by Avon Gale
My face flamed. “Jesus, Landon.”
“Keeping it honest, Jericho.” Landon’s severe expression eased into a smile. “An hour, tops. Let me know what else I can do to help.”
I gave a vague wave of my hand, then climbed into my truck. The store looked worse in the harsh glow of my headlights: sad and dilapidated. All I wanted to do was go home and mope. But I was determined that this thing between me and Poe wasn’t going to shatter quite as easily as the glass in front of my shop.
I pulled into Poe’s driveway about twenty minutes later, with a couple of sandwiches and a six-pack of beer. I went around to the basement entrance, knocked once, and leaned against the frame.
He answered the door, looking about as miserable as I felt. His eyes were red, his hair damp and pushed off his face, and he was wearing sweats and a T-shirt that I was pretty sure belonged to me. The thought of him, sad and alone in the shower and then wearing my shirt, made my heart hurt. “Hey.”
“Hey.” He gave me a wary look, clearly uncertain if he should ask me to come in or not.
“Look, Poe.” I took a deep breath. “I’m sorry that I said that, all right? I don’t think you had anything to do with the shop. I was angry. But we can’t do this. We can’t argue and then have you walk away like that. It’s not how people in relationships solve problems, and I want to solve this one. With you, all right?”
My apology didn’t make him look any happier. If anything, he looked more miserable. His eyes were suspiciously watery as he glanced down at the ground. It was a far cry from his playfulness the night before. “I should have told you. You didn’t do anything wrong.”
I reached out and put two fingers under his chin, tilting his face up to mine. “Yeah, I did. I shouldn’t have let you walk off. Look, get dressed and come with me. Please.”
“Why do you want me anywhere near you?” he asked, not moving. “Seriously, I get it. I’m a fucking mess. You’re better off without me.”
My mouth twitched, and I had no idea if the reaction was due to stress and exhaustion or actual amusement. “You gonna put some emo music on your MP3 player and serenade me to my truck?”
His mouth tightened, but I saw the spark in his eyes. “‘MP3 player.’ Jesus, you’re old. I have a Bluetooth speaker.” His expression eased a bit. “Okay. Give me a second.” He stepped away, and I followed him into the basement.
I’d been to Landon’s before, obviously, but I’d never been down here. The basement ran the length of the house, and was larger than I’d always assumed—large enough to incorporate a makeshift skate park on one side, comprised of a half-pipe and a quarter-pipe. The walls were all painted, with the focal point being a large Edgar Allan Poe–themed mural. I could see his progression as an artist leading up to the mural, and I had to admit I was impressed.
It reminded me of my conversation with Landon, about how art was a constant evolution.
The rest of the room was a lot messier than I could stand if it were me. But then again, Landon wasn’t the tidiest guy, either. I examined the art on the wall while Poe pulled on jeans and a hoodie and a pair of Chucks. He didn’t take off my shirt, and I didn’t mention it.
I pointed to the section of his mural that was my favorite. It showed a rendition of the St. Louis skyline, the arch behind it, sitting in what I assumed was the Mississippi River. But the river was churning into large curling waves, one looming ominously over the city.
“That’s supposed to be ‘The City in the Sea,’” Poe said, nodding at it. He shoved his hands in his hoodie pockets. “I finished that one a few days ago.”
The curl of the wave looked very much like a tattoo I had on my chest. I wanted to push him against the wall and kiss him, but all I said was, “Ready?”
Poe was quiet in the truck until he realized we weren’t heading to my place. “Where are we going?”
“You ever been to Pere Marquette Park? It’s near Elsah.”
“Sure. Not really since high school, though.” He glanced over at me. “Are you okay?”
As strained as things were between us, I was glad he’d asked. “Yeah. I’m okay.”
“Good.” He stared down at his knees. I remembered driving him back to my house the night I’d picked him up from that party, smelling like smoke and bright-eyed from alcohol.
My truck had a Bluetooth adapter, but I opted for the radio, listening to Kelly and Chris call the Blues game as I drove. Pere Marquette Park technically closed at dusk, but barely anyone paid attention to that rule. I found a scenic overlook, pulled the truck over, and killed the engine. “C’mon.”
“We’re not going hiking, are we?” Poe asked.
“Nope.” I grabbed the sandwiches and the six-pack, closed my door, and waited for him to walk around and join me at the back of the truck. When he did, I flipped the tailgate down and hopped up into the bed. I opened the utility box and pulled out a few blankets, then sat with my back against the side of the truck. I held up a sandwich. “You hungry?”
Poe climbed up into the truck bed and took a sandwich without answering. I used the bottle opener on my keychain to open up two Boulevard Pale Ales and handed him one.
I was hungrier than I’d thought, and finished my sandwich fairly quickly. Poe picked at his but didn’t seem all that interested in eating it.
“I think I owe you an apology,” I said, slowly. “I know I’ve acted . . . well. Like your boss or, as much as I hate saying this, your father. When it comes to graffiti, and your friends.”
“Well.” Poe shrugged. “You were right about Blue.”
“Still.” I put a hand on his knee and squeezed. “I think I was worried that you loved graffiti and didn’t really connect with tattooing in the same way. I wanted this to be something you loved, not something you did because you wanted to stay out of trouble or make your dad happy.”
Poe blinked up at me. “I do love it.”
“I know. I believe you.” I sighed and took a sip of my beer. “But I realize it might have looked like a choice between me and graffiti, and I don’t want that. I want you to be happy, and if you don’t find that in tattooing, then you don’t. You don’t have to do it for anyone but yourself. I don’t want you to do it for anyone but yourself.”
“I want to do it.” Poe’s voice was serious. “I mean it. Yeah, I still love graffiti and I don’t plan on giving it up, but I want my license and I want a career.”
“I know. And I’m sorry if I made it sound like you had to choose. Because you don’t.” I smiled. “Your father asked me what it was, exactly, I saw in you. Why I wanted to date someone so much younger. Know what I said?”
Poe opened his mouth, closed it, and glanced at me. “If I didn’t feel like shit, I’d make a joke about my ass.”
My smile softened, and I took his hand in mine. “I told him that you remind me that life is like art. It isn’t static, it evolves. I get so caught up in the afters—what people’s tattoos become, you know, after I change them. I tended to see the beginnings as mistakes. I’d started to ignore everything that happens in between. And the fact that, you know, those tattoos are still there. Just different.”
Poe ducked his head. “That’s— Thanks.”
“Thank you. And I wanted to tell you that, and . . . well. Maybe the reason why I am that way. You know how I got into tattooing?”
Poe shook his head, pushing his sandwich away and taking a drink of his beer.
“I grew up here too. In North County, I mean. And I was always in trouble. And I don’t mean trouble like stealing from the store or getting caught with my dad’s beer. I mean real trouble. Drugs, theft. That kind of trouble.”
Poe’s eyes went wide. “Drugs? Dude, you barely drink.”
“It wasn’t only that I was doing them.” I took a deep breath. I wasn’t proud of my misspent youth, and I’d worked hard to put this all behind me. “I was selling them. And I was under eighteen, so I thought I was invincible, you know. If they caught me, what could they really do to me?
I was a minor.” I shook my head. “I was also an idiot.”
Poe didn’t say anything, so I continued. “When I was sixteen, I’d dropped out of high school and my parents were fed up with me. I’d been picked up by the police a handful of times, though thankfully nothing more serious than possession. This time, they threatened to charge me with intent to sell if I didn’t start talking about who I was getting the drugs from, if I didn’t give them names. I thought I was some brave soldier and didn’t say a goddamn thing.”
“That doesn’t surprise me,” Poe said wryly. He picked up his sandwich and took a bite.
“Yeah, well, I should have said something. I thought I was protecting people, but I wasn’t, not really. And my parents, that was it for them. They knew that if I stuck around much longer, I’d end up in prison or worse. So they shipped me out to San Diego to live with my mom’s sister, Katie, and her husband, Joe. They were convinced that a change in scenery would get me off the streets and back in school.”
“I take it that didn’t work?”
I leaned back, feeling the wind against my face and in my hair. It’d been fairly mild so far this winter, though we were into January. “Of course it didn’t. I fell right back into my same habits in San Diego. Skipping school, running with a bad crowd, all that shit.” I shook my head. “It’s been twenty-four years, and I don’t know why I acted like I did, Poe. My folks didn’t neglect me, not really. They worked a lot, but they weren’t absentee parents. They weren’t abusive or anything. I hated authority and thought I was entitled to do whatever I wanted with my life.
“Anyway, my aunt Katie was a lot like my mom—except she always believed me when I said, yeah, of course I’d been at school that day. When she started getting phone calls, I was always coming up with some story, some excuse. When she finally tried to step in and say something, I took my stuff and moved out. I stayed with some friend of mine—fuck, I don’t remember his name—in this trashy apartment that cost more than my mortgage. I think there were four of us living there. No one wanted to get an actual job, though, so we were paying the bills by selling drugs.”
“I still can’t see you as a drug dealer.” Poe had finished his sandwich and was sitting next to me, long legs out in front of him. He shivered a little in the hoodie.
I tossed him a blanket. “Didn’t I get you a coat for Christmas so you’d stop wearing that hoodie in winter?”
“This is what I mean,” Poe said, dryly. He took another drink of his beer. “Okay, so you’re seventeen, you live in a small apartment in San Diego with a bunch of dudes . . .”
“You’re making it sound a lot hotter and more interesting than it was,” I said, and for the first time tonight, saw a hint of his smile. “People stole shit from me all the time. I almost knifed a guy for going through my bag one night, and I still don’t know who it was. But, yeah. That’s where I was. Anyway, I went to sell to some guy, and he had me meet him in front of The Living Canvas, which was this tattoo shop. We used to hang out around there, but the owner was this real dick-bag. He wouldn’t give any of us tattoos because we were underage.” I smiled, remembering Chris and his unimpressed face whenever anyone tried to tell him, No, really, man, I’m eighteen, I just don’t got any ID, but you can trust me.
“The owner, Chris, caught me out there dealing drugs as plain as day. Right after I’d handed over the goods, he grabbed me by the scruff of the neck and hauled me into the store. He threatened for twenty minutes to call the cops on me, and I of course played it cool and acted tough, like I didn’t care. I said something about my age, how I was only seventeen, so what could they really do?”
Poe drew his knees up to his chest and leaned forward a little, listening, the top of his beer bottle caught between his thumb and forefinger.
“And he said, ‘Yeah, so what’re you gonna do when you’re eighteen, huh?’” I took a long swallow of my beer and passed the opener to Poe, who’d finished his. “I gave him some smart-ass answer, and he drags me to the back room he used as an office and puts his hand on the phone, says he’s going to call the cops and we’ll see how tough I am then.”
“Were you scared?” Poe asked, putting the empty bottle in the box and opening a new one.
“Fucking terrified,” I admitted. “But I acted like I wasn’t, of course. I don’t know what it was about Chris, but he takes this long, hard look at me like he’s trying to see into my soul. And he goes, ‘Is this really all you want out of life?’ And for some reason, I don’t give him the tough-kid answer. I give him the real one, and I said no.”
“Why?”
I shrugged. “Hell if I know. But Chris doesn’t call the cops. He tells me that he’s gonna call my aunt Katie, instead. Then he tells me that I can come here every day, be his apprentice, and learn how to do something legal. At this point, he doesn’t know if I can draw a straight line. Then he tells me to get my stuff, get out of that apartment—which, now I think about it, I’m pretty sure was a pay-by-the-week hotel—and go back to my aunt’s house. Apologize for being a punk, and tell her I’ve got a job now.
“So that’s what I do. Of course, if I’m honest, mostly I wanted any excuse to get out of that apartment. I nearly cried when my aunt let me move back in and I had my own room again. And a shower I didn’t have to share with however many other dudes.” I finished my own beer and put the empty back in the box, but didn’t reach for another. “I almost didn’t go back to Chris’s shop. If I hadn’t, I would have ended up in prison or dead—San Diego, St. Louis, it wouldn’t have mattered. I have nightmares sometimes about what my life would have been like if I’d walked right past that shop.”
“But you didn’t.” Poe’s voice was full of something warm—pride, maybe. “Instead you became a tattoo artist.”
“I’m not saying I turned my shit around overnight, because that so isn’t how it happened.” I gave a soft chuckle. “You can ask Chris sometime. I thought I was edgy and knew everything, when really I had a bad attitude and didn’t know anything at all.”
Poe put his head on my shoulder and took my hand. He squeezed. “So you’re saying I’m a better apprentice than you were.”
“Much better,” I agreed. “I was mouthier than you, if you can believe that.”
“Yup,” he said, immediately. He glanced up at me. “So is that why you wanted to take me on as an apprentice? Because you thought I was like you?”
“Maybe a little. Mostly I wanted to give you a chance since someone gave me one and it made all the difference in the world. But you were just aimless, Poe. You weren’t a criminal. Not like me.” I paused.
“And not like Blue,” he finished. Poe was perceptive that way. “You told me this story because of him?”
“I told you because I wanted you to know. I don’t want you to think I haven’t fucked up,” I said bluntly. “But someone saw potential in me anyway, and my life is what it is because of it.”
“And then some fucking asshole destroyed the shop you built,” Poe said, and I could tell he was about to start feeling guilty again.
“And then some fucking asshole destroyed the shop I built,” I said. “A shop that can, and will, be rebuilt. It wasn’t your fault, and I get why you didn’t say anything. I’m sorry I implied that you knew anything about what Blue was going to do.”
He sighed, the sound heavy. “I’ve never known him to do anything like this before. I can’t believe he’s so mad about me being a tattoo artist that he’d . . . do something like that.”
“About that,” I said, carefully. “You sure he doesn’t have feelings for you?”
Poe looked genuinely startled by my question. “I’m—I’m pretty sure he doesn’t. I think he’s jealous, but it’s more . . . like, his family is shit, Jericho. And maybe me and Landon have our moments, but he’s always been there for me. Blue? Hell, I don’t think his family knows where he lives. So here I am, and I get this chance and I have a mentor and a father who actually gives a fuck, so . . . I think that’s what he’s jeal
ous of, you know? That I got all these chances, and he didn’t.”
“Maybe someone gave you a chance, but you’re the one doing the work.” I gently disentangled our hands so I could slide an arm around his shoulders. “Like I said, Poe. This isn’t like what happened with me. You needed direction, and I was able to help you find it.”
Poe was staring hard off into the distance, as if he could see the Mississippi River in the dark. “So maybe Blue’s more like you were, then.”
I thought about that. I could argue that drugs were a victimless crime, but I knew I’d caused damage, though indirectly, in my brief years as a teenage drug dealer.
“Are you going to call the police on him?”
I answered carefully. “I think I have to, Poe. This isn’t only my livelihood affected, you know. It’s everyone’s. Who knows long the shop will take to reopen? This goes way beyond graffiti on the wall.”
“Yeah, I . . . I know.” Poe went up on his knees on the blanket, turning to stare me straight in the eyes. “And I get it. I’m not going to stop you, but maybe . . . maybe I could do the same thing for Blue that Chris did for you. Not have an apprentice, obviously, but maybe he needs someone to say the same thing to him. About not spending the rest of his life doing this.”
Blue definitely needed someone doing that, but I didn’t want it to be Poe. “I don’t know, Poe. There are deeper issues at play, here, clearly, and—”
“There weren’t with you?” Poe interrupted. When I didn’t answer, he said, “Please, Jericho. I know Blue, and I know this isn’t . . . this isn’t him. What if I talked to him, got him to turn himself in? You know what’s gonna happen if he gets sent to jail. The same thing that was gonna happen to you too.”
I considered that. I’d always thought that giving Poe an apprenticeship was paying forward what Chris did for me, but suddenly I wasn’t so sure. Chris had taken a chance on me twenty-four years ago, and it’d paid off. But I hadn’t been a kid with a dead-end job living in his dad’s basement whose only passion was for art. I’d been a straight-up delinquent with a rap sheet and a prison sentence waiting to happen—if I was lucky. Poe was right. I’d had a lot of issues that only time, a steady job, a clean conscience, and therapy had helped me to confront. And I never would have had any of those if Chris had called the cops that afternoon.
