Skin

by Christian Baines

  Marc swallowed. He could have fought. Could have argued some more, but what was the point? What could he hope to gain except a matching shiner to go with his aching jaw? “I can’t go back to the bar like this. After what happened, if Dan sees—”

  “Yeah, yeah. I can take care of Dan. Maybe. We need to get some ice on that. Or else your face is gonna be fucked for… Jesus!”

  He watched as Ash began to walk away up the street. “Rafael,” he called.

  “What?” Ash answered, turning and screwing his nose up.

  “His name’s Rafael. Not Jesus, asshole.”

  After a second or two, Ash finally cracked a smile. “Okay, that’s funny. That was fuckin’ funny, Marky.”

  He rubbed the spot on his jaw. Nothing broken. He’d live. “Yeah. Yeah, real fuckin’ funny.”

  KYLE

  “Yeah, I can do them. You’re not the first. On your chest, right?” She was looking at one of the pictures he’d given her, an old man kneeling with the aid of a gnarled walking stick, petting the handsome dog by his side with his free hand. The figure was naked, save for a red cloth slung over his shoulder that loosely covered him. Something about it made Kyle feel safe, like he was protected somehow.

  The tattooist turned her attention to the second picture, one that Kyle knew well from where it hung in a bunch of the bars. The grinning death’s head he’d mistook for Papa Legba. At least the jerks at Laveau’s had set him right on that. And when Kyle had found an actual picture of old Legba, with his knotty looking cane and dog, the two had just seemed to balance each other.

  “Right side? Left side?”

  “Umm, left I guess.”

  “Which one?”

  Kyle swallowed, hesitating just long enough for her to pick up on it.

  “You know who these guys are, right?”

  “Well, yeah. They’re like Voodoo gods or somethin’.”

  “Kind of,” the tattooist said slowly. “But Voodoo has the same god as Catholicism. These guys are more like spirits. Servants of God. And I get a lot of weekend warrior types in here—you know, frat guys or whatever—wanting permanent ‘souvenirs’ of the local culture. Guys who don’t take two minutes to Google that shit before I stick under their skin, you know?”

  Kyle just stared at her.

  “Hey, that’s not to say you’re… It’s your choice, guy. But this is the kind of stuff they ask for. That’s all. You don’t seem like the type.”

  “Do people like it?”

  “Some, I guess,” she shrugged. “Always somebody out there for everything, right?”

  “I mean do tourists like it?”

  She frowned at him, brushing a dreadlock off her face and crossing her arms. Her soft dark skin was covered in intricate designs. The foliage of a garden with thin purple flowers sprouting through it up one arm, and something that looked like computer circuitry up the other. “You planning on showing it off to many tourists?”

  Was he making a mistake? No, no he wasn’t. Most of the guys wouldn’t have thought twice about saying what they did for a living, and nearly all of them had some kind of ink. Did he really care what this chick thought? “I dance.”

  “Dance?” she asked. “Ooooh, right. At the Pub? Oh. You mean at the other place.”

  Kyle swallowed. ‘The other place?’ Like the Pub was so fucking classy! “More ink? Better tips.”

  “I hear that. This your first?”

  “No.”

  She winced as he showed her the Fleur de Lis on his forearm. “You know, for thirty bucks I could fix that shit right up. Make it look like that asshole knew what he was doing to you.”

  Kyle snorted indignantly.

  “I heard that. You want to look like some dime a blow-job Quarter hustler that’s fine by me. Now, let’s find you some real art.” She pulled a large binder from under her desk and started flipping through its images. “If you want the loa, just like the pictures you brought in, you’re looking at maybe one-fifty each. At least double that if you want color. I’ll probably get you back two, maybe three times, but I can get you outlined tonight.”

  “What are you looking for?”

  She flipped a few more pages and with a triumphant grin, turned the binder around and showed him the sketch. A cross, but no plain old church symbol. There were cross lines all through it with stars at the points and weird diamond shapes all around. On either side stood two small coffins, covered in crossing lines.

  “Cute,” Kyle said, tracing the pattern with his finger.

  “I’m just giving you options, guy. You want something more authentic? This here’s called a veve. Every loa’s got one, and this is Samedi’s. He’s probably the most famous one. The cross, because he’s the guardian of the graveyard, right? The loa who watches over the dead.”

  “Loa?”

  “Yeah, that’s what they’re called, the Voodoo spirits. You want to stop somebody dying, or protect the soul of somebody who just died? This is your guy. Only there’s not just him. There’s a bunch of these guys, all playing their own, slightly different part, each with their own personality, all looking out for the dead in some way or other.”

  Kyle winced before he could stop himself.

  “Somethin’ wrong?”

  “Uh, no. No, it’s…” He wasn’t about to tell her the truth. That he just wanted something to remind him of Antoine. To remind him of how happy Antoine had seemed, talking about his aunt, and all the history, like Marie Laveau. “It’s cool. I mean the picture. I like it.”

  “The veve. You like it, huh? Only it’s kind of big. If you want two on your chest…”

  “You got the other one in there?”

  “Legba? Pretty sure I do.”

  Kyle’s breathing slowly returned to normal. Even though they’d never find out, remembering Antoine with some Voodoo symbol would probably piss off his rich ass parents too. That had to be something Antoine could appreciate. Or would he? He heard the pages stop turning.

  Now, she was staring at him.

  “What?”

  “You miss ’em, huh?”

  A bitter snort escaped him before he could stop it. “You always into your client’s business?”

  “You ain’t exactly hiding it there, guy.” She quietly went back to flipping through the pages. “How long’s it been?”

  “Three weeks,” he answered, his voice barely a whisper.

  “Oh shit, man. That’s raw.”

  “They buried….” He stopped himself with another painful wince. “The funeral was yesterday.”

  The tattooist’s face was completely still. Not a trace of fake sympathy. “You weren’t there, huh?”

  He couldn’t answer.

  Instead of pressing him, she turned the book around again. “Okay, so this one here’s for Papa Legba. He’s more about life than death. Attuned to nature and all, so you got your cross-strokes there with the two leaves. It’s smaller. I think it’d look good as a stomach piece, but that’s totally your call.”

  Kyle gripped the counter with his fingers, the scrape of wood under his nails doing nothing to quell his anger or stop the tears that threatened to break down his face. He’d been at the funeral all right. He’d come ready with some bullshit story about knowing Antoine from school, but he needn’t have bothered. Not the way he’d been dressed. No member of the esteemed Lavolier family had wanted to talk to him, least of all Antoine’s mom, who’d kept eyeballing him like a piece of white trash, which was exactly the way he’d felt for the hour or so they’d stood out there. How he still felt.

  Now he was out getting a tattoo? His memorial to Antoine was a goddamn tattoo?

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “This was a bad idea.”

  “You changed your mind?”

  “No. I mean… I just need…” He swallowed, silently clenching and releasing his fists. Go, he told himself. Just walk out of there and stop wasting this chick’s time. Nobody wanted a dance from him because they could see his grief. A good dancer was a smiling, e
ager to please jock, ready to drop their shorts and party any time, any place. That was the fantasy. His job. Nobody wanted a mopey bitch in their lap.

  “Did he know how much you cared about him?”

  Kyle looked up at her, feeling the white heat of anger flash behind his eyes. “Who told you it was a him?”

  “You. Just now. But I’d figured.”

  He nodded, his mouth tightening. He was a fucking mess. Might as well tattoo ‘big fucking mess’ on his forehead and get it over with. “Sorry for wasting your time,” he said through gritted teeth before heading for the door.

  “Hey,” the woman called, flipping through the book once more. “Hold up. Let me show you something.”

  He peered at the page she turned toward him. On it was another, simpler veve, this one a crucifix with smaller crosses at each end, an intricate circle around its cross point, and two long bones crossing right above the low wall of bricks that formed its base.

  “I’ve never actually done this one,” the woman explained. “But if you want something a little different? Maybe a bit more…interesting?”

  He looked closer, tracing the delicate lines with his finger. Compared to the other veves, it seemed so modest. Yet it piqued his curiosity. “Shoot,” he murmured.

  The artist grinned.

  * * *

  Kyle watched the last group of tourists leave the museum, then checked the time on his phone. Almost six. Just enough time to get in and satisfy his curiosity. The tourists seemed satisfied enough, leaving the museum with big smiles on their faces, clutching tiny bags probably full of books and knick-knacks, waving hands and pointing fingers, teasing each other with fake curses.

  He touched the spot on his chest where the woman had inked him. Why the hell was he doing this?

  The store that fronted the museum was a little plainer than he’d expected. No explosion of colorful tourist trinkets lined the walls. No cheesy dolls stuck with pins. No ominous signs cast in skeletal font forbidding photos. Just a few African masks on the walls, a couple of grinning skulls decorated with coins, beads, and the occasional knife, aged wooden boxes stocked with tiny colored bags, candles of every shape and color, figurines of the Virgin Mary, alongside other saints he didn’t recognize, plus feathered figures of the Voodoo spirits he took to be the various loa the tattoo artist had described to him, some obviously more pitched at tourists than others.

  But more than anything else, there were books. Books on spells and rituals, famous practitioners, the spirits… Kyle pulled one from the shelf, flipping directly to the index and holding it open with his thumb. He flipped through to the first of the five or six pages that mentioned Ghede Nibo, patron spirit of those taken before their time. Those whose deaths had defied justice, or were the product of violence. Deaths like—

  “Closing in five, son. If you plan on dog-earing that volume any more, you’d best plan on buying it.”

  He peered at the old man gingerly stubbing a cigarette out in an ornate silver tray on the counter. Behind him, Kyle saw a small altar next to the doorway that led to the museum’s entrance, a dim red light just visible behind its black curtain. “Yeah, umm…maybe.”

  “’May-be,’ he says. May-be,” the old guy mused, his accent carrying the pure, faintly aristocratic lilt of an educated man who, for all his worldliness, had known no other home but New Orleans. There was no trace of the southern drawl that gave away the guys at Laveau’s as transplants, nor the faint Cajun affect that tinged Kyle’s own words. Maybe he’d lucked out. Maybe this place, and this guy, were the genuine article.

  “Hey, umm…you know anything about this Ghede Nibo?”

  The guy nodded, slowly, pushing the ash tray aside. “I know enough about a lot of things. That includes the psychopomp.”

  “The what?” The word sounded like something you’d call a rave at a mad house.

  “The psychopomp. An intermediary between the living and the dead. What’s your interest in any case?”

  Kyle shrugged, carefully putting the book back where he found it before pulling up his shirt and showing the man his still glistening tattoo.

  The guy just stared at him, keen grey eyes dull and immutable, until he finally spoke. “So, which is it? Are you desperate or just plain stupid?”

  He opened his mouth to speak but choked. What the hell was that supposed to mean? Hell, with his white hair and six chins sticking out under his ruddy pink face, the old guy looked more like he should be asking snot-nosed brats at the mall what they wanted for Christmas than cracking wise at customers in a Voodoo store.

  “A messenger from the land of the unjustly dead, most of them fair rightly pissed off, I dare say, and you get his damn post-box tattooed over your heart? Sounds like a real wise idea, son. So, which is it? You desperate or just plain stupid?”

  “I…I don’t know. It’s just ink.”

  “’Just ink,’ he says. ‘Just ink.’ Probably the most dangerous substance on this here earth. There’ve been wars started by ‘just ink.’ But don’t you worry, son. Hell, if you’re looking to get a few extra dollars stuffed down your jock, you probably couldn’t have picked a better spirit to blaspheme.”

  “Jesus, man. What the hell’s wrong with you? You think you’re scaring me with that hoodoo bullshit? Hey, you know what? Forget it. I’m good. Sorry if I wasted your precious time.”

  The man didn’t so much as flinch at his sarcasm. If he was offended or scared behind those keen eyes, Kyle wasn’t seeing it. The guy lit another cigarette, holding it in that faggy way between his index and middle fingers, letting the smoke gently swirl to the ceiling. The man took one long drag and ashed the tip. “Hoodoo,” he finally said, his tone now bone dry, “is not what we teach here, son. It’s another thing altogether. Folk magic.”

  “Okay.” He nodded, trying to cool his tone. “Okay, fine. It’s folk magic. Hoodoo is folk magic, and Voodoo is…somethin’ else. I get it. All part of the same, ain’t it?”

  “Ahah, sure!” the man drawled, smiling through a transparent mockery of Kyle’s own accent. Why don’t you stick around a half hour? We’ll be drinkin’ snake blood from a ‘gator’s head and askin’ my dear old Aunt Doris, dead fifteen years this September, how it goes. You know what? You’re right. Get lost, son. You’re starting to bother me.”

  “Hey! Will you just…?”

  The man took another long drag off his cigarette. “Just what?”

  “This Ghede Nibo guy. The psychopomp. You said he was like, an intermediary? That was your word. So if you contact him…what? You can talk to dead folk?”

  The man scoffed. “Well, Jesus, son. Any half decent séance will let you do that, if the dead want to do talking. Truth is, if they’re happy, they do not give one damn about you or me or any other soul still living, breathing, eating, or worrying on this earth. Now, if they’ve got a bone to pick, a grudge against this earth, or their time on it, or someone on it, that would be a different story.”

  “You mean if they’re like, murdered or something?”

  “Hell, son. Murdered, accidental… Lots of ways to go before your time. Or just die unhappy or in pain. But you see, that’s where there might be an anchor, to somebody left behind. And if old Ghede accepts your offering? He can make an unhappy soul feel a little less unloved.”

  The room felt hot all of a sudden. Kyle could feel the sweat forming on his brow, the clammy dampness of his palms. “What if he doesn’t accept it?”

  “The psychopomp’s not that choosy, boy. You’ll always have something he wants. Have no fear of that. Especially now you’ve seen fit to paint his veve under your tit.” The old man slowly rose from his chair with a series of discordant creaks, taking a shiny black walking stick from behind it, then staggering toward the door. “So who’d you lose, if I’m not prying?”

  “Huh? No…nobody. Just wanted to know more about my tat, is all.”

  The man turned over the sign in the storefront window, locking the door firmly beneath it before turning back
to him. “Son, I hope for your sake that you’re a better dancer than you are a liar.”

  “Hey, how’d you know I dance?”

  The man shot him a dejected look. “New Orleans born and raised, dear boy. I’m acquainted with the type.” The guy stepped closer, but he didn’t press Kyle for an answer to his earlier question. “I’m leaving here in ten minutes. You’ve got ‘til then. Second room on the left, if you don’t want to waste time.”

  Kyle swallowed, silently nodding his thanks as he turned toward the black curtain.

  “Hey!” The old guy stopped him. “Six fifty. We’ve all got a jock to stuff here, kid.”

  Kyle tried to force the image as far from mind as possible, fishing what singles he could from his shorts and dumping them on the desk.

  Satisfied, the man tilted his head at the black curtain, lifting another cigarette to his lips.

  * * *

  If the gift shop had been a neat, well-ordered array of tourist-friendly books, knick-knacks and colorful charms, the three rooms behind the curtain were the playground of a full-blown, Voodoo-fevered imagination. A half dozen skeletons wore ragged furs and garish pimp hats. Skulls, crucifixes, and charms Kyle didn’t recognize were hung up on walls, while peacock feathers added just a splash of extra color to the decor. Wooden masks on the shelf grinned at him with grim, mirthless smiles. Carved figures with melted candles and offering-filled bowls sat on tables covered with ornate red, brown, and pink cloths. Portraits of saints covered the walls, interspersed with aged papers attempting to explain hoodoo, the art of speaking to the dead and zombiism.

  Shit. Ten minutes, the man had said. Probably five by now.

  Kyle made for the room to which the old man had directed him. Second on the left, where he could hear faint music crackling on an old-style gramophone. Hard to get lost in a place this small. At least physically.

  Great, he sniffed to himself. Now the old guy almost had him taking this shit half seriously.

  A huge tapestry hung on the back wall of the room. At its center sat a woman he took to be the Virgin Mary. She looked the type anyway. Weren’t they all the same in some way? Having been raised, scolded, and rejected by Baptists, Kyle had no way to know. Catholics, Buddhists, Mooslims, Hindoos were all the disciples of Satan in the expert eye of Reverend Charles McAlistair. At least until McAlistair had been caught with his dick inside a Mexican hustler named Pablo. Saint Pablo, as a fifteen-year-old Kyle had called him to the two or three friends who would listen and laugh at his jokes. But if the Reverend McAlistair’s sins had bound him for hell, then by his own logic, he’d meet every Catholic, Buddhist, Mooslim, Hindoo, and no doubt Voodoo he’d decried in the quest to do ‘God’s holy work.’