Martin

"Blessed are the hearts that bend; they can never be broken." Albert Camus

Maria came in the waiting room of the 3rd floor of the South Building (as it was written in the indication she got from the yellow pages) as if she were an astronaut going for her first encounter of an odd species from another planet. She found her self in a plain white room, with a nice lady at a desk, a coffee table at the center of the room and some 10 red fabric chairs around the coffee table. She was told to sit and wait because she was ahead of her consult and there were more people to see the doctor.

“It’s all right. I will wait.”

Maria sat at the chair that was farthest from the coffee table and closest to the corner of the big white walls, hoping to be far from everyone else. Besides the nice lady behind the desk, Maria could see, sitting there as she was two more people: a middle aged lady, with an incredibly excessive amount of make-up on her face and cleavage; and a young boy that must have been around Maria’s own age. The first thing Maria noticed about the boy was the fact that he was oddly pale. Maria didn’t have much time to notice with more detail how amazingly white the boy’s skin was because from across the coffee table, the boy simply smiled at her. With such genuine nicety that Maria couldn’t resist smiling back, shyly and then diverting her eyes to look at the wall on her left.

You could say Maria had some sort of shortened attention span because as soon as she looked at the wall, she gorgot all about the oddly white boy as her eye was immediately caught by the colors of the framed painting on the wall, not exactly because it was a good painting but because it looked like the artist was trying to use all the colors he had to put together something that lacked the harmony of a proper painting. Bewildered as she was at the bad quality of the painting, Maria did not notice that the boy was now sitting right next to her.

“Awful, isn’t it?”

Maria woke up with a tremor from the almost psychedelic trance induced by the terrible colorful painting and looked to her right to find the boy’s pale face only inches away from hers.

“It’s like he bought all the cans of paint in the store, right?”

Maria couldn’t help but laugh at this boy’s commentary. And as the boy smiled back at her, as if appreciating the honesty of her laughter, Maria decided that no harm could come of talking to this nice boy.

“Well, he is definitely no Rembrandt…”
“Oh no, he’s not. And no Picasso either!
I am Martin, by the way”
“Hello, Martin! I’m Maria. Nice to meet you”
“Nice meeting you too, Maria. I’m afraid I have to go now.”

Maria was slightly puzzled at the calm and mysterious tone the boy printed to his last words as Martin got up from his chair and started walking back to his seat. Then Maria noticed there was someone else in the room now. A blonde 30-something year old doctor was talking to the nice lady at the front desk and the door to her office was now wide open. Maria had never been to this office before so she tried to look into the office trying to get a glimpse of what was to happen when she went in. Suddenly the red shirt of the oddly pale boy Martin got between her eyes and the door. Maria noticed the doctor was calling him for his consult.

“Martin, you can come in now.”

They stayed at the door for a few seconds as the doctor asked Martin how he was doing.

“And how is your father, Martin? Getting better?”
“Yes, Dr. Monroe, thank you for asking. He’s keeping himself busy.”
“Yes, I see. You must thank him again for the lovely painting he did for us. It stands really nice on that wall, doesn’t it?”

Martin looked at Maria who quickly looked down at the her tennis shoes, blushing and ashamed as she found out that it was Martin’s father who had painted that psychedelic scenery. Then she looked up at Martin who was trying to hold his laughter and just smiled at her, again with the sincerest nicety, as he said to the doctor going into the office:

“Yes it does. If I didn’t know it was my father’s I would say it belonged to a great master!"

May be continued.