The Pink Portrait, Ch. Four

Four

Kieran, ti prego rilassarvi?” pleads Ales.

“Relax?” I repeat. “Relax! I agree to attend this stupid party and I can’t even figure out what to wear!” She let me take a nap for three hours before she started calling me. I helped her set up for this party at her massive house on the other side of the lake and everything went quite smoothly; we laughed, we joked, got into a little fight with Party String and now guests are so supposed to start showing up in an hour and I am at a loss.

“Abbastanza per favore?” she tries, clasping her hands to together. When I don’t say anything, she rolls her eyes. “Miele, it’s not like you’re dressing for a dance or a gala. I mean look at what I am wearing.” She’s wearing a short-sleeve red top with lace shoulders and blue skinny jeans with her black Prada pumps with the ankle straps. I fight back a smile; I made her that top amongst other pieces of clothing.

“I’m not wearing pumps,” I say and smile broadly when she cocks her head.

“Se non venite unirsi a me in macchina in cinque minuti sarò farvi indossare tacchi a spillo,” she warns and walks out my sliding door.

I know not to test her. She made me wear stilettos once on a dare and that was two painful hours at the mall that I would never get back. I don’t want to go through that again. I look through my closet. I look down. My jeans are all rumpled from taking a nap in them, plus they have cat hair on them. I choose a clean pair of blue jeans and a black V-neck T-shirt. I scan through my vast array of shoes and I land on a pair of black buckled boots. At least they will add an inch to my height.

For the sake of it, I decide to wear jewelry and I pick out a silver chain necklace with a wicked-looking scythe charm. I don’t wear a Reapers jersey, but I do love accepting gifts from my best friends—even if it does commemorate the team that they cheers for to a certain extent. I grab my Alexander McQueen leather jacket with the light tan shearling collar from a hook and my Louis Vuitton satchel from another next to the front door of my room and I am out the sliding glass door. I look back and I see Beatrice sitting pitifully on the other side of the glass. I smile.

“Bye, Bea,” I say waving my fingers. She turns away and trots off with her tail arched.

I try to mimic her grace as I walk down the stairs of my deck. I walk around the house and I see Ales sitting on the hood of Carlyle in a somewhat too sexy form. I place my hands on my hips.

“Alessandra Neri, Carlyle is not a Ferrari.” I gesture toward her red Ferrari 458 Berlinetta.

“I know, but I still love him,” she says as she holds out her hand. I smile as I grab it and help her off of Carlyle.

“I just don’t know why you went for the Berlinetta instead of the Spider.”

“Avete già avuto un convertibile.”

“And you didn’t want to have a convertible also.”

“Coretto.”

“Plus you find Lamborghinis and to be overrated, even though they are well within your budget.”

“Due per due,” we get into her Ferrari and we are off. “Hai intenzione di ballare?” asks Ales.

“Depends,” I answer, staring off into the increasingly dark hills. “The music plays a major role in whether I dance or not, as well as how women plan on dancing with me.”

“You’d think that women would understand that you do not like to dance dirty by now.”

“You would think,” I agree. Before long, Ales’ house comes into view and it is not hard to miss. My best friend’s residence sits on ten acres of land and, while the house itself may not suggest that it is in fact owned by a sixteen-point-something-billion-euro family, it is still quite a spectacle. While my house was no inexpensive work of architectural art itself, this house made mine look like a poor man’s shack.

The six-bedroom, ten-bath house can almost be viewed as four rectangular prisms of varying size slammed together with the one on the inside left being where the front door is located with its double floating granite staircase leading up to it, giving the entire house an asymmetrical look. To add to the unevenness of the building, each rectangular prism has its own arched roof at varying heights with the one over the entrance being the highest. I would never say this to Ales, but if it weren’t for the black shudders and very dark green door, I would have found the overall whiteness of the exterior to be awfully unbearable.

We park in the four-car garage and if I am at all paranoid about Carlyle getting maimed or stolen, Ales and her parents are even more so. The whole garage is laced with pressure beams that they always activated whenever they left the place. I can’t say I blame them. Their family car is a black Mercedes-Benz SUV, a 1930 Rolls Royce Phantom II that their chauffeur drives them in, and her father owned the Lambo Huracán which is currently missing due to her parents being at a gala. And these cars were not even the only vehicles that they owned. I’ve been to their house near Venice and they had several cars there as well.

We walk into her house and even I must admire our combined effort into make the place ready for a party. Fearing for what might happen, the first thing we did was hide everything of value so that they wouldn’t be broken or stolen. I remember a time back during sophomore year, Ales threw a party and some expensive chinaware was destroyed along with a second story window, resulting in her being grounded for three weeks. After that, she made it a goal to put everything that would be at potential risk of destruction that she could “keep out of parental persecution” as she liked to say, or at least out of reach from the hormonally active.

When that was taken care of, I helped her set up an area for a local disk jockey that she knew in the ballroom. What we ended up with was a table with an elaborate set of turntables and other musical media that I knew nothing about, minus the Apple laptop. Surrounding the table was a half-circle of stacks that I worried might make the whole house vibrate right off its foundation with the musical choices that would come down tonight. Just about the only thing that wasn’t present was alcohol. I never attended one of my best friend’s parties until now, but I knew for a fact that she always made it explicitly clear that if there was going to be booze, she was not providing it. If how she always described her parties were at all true, there are going to be plenty of inebriated teens here this evening.

Right now, as I stand in the entrance hall of my best friend’s house, I wonder whether someone was going to come with pot brownies. All I can do is refuse the punch and whatever “snacks” people try to shove into my hands.

“You know, I think I’ll just hang out in your bedroom until guests start arriving,” I say staring up at the glassy chandelier that was probably the most baroque object in the room—except maybe the skeletal curved floating staircase that, instead of sitting in the middle of the room, was a little more off to the left, adding to the overall asymmetry of the house.

Ales sighs. “Bene, ma non appena vedo la gente arriva, è meglio avere il culo qui.”

“Grazie, Ales,” I breathe. “Just give me a holler when they do.”

“Farà, amico. And don’t you dare get any Prismacolor stains on my bed!” she adds almost with a touch of ultimatum as I head up the stairs.

“As you wish.” I know that I can almost always get a smile out of her when I make impressions, especially when it is from a movie that we have a mutual love for. The Princess Bride is in that area of movies that could put a smile on our faces no matter how many times we watch it.

As I head to Ales’ room, I find myself staring at the walls. The only color amongst the creamy white walls is in the form of paint and photography. With the photography, it is easy for me to tell which ones are the work of professionals and of Ales and her parents. I never understood how, but there is always a way—at least for me—of telling the amount of effort that is taken in creating a photograph. The photography of professionals always seemed to be more meticulous, plus I know which ones were taken by Ales and her parents because I was present when some of them were taken.

As for the paintings, the Neris are my most reliable customers whenever I put up a painting in a gallery. The paintings that they bought were usually the ones that nobody wanted. I always forget to be proud of my paintings, even when nobody wanted them.

I reach Ales’ room and I take in a breath as I step into it. Next to my room or my studio, my best friend’s bedroom is where I feel safest from the world.

So as not to get any Prismacolor on Ales’ bed—not that I would, I just don’t want to go against my word—I sit at her desk. Her desk is a massive monstrosity of mahogany that is complete with a gaming laptop hooked up to an Asus twenty-four inch HD monitor as well as two powerful bass speakers with a subwoofer and still enough room to do homework on paper. She’s always trying to get me to play videogames with her, but I am barely half the gamer she is. I’ll be researching new techniques of painting and she will be playing one of the Assassin’s Creed games or continuing to build her reputation as a sniper on Battlefield. In my room, I’m always using a lap desk if I am not using my computer which I do have a decent-sized L-shaped desk for.

I take my sketchbook and my box of Prismacolor markers out of my satchel. I open my sketchbook to an empty page and I begin drawing. While I sketch, I think of what this party is going to be like. People chugging down alcohol? Abrasive music making the entire house shake? Perhaps I’ll find an insecure girl doing a striptease on top of the coffee table in Ales’ living room? I imagine if I leave this room and come back a half hour later, I’ll find a couple in the middle of having sex.

I never pay too much attention to what I draw—at least while I am drawing. On the contrary I choose to focus on the idea that I am trying to visualize. I’m always thinking about a particular idea, or mood I am trying to set. Choosing the colors was the easy part; manipulating them to set an atmosphere was the trickier part. One color could represent numerous things.

Black could represent everything from death, to illness, to darkness, and finally to simply being used as a void. The primary colors, besides being just that, are also like the basis of human emotion. Blue equals sky, water, sadness, beauty; red equals blood, desire, evilness; yellow equals excitement, giddiness, happiness…I could go on forever as colors mean different things for different people.

“KIERAN, GET YOUR CULO DOWN HERE NOW!” shouts Ales, almost making me jump even though from up here in her bedroom her voice isn’t as unbearably loud as it could be. Before I comply with her request, I inspect my drawing.

The picture shows Ales’ living room in shambles. The furniture that composes of leather couches, a glass coffee table, and a massive HD television set hooked up to a powerful speaker system is in utter ruin. Surrounding the ruined living room are broken beer bottles and teenagers in varying amounts of clothing passed out from drunkenness. Half the drunkards are wearing blue and white cheer skirts and varsity jackets. Most of them resemble members from the actually football and cheerleading teams to a certain extent, but I’m not certain that they would recognize themselves if they saw this Prismacolor drawing.

The dominating figure in this piece is a dark angel-winged figure in a hooded cloak with a massive scythe—my personification of death. This particular grim reaper has a necklace against its skeletal chest that closely resembles a jeweled palette charm that I own. This is not the first piece of artwork where I have used the reaper as my persona. I guess I always felt that the reaper was a misunderstood character and I am not so understood myself.

I close my sketchbook and I safely store it and my satchel in Ales’ dressing room. Not wanting to make my best friend wait any longer than she has to, I hurry downstairs, almost resisting the temptation to slide down the guardrail, and meet her by the door.

Not too long later, the doorbell rings and Ales opens the door. Almost instantly, teens come pouring in. Some of them come with beer kegs and soon there is a whole circle of beer in the ballroom. Over the course of a half hour, the whole house fills with the sound of music, laughter, and shouting.

Ales easily makes herself noticeable amongst the guests. She doesn’t make a whore of herself dancing on top of a table, or purposely making guys trail after her in the hopes that she will drag one or more of them up to her bedroom—she made it very clear that she was not that kind of girl a long time ago. On the contrary, she drifts from one huddle to the other, somehow managing to include herself in whatever conversation might be taking place.

I roam back and forth throughout the house. Here and there I pass by a cheerleader or some other person whose name I know not and they either avoid me, or say “hi”. In those scenarios, I never know if I should say “hi” back. I never know if they are sincere and I end up appearing awkward—and that can result from doing just that. I simply smile politely and continue my way. I end up regretting that as well as that in and of itself can sometimes result in them giggling about my suggested awkwardness. Sometimes my awkwardness has resulted in me receiving “retard” as an insult.

I pass by the living room and I see a few people playing Rock Band 3 on the PlayStation 3. The keyboardist is terrible; the bassist is decent; the drummer is exceptional; the guitarist…the guitarist is Pauline Marek and she is playing Pro Guitar. I listen in on what song they were playing and I am impressed as the song is “Free Bird” by Lynyrd Skynyrd. I look at the runway that I assume represents her instrument considering the numbers above the color-coded notes and I see that each note is being hit. I then look at Pauline’s hands and almost make myself dizzy watching her fingers speed across the fretboard. I wonder if she plays a real guitar.

I stay there, watching until the song ends in a crazy flourish that includes Pauline performing an impressive headbang that sends her somewhat curly brown hair flying in all directions. I feel a smile building up in my cheeks and I quickly run off. I find myself having to swerve a few times to bumping into people. I accidentally bump into a girl as I turn a corner and cause her to spill her drink.

Oh, great, I say to myself. Looking like something straight out of the cover of an issue of Sports Illustrated and as supercilious as can be, black-haired Lisa Layton is standing in front of me with venom in her black eyes.

“Paintbrush, you idiot!” she squeals. “This top is designer!” she dramatically gestures to the now beer-soaked black surplice top. It wasn’t even a designer shirt; it was probably from Kohl’s or JCPenney.

“Which designer?” I ask shrewdly.

Lisa falters slightly. “Prada.”

“Which Prada outlet did you buy it from?” I press.

“Athens.”

I smile broadly. “Honey, there is no Prada outlet in Athens.” I say it loud enough that several people around us stop and stare. “The closest Prada outlet is in Columbus, so you can quit complaining about your Kohl’s brand top getting beer on it. If you were so concerned about it, then maybe you shouldn’t be inebriating yourself.”

I turn away from her, followed by a chorus of laughter.

I walk over to the ballroom and almost laugh at the song that is playing. Some stupid post-industrial music that I don’t know the name of is blaring over the speakers. I glance around the room and I am astonished to see that a circle of people are standing in the middle of the room. I gently push my way through the maze of people to get a better look and when I make it to the middle, there are indeed a few people doing a dance-off.

Out of nowhere, I feel a tap on my shoulder and yelp as I turn and see Ales. I see her face and she slightly gestures her head towards the dance-off.

“Nei,” I say firmly.

“Spiacente, non parlo norvegese,” she says, smiling and she shoves me into the circle.

Dammit, why did I pick the Norwegian word for “no”? I ask myself angrily. It would not have made a difference if I spoke Klingon, which thank God I do not speak. Okay, what to do? I always had trouble getting right into it whenever I did a solo dance. Ales got a few people cheering for me, which isn’t really helping all too well.

I take a deep breath. I take off my glasses and my jacket. I hand them to Ales and, before I know it, my body is moving. As the rhythm of the music flows, so does my body and all I hear is the sound of the somewhat obnoxious song that everybody loved to hate, but was much more tolerable than Justin Beiber’s “Baby”. The song ends and my dance finalizes in a backflip that ends in me performing a perfect split. Initially, a few people groan, probably assuming that I just hurt myself, but participating in yoga and helping my best friend rehearse her cheerleading routines paid off. I raise my fists to the air and the groans turn into boisterous cheering.

As I get up, a few people clap me on the back and others comment on my “perfect windmill”. Ales hands me my glasses and my jacket with a look of pride in her crooked smile.

“Non è stato così difficile ora era?” she asks rhetorically.

I sigh heavily. “Not so hard at all. Now, if you don’t mind, I am going to go someplace quiet for a while.” Ales nods, letting the silent message pass. When possible, I retire to someplace quiet when I am in a rowdy environment for a long period of time. It always helps so that my stress can stay at a maintainable level.

I trudge back up to Ales’ room, which is thankfully vacant, and I barricade myself in her closet. I think that dance put me in a good mood as I pull my sketchbook out of my satchel and start drawing again. I draw an elaborate depiction of Ales’ ballroom. I use a color scheme of red, black, blue, and green.

In the background, I make a beautiful, but inexact representation of the tall windows that just barely reach the ceiling. Through them, I draw a very subtle depiction of the night sky that shows sign of another rainstorm brewing. In the center of the background, visibly raised above the heads of many partygoers, is the DJ’s workstation, surrounded by a colorful array of beams of light.

In the foreground, I take special care as I depict the faces of the partygoers. In contrast to the half-drunk teenagers downstairs, I fill these faces with joy and laughter, etched with sobriety. I include myself in the drawing, frozen in a windmill dance move.

As I complete the Prismacolor marker drawing, I feel the drawing come alive. I listen to the muffled music from downstairs and I look deeply into my drawing and I almost feel myself become a part of the fantasy.

I slowly close my sketchbook and feel the lingering effects of that fantasy dissolve from my skin. I get up and pause. I assume someone might be in the room, so I slowly open the door a creak as silently as I can.

I quickly close it again just as quietly as my eyes briefly land on a couple in Ales’ bed.

Oh, she is not going to appreciate that, I say to myself. Looks like I am going to have to wait it out. Minutes pass by as I sit against the door, staring up at the ceiling and twiddling one of my thinner paintbrushes in my fingers.

I gaze at Ales’ wardrobe thoughtfully. For a girl who was as rich as she was, there were only a few designer items amongst her clothes. Given the time, I could easily name off the designer of each piece of clothing she owned, but unlike me, she does not alphabetize her designers. Between the two of us, I am the one who is more likely to be seen wearing a designer item. My eyes land on one little area of her wardrobe and I smile. I never stop finding it special that she always had a space in her closet dedicated exclusively to clothes that I’ve made for her.

Amongst the things that I’ve made for her are two dresses—one vintage, the other a silk gown that won her a teenage pageant in Rome. I have also made several hand-stitched tops for her that she continues to wear with pride. Making clothes for her, as well as me, eventually led to people coming to me hoping I make clothes for them as well.

That, along with painting, has led to my source of income.

The sounds being made from the couple in bed are starting to get annoying. The girl is moaning with uncomfortable audibility. I don’t even have my stupid iPod. I’m about to sit on the opposite side to drown out the sound, when I hear a rather disturbing word.

“Stop.”

Curious, I press my ear to the door.

“Stop,” there’s that word again. It sounds urgent.

I hear it one more time. This one is different; it’s muffled. I assume the worst. I reach into my satchel and grab my collapsible baton. I stand up and open the door as quietly as I can.

I take a peek and I inhale as I realize that it is exactly what I thought it was. In a moment of effrontery, I pull out my phone and turn on the video camera. I close the door behind me just as quietly and walk towards the bed, camera directed at the scene. When the girl cries out, I make my presence noticed.

“Ahem,” the guy gets off the girl so quickly that I might as well have woken him up from a nightmare. I try to ignore the fact that he is shirtless and that his pants are halfway down his legs.

“Let’s see, restraints,” I point the camera at the girl’s wrists which are duct-taped to the bedframe. “Obvious signs of distress both visual and audible…I think we all know what this is.” I stop the video.

The guy, who to my disgust is Nigel Payson, starts to advance on me. I’m prepared.

“Not so fast, Ted Bundy,” I say as I flick my baton, letting it pop out at a menacing speed to its full twenty-one-inch-long length. “I click this button and this video goes to Instagram.”

Nigel backs down a little, probably startled by my baton, but still looks ready to pounce.

“The way I see it is this encounter can end in two ways: either you free her and walk out of here quietly in the exact state you are in now…or I upload this video and condemn you with the label of ‘rapist’. Your choice.”

Nigel’s answer surprises me. “Fuck it, give me the phone, and I will not tell people that you were in on it.”

I smirk. “Who will believe you? I already sent this video to my email address; I can just upload this on Facebook. So why don’t you go humiliate yourself as a drunk asshole and not be labeled as a rapist as you so rightfully deserve? So much for being an upstanding football star on the path to becoming an NFL reject, don’t you think?” That hit a soft spot.

Nigel advances on me again. He may be bigger, but I had more experience in martial arts. He throws a punch at me, which I easy avoid. I whack his thigh, causing him to clutch his leg in pain. I then whack him in the back, which sends him onto his stomach. He curls up in pain. I stand over him, regarding him with contempt. I lift him by his ear and ignore his howls of pain as I drag him towards the door.

When we are outside the door quite a few people gasp at the awkward scene. I turn his face towards me. “Now, Payson, you are going to get your frolicking, rapist ass out of this house no questions asked, understand?” He doesn’t respond. I jab the bottom side of my baton under his testicles, causing him to let out a very unmanly squeal. “UNDERSTAND!”

“Yes, yes, for God’s fucking sake, yes!” he sobs.

I release him and, after grabbing a cup from someone’s hand to shield his manhood, he hobbles his way out of the house. Everyone just stares in silence from him to me. I walk back into Ales’ bedroom. All that drama and this the first time that I actually look at the victim; it’s Pauline. My eyes unconsciously roam over her body for a minute before I regain control of myself.

I sit on the bed and tentatively reach over to her wrists. “This’ll hurt,” could I have picked a more doleful thing to say? She bites her lip as I tear the duct-tape from her wrists. As soon as her wrists are free, she throws herself onto me, sobbing into my chest.

Not knowing what else to do, I put my arms around her comfortingly. I shush her. Her grasp upon my jacket turns into a fistful of my clothes as she buries her face in my chest. Oh my God! I scream to myself. This girl is naked and I am touching her! I place my hands on her shoulders and gently push her away.

“I-I-I’m so sorry,” I stammer. “I shouldn’t be touching you.” I grab my satchel and leave the room as quickly as I can. I narrowly avoid running into Ales, who tries to call after me. I keep running.

I am out of the house. I am running. I might as well be trying to run from an approaching aircraft. If that were the case, I would be running perpendicular to its path. No, I am running from…from…I don’t know what I am running from. All I do know is that, whatever it is, I want to get as far away from it as I possibly could.

I think five minutes pass before I stop to catch my breath. It’s not until I’m heaving for breath that I realize how much my feet hurt. Boots are not the shoes to be running in. I take them off and continue walking.

Thunder rumbles overhead. “Oh, Ohio,” I lament. Every season. You want sunshine? Rain. You want snow? Freezing rain. You want hot and humid days full of scorching sun? Rain!

I hear a car approach. I continue walking as I feel the first few drops of the coming storm. I don’t have to look to know that it is Ales’ Ferrari that pulls up next to me. I hear her window roll down.

“Ora, che cosa pensi di fare?”

“What does it look like I am doing?”

“Ah, rispondendo a una domanda con un’altra domanda,” she sneers. “Get in the car, per favore.”

“Go home, Ales.”

“Bene.” She speeds up and turns around in a very drift-like manner. Oh, boy she’s coming towards me. I can’t decide whether to stand my ground or cower. Then, seemingly at the last possible second, she turns and stops.

“Really, Ales?” I cry. I try to go around her. She blocks me. I try the other side. She blocks me again.

“Get…in the car…now,” her green eyes are on fire.

“Ales, are you trying to get yourself killed?” I squeal. “You’re blocking half the street.”

“Which can easily be fixed,” her tone is way too reasonable and that only adds to my disquiet. “All you have to do is get in the car.”

My hands begin to shake. “All you have to do is get out of the street, you cagna suicida!”

Now I think she is ready breathe fire. “Fine, you want to be a lamentoso, be my guest.” Her window rolls back up and she speeds down the road. I start walking the other direction respectively. I stop again.

I sigh, tears welling up in my eyes. I pull out my phone and select Ales’ name. About ten seconds later, I see her car again. She pulls up beside me and rolls down her window.

“Will you give me a ride home, please?” I’m pathetic.

“Entra, migliore amico,” the fire that was in her eyes is replaced by a calming glitter.

I quietly comply and we are on the road again just as the rain starts to pick up.

“You know I didn’t care if you got caught in the rain, right?” well that’s one way to commence a conversation.

“No?” I raise an eyebrow.

“I was just concerned about your jacket getting ruined,” Ales cackles heartily.

I scoff. “You’re such a twerp!”

“Only the best.”

I smile. That smile quickly melts though. “I’m sorry I called you a ‘bitch’.”

“Va bene,” she reassures. “So what happened at my house?”

Oh, crap; there is no way out of this. “I detained a rapist.”

“Way to go, Capitano Obvious, I meant after practically you ruined Nigel Payson’s life.”

“I touched Pauline,” I say hopelessly.

“Che, hai molestarla?”

“No, I didn’t molest her; I...hugged her,” when Ales doesn’t say anything, I continue. “After I forced Payson out of the house, I went back into the room to take off the restrains on Pauline’s wrists and she just threw herself into my arms.”

“So what’s the issue; you just painted yourself as a hero.”

“That’s not what bothers me,” I make explicitly clear.

“Allora cosa?”

“I DON’T KNOW!”

“I think you and I both know the answer.”

“Does a vow of silence mean nothing to you?”

“I haven’t said anything.”

“No, but your implications did more than just graze the surface.”

We don’t say anything the rest of the trip to my house. When we arrive, Ales stops me before I leave the car.

“Don’t be afraid to unlock at least one of those chains around your heart.”

I blink, speechless.

“Buonanotte, mio amico.” She ushers me out of the car. I hurry into my house. I assume that my mother is in bed, so I am as quiet as possible. Beatrice approaches me halfway up the stairs.

“Not now, Bea.” She, of course doesn’t listen as she rubs against my legs as I head to my bedroom. I give up and scoop her off the ground. She goes with a squeaky reow, but is soon purring loudly. I set her down again as I ready myself for bed.

As soon as I have brushed my teeth and put in my retainers, I lay in my queen-sized bed. I watch the storm over the lake. The view, as well as the pitter-pattering of the rain against the glass is all I need for the sweetest lullaby.

My last thoughts as I drift off to sleep are of Pauline in my arms.