Permanent Ink

by Avon Gale

  When he finished, Jericho led Valerie to the mirror to show her what he’d done. He explained his vision for the tattoo as she nodded along and dabbed at her cheeks with the handful of tissues Jericho had given her.

  “I love it,” she said, hushed. “Let’s do it.”

  Jericho snapped on a pair of nitrile gloves and set up his tray. He pulled the inks he needed, a small tube of petroleum jelly, paper towels, and the squirt bottle of green soap. His movements were slow and methodical, everything in its place and the order he preferred.

  He urged Valerie to lean back in the chair, and with a paper towel wrapped around his left index finger to wipe away ink and blood as he worked, Jericho picked up the machine, dipped it in black, and got started.

  Valerie kept her eyes shut for most of it. A steady stream of tears flowed from beneath her lashes, and I knew it had nothing to do with the pain of the needles piercing her skin. She refused to take a break, though Jericho offered a few times.

  Eventually, with a growing knot in my throat, I stepped forward to place a box of tissues within her reach.

  She gave me a quick nod of thanks, and I looked away, discomfited by the raw grief on her face. I only knew what it was like to lose a family member because my mom had packed her shit up and walked out when I was a kid. She hadn’t died, as far as I knew. She was somewhere out there, living a new life that didn’t include me and Landon. She’d abandoned her husband and me, her child, and I doubted she’d ever shed any tears over it. Now, here was Valerie, crying over the untimely loss of her son. I’d bet any money she never would’ve up and left him.

  Life, man. When was it ever fucking fair?

  Jericho handled her so respectfully, his voice soft, hands gentle. He checked in on her often, but otherwise stayed silent, as Valerie seemed to want it. Only the buzz of the tattoo machine, and the low music coming from the laptop that rested on top of the red Craftsman rolling cabinet Jericho used for storage, disrupted the quiet.

  It took about four hours altogether. As with the original tattoo, Jericho had stuck mostly to black and gray with white accents. The only spots of color were the sky-blue morning glories. The skin around the design was bright pink as Jericho wiped down Valerie’s chest. She was shaking now, and Jericho had to help her off the chair and support her with a hand under her elbow as he steered her to the full-length mirror on the opposite wall.

  Valerie stared at the tattoo. “It’s beautiful,” she choked, and started crying harder.

  Jericho wrapped a strong arm around her, and she turned into his sturdy chest. He held her, this woman who was a complete stranger, and let her soak the front of his dark T-shirt. I wanted to step out of the room, give her a moment to collect herself. Valerie’s agony was so palpable it made my heart ache. But I couldn’t look away. Not from her bowed head or Jericho’s patient, sympathetic expression or the way he rested a comforting hand on her pale hair.

  I didn’t think I’d ever really comprehended what tattoos could mean for people. I wasn’t sure why or how I hadn’t understood, when the art I drew was so intrinsic to me as a person.

  I got it now.

  Jericho had helped Valerie transform the tattoo she’d gotten to commemorate her son’s birth into a beautiful tribute to his memory. She would look at it for the rest of her life and remember Aidan. And she’d remember Jericho, and this moment, and maybe me too.

  It wasn’t only about adding a pretty decoration to her body, though there was no harm in that either. This tattoo, it was a physical manifestation of her grief. It was a living memorial, one she’d carry with her, in her skin, always.

  When she finally pulled away and Jericho started covering her tattoo, she looked sad but resolved. I wondered if she’d felt changing the tattoo was a necessary step in order for her to start moving on, another small act toward acceptance.

  Jericho led her from the room, and I started cleaning up.

  He returned after a few minutes and stood near his desk, one hand lifted to massage his nape. I knew he had to be sore from his shoulders to his hands and maybe even throughout his calf and thigh muscles from maintaining pressure on the pedal that kept the tattoo machine running.

  For a second, I almost gave in to the temptation to offer him a back rub. He was so goddamn sexy. I’d noticed from the very beginning, but now, after watching how respectfully he’d treated Valerie, I was more attracted to him than ever. My fingers itched to touch his broad, powerful shoulders. I’d work my way down, slowly easing his tension from the back of his neck to the swell of his nicely rounded ass. And maybe I’d stop there and play for a while, see what else I could work loose, what else I could do to get him to relax. He deserved a reward after being so considerate. Why couldn’t I be his prize?

  I licked my lower lip, half-lost in the fantasy, when Jericho suddenly turned to face me.

  His gaze shot to my hands. “Jesus Christ, kid, are you a fucking idiot?” He strode forward to grasp my wrist, abruptly ripping me out of my daydream. “Never, ever touch any of this shit without gloves on. Haven’t you ever heard about blood-borne pathogens?” He lifted my hands to inspect them. “Do you have any cuts on you?”

  I tugged out of his hold, my face flaming hot with embarrassment. “No, I’m good. Chill, man.”

  Jericho’s glare was fierce enough to strip paint off cars. “Don’t tell me to chill. This affects your health and safety. You’re not spray-painting buildings anymore. This is fucking serious. You’ll have to train and pass a test about this before you can even attempt to get your license.” Then he launched into a twenty-minute lecture on the risk of hepatitis and HIV and the importance of protecting myself and avoiding cross-contamination.

  I bristled at first—especially over his spray painting comment. My instinct was to argue, but then I forced myself to listen because, well, it had been irresponsible of me to risk exposing myself to a stranger’s bodily fluids. I could only blame my distraction on the memory of Valerie and then my brief foray into fantasyland as I’d stared at Jericho’s ass, but I wasn’t about to utter that flimsy excuse. This wasn’t a game. I couldn’t afford to be distracted in this job, no matter what the situation, not when the potential consequence could be infecting myself with a serious illness. I had to be smarter than that.

  So I took the lecture, nodded, and put gloves on before I went back to my work.

  Harriet appeared in the doorway as I finished wiping everything down. “Hey, Jericho, your five o’clock is here.”

  Jericho was sitting at his desk with his head in his hands. “Be right out.”

  I approached him, my steps hesitant. “I’m all done.”

  “Thanks,” he said, voice muffled. “Sorry about snapping at you.”

  “Um. No worries.” I shifted my weight from one foot to the other, my skin practically itching with awkwardness. In spite of his ranting and lecturing earlier, I still wanted to tell him how much I admired his treatment of Valerie. “It was great what you did for her. For Valerie, I mean. You were really nice.”

  Sighing, Jericho stood. “I just did what she paid me for.”

  That wasn’t true. There was no just about it. Not every tattoo artist would’ve comforted her while she cried or been so sensitive to her feelings. He could’ve handled the whole situation with distant, clinical precision—and he and I both knew it.

  But I didn’t say anything else as he walked from the room.

  Jericho

  I noticed a remarkable change in Poe’s behavior after Valerie’s tattoo. He showed up on time, he was respectful, and while his attention did wander, it didn’t happen nearly as often. Sometimes I caught him staring out of the window when he should be watching, but a quick clear of the throat generally brought him out of that and returned his focus to where it should be.

  Having Poe’s undivided attention was new. It was beneficial, of course, because he needed to be learning from me. But it was also unexpectedly distracting because I’d started to appreciate Poe in a way I hadn’t bef
ore. His newfound maturity and commitment to his apprenticeship effectively stripped away a lot of the sulky veneer that had so annoyed me at first, and without it, I couldn’t help but notice how attractive he was.

  It started off small, my eyes lingering a bit too long on his ass. Or on the way he sucked that lip ring into his mouth when he was concentrating, flicking his tongue in a way that shouldn’t look nearly as obscene as it did. I’d come out from my office to see him leaning over Harriet, showing her one of the few things my new front desk wizard had yet to master, and take a second too long to appreciate the curve of his spine as he pointed to the computer screen.

  He had a nice laugh too. It wasn’t a sound I’d heard much of when he’d first showed up to work for me. His polite chuckle had sounded as forced as—well, as forced as you’d expect out of someone who was doing customer service and really didn’t enjoy it all that much. But Poe’s actual laugh was warm and a little husky, and I found myself smiling slightly whenever I heard it in the shop.

  I told myself that I was pleased my apprentice was doing a good job, not that I was perving on a guy who was seventeen years younger than I was. But I couldn’t help it—the more Poe toed the line, the more I was aware of his physical attributes and how goddamn hot he was when he wasn’t running that sulky mouth of his.

  “Why’s this stuff green?” he asked as we were finishing up after a client. It was part of Poe’s job to make sure everything was put away and clean and ready to go for the next client, to adhere to the state’s strict hygiene standards.

  I looked at the bottle of green soap he was waving at me. “I don’t know, but you need to wipe the sides off because there’s some residue on there.”

  He made a face and rolled his dark eyes. “Minus five points from the state inspector score, eh?”

  “Poe, clean the bottle.” I shook my head at him. Even this interaction was ten times less fraught than the ones we’d had before, where I’d gotten the feeling he’d been listening to me and hearing the parent’s voice from the old Peanuts cartoon.

  God, did he even know what that was? This was exactly the reason why I shouldn’t be thinking of his long fingers wrapped around anything but that squirt bottle.

  I clearly needed to get laid.

  He took the paper towel and gently wiped off the bottle. “Who’s coming in next?” There was no mistaking the genuine interest in his voice.

  “Mari. She’s a return client. We’re working on the color for her clock.”

  “A clock? Is she always late?” Poe smiled slyly. “I should get one of those, huh?”

  “You’ve been perfectly on time the last few weeks.” I smiled at him. “In fact, you’ve pissed me off about sixty percent less than usual.”

  Poe put a hand over his heart and grinned a crooked smile at me. “Only sixty?”

  “Well.” I picked up the tattoo machine, a paper towel, and wiped off an imaginary speck of dirt. “I don’t want you to think there’s no room for improvement.”

  “I cleaned that!” Poe protested. When I laughed, he punched me lightly in the arm. His eyes widened a bit, and his hand lightly squeezed my biceps. “Damn. Packing some guns, there, McAslan.”

  “Either you put a mister in front of there, or call me Jericho. We’re not bros, Poe.” I was teasing, but I was aware of the unwanted tingle of desire that shivered through me at his touch. This was ridiculous. I was almost tempted to put Poe back on the front desk to remember how he got on my nerves.

  He leaned back in his seat, fidgeting a bit as he tended to do.

  “You’re gonna have to learn to sit still,” I told him. “You move around that much with a tattoo machine, someone’s gonna get pissed.”

  “I could send them to you to fix it,” he said.

  “That’s not how this works.” I gave him a flat stare. “You do your best so that no one has to fix it. It’s not like graffiti, Poe. It’s a lot easier to cover up something with paint than work with ink on a human being’s skin.”

  His eyes narrowed. “How do you know? I mean, have you ever tagged anything before?”

  “No, actually, I make it a point not to vandalize public property, kid.”

  Poe rose to his feet and put his hands on his lean hips. I’d seen him annoyed before—at me—but this was something different. His chin went up, and there was a heat behind his dark eyes that might have burned if I stood too close.

  “Is that what you think? Graffiti is just vandalizing? So, you think people that get tattoos are all crooks and sailors?”

  “‘Crooks and sailors’?”

  He huffed. “You know what I mean. Come on, man. There are a million dumb stereotypes about tattoos. Trust me, I see the looks that Landon gets when we go places. They see the beard and the tats and think he has a criminal record.”

  I’d been out with Landon enough times to know that was true. Hell, I got them myself from time to time—mostly in places like Chesterfield or West County. North County had a lot fewer upper-middle-class uptight people. “My tattoos are on me, though. People consent. The buildings? The people that own them? Not so much.”

  “Next you’re going to tell me you think graffiti is all gang signs,” he said, and I had to admit, I’d never seen him so passionate about anything.

  “Of course I don’t think that.” I might have, actually, at one point.

  “Look, you want to know why I’ve been annoying you sixty percent less than usual?”

  “It’s about fifty and going down, at the moment.” That wasn’t true. I leaned back and crossed my arms, then gave a brief nod. “Sure.”

  “What you did for Valerie, I know you said it was your job. But I’d never . . . Look, I’ve always thought tats were cool. Hot, even. But I’d never really understood how meaningful they could be until I saw Valerie and realized why she was getting one.”

  I nodded. That had been an emotionally exhausting tattoo, for Valerie and for me. Remembering her grief was still difficult. I wished with all my heart I hadn’t had to tattoo that on her. I remembered putting the first one there, her happy smile and the pictures she’d shown me. The exact details were hazy, but her joy in that moment was not. Nor, I suspected, would her sorrow be when I thought about that tattoo.

  “Well, if I can learn to appreciate tattooing, you can learn to appreciate graffiti.”

  “I’m not your graffiti apprentice,” I told him. Partly, I realized, I was egging him on. But I was curious, and I could tell that his desire to explain was going to suffocate beneath his irritation if I kept being flippant. I waved a hand. “All right. Tell me what graffiti is all about, then.”

  “It’s about art. It’s about people making art, and maybe it’s different because I’m not putting it on someone’s skin like you do. But in a way . . . it’s more accessible. Look, I worked the desk, and I know how much people pay for ink here. It’s not cheap. Hell, I’m looking at all the equipment I’m gonna need when I’m tattooing, and that’s not cheap, either. Paint, though? Not nearly as expensive. Graffiti can be for everyone—the artist and the public. And when you do it, you sign it with your chosen name, not your given one. The goal is to not get caught, but it’s not because of the cops.”

  I raised my eyebrows at that, considering that was what had brought him to my shop in the first place.

  “Okay, no,” he amended. “It’s not only about that. But when you take the artist out, you make it . . . Hell, I don’t know. You make it about the art, right, not the artist. There’s a signature that tells you who wrote what, but no one takes one look at me and knows I’m Raven. They know Raven’s art. And that’s how it equalizes things. The artist, and the art. And the people, who don’t have to pay to go to some museum to see it.” He pointed at me. “And don’t tell me how the art museum in Forest Park is free. They hang art made by rich white dudes in there, and that’s about it.”

  Truthfully, I’d never considered graffiti art, though I had appreciated the artistry of the graffiti. I thought for a moment, strok
ing my fingers over my short beard. I was amused at his reducing the eons of human art to “rich white dudes,” but I couldn’t deny he had a point that the majority of the art in the museums were made by the old masters . . . who really were rich old white men. “You’re saying it’s a way of bringing art to those who can’t afford it.”

  It reminded me of my friend Callum, who ran an entire organization dedicated to bringing art to impoverished urban areas.

  “Yes! And yeah, okay, maybe there’s territory involved, but shit, Jericho. There’s so much shit that goes on that sucks, you know? People are suffering, they’re poor, and yeah, maybe they’re addicts . . . but at least there’s some fucking art to make things not so goddamn bleak.”

  I couldn’t deny that. It was one reason I loved tattooing. People’s experiences were not always sunshine and roses. But putting those memories in ink on skin . . . at least they could become something beautiful. Like Valerie’s tattoo.

  “I hadn’t thought of it that way,” I admitted. “I’ve always appreciated the artistry, Poe, believe me.”

  “I know. I hear that a lot. People wish we could keep it in our homes or on canvases. But that’s not how it works. The world needs art.” Poe sat down again, like he’d finished delivering a speech.

  “It’s clearly something you’re passionate about.” I tried not to notice how attractive he was, brimming with energy, his eyes flashing and his skin flushed.

  “Yeah.” Poe nodded. “Sorry. It’s a sore spot when people call it vandalism. It drives my friend Blue crazy. The point of vandalism is to destroy things. The point of graffiti is to make it beautiful. He’s always ranting about it.”

  The law might disagree, but I kept my mouth shut on that one. A few minutes later, Harriet stuck her head in to tell us that Mari was there for her tattoo.

  Poe went back to being a helpful and attentive apprentice, but I couldn’t help wondering as I worked . . . would he ever have that much passion for tattooing? Or was this only a way for him to stay out of trouble and keep his father happy? Because that wasn’t what I wanted. I wanted him to have that same passion for, that same connection to, tattooing. And if he didn’t, would that be enough . . . for either of us?