“Girl, you are so stupid. Roy is gay! That guy at the art store where you used to work is gay,” she scolded me in her mother’s kitchen in the Bronx as we split a pot of macaroni and cheese one night.
“Eliot?” I exclaimed. “Eliot’s just weird, not gay.”
Jacinda dramatically dropped her fork on her plate and stared me down.
“You are kidding me, right?” she deadpanned. “Gigi, the boy wears polka dots. He’s studying musical theater. He’s as gay as it gets.”
Andy was as generous and as patient as a boss could be. More than once, his husband, Phil, an attorney at some fancy law firm, stopped by at night with a tin-foiled covered casserole or pot pie for all of us working the evening shift. As much as I was mindful of my parents’ lessons, I couldn’t help but love Andy and Phil. My parents had been flat-out wrong about a lot of things. Maybe they had just never gotten to know any gay people to inform their opinion, I decided. I felt like Andy had accepted me on his staff with no questions asked based on my artistic talent. I figured I owed him at least the same courtesy of acceptance without scrutiny.
In addition to Andy and Felix, the staff at the Blue Phoenix included Jeff, a Japanese guy with a southern accent and a full sleeve of tattoos up both arms, Aimee, who specialized in weird body piercings in anatomical parts that made me cringe, George, who had a red beard and always wore a trucker’s cap, and Jane, a skinny blond woman in her late thirties who created epic fantasy scenes in ink on her customers. Most of Jane’s work was so elaborate that her customers had to visit the store several weeks in a row to have more of the outlines she would draw filled in with solid colors. I came to suspect that most of her male customers were there because they had crushes on her, not especially because they needed to cover another square inch of their body with design.
And then there was Smokestack. Smokestack, also known as Mike, was a foul-mouthed, pierced, tattooed guy who looked like the devil. He was somewhat of a legend in the tattoo world, having had his work featured in various ink magazines. He had even been profiled on a reality television show about people who were so obsessive about tattoos that they traveled the world to get tattooed by their favorite artists. I was more than a little afraid of Smokestack. He barely addressed any of us, and took frequent cigarette breaks outside, hence his nickname. He adored Felix, though, and considered him somewhat of an apprentice.
My first day handling the front counter alone was nerve wracking. Our credit card processing service was experiencing networking problems and I couldn’t run a payment for a mother who had come in with her daughter from New Jersey for a navel piercing. The mother grew increasingly frustrated with me until I just wrote down her credit card information and ran the payment two hours after she had left.
There were long periods of time with nothing to do, when I stared outside at the snow through the storefront’s window. Everyone’s schedules varied wildly. Most artists, Felix included, set their schedules with Andy on a weekly basis and alternated afternoons and late nights. Smokestack and Jane worked exclusively at night and never showed up for work before nightfall. Sometimes during lazy afternoons when I could hear the needles buzzing in the back of the shop, I would imagine what the two of them would do during daylight hours. To me, they were like vampires, existing only at night.
During those long boring stretches, I surfed the internet on the laptop at the counter, checking in on my parents’ case. I dared not check any e-mail addresses I had opened as Grace Mathison out of a paranoid fear of somehow possibly implicating Andy in my status as a runaway. I also looked up at the licenses on the wall, taking particular interest, naturally, in the one belonging to Mr. Felix Katz. His birthday, printed on the license, was April 28. His middle name was Anatoli.
Sometimes, the front counter became really busy. One night between Christmas and New Year’s Eve, an entire bachelorette party came in and all of the girls wanted matching ladybugs on their feet. The girls had been drinking, I presumed, and spent a loud, obnoxious hour in the front with me, examining all of the artists’ portfolios on the wall and the leather books we stored beneath the counter. Felix heard the commotion and checked on me in the front to make sure everything was all right.
“A bridal party,” I assured him.
“Oh, great,” Felix muttered. Felix loved spending time with customers and putting them at ease to make sure not only that they understood the process by which he was preparing them for their tattoo, but also the care they would have to take of their new tattoo once they got home. He did not, however, enjoy ever having to deal with drunken people. I was supposed to turn away anyone who was visibly intoxicated because people bleed more when they’re drunk, but at least half of our clientele arrived buzzed. Getting a tattoo was a great thing to do after a round of cocktails, it seemed.
The maid of honor in that bridal party took an immediate liking to Felix as soon as he surfaced in the front of the store, and ran her hand over his shaved head. She was tall and busty, almost five inches taller than Felix at least, and really pretty. I bristled from behind the counter, wishing that I, too, was a wealthy girl in my twenties carrying around a Tory Burch bag with all my best girlfriends. Felix helped the women select the style of ladybug that they wanted from the sheet of our house designs, or rather, the designs that were most often requested by clients that weren’t necessarily original works by any of our artists. Those designs were basically stock art, any one of our artists could recreate them.
“I’m going to need Smokestack to take half of this group, or else we’ll be here all night and tomorrow, too,” Felix told me in a low voice as the girls decided who among them would go first. He slipped his hand gently into mine behind the counter, and then as if to squash the girls’ attempts to flirt with him further, he kissed me softly on the cheek to make it clear that we were together. And that he was off-limits.
Between Christmas and New Years, Felix and I became basically inseparable. When he made a coffee for himself in the kitchenette, he made one for me, too, and I did likewise. We went to a matinee movie and shared popcorn one afternoon before we arrived at the Blue Phoenix for our shift, giggling in the darkness of the theater in Times Square. I returned to his mother’s apartment with him twice more for dinner, and my attendance at the dinner table wasn’t questioned by anyone. It wasn’t long before everyone at the Blue Phoenix understood that we were a couple, and no one seemed to make a big deal out of it.
Jane was studying me one night after finishing an enormous eagle on the back of a big guy who looked like he was in pain as he paid and left.
“You should let me ink you,” Jane said. She pulled my pink hair away from the back of my neck and examined it. “Your skin is so pale. It would look amazing.”
“I’m scared of needles touching me,” I declined.
On Friday, the day before New Year’s Eve, Felix asked me if I had plans for the following night.
“I would like to ring in the New Year with you,” he whispered in my ear while standing close to me behind the counter at the store. “If you don’t already have plans for after work.”
“I kind of have to spend at least part of the night with my brother,” I said, really kind of wishing I could just go along with whatever romantic ideas Felix had in store for me. But I thought of my brother, stuck at home alone, and how horrible it would be at the stroke of midnight for him to hear our whole neighborhood celebrating outside of the confines of our apartment.
“He has a broken leg and it’s hard for him to move around,” I added, so that Felix would better understand that spending time with my brother meant at home, in our apartment.
Felix waited expectantly for me to continue, and blinked.
“Are you ever going to introduce me to Eric?” he asked.
Actually, I had kind of been hoping to never, ever have to introduce my brother to Felix, or even tell my brother that I had a boyfriend. The whole premise was embarrassing. I didn’t want my brother to jump to any conclusions about
what Felix and I had been up to, especially since we had been up to nothing other than hand-holding and a little kissing. I had a gross suspicion that my brother was going to attempt to have some kind of pep talk with me about the birds and the bees.
“Sure,” I said.
There was no putting it off any longer. Even though we had really only been together two weeks, Felix had already made it abundantly clear how important his family was to him. Aaron was important to me, too, so if Felix was going to continue to be a part of my daily life, I owed it to them both to make the introduction.
Felix and I worked until the store closed that night at two a.m., and we walked together to the F train at Second Avenue after Andy locked up.
“So… tomorrow night?” Felix asked as the subway approached my stop at East Broadway.
“Yes,” I told him. “Come over. We’ll celebrate at our apartment.”
I got home far too late to warn my brother about my sudden New Year’s plans, and had to spring it on him the next morning. I could hear him snoring through the wall, and my stomach filled with butterflies at the prospect of having to inform him that I had a boyfriend.
“So, I was thinking about having some people over tonight,” I said quietly in the kitchen the next morning. I wasn’t sure where the some people part came from. It sounded less suspicious than someone or the guy I’m seeing. “Would that be OK?”
Aaron was stirring a spoonful of instant coffee into a mug full of hot water.
“Sure,” Aaron said. “It would be fun. We could order pizza or something.”
I had told my brother about finding a new job, but had never confided in him the full story surrounding my dismissal from Prekin. It was time to fill him in about our potential impending eviction. I had been keeping a lot of secrets from my brother for that last three weeks, and they were starting to make my temples throb.
“Yeah, about pizza…” I began. “I’m sorry to be telling you this now, on basically the last day of December, but we’re going to be late with January rent. When I left Prekin I didn’t quit because I had a better job lined up. My boss accused me of stealing out of my register and refused to pay me for my last two weeks of work.”
My brother listened without moving, leaning against the kitchen counter.
“Why did you wait until now to tell me?” he finally said.
“I was ashamed,” I confessed, remembering my rage and embarrassment the day I trudged out of Prekin with my head hung low. “I’m sorry. I should have told you. But with everything going on, with Quian, I just didn’t. So, we’ve only got about nine hundred and fifty dollars for rent, with all we’ve spent on food, especially with Feng around lately. I’ll get paid on the 15 and it should be enough for us to catch up, but… we are going to be late. And we’ll probably also be late for February, too.”
My brother’s mouth twisted into an uncomfortable frown. He picked up his set of apartment keys on the kitchen counter, clutched them in the palm of his hand, and then set them down again.
“So, did you do it?” he asked.
“What?”
“Steal from your register,” Aaron asked.
My eyes shot open. “No!” I exclaimed. “I would never steal! It was my manager. I caught him stealing paint and he took money out of my drawer the day I had to pick Feng up from school. He blamed it all on me, and it was my word against his.”
Aaron looked like he was about to say more, a lot more, but then swallowed hard and shook his head. “I’m sorry. You could have told me. I feel really badly that you’re having to work so hard. I would think that this thing can probably come off soon…”
He banged the cast on his leg against the kitchen cabinet.
“Eventually you’re going to have to go to a doctor to deal with that,” I stated firmly. My own amateur internet research suggested that a broken tibia, cast properly, would heal in about six weeks. It had been five weeks since Aaron’s break. We could only hope that the break had been set well and that in all of this time Aaron had spent lying around on the couch, everything had healed the way the doctor who had put the cast on his leg had intended.
My brother waved away my concern.
“Really, Aaron,” I insisted. “Tony Michaels said he’d be willing to take you to a doctor in New Jersey to have the cast removed. We can’t let it go much longer.”
My brother began hobbling back toward the couch with his coffee, and turned on the television. On both of our stations, typical New Year’s Eve countdown shows were on, even at the early hour. One was counting down the top ten celebrity couples of the year, the other was counting down the top ten sports plays of the year.
“I really don’t want you talking to that guy,” my brother informed me. “He’s a journalist. It’s his job to get people to talk about stuff. He’s going to get you to say something he can use against Mama and Daddy, and then you’re going to feel awful.”
I was pretty sure that Tony Michaels wasn’t going to play any kind of trick on me. He had texted me a handful of times since our meeting, and had asked more than once if we needed help. I had promised to meet up again with him after New Years, but still hadn’t decided whether or not I would tell him where I thought Mama might be staying in Argentina.
I knew that Jacinda and Orlando had big, romantic plans to go to a fancy nightclub in midtown, but I let her know that we were having a little party at our place, anyway. Orlando had bought tickets for their night out weeks in advance, and I had gone with Jacinda on a shopping adventure to Lower Broadway to try to find the perfect slinky, sparkly dress. Somehow, every time Jacinda and Orlando planned on having a special event together, it ended in a heated argument. So it wasn’t so unrealistic of me to think that Jacinda might join us at some point later that night. Having Jacinda around when I introduced Felix to Aaron would be the ultimate diffuser.
The Blue Phoenix was quiet all evening until nightfall. We were closing at ten, early for us, but primarily for the staff to have time to get home before midnight in case subway service was altered. I was getting restless by five o’clock, just knowing how strange it was going to be to have Felix accompany me home and see how Aaron and I lived, with so little furniture and in such a tiny apartment. Just when I was convinced that the night was going to be uneventful, a black SUV pulled up outside.
In through the door of the Blue Phoenix stumbled Tawny, followed by two of her girlfriends, a male stylist and an enormous driver who doubled as a security guard. The entire entourage, with the exception of the driver, appeared to have been drinking. Tawny looked stunning with her hair naturally curly, wearing a tight ice blue dress, faux fur coat and gobsmacking diamond earrings. I could smell alcohol on the rowdy group and was grateful that Andy was around to make the judgment call on whether or not to let Tawny proceed with whatever work she wanted to have done. I thought of Juliette and wished we were in contact; Juliette loved Tawny.
“Hi,” I said timidly. “Welcome to the Blue Phoenix.”
“Ooh, I love this hair!” Tawny said, leaning over the counter of body piercing jewelry and fingering my pink hair. She was insanely beautiful up close, so beautiful that I felt in awe of her despite all of my father’s rants about worshiping celebrities as false idols. “Shanika, look at this hair.”
Shanika, one of Tawny’s friends, also dressed to the nines presumably to attend a hot New Year’s party, nodded in approval. Shanika had stationed herself in front of our big wall of custom art, curiously right in front of the small selection of my designs that Felix had sent to Andy.
Andy joined us in the front after hearing the loud voices and commotion.
“Hi, ladies, welcome to the Blue Phoenix,” he said. I could tell from the caution in his voice that he was trying to gauge the level of intoxication.
“My girl here wants to get a tattoo tonight,” Tawny’s other friend announced. “Tonight’s a special occasion.”
“It’s Tawny,” I whispered to Andy so that Tawny and her entourage couldn’t hear as t
hey picked out a design. I could tell he didn’t recognize her. “She won three Grammys last year.”
Andy seemed to acknowledge the significance of having a bona fide celebrity in the shop on a major holiday. We had a few celebrity headshots with autographs hanging over the counter. Most were character actors, known for playing mob bosses in movies and television shows set in New York. Tawny was a whole new category for the Phoenix. Tawny was regularly on the cover of magazines like Expose.
“What about a Scandinavian navigation symbol?” Shanika suggested to Tawny, pointing at a sheet of runes.
“That’s way too Bjork,” the male stylist, who was also wearing a fake fur jacket like Tawny’s, commented. “She’s already made the Vegvísir famous. No one else can pull that off.”
“I like this,” Tawny announced loudly and abruptly, resting one impossibly long silver fingernail on my line drawing of True Heart.
“That’s very forward,” Shanika approved.
“It’s one long line, and it never stops,” Tawny observed. “I like that. It’s like me. Just going on and on.”
Andy winked at me before crossing the front of the store to prep Tawny for the tattoo. Everyone who was tattooed in our shop had to pay in advance, sign a release and show ID to confirm they were over the age of eighteen. It slowly dawned on me as Tawny was signing her paperwork with her real name, Tarine McDonald, that a celebrity had chosen my design. It was a pretty exciting prospect to think that all future magazine pictures of Tawny were going to show my art on her upper arm.
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