by Lucas, Helen
“Oh? Is he?” I asked, trying to seem as uninterested as possible in whatever Joel might have to say.
“He is. He doesn’t act like it and frankly, he doesn’t want anyone to know. But he is.”
“I find that hard to believe…” I murmured, closing my eyes and trying to forget the pain, trying to forget the needle digging into my tender, broken flesh.
“Sure, he just seems like an asshole. But really, hun. Heart of gold, that one. Tutors at schools.”
“Really?” I asked, my eyes shooting open.
A grin spread over Joel’s focused face.
“Yeah… That’s right. He would kill me if I ever told anyone. But he loves kids. Loves reading to them.”
So, that explained all the children’s books at his apartment.
“He goes down to St. Rosa’s a couple afternoons a week to work with the kids there. Sweet guy, you know. Doesn’t let the Damned know about it. He tells them that he’s out, I don’t know, dealing meth or cracking Puerto Rican kids over the head with a hammer and stealing their lunch money. It’s not really part of the biker lifestyle, reading to kids.”
“I had no idea.”
“That’s the point. You’re not supposed to know. No one is. He’d get his face smashed in if he showed any sort of weakness to the Damned.”
Here was more potential motivation for Fang to want to leave the club. He couldn’t do what he wanted, live the life he wanted, while he was in the club. He would be ostracized, even killed, if they knew about this tiny, tiny thing—this little bit of humanity that he was showing, that he was trying to improve the world in some small way.
Not only was it a matter of just trying to get out of the club… It was a matter of trying to live the life he wanted to live, trying to be the person he wanted to be.
I felt tears coming to my eyes. Joel glanced up, and saw my eyes turning glassy and dewy.
“Don’t go fainting on me now, kiddo,” he said, dabbing at the tattoo. He sprayed it down with soap, wiped away the blood and excess ink and jabbed a finger towards a can of Coca Cola he had set out for me. My throat hurt from the tears I was just barely holding in, so I grabbed the Coke, cracked it open, and began to slurp it down.
Fang found me like that, sipping at Coke while Joel worked. He peered at the unfinished tattoo, nodding seriously.
“That’s looking badass. You’re gonna’ have a badass tat when all is said and done!” he announced. I rolled my eyes.
“Yeah, that’s really my main concern here—how badass my arm is at the end of the night.”
“That’s what a biker gang’s old lady would be thinking about,” Joel cut in. “And you’d better get used to thinking about things like that.”
Damn. He was right. I had to get used to it, had to get ready to think about things in those terms—telling people about the wicked tats I had gotten on my arm, did all in one session.
Fang watched TV in the lobby of the studio while Joel worked. I zoned out, listening to music, eating my candy bar, drinking my soda, watching Fang watching TV—watching his face bear no reaction to the baseball game on ESPN.
Who the hell was this guy? Something… Something was strange about him. There was more to him than met the eye and I wanted to find out what it might be. I wanted to learn about him, to learn about his heart and his experiences.
That could be part of work, after all. That could be part of the operation.
But there was no room to fall in love with him.
“All right,” Joel announced after another few hours. “Let’s turn you over and hit that tramp stamp.”
He rolled me over on the table, my already tattooed spots aching something awful, practically throbbing. I felt like I was dripping sweat and blood. In fact, I probably was, but I was just too far gone to think about it.
Fang watched as Joel pulled down the back of my shorts, revealing the top of my ass.
“Don’t look,” I called back to him, shooting a death glare over my shoulder.
“You’re my old lady now. I get to look if I want to,” Fang said, teasing. I scowled, rolling my eyes.
Joel adapted a few sketches he already had into a full lower back piece for me, featuring roses and thorny vines. It was the kind of trashy thing that I had always looked down on but it was the biker gang look after all.
I whimpered as the needle dug into my flesh again. I was definitely getting tired of this whole tattooing thing. I didn’t know how much more I would be able to take today, but I knew I had no choice—I needed a full body’s worth of tattoos, and I needed them today.
“God, I feel like my skin’s on fire,” I said, shaking my head.
“Yeah, it’ll feel like a bad sunburn,” Joel offered. “But you won’t feel them after a week or two. Everyone heals differently. And this guy is going to have to pamper you and rub you down with ointment once I’m done. Three times a day, every day. You hear that, Fang?”
“I’ll see if I can find it in me,” he said gruffly.
“I bet I won’t even have to ask him,” I said, from over my shoulder. “He’ll do anything to get a look at my tits or ass.”
“Oh really? I feel like there’s a story here,” Joel said, laughing.
“Sure is. The first morning I was staying with him, he came in my room—“
“Which is my room, I should note,” tossed in Fang, rolling his eyes.
“—and tore off the covers so he could see my tits.”
“So you could make breakfast. So my woman could make breakfast for me.”
“I’m not your woman…” I said, feeling whoozy all of a sudden. I felt like I was sweating even more now, but instead of feeling warm, I felt cold—uncomfortably so. “I’m… I’m Fred’s woman…”
“Who’s Fred?” Joel asked.
“My husband…” I murmured, trying to turn over to face the men.
“Hey, hey, hey, stop moving! You’re gonna’ fuck me up!”
“No, I need to talk to Fred…” I muttered. The room was spinning and my vision was narrowing.
“Shit, Joel, she’s passing out.”
“Fuck, fuck, fuck—grab her before she rolls off the table.”
And that was the last thing I remembered.
FANG
Like little pink butterflies, Claire’s clammy, sweat-laden eyelids finally fluttered open, with those bright blue orbs staring up into my own.
“What… What happened?” she asked slowly, struggling to form words.
“You passed out. Happens to everyone,” I whispered, wiping some sweat from her brow with a cold, soaked paper towel Joel had offered us. “We’re taking a little break.”
“Sorry… Sorry that I passed out,” she whispered, her voice slurred and heavy.
“Don’t worry about it. You didn’t do anything wrong.”
“It’s not something you can control,” Joel called out from across the room. “It’s hard. Even big guys pass out. I’ve had some body builders and fighters as clients—real heavy, hard guys—and they pass out after three or four hours too. That’s just how it goes if you’re getting a lot of work done in a short period of time. I challenge you to find anyone who can stand more than four or five hours of straight work.”
Her face seemed to soften a little bit at those words. Of course, knowing her, she probably felt terrible for having passed out. Silly, dumb girl.
“Don’t worry,” I said again, still stroking her forehead. “We’ll get this finished and I’ll take care of you.”
A smile crept over her face.
“Yeah? You’re gonna’ take care of me, Fang?” she asked in a little girl voice. I couldn’t decide if she was teasing me or not. I decided I didn’t care.
“That’s right,” I whispered.
Her eyes started to close again. As they did, I found myself lowering my face to hers. Joel was looking away.
I could smell Claire’s scent—the perfume, the sweat, the blood, and the strangely clean and soft smell of the soap that Joel use
d to clean her skin and her half-finished, still gnarly tattoos.
I pressed my lips to hers and she murmured softly into the kiss, pressing back into me.
Fuck. This was dumb. I should not be doing this. I should not be doing this for a million reasons.
Those thoughts all ran roughshod through my brain, crushed by the final knowledge that I was doing it anyway, and that I didn’t much care what happened in the end. I was kissing Claire, and that was that.
I broke apart from her. She was passed out again.
Part of me was relieved. But part of me was sad—part of me wanted her to be awake, to feel my kiss, to have been kissing me back and making it real.
“Did she pass out again?” Joel asked, returning to the table with fresh rubber gloves and more inks.
“Sure did. Just like a light,” I said, leaning back, as if trying to distance myself from the scene of a crime.
“Damn it all. We’re going to be here a while,” he muttered. A few moments later, Claire came back around, remembering nothing of what happened.
Joel continued to work. I stayed with Claire, holding her hand and letting her squeeze me whenever the pain was too much.
“God, how are you able to sit through so many of these…” she murmured, staring up at the ceiling as she crushed my fingers.
“Well, usually, you don’t sit for so many tattoos at once.”
“It’s still brutal.”
She turned to Joel.
“Hey, I know another one I want to have done.”
“Yeah?” he asked, clearly unsure of whether he should be exasperated or excited by her continuing requests.
“Yeah. I’m thinking an American flag with my husband’s name emblazoned beneath it. And his dates.”
“His dates?” Joel asked, furrowing his brow as he lowered his face closer to the site of Claire’s tramp stamp. For him, this was all business—there was nothing odd about having his nose pressed right up against her butt crack. This was life for him.
“That’s right. You know… Date of birth. Date of death.”
“Oh… I see…”
“He was a Marine, wasn’t he?” I put in, unable to avoid saying anything. She bit her lip and nodded, the pain passing over her face like river water over pebbles.
She wasn’t going to say anything further and I didn’t want her too. I didn’t want to be reminded of the fact that I had just kissed my dead friend’s wife, without either of them knowing it.
Well, without her knowing it. I’m sure Fred knew, from somewhere in the after life, and he was probably ready and waiting to beat the unliving shit out of me when I finally died.
The tattoos blended together, one after another. The shop closed, with the other artists and patrons going home, leaving just us. The other artists knew that this was a special case—something involving a special client, something that Joel couldn’t or wouldn’t talk about. They were fine with letting it go.
“All right. And that American flag and the dates?” Joel asked as he finished up the coloring on the koi sleeve.
Claire was pale, barely conscious.
“What? Hm?” she murmured, her grip on my hand flagging.
“Where do you want it? Claire, Claire, listen to me—do you still want it?” Joel asked, turning Claire’s face to him, looking her in the eye, trying to catch her uncomprehending eyes with his.
“Yeah. Yeah, I do. I want it on my lower leg. Wrap the flag around the leg.”
Joel sighed. It was a complicated request—having a flowing, waving flag, and then coloring it in. But he set up his colors and went to work.
Piece by piece, the flag on Claire’s lower leg back to take shape, wrapping around her shin and her calf. Joel was working faster now—practice and consistency was making up for how tired he was at this point.
With the black lines laid down, Joel left the shop to grab a coffee and a pack of cigarettes, leaving Claire and I to sit in the early morning silence while her skin calmed down enough for him to pack colors into the bloodied mass. Her other completed tattoos had already been wrapped with plastic and since she had so many at this point, she looked something like a mummy, bundled in clearly plastic.
“So, what’s the next step after this?”
“What do you mean?” I asked, turning to her. I had thought she was asleep but I found her wide awake.
“After the tattoos. What else do I need to do to become one of the Damned?”
“Well—“
“Sorry. What else do I need to do to become your old lady? I know women can’t join. I know you guys would never trust a woman with club business,” she said, a little smile on her face. I found myself returning it.
“I’m going to need to teach you some history of the club. Customs. Culture. Stuff like that. You’ll have to know how to act around us, how to be a member of the club. I mean, a member of the group—so no one thinks you’re a Fed.”
“That’s right.”
“And I’ll introduce you to the group once the tattoos heal. It’d be way too suspicious if you just showed up with half a dozen huge, freshly done tattoos still wet and bloody.”
“Yeah, nothing says FBI agent trying to blend in with bikers like six or seven brand new tattoos.”
“You should make up a back story for each of them too,” I suggested. “And for the dates under the American flag…”
Her eyes flashed.
“What about them?”
“Just tell people they’re your brother’s or something.”
“I don’t have a brother.”
“That doesn’t matter. That’s not the point. The point is, if I let you walk around with another man’s… Info… Whatever… Trace… on you, then that makes me look like a pussy.”
“How the hell does that make you look like a pussy?’ Claire demanded hotly.
“It just does, okay?!” I said, louder than I expected. “It just fucking does. Nothing in this world makes sense and you have better fucking get used to it.”
“Fine. Fine. I’ll make up a fake dead brother of mine and I won’t tell anyone about my real dead husband.”
“See that you don’t.”
“Am I going to need a whole new identity? New job, new biography, new everything?”
“That’s right. Doug’s dropping off some fake documents—driver’s license and passport. That should be enough for anything we might need to do. Enough to make it seem like you’re—“
“Not a Fed. I know. Jesus, I know I can’t just tell your buddies that I’m an FBI agent. I know Doug’s bringing us the documents. I’m not an idiot.”
She scowled. I could tell that the thing about the flag and the dates was pissing her off.
“Listen, I’m just telling you how things are,” I tried to say as gently as possible. “You and I and Joel will know what the dates mean. We’ll know who they’re for.”
Her face softened somewhat.
“That’s right,” she said, looking me, into me. “We will.”
She couldn’t know, could she? That I had known her husband in the war?
No. I hadn’t given any indication of that. I had kept that cool, kept that shit locked down.
Joel returned reeking of coffee and cigarettes, which I knew from experience was the state in which he did his best work.
“All right, boys and girls,” he sang, sliding his rubber gloves on. “I’m going to steer this ship home and call it a night.”
He went to work, laying down layer after lay of thick red and even thicker blues and whites into Claire’s leg. She gripped my hand like a vice, crushing my bones but I didn’t say anything. It was the least I could do, I supposed—allow her to grip the hell out of my hand while half her skin was carved like some sort of Renaissance sculpture.
We sat in silence for the last two hours of the coloring. Joel was in a groove. After a while, he put on headphones, blocking out all sound as he dug color into Claire’s skin, the blues turning purple and the whites turning pink with her bloo
d, while the reds just became all the deeper, all the darker, all the more profound and striking.
“Doug mentioned you had been an addict,” Claire said, suddenly, her voice clear and clean, not betraying any hint of the exhaustion she must have been feeling. She had been tattooed continuously for nearly fourteen hours now. It was past one in the morning but she must have been getting a second wind.
