Skin Paper Stone

by Máire T. Robinson

  ‘Look, the reason I’m ringing, well … I didn’t really get a chance to talk to you the other night. I just wanted to make sure we were okay. I mean, everything was okay between us.’

  ‘Oh right …’. So this was why he was calling. ‘Yeah, everything’s fine.’

  ‘Are you still around Dublin? Would you be free to meet up for a coffee or something?’

  ‘I’m actually just about to head back to Galway.’

  ‘Okay. Well, look. I’m gonna be in Galway as it happens in the new year for George’s stag party, so can I call you when I’m there?’

  ‘Yeah, okay,’ said Stevie.

  ‘I have some stuff belonging to you. Some books and stuff.’

  ‘Really? I thought I took everything.’

  ‘There’s a few novels and some gloves …’.

  ‘Oh, okay.’

  ‘So I’ll call you?’

  ‘Yeah, that’s grand. Talk to you then.’

  She headed towards the station, past a playground where children bundled up in warm coats played on the swings. A giant brown dog bounded past followed by its panting owner. The winter sun hung low in the sky, a piercing white orb. Its light beamed through the gaps in the tall thin trees as she walked along the path, the bright stuttering beam of a projector seeking her out in the shade.

  Chapter 22

  Alex peeked at Kavanagh, his hands covering his face to shield him from the horror of what he was hearing as Kavanagh recounted the story of Simon and the restaurant.

  ‘Oh man, oh no, oh man …’ Alex repeated as Kavanagh revealed more and more details about the knife and his misguided attempts to foil a burglary that wasn’t taking place.

  ‘Oh man, we should have gone back there the day after and tidied up. Shit.’

  ‘Yeah, I know,’ said Kavanagh, ‘but he wasn’t supposed to be back ‘till the thirtieth. I thought I’d loads of time and I was all caught up in this new painting.’

  ‘Okay. There must be something …’ Alex made a steeple of his fingers and rested them on his chin. ‘How about this? I could talk to him, say it was me.’

  ‘What, you mean take the rap for me?’

  ‘Yeah, I mean if it would help. You might get your job back. I could say it was all my idea, that you were staying with me and I found the keys.’

  ‘If it was just you, that’d be breaking and entering. He’d definitely call the Guards then.’

  ‘Well, I could say you were, like, there with me, but I talked you into it and you felt sorry for me because I’ve no family to spend Christmas with and you were only doing a good deed kind of thing.’

  ‘I was only doing a good deed: feeding the stoned and the hungry on Christmas day.’ Kavanagh mulled the idea over for a moment. ‘Nah, man, thanks,’ he said finally. ‘I appreciate it, but that bridge is burnt. No use going back to it now with a tiny cup of water.’

  ‘Shit. I feel really bad, Kav. This is partly my fault. I drank a shitload of that guy’s booze.’

  Kavanagh shrugged. ‘Look, the guy didn’t even throw us a staff Christmas party. He’s a fucking scabby prick. I was just taking what I was owed really when you look at it.’

  ‘Yeah, at least you were employed by the guy though. I didn’t even work there, Kav.’

  ‘You were my plus-one.’

  A reluctant grin spread across Alex’s face. ‘Shit. It was a good night though, wasn’t it?’

  ‘Yeah. Best Christmas I ever had by a long shot.’

  ‘Well, I guess we won’t be going back there next year. That’s a pity. We said we’d make it an annual thing.’

  ‘We’ll have to break into some other shitty Irish restaurant and make Evil Dead Twos. Actually, no. This time next year I’ll be living it up in Thailand, tattooing the great and the good on the beach. You should come out. We could open our own Irish restaurant.’

  ‘Cabbage and sunshine. Living the dream,’ Alex laughed. ‘What are you gonna do now though? Will you sign on?’

  ‘Yeah, I called into them today. It’s gonna take a while though. There’s a massive backlog of people whose claims haven’t been processed yet. But it’s grand. I’ll get it eventually and at least now I’ll have more free time for my apprenticeship in Dúch.’

  ‘Hang on there a sec.’ Alex left the room and came back with a wad of twenty Euro notes. ‘Here.’ He pushed the bundle into Kavanagh’s hand.

  ‘Jesus, Alex. I can’t take this.’

  ‘You can and will. I’m partly responsible for you losing your job.’

  ‘It was a shit job.’

  ‘Still …’ said Alex. Just take it.’

  ‘Jesus.’ Kavanagh looked at the money. ‘You keep this kind of cash in the house? What, do you have it stashed under the mattress?’

  ‘It’s for emergencies. Sure you can’t trust the banks these days.’

  ‘I’ll pay you back.’

  Alex batted the idea away with a wave of his hand. ‘Actually, I’ve been thinking you might be right about selling some more weed.’

  ‘Seriously?’

  ‘Yeah. I’m growing way more than I actually need, you know? May as well spread the love a bit. You said you knew some people who were interested?’

  ‘Yeah, there’ll be no shortage of people, seriously. There’s fuck all around at the moment.’

  ‘Not like last time though,’ said Alex.

  ‘No. I won’t try to sell drugs to Pajo’s friend.’

  ‘I think that would be wise.’

  Kavanagh laughed. ‘It’s kind of funny now, looking back on it.’

  He could see himself, his drunken swagger at the party in Shantalla. Thinking he was the shit and playing at being the dealer. Too drunk and stupid to realise he was right in the middle of someone else’s territory. Pajo and his two goons had followed him out to the back garden. He was flat on his back with blood pumping from his lip before he even had time to know which end was up. Then the massive one, the one they called Hulk, was rifling through his pockets, taking his money and the rest of the weed.

  ‘What the fuck, man?’ he tried to say, but the blood filling up his nasal passage made it come out as wann nhh nhh nnn. He turned on his side and spat blood onto the ground before trying to stand up. Then he saw a boot coming for his face and he was flat on his back again.

  ‘Where did you get this?’ Pajo’s ice-blue eyes pierced through him. How was he supposed to reply with Hulk’s boot on his throat?

  ‘Did you get it here?’ Pajo gestured for Hulk to move back. ‘Who grew this?’

  ‘I don’t know, man,’ Kavanagh coughed and clambered up on his side.

  Then the little weasel-faced guy snuck in a kick to his ribs and he fell back down again.

  ‘Back off, Walshy,’ said Pajo. Walshy ran back behind Hulk, squealing with shrill laughter. Pajo focused his attention on Kavanagh again. ‘I asked you, who grew it?’

  ‘I haven’t a clue, man. I got it off some guy in Dublin.’

  Satisfied, Pajo signalled for his goons to follow him back into the party. Kavanagh shuffled to his feet. The ground was wet and his jeans were covered in mucky rainwater. He shivered in his T-shirt in the cold night air as adrenaline drained from him.

  ‘You better watch yourself,’ said Hulk. He shoved Kavanagh’s shoulders with his two giant hands. ‘Consider this a warning.’

  Talk about stating the obvious. Where had this moron got that line? Oh, that was a warning? I thought you were just pleased to see me was what Kavanagh bit back on his tongue. If he were less terrified, the whole situation would have been hilarious. If only it had happened to someone else, he would have laughed and laughed. As Pajo and his heavies disappeared back into the welcoming noise and bustle of the party, there was nothing Kavanagh could do but slink off into the night. A
lready shock was making way for intense pain. Everywhere hurt. His eye was closing over. He could still taste blood in his mouth, a sickening metallic tang. All he could do was try to get home without bumping into anyone he knew, wait for the bruises to go down and hope that not too many people had witnessed his public humiliation.

  ‘No, Kav, that really wasn’t funny at all,’ said Alex. ‘That guy could have killed you. He’s a fucking degenerate.’

  ‘I know, I know. I’ll stay out of his way.’

  ‘Be careful who you sell to, that’s all.’

  ‘Yeah, no worries,’ smiled Kavanagh. ‘Just close friends and total strangers.’

  *

  Kavanagh was walking home when his phone rang and he saw ‘Colum’ flash up on his screen. It was such a rare occurrence for his brother to ring him that he did a double-take before pressing the receiver button. ‘Hello? Colum?’

  ‘Joe?’ said his brother.

  ‘Colum. Hey, how are ya?’

  ‘I’ve been better, Joe. I’ve been better.’

  ‘What’s wrong?’ said Kavanagh, an icy feeling spreading over his flesh.

  ‘Mam asked me to ring you,’ said Colum. ‘She’s having the operation tomorrow.’

  ‘What operation?’

  ‘She’s having a …’ his voice dipped lower into a hushed tone, an almost whisper, ‘a hysterectomy.’

  ‘What? Jesus, is that serious? Will she be okay?’

  ‘Yeah,’ said Colum, ‘I know it sounds bad, but it’s not cancer or anything.’

  ‘Oh,’ said Kavanagh. That hadn’t even occurred to him.

  ‘She has fibroids so she’s having elective surgery. The doctor thought it would be best, and I happen to agree with him.’ The words from his mouth were not his, but his wife Anne’s, the medical expert. They even had that same clipped, slightly put-upon delivery. ‘She should make a complete recovery but she needs to take it easy for at least four weeks. Keep her feet up, no heavy lifting, that kind of thing.’

  ‘Right,’ said Kavanagh. ‘But when … this is the first I’ve heard of it.’

  He heard Colum sigh loudly but couldn’t tell if it was from tiredness or disdain. ‘Well, it’s been on the cards for a while. She was going to tell you over Christmas, but you didn’t bother your hole coming down here, so what could she do?’

  Kavanagh smarted at the comment, mostly because he knew it was true. ‘I couldn’t come down. The snow …’.

  ‘Sure, that only lasted a few days.’

  There was a testy silence on both ends of the phone, both men waiting for the other to speak.

  ‘I really wanted to come down, but work was manic.’

  ‘Work?’ said Colum. ‘Is that what you’re calling your PlayStation these days?’

  ‘No. I got a job in a restaurant here in town. I’m the assistant manager actually.’

  ‘Right. Anyway, I’m here. I’m only up the road and so is Anne, so we can look after Mam. There’s no panic or anything. But she’d like to see you so I’m just letting you know.’

  ‘I’ll come first thing tomorrow,’ said Kavanagh.

  ‘Leave it until the weekend,’ said Colum. ‘She’ll be out of hospital and settled back in at home by then.’

  ‘Okay, I’ll see you at the weekend then.’

  Chapter 23

  ‘You look really familiar. Have we met?’ asked Finn as he prepared the ink.

  ‘I don’t think so,’ said the woman sitting in the chair. ‘I’m Jacqui.’

  ‘Finn.’

  She looked small sitting there with her legs stretched out in front of her and the leg of her jeans rolled up.

  ‘Probably just seen you around.’

  ‘Yeah, I’m around all right.’

  Galway was that kind of place. Strangers started to look familiar after a while. Passing the same faces on Shop Street, or at the market on Sunday, or in the smoking area of the Róisín Dubh week in, week out, made them start to feel like friends after a while, or if not friends then at the very least accomplices.

  ‘Okay. So you’re happy to go ahead?’

  ‘Yeah, definitely.’

  She had chosen a sunflower for her right ankle.

  ‘As I was telling you, this can be a painful spot, just to warn you so you’re prepared. Not much fat there, close to the bone.’

  She didn’t look in any way nervous. ‘I can handle a bit of pain.’

  ‘Good woman. It’ll be worth it, definitely. I think it’s a really nice design. I love sunflowers.’

  ‘Me too.’ A smile flitted over her face. She looked pretty when she smiled but it was gone all too soon.

  ‘You know it’s one I don’t get asked to do too often. Lotus flowers have become popular recently, and of course roses would be the most common.’

  ‘It’s good to go for something a bit different.’

  ‘Yeah, definitely. Okay, I’m all set here. Just try to relax. I’ll start with the outline. Now, feel free not to watch if you like.’ He sterilised the skin on her leg. ‘Sometimes it can look a lot worse than it is.’

  He had got her to sign the agreement form even though it was just a straightforward design. It was the policy of the shop. He had learned to play it safe in San Francisco. Eight Ball had told him horror stories of names being spelt incorrectly, shops being slammed with lawsuits. He’d seen a tattoo of ‘Stregnth’ and even one of ‘Angle’ underneath a halo and a pair of wings, not to mention the countless mistakes with translations into foreign languages. It was mind-boggling how little thought went into the preparation of tattoos for some people. They were left with warnings against impulsiveness inked on their flesh as a permanent reminder.

  Jacqui didn’t flinch during the outline, just smiled as it started to take shape. Finn never asked his clients questions. If a client wanted to volunteer information about the tattoo and its significance to them he would listen and talk to them about it. If not, he didn’t bring it up. He chatted to them when they were in the chair and when he was preparing the ink to keep them relaxed. Bedside manner is what Eight Ball called it. ‘Dude, you should have been a fucking surgeon,’ he used to say. Finn’s approach was in sharp contrast to Eight Ball’s, whose motto was, ‘I’m not here to hold anyone’s fucking hand.’ He was not for the uninitiated.

  When Finn had moved back to Galway, there was only one tattoo shop in the city at the time and he worked there for a bit. It was mostly teenage girls coming in to get their belly buttons or eyebrows pierced. The designs were the usual predictable ones: roses, broken hearts, Celtic bands, kanji symbols with their English translation underneath that said Love or Friendship or Honour, but for all they knew they could easily have meant something else. The place lacked the panache of Eight Ball’s shop. It all seemed so arbitrary. Looking at a menu and picking out something on a whim. The place lacked the panache of Eight Ball’s shop. He had been into the history of the art of tattooing and he often spoke about the Japanese masters, the hori.

  ‘If they didn’t like you, man, they wouldn’t tattoo you. They had to get to know you first, suss out your personality. If you weren’t the right kinda person who deserved their artwork on you, they’d tell you to take a god-damn hike.’

  Finn started to think the hori might have had the right idea.

  He stuck it out for as long as he could, saved his money and then opened his own place, right on the docks, which he felt was the rightful location for a tattoo shop. He liked looking around Dúch at the designs. All of human experience was there: love, death, joy, sadness, family, patriotism, humour, travel and adventure. Finn’s hero was Sailor Jerry. He had taken classical American designs and used Japanese techniques to take them to another level with his use of colour and shading. He had pioneered new methods, discovered new colours. Before him, there was no purple. Finn
applied the same aesthetic to designs of an Irish origin. Japanese style, bold Sailor Jerry-colours and shading applied to Celtic bands and ornate Book of Kells lettering. This was something new, and as a result his reputation spread. Now people travelled from across the country and beyond to get their tattoos done at his shop.

  The sunflower was coming along nicely. He was enjoying the shading, giving the flower a three-dimensional effect. Jacqui seemed delighted with it. It wasn’t one he got asked to do a lot, but he could vaguely remember reading about its meaning in one of his books on symbolisim, something about unrequited love and a Greek god. Hel something….

  He said goodbye to Jacqui and she headed out the door. Then it came to him: Helios. A young woman fell in love with him and she stood staring at him day after day, but he didn’t notice her. Eventually, she turned into a sunflower and stayed stuck there forever, worshipping him from afar as he shone down indifferently.

  Chapter 24

  On the bus home, Kavanagh looked out the window at the passing scenery and found his mind drifting as he thought about old friends he had grown up with, but grown apart from over the years. It was hard to stay in touch with people when you only saw them maybe once a year. He found himself thinking of Lizzie. Back then, she was his sort-of girlfriend. She was small and pale, with eyes so dark that the colour of her irises blended with her pupils, giving her a wide-eyed, amiable expression, like a Japanese cartoon. She would cast glances at him from behind her long eyelashes, and when he looked back at her she would look away. Up close you could see that her eyes weren’t black after all. They were dark, dark brown. He didn’t remember talking to her alone. They were always part of a group. They drank cider down by the river and smoked rollies or hash the odd time if one of them could get their hands on some. Sometimes they drove to Ennis and tried to get into the nightclub where they weren’t known and their fake IDs wouldn’t draw as much attention. If they didn’t have enough money to go to the nightclub, they got buzzed down by the river and went to the under-18s’ disco in the town, sneaking in naggins of vodka and adding it to the cokes they bought inside. Sometimes someone’s parents would be away and they’d have the luxury of a free house, a tantalising glimpse of drinking indoors, blessed freedom from midge bites and grass stains. The sound of ice clinking in their glasses of vodka was a beautiful music to them. They danced in the sitting room to CDs. If not, it was the river and the bench and the tinny sound of the music from the speakers of the portable stereo.