by Rob Rufus
“Forget it.”
The room got quiet.
“So, how are you really feeling?” he asked.
“Horrible. I mean, I’m better than I was—but I’m in constant fucking pain, and getting so out of breath. That surgery, it messed me up bad, man.”
Nat nodded. He asked to see my chest. I unbuttoned my shirt and labored at the soggy bandages. I clenched my jaw as I peeled them back.
“Shit,” Nat said. “Brutal.”
“You have no idea.”
I tried to stick the bandages back on. Nat watched, unblinking.
“Thanks for going to Teddy’s,” I said, changing the subject.
Nat laughed. “Fuck that guy. Next time I see him, I’m gonna smash his face.”
“Mom and Dad still pissed?”
“Nah, not really. You better call Paul, though—his mom lost her shit last night. The cops called their apartment, dude. She’s threatening to send him to military school.”
“You’re kidding.”
“Ah—don’t worry about it. You know they don’t have enough money to pay for some snooty-ass military academy.”
“True,” I said, “but still the whole thing is fucked.”
“The whole summer was fucked, dude. We just gotta roll with it, same as we always do.”
I nodded. I stood to go back up the stairs—and then, hopefully, up to my bedroom. I needed a shower. I needed to change my bandages.
I made it up three stairs, but then had to stop and catch my breath. My body just couldn’t get used to working this way.
I leaned against the wall, panting.
“Whoa, whoa, shit, relax,” Nat said. “Just chill a second, man. Don’t rush it.”
He leaned over and pressed play on the stereo. An old Rancid cassette was in the tape player. He cranked it up, shaking his head to the music.
“Man!” he yelled above the speakers. “Do you remember how long ago we got this?”
I remembered the exact moment—seeing the album cover, sitting on the rack of that faraway record store. Putting it on for the first time, back when we had no idea where it would take us . . .
. . . He moved so slow, like a dying dream . . .
* * *
I rested once more on the stairs, and then again at the kitchen sink. I was halfway to my room. I walked into our small foyer. I looked up at the stairs—twelve, steeper than the others. They might as well have been Mount Everest.
I sucked air and started climbing.
* * *
Dad showed up with an old TV from the pawnshop. He and Nat carried it up to my room. They hooked it up at the foot of my bed. I hoped that the mixture of pills and daytime TV could numb my brain enough for me to forget the pain—to forget about it all—if only for a little while.
I was watching a sitcom when Ali showed up.
I was lying there, on a stack of pillows. She stood at my door until I waved her inside. She moved toward me and held out her arms, but then paused. I told her it was fine, as long as she was gentle.
She gave me an awkward hug, kissed me on the cheek, and kneeled beside the bed. She smiled—the sad one—and rubbed her hand across my head.
“Holy shit, baby,” she said, “your hair is growing back!”
“I know.” I smiled. “I just hope it isn’t curly.”
“Can I see?”
“Sure,” I said. I started to unbutton my shirt.
She gasped when she saw all the bandages. I asked her to help me unwrap the wounds. She peeled a bandage back. Her arm shook.
Even in the low light, the cuts looked vicious. The staples bit into the raw skin like razor fangs.
“Ohmygod,” Ali mumbled.
She reached for the biggest cut but stopped. She closed her eyes, squeezing a few tears out, and took ahold of my hand. She lowered her head.
She just kneeled there silently, shaking her head with her eyes closed.
“Holy fucking shit,” I said. “Seriously—you couldn’t look more Catholic right now if you tried. Come on, Weeping Mary, get up. Get up, really, it’s okay.”
“Shut up, asshole.” She laughed. She wiped her eyes.
She moved to the other side of the bed, and sat straight-backed beside me. We held hands and watched idiots laugh on TV.
Every few minutes, she asked me a question. Was I okay? When would I go back to Columbus? How was my breathing? Did I get to keep the lung? Was this almost over?
Vague answers were the best that I could do.
“Did you see Nat when you got here?” I asked her.
“No,” she said quickly, her eyes fixed on the TV.
“Oh, well, he’s down in the basement. You should have him tell you about—”
“About what? About Teddy? I already know aaaaaalllllll about it, Rob. Let’s just drop it.”
“What the hell is your problem?”
“After that shit your brother pulled the other night, my friends won’t even talk to me! Everyone is pissed. And they’re taking it out on me.”
“So?” I said, after a moment. “So what if they don’t talk to you? They suck. You know that they suck. Why would you want to talk to them? They shouldn’t be mad at you, or my brother—or anyone but Teddy.”
I couldn’t believe I was hearing this shit. Her friends—all of whom knew I was in the hospital—weren’t upset with Teddy. They were upset with me. They were upset that the events of their party didn’t just fade away.
“But they’re my friends, Rob,” Ali said, softer now. “I mean, don’t you get that? What do you want me to do? Hang out alone when you’re gone? With only your brother, or Paul? I have to have friends. I have to have a life. You know? Don’t look at me that way, Rob. Damn.”
TWENTY-ONE
Skin-Deep
1
I had to get out of the fucking house.
For almost two weeks I stayed locked inside, barely moving, struggling and bitching to get from one room to another, but even I knew I needed to get out of bed. I needed to see if I could function in the outside world.
So Ali and I went to the movies. I took pain meds, and she offered to drive. She parked at the empty bank, a few blocks from the theater.
“Holy Christ,” I said, as soon as I set foot on the blacktop.
“Yeah, it’s been really hot this week. . . .”
Hot was an understatement. The dog-day weather turned our town into a fucking pressure cooker—the air was so thick I had trouble swallowing it. I labored through the parking lot, limping pathetically slow, posting on cars and brick walls for support.
“Should I take you home? This movie looks pretty stupid, anyway.”
“I know it . . . does,” I panted, “but we . . . are . . . fucking going . . . okay? Just . . . let me . . . catch my breath. . . .”
I strained to open the doors of the Keith-Albee Theater. I felt a rush of calm as the cold air engulfed me. The lobby was empty, apart from the pimply kid at the box office. He said we were thirty-five minutes late for the movie.
“Give me . . . two tickets, anyway . . . man,” I said. I handed him a twenty.
I bought popcorn for Ali and some Junior Mints for myself. With hope in my heart, I ordered a large Coke—if my hair was coming back, maybe my taste buds were too.
As I waited on my change, I heard someone say, “Ali?”
I turned toward the voice. There was a group of five frat guys at the ticket counter. One of them, the biggest, was waving.
She smiled and waved back. “Hey, James.”
James walked over to her and gave her a hug. James wore a pastel-pink polo shirt and khaki shorts. James didn’t acknowledge me, or even notice I was there. James made small talk, while Ali shuffled awkwardly.
Finally, his friends called for him. James walked the fuck away.
Ali helped me into the main theater.
“Who’s James?” I whispered, as we walked past dark rows of seats.
“Just a guy I met at a party,” she whispered back.
“I don’t remember him from school. . . .”
“No, he’s a junior at Marshall University.”
“Awesome.”
We sat in the front row.
I leaned back in my chair. I was still a little out of breath. I looked at the screen but couldn’t pick up the story line. Dual thoughts raced down separate tracks in my mind—part of me kept saying, Oh no, it took you half an hour to walk three blocks—but the other part said, Hell yes, you made it THREE BLOCKS!
* * *
My wounds were looking better. They were turning lighter shades of red.
Our family doctor was back from his sabbatical and offered to remove the staples himself so that I wouldn’t need to leave town. It didn’t hurt as bad as I thought it would—he said it was because the nerves in my chest were probably all scrambled up.
But that wasn’t important—the important thing was that the staples were out. The important thing was that slowly—painfully slowly—I was starting to work my way out of the trauma. The important thing was that, maybe, life could actually get back on track.
* * *
Nat was writing new songs. He’d written six brand-new ones while on the road, but he wouldn’t let me hear them.
“Not yet,” he kept saying. “Not until they are ready.”
He wanted to have twelve new jams written and arranged by Christmas.
By Christmas, I’d be done with treatments, and my breathing would have hopefully improved enough for me to play drums again. By Christmas, everything would be cool. So we planned to arrange the new songs over winter break. By next spring, we would be ready to record a new demo, or maybe even a full-length.
“I’d really like to go ahead and do the band photo for the new press kit,” I told him one day, “before I go in for those last chemo treatments. I don’t really wanna be bald in the pictures.”
Nat nodded. “I’ll talk to Paul about taking some for us next week.”
“Thanks. Hey, also, how long do you think I need to call in advance to make a tattoo appointment?”
“Shit, man, not long at all. You could probably call down there right now if you wanted. For you, the guys at the shop said anytime.”
I called J-Sin’s House of Ink later that afternoon. The counter girl put me on hold—when she came back, she told me that they were booked up for the entire month . . . but that Jason, the shop owner, would stay after they closed so he could squeeze me in.
“When?” I asked her.
“Tonight,” she said. “Why dick around?”
* * *
Nat and I left the house around ten. We drove down darkened streets, toward the tattoo shop. It was the only place on the block with the lights still burning.
A hand-painted sign hung over the door—J-SIN’S HOUSE OF INK in melting black print. It swayed and creaked above me as I walked inside.
The door opened into a long hallway. The walls were painted with sugar skulls—a hundred black-and-white faces with folksy, thick-toothed grins. I followed the skulls down the hallway, past the waiting room, and into the first booth. Jason (J-Sin) sat on a rolling stool, waiting for me.
He was in a metal band that we played with sometimes. He was about my height, but twice as wide. His cheeks were covered in surprisingly gray stubble. Faded tattoos curled around his arms and neck.
He told me to chill while he finished setting up.
He adjusted the gurney that spread across the length of the booth. He set an armrest to the left of it. He dropped colorful tears of ink into little plastic cups.
A stencil of Nat’s tattoo sat on the counter beside him.
By the time he was ready, Paul, Ali, Doyle, Jamie, and Tyson were all there, showing support for my childhood dream of getting needles jammed into my skin. They cheered as I left the waiting room.
I lay on the gurney. Jason straightened my left arm onto the armrest. He shaved the arm with a safety razor. Not much hair had grown back yet, but he ran the blade down the skin just the same.
He called Nat back to the booth.
Jason took hold of Nat’s right arm, straightening it beside mine. He pressed his stencil on my arm and evened it out with my brother’s tattoo. He peeled off the paper, but the skeleton of the tattoo stayed.
With a red marker, Jason outlined the piece—the sky, the clouds, and the stars appeared in broad, sweeping lines. He repositioned my arm and then picked up his tattoo gun.
He tapped the pedal that controlled it—the gun went bbbzzzzzzz, bbz, bzz, bbzzzz bbbbbzzzzz. It sounded like I was in a dentist’s office, not a tattoo parlor. It sounded painful. . . .
“Ain’t scared of needles, are you?”
I shook my head. “If I was, I’d know it by now.”
He pressed his foot on the pedal, bringing the tattoo gun back to life. Dozens of tiny needles moved on the tip of this torture device. He dipped the needles into the cup of black ink.
“Well, here we go,” he said.
At first, there was only pressure—the sting of the needles was present, of course, but it wasn’t like getting a shot, or a biopsy. These needles didn’t puncture veins or bone. These needles went only skin-deep.
This is it? I wondered.
I relaxed as Jason drilled into my arm.
* * *
It wasn’t it.
After three straight hours, I was in serious pain. The sting of the needles took on a raw quality as they treaded endlessly over old wounds. When Jason finally stopped for a smoke break, I was relieved.
He sprayed my arm with water, then dabbed off the extra ink and blood. He tossed the paper towel at the trash can but missed. Then he moved toward the front door, digging in his jeans for the smokes.
I dug around in my own jeans, searching for my pills. I placed a painkiller under my tongue and held it there. I walked to the bathroom, where I could stretch out my throbbing arm to get a real glimpse.
It looked exactly like Nat’s tattoo. A matching red blood star shined farther near my elbow. I rotated my arm. I looked at it from all angles. The tattoo was almost finished. We were almost identical again.
I dipped my head beneath the bathroom faucet and swallowed the melting pill. Then I walked out to the waiting room to show everyone my progress.
“You should get tattooed while I recuperate,” I said jokingly to Paul.
“Fuck it, I totally will.”
Before I could reply, he was out the front door, standing on the stoop while Jason smoked his second smoke. I watched them talking through the window.
A few minutes later, Jason walked wordlessly past me. He went into the booth. Paul tore off his shirt and flung it at Ali.
“Hold my shirt, gorgeous,” he said, and winked.
He followed Jason back.
* * *
It was like a fever spread through the House of Ink—in less than two hours, almost every one of us got tattoos. There was no forethought; Jason didn’t even sketch them out anymore. He was working freehand, staying in the moment.
Paul got his back covered in red constellations. The stars grew darker as the blood pooled.
Tyson got a similar tattoo on his back, but without any thick outlines or shadow. It was like a watercolor—a painting of a giant storm cloud. Shots of lightning reached over the stars, curling like electric arms.
Doyle got the Black Flag logo tattooed onto his wrist.
“Me next,” Nat said.
“Mom will kill you if you get another one.”
“Eh, she won’t notice,” he said. “She doesn’t even look at me, bro.”
Jason yelled out from the booth: “Anyone else w
ant a banger before I finish up Rob’s sleeve?”
Nat walked past me, down the hall.
“Just a small one,” I heard him say.
A few minutes later, the tattoo gun was buzzing. Nat yelled for me.
“Yo,” he said, “you aren’t gonna give up on the band, right?”
“Why would you even ask me that?”
“And we are never—ever—going to get lame-ass desk jobs, right?”
I laughed. “I couldn’t even imagine.”
“Good,” he said, “me either. All right, Jason, go for it.”
Before I grasped what was happening, Jason dug the needles into my brother’s neck.
* * *
Nat and I didn’t get home until three in the morning. The lights of the house were out, except the glow of the TV from the living room.
I walked through the kitchen—a bottle of wine sat uncorked on the counter. The kitchen table was littered with papers and white envelopes. I squinted at them in the dark. Medical bills. Late notices. Insurance paperwork.
Mom was in the living room, asleep in the corner chair. A half-empty wineglass sat forgotten on the floor. The TV played an infomercial.
“Mom,” I said, shaking her gently.
Her eyes flickered open. She looked at me, confused. I couldn’t tell if she was drunk or dreaming. She rubbed her hand over her face.
“It’s late,” I said. “You should go crash out.”
She nodded and stood up. Her eyes locked onto the Saran Wrap covering my left arm.
All of a sudden, she looked very awake.
She grabbed my arm. I jerked back in pain.
“Shit!” I cried. “Chill out.”
“My God, Rob. You’re smarter than this!” she said, disgusted.
“It isn’t a big deal.”
She started to reply but stopped—she’d spotted Nat behind me.
“I hope you’re happy now,” she said to him.
Nat ignored her completely. He opened the door to the basement.
Mom’s eyes grew wider than wide.
The light above stairs centered a perfect spotlight on the three big nautical stars that now ran permanently down the side of his neck.
“WHAT DID YOU DO!” she yelled.
