Painless (25 page)

“I’m too old for the art business,” my grandad sighed. “It’s a young man’s game.”

“Balderdash,” Wentworth said. “I’m older than you, Spiridon, and I’m still in it.”

“But we’re on opposite sides of the game board, Stanford.”

“Touché. I’ll make it easy for you. I’ll give you seven million for everything in the room.”

I think I could hear Brandon gulping all the way from where I sat at my easel.

“Thank you, Stanford,” my grandad said, “but no. The memories in these paintings are worth ten times that. Many of them were painted when I was a young man, or when my son was but a child, or when I had my grandson sitting on my knee. I couldn’t part with them.”

“If you change your mind, give my office a call. But I promise, my offer will have changed, and not to your advantage, I assure you.”

Nice. I hadn’t yet met the guy, and already I didn’t like him.

“Enough of that,” Wentworth grumbled. “Now, shall we see the young artist at work?”

“If he’s not too busy,” my grandad said a bit defensively.

“I’ll go check,” Brandon said. He rushed into the studio a moment later, a pained expression on his face. “You ready for the dog and pony show?” he whispered.

“Do I have a choice?” I mumbled.

“No,” Brandon said sharply.

Fan fucking tastic.

Stanford Wentworth ambled into the room, flanked by his assistant Frederick, Brandon, and my grandad.
 

Wentworth was a large, tall man with a thick head of tightly maintained aerodynamic silver hair. He wore an expensive suit and imposing tie.
 

Frederick was similarly slickly suited. Wire rimmed glasses were attached to his face and a cellphone earpiece was attached to his ear. He raised his hand to his earpiece and pressed a button. “Frederick Whitlock speaking?” After a pause, he said, “He’s busy at the moment.” Pause. “I’ll check. Mr. Wentworth, it’s Couteux Galerie in Beverly Hills. They want to know if you’re coming by this afternoon?”

“Tell them I’ll come by if I come by,” Wentworth barked.

Nice. Wentworth sure had a winning personality.

Frederick relayed the message over his earpiece way more politely than Wentworth had said it. I had no doubt Frederick more than earned whatever Wentworth paid him.

I pretended to paint as they walked toward my easel, mixing paint on my palette. Isabella briefly glanced at them, but maintained her pose. I had explained to her earlier in detail that we should continue working while everyone walked in and watched.
 

I noticed Wentworth blatantly eyeballing Isabella’s nakedness. He positioned himself to get the best possible view of her exposed breasts. His overt desire was as subtle as a volcano. He slid his hands into his pockets and arched his back, thrusting out his pelvis. I wouldn’t have been surprised if he started jingling his change like he had a jackhammer running in his pants. Total douche. I liked him better and better. Not.

I would’ve thrown the guy out except for the fact he could ruin my art career with the snap of his fingers. The one downside to selling paintings for ten grand or fifty grand or more was that you were always dealing with rich shitheads.

Whatever. It’s not like the guy had his hands on Isabella. If he crossed that line, I’d break his fingers. But Isabella was a big girl, and I’m sure this wasn’t the first time she’d been ogled by an old dude. She worked as a model, after all. I could only hope she’d learned how to deal with it.

Wentworth let out a big sigh and pulled his hands out of his pockets. I’m sure by now he’d come in his pants. Fucking perv. He walked around behind my easel to see what I was doing.

I nodded at him.

“Don’t mind me,” he said. “Please continue.”

The way he said it sounded dangerously close to a command. I’m sure he was used to telling people what to do 24/7. I rolled my eyes before glancing at Isabella. She seemed relieved that I was now positioned between her and Wentworth like a shield.

I had been in the process of painting Isabella’s hips. The joint where the leg comes out of the pelvis was always tricky. Beautiful women had a softness, but you had to give it just the right amount of subtle structure or else it looked like carnival balloons stuck together. I’d always believed that softness was the secret of feminine beauty. Not hard muscle. All that modern shit about women having eight packs and guns for arms was ridiculous. If you wanted to fuck a guy, go fuck a guy.

I loaded up my brush with a mixture of burnt sienna and a hint of burnt umber. I swept the brush across the canvas at the hip joint in an elegant curve.

“Mmmm,” Wentworth nodded.

I ignored him.

I needed to hit one of the planes on the front of the pelvis with a lighter mix, so I went back to my palette and added a hint of zinc white.
 

As I was about to apply the paint to the canvas, Wentworth went, “Hmmm.”

Was it going to be like this all day? I almost turned and tossed him a glare, but decided it was a bad idea. So I scumbled the paint onto the canvas instead. Then I took out a clean brush and used it to soften the edge between the light and dark areas.

“Uh huh,” Wentworth mumbled.

Oh man, this was killing me. I set my brushes down and wiped my hands on a rag. I took a step back from my easel.

Wentworth immediately stepped in, getting his nose inches from the canvas. A simple “May I?” would’ve been nice. Nope. What Wentworth wanted, Wentworth got. He inspected the hip joint I’d just painted like a jeweler. Somebody give that guy a loupe so he could examine the molecules in the paint mix a little better.

He stepped back to view the whole painting and nodded thoughtfully. I couldn’t tell if he approved or what. Then he lunged forward, getting in close on the portrait again.

This guy was a nut.

He continued lunging in and out for several minutes, examining different parts of the painting in detail. When he was finished, he stepped back and stood beside me.

“I like it,” he said thoughtfully, “but it needs work.”

Was he kidding? We hadn’t even been introduced. Yeah, he knew who I was, and I knew who he was. But, fuck, there was this thing that had been around for thousands of years called common courtesy. I guess when you got rich enough, shit like that went out the window.

I glanced at Brandon, who gave me a sympathetic look that said, “Yes, he’s crazy, but he’s a hundred times richer than he is crazy, so suck it up.”

I shook my head minimally and rolled my eyes for Brandon’s sake.

He shot me a warning glare.

I sighed. Time for me to behave.

“Yes,” Wentworth said, “a few revisions and I think this will be serviceable. The head is good, but have you considered altering the pose?”

I raised one of my eyebrows at least three inches.

My grandad chuckled and walked out of the room. I could tell he was offended for me by the way he laughed.

I guess I’d missed the part where Wentworth had been hitting the crack pipe like a high class hooker after a blow job bender. The guy was a lunatic. Oh, I forgot. Wentworth did what Wentworth did.
 

He said, “This is good work. It’s not great. I wouldn’t pay more than fifteen thousand for what I see here. But I believe if you were to change the pose to something more elegant, you could get it up to fifty thousand.”
 

More elegant? Was he blind? Everything Isabella did was elegant, and my painting captured that.

Before I had a chance to tell Wentworth to go fuck himself, he asked, “What other paintings do you have on hand?” He turned away to investigate, and the second his back was to me, I rifled a glare at Brandon.

Brandon ignored it. “Christos,” he said pleasantly, “can you show Mr. Wentworth the other paintings you’ve been working on? I know you have several in progress.”

Thanks a bunch of fuck, Brandon. Wentworth started digging through some old canvases I had leaning against the wall like he owned the place. I had to restrain myself from planting my boot in his ass.

“The new paintings are over here,” I said, pointing to the drying rack where I kept the canvases of Avery, Jacqueline, and Becca that I’d completed a few weeks ago. They stood in the tall vertical slots of the drying rack, which kept dust off the paintings while the oils cured. I carefully slid out the first one. “They’re still wet,” I warned subtly, half expecting Wentworth to run his fingers all over the art like he owned it.

Instead, he glanced at the first painting, then nodded commandingly, “Next.”

Yes, master. I slid it carefully back into the rack.

I noticed Frederick answering his earpiece again. “Mr. Wentworth, it’s Madelyn Cornett with Jah—”

“Can’t you see I’m busy, Frederick?” Wentworth grumbled.

“Yes, Mr. Wentworth,” Frederick said before turning away to handle the call.

Whatever Wentworth was paying Frederick, it wasn’t enough. The guy needed a raise. My suggestion would’ve been for Frederick to find another boss, but that was just me.

“Next,” Wentworth insisted, looking at me expectantly.

Man, Wentworth needed an attitude adjustment in a hurry. I’d be more than happy to take him to the garage where I kept my tools and no one would hear him shouting for help.

I slid out another painting. This was of Jacqueline, and I was pretty happy with it.

“No. Next.”

I pulled out the last one.

He shook his head and turned away, looking for new distraction.

What a charmer. And I was doing whatever he said like a servant. Who the fuck did he think he was? I wanted to tell him he could take his money, light it on fire, and stick it up his ass. I didn’t need him. There were other art buyers out there.

Wentworth’s eyes fell on Samantha’s easel in the corner. He walked over to it. Samantha’s painting of three Calla Lilies in a vase sat on it. “What’s this?” Wentworth asked. “It’s not yours, is it?”

“That’s my girlfriend’s painting,” I said.
 

“It’s terrible,” Wentworth chortled.
 

He turned away and started walking toward the door before I could respond. He stopped in front of the Isabella portrait on his way out and said, “If you change up your painting of this beautiful young model like I suggested, you might have something with it. Frederick? It’s time to go. Call Couteux Galerie and tell them there wasn’t anything worth my time in San Diego today.”

I ground my teeth together. Wentworth had never once called me by name. He was prick royalty. King of All Dicks. I debated whether or not Frederick or Brandon would turn me in if I beat Wentworth to death and dropped his body in a ditch somewhere.
 

“Did you see those Calla Lilies?” Wentworth quietly asked Frederick as they neared the doorway leading back into the house.

“I did not, sir,” Frederick replied quietly.

“They were god awful,” Wentworth chuckled quietly.

“Hey!” I shouted at his back. “Fuck you, Wentworth.”

Wentworth stopped in his tracks. He turned around slowly, like an old gun fighter at high noon. “Excuse me?”

“You heard me, Wentworth. Fuck. You.”

Wentworth blinked. “You do know who I am, don’t you, boy?”

“I do, but not because you introduced yourself like a normal person,” I growled. “You came into my house like you owned the place and you’ve been acting like an entitled dick since you got here. I don’t need to take shit from you. And I don’t need your fucking money.”

Wentworth narrowed his eyes. “Do you think a bunch of curse words and petulant puffery is going to rile me, boy? I’ve watched the likes of you come and go countless times in my life. At the rate you’re going, in twenty years, no one will remember your name. They’ll remember your father’s and your grandfather’s, but not yours. All you had to show me today was nothing but boorish scribbles. You’re not a real artist, boy. At best, you’re a copyist. Your work is lifeless. It has no art to it. Take a page from your father’s or your grandfather’s career, and maybe you’ll make something of yourself.”

“Fuck off,” I scowled. “And get the fuck out of my house.”

“Your house?” Wentworth laughed. “I imagine that your grandfather was the one who paid for this house with his own efforts. Not you. Maybe one day, you’ll amount to something. But all I saw here today was garbage. I’ll forget about you the moment I step into my car.”
 

Wentworth walked out of my house with Frederick on his heels.

I’d never met a bigger prick in the art business in my entire life. Wentworth not only took the cake, he shoveled his cake down his throat like a glutinous troll. Why had I gotten into this business again?

“What the fuck was that?” I asked Brandon, who stood on the other end of the studio.

Isabella stood between us, now in her robe. She must’ve thrown it on the second I was busy with Wentworth. I couldn’t blame her for wanting to cover up in front of his hungry lizard’s stare. She hugged the robe tightly around herself and shivered, “That man a big jerk.”

Brandon looked torn, like he wanted to rush after Wentworth and lick the man’s asshole until Wentworth scratched him behind the ears. “My apologies, Christos. I’ve never met Wentworth in person. I had no idea what to expect. I should really go talk to him.” Brandon jogged out of the room.

A minute later, I heard car doors chunking shut and an engine starting. Brandon must’ve left the front door open. I heard a car drive off. To my surprise, Brandon walked somberly back into the studio looking defeated.

“I’m going to need a ride back to La Jolla,” he said.

“Huh?” I said.

“We drove here from my gallery in Wentworth’s car.”

I considered telling Brandon he could walk back after bringing that prick into my house. Lucky for him I was in no mood to paint after today’s episode of The Stanford Wentworth Show. I told Isabella she could leave early and asked if she could drive Brandon to La Jolla before she went back to L.A.
 

She said yes.

When they were gone, I stomped into the living room and grabbed a bottle of bourbon from the bar. It was a forty dollar bottle of Basil Hayden’s. It had a smooth caramel flavor I enjoyed. I wasn’t in the mood for anything too fancy. I’d gotten more than enough high end bullshit from Wentworth already.