Paint Job Read Free Page A

I’m suddenly
ravenous. “Eat, Gabby. We’ve got a lot of work ahead of us. And a lot of sex.”
    Randall studies me. “Sex, Gabby. You, me, Leena. Fucking.
Screwing. Sex.”
    Sex. My cheeks flush. Leena is smiling at me over her
coffee.
    “Sex,” she says.
    “Uh…sex,” I say, smothering the word in a loud slurp of
coffee.
    “With condoms,” adds Randall.
    “Of course,” she agrees. “We care about safety.”

Chapter Two
     
    After our snack we move back into the room where they
seduced me. Me— seduced ! But now they are all business. They ask me to
disrobe. I do. They ask me to pose again on the platform. I do. This time there
is no touching, no fondling. This time I’m not self-conscious about being naked
in front of them. This time I like the way they look at me. Leena rolls a large
wheeled table next to the platform and I see it is filled with tubes of paint
and brushes and solvent and those painters’ palettes with a nifty hole for the
thumb.
    Randall has a thin gray crayon in his hand and once again
he’s marking my skin. Most of the marks he made earlier are gone.
    “This will sting some,” Leena says offhandedly as she swirls
her brush in a puddle of blue paint.
    Wait. It’s going to sting? “No one told me that,” I
protest.
    “Oh! Well, they should have. The paint—the stain—will invade
the top layers of skin. How else will it last for a whole year? But don’t
worry, it’s not too bad. The sting fades in a few minutes.”
    “I have it all over my dick, remember,” says Randall
helpfully. He’s putting the final touches of a line drawing onto my bare body,
a nicely shaped bikini. “Trust us.”
    “Well, okay. I guess.”
    “I’m going to do a base coat. None of this will show in the
final work.” Leena nears me with the brush. I shrink away. “Hold still!”
    She puts her hand on my arm to steady me. The brush tickles
me where she starts painting on my left hip. The sting hits all at once and I
gasp. “Gabby. You have to stand still. This stuff is permanent, remember? You
don’t want stray marks, do you?”
    “I don’t know about this!” I bend over, feeling faint. “I
didn’t know it was going to hurt.” They both regard me, looking disappointed.
They don’t understand. I really don’t like pain. I faint when I get
shots. I don’t leave my bed when I have cramps. I once puked when I cut my
thumb with a paring knife and all that blood went everywhere. I want a Paintini
but I didn’t know it was going to sting! Maybe I have to rethink this. “Why
can’t we just do the other thing—have sex, you know, have some fun—and forget
about the Paintini?” I say, desperate.
    “No,” says Randall.
    “Absolutely not,” says Leena.
    “We won’t do one without the other.”
    I stare at them. I look at the blue splotch on my hip, at
the grey outlines running all over my body. “You won’t?” I ask. “Why?”
    “We’re artists! We want to paint you,” says Randall.
    “We’re not prostitutes , Gabby,” sighs Leena. “This is
a package deal. It’s all or nothing. We’re proud of our work.”
    The sting is almost gone now. It burned for a while, but it
wasn’t that bad. Not as bad as a shot. Suddenly, I decide a little burn
will be worth it for…for a paint job. And for the other. For the promise of sex
with them. I feel a rush in my loins just thinking of it. “Sorry. Of course
you’re artists. I love your work. That’s why Claire told me about you, even
though she screwed it up. I’m sorry. I want to continue. I’ll hold still.”
    Leena brushes me again, and again, and again, and it hurts .
I hold still, but tears are forming in the corners of my eyes. Then Randall
starts in on my other hip. They have a rhythm, these two. She paints a stroke,
then he does, then she does. Back and forth they go, hurting me over and over,
on one side then the other. I gasp. “Please! Can we take a break?”
    “Poor thing,” says Randall. “You’ve been so good.