the water! Everyone is hollering and Nikos turns on a dime, shouting ‘I’ll get it, I’ll get it!’ He dove right in the water and rescued my painting. But you can imagine what a dip in the ocean does to a wet watercolor painting.”

Spiridon and Nikolos were both laughing as they remembered.

“Oh no!” I laughed. “What happened to the painting?”

“The painting was ruined, but I couldn’t tell Nikos that. He was so proud for saving it.” Spiridon looked at his son and smiled lovingly.

Nikolos nodded, basking in the warmth of his father’s love decades after the fact.

Spiridon and Nikolos traded painting stories back and forth like that for an hour. Some of them included the misadventures of young Christos as well. Every single tale was filled with excitement, fun, and love. My childhood had been nothing like it.

“And that’s what you did for a living for all those years?” I said to Spiridon with an amazed smile. It sounded like a continuous vacation to me.

“Yes,” Spiridon said. “For a long time.”

“Why’d you ever stop painting?” I asked.

Spiridon sighed mysteriously. “That’s a long story,”
 

I glanced at Nikolos, who raised his eyebrows before looking away. Okay, they weren’t going to tell me.

“Maybe you should be a landscape painter, Samantha,” Nikolos said, drawing attention away from Spiridon.

“You think?” I said.

Nikolos shrugged his shoulders, “Why not? It’s a job like any other.”

It never ceased to amaze me how the Manos men took it for granted that I was going to be a successful artist someday. Now Nikolos was doing it too. Christos had the most awesome family I’d ever met. I was so glad to be a part of it.

I shook my head and sipped more lemonade, which was delicious, as always, and basked in the warm spring air. It was hard to believe working for Nikolos was an actual job. It was like hanging out with my friends.

Lucky me!

===

I sat at my drawing table in the studio at Spiridon’s house, working on drawing drapery. Drapery meant the way cloth folded, usually on clothing when people wore it, sometimes just hanging like wrinkled blankets or hanging tablecloths and curtains. It was part of our homework for Drawing The Costumed Figure.

It was almost like doing fashion illustrations.
 

I’d already drawn a bunch of pictures of princesses in fluffy dresses and hot guys in slick suits striking GQ poses. I had a bunch of internet browser windows open on my laptop showing photos of various gowns and runway models, male and female. I was really liking this whole Art major choice of mine. My parents were really out to lunch about art.

Whatever.

Christos was out, hanging with Jake. Spiridon was out too, I wasn’t sure where. He tended to come and go without explanation. I could only assume he had an entire adult life he was living, but I never saw it. Maybe he was secretly a handsome Greek mafia kingpin?