The Petty Details of So-And-So's Life

by Camilla Gibb

  “But I’m not planning on getting old,” the girl says, startled.

  “No, no one plans to. It just happens.”

  She says maybe she needs to think about it some more and thanks him for his patience. Blue is a natural.

  In walks the next unsuspecting customer. A tough little man with a goatee, asking for barbed wire to be drawn across his shoulders. Into the chair. Blue sketches barbed wire, makes a stencil of it, disinfects the man’s skin, and rubs the purple ink from the stencil down onto his shoulders. Blue shows him the new needles, dons his latex gloves, says, “You all right, buddy? You’re turning a little green, there.”

  “Yeah, I’ll be okay,” the man says, although he looks like he might pass out.

  “Just remember to breathe,” he reassures the man. “It’ll take about forty-five minutes. If you need me to stop, try to tell me rather than show me. Okay, buddy?”

  The man inhales deeply and closes his eyes. The needle whistles and sings and he runs it over the man’s back as if he were skating on ice. Blue doesn’t blink for half an hour. Half a beautiful hour where he loses himself in a river of black ink.

  At that moment, Billy walks in. “What the fuck?” he says over Blue’s shoulder. Blue turns and glares at him, and Billy takes a step backwards. He nods then, and raises his eyebrows. “Nice work, man,” he says.

  When he is done, Blue holds up a mirror and the man looks at his swollen back, saying, “Fuck, fuck, fuck, that’s so cool.”

  Blue snaps a Polaroid and sticks it up on the mirror. His first official job. An undeniably beautiful piece of work. The man hands over a hundred bucks, Blue hands Billy forty, and that is that.

  He is good, better than good, and better every day. They trust him, this stream of strangers. Despite his size. Despite the scars on his face. Perhaps even because of his size and scars. It’s a heady, powerful feeling.

  He puts his money away, stuffs it into an old army boot, and dreams and schemes with Amy about the shop he wants to open. With Amy’s savings and the loan Elaine has agreed to give him, he’ll have his own shop sooner than he’d ever imagined possible. He’ll call it Dyeing Arts and he imagines that Amy can have a hair salon in the back when she’s done her course. He’s found his calling.

  He tattoos Amy. A big monarch butterfly on her bum. One wing on each cheek. She squeezes her cheeks together and the butterfly flies.

  “Thank you for giving me my wings,” she says, rubbing her naked body against his chest.

  He replies, kissing her with the redness of his full lips. “I love you, girly girl,” he mumbles into her neck. In that moment, life is better than it has ever been. But no matter how good, Blue’s moments have never lasted long.

  Slipping

  Emma is on her way to meet Blue’s new girlfriend and see their new apartment. She has a head full of ambivalence. In her jealousy, she’d been quite prepared to pass scorn on Amy because she was a stripper. She wanted to hate her for something. But when Blue had put Amy on the phone to “meet” Emma, Emma had to admit that she sounded really sweet, open, even deferential.

  Emma climbs up the fire escape at the back of the dry cleaners. Someone’s made a lame attempt to plant some geraniums in a plastic container hooked onto the rails. Emma’s on her way home from work, still in her brown-and-pink-striped uniform, with at least half of thirty-two flavours splattered across her shirt. She’s carrying a bag of books she picked up en route from the library. She’s back to reading trashy novels, back to life-before-Andrew, and what a relief it is.

  “I’m really happy to meet you,” Amy says, opening the door. She gives Emma a big hug like she’s known her all her life and then picks up Emma’s bag and says, “Blue’s told me so much about you. Brags about you all the time—you know, going to university and all. He calls you ‘my sister the professor.’ ”

  Emma is surprised. It was only last Christmas that Blue was telling her it all sounded completely useless. She takes Amy in—all five foot one of her. She seems to have remarkable strength for someone too small to change a light bulb as she hoists Emma’s bag full of books over her shoulder. She looks young enough that it wouldn’t surprise Emma to hear her say she’s got to be back by curfew.

  The apartment is overheated and smells of stale cigarette smoke. The television is on and the ashtray on the table in the living room is overflowing. Amy picks it up to empty it, embarrassed. “Sorry, it’s a sty. We’ve both been working lots.”

  “Wanna beer?” Blue asks Emma, closing the door behind her. “Amy brought a Mustang full of stash back from Alberta.”

  “Sure,” Emma nods.

  “You know, I’m glad you’re back here,” he says, collapsing onto the lumpy brown sofa.

  “Me too, Blue,” Emma sighs. “It’s been a pretty fucked summer.” She’s been feeling flat: now that she’s settled into the routine of her boring job, she feels the full weight of the truck that ran her over.

  “You said it,” he nods.

  “So are you going to tell me what happened to your face or do I have to guess?” she asks him.

  “Aw, it’s no biggie, really. I just got done for D and D.”

  “D and D?” she asks, confused.

  “Drunken and disorderly,” Amy says. “More than once.”

  Blue is silent. He crosses and uncrosses his legs.

  “Things weren’t going so well,” says Amy. “That’s why we decided to come back here for a while,” she explains.

  “What happened?”

  Amy looks at Blue and Blue looks at Amy and lowers his eyes. “So go ahead and tell her if you want.” Blue’s willing to let Amy do all the talking because she seems to have a need to tell the story, where he does not.

  “Down at the club where I was working,” Amy begins to explain. “Well, a lot of the guys from the hotels in the area would come down there when their shifts ended and have a few beers and watch the show. Blue was great—he came down all the time and waited for me to finish so we could go home together. I know it can be hard on some guys, watching their girlfriends dancing up there and everything, but it’s just a job, like any other job, and I’m good at it and it pays way more than I could make doing anything else.

  “There was this one guy, though. He was a little older and kind of strange, and he would come in once in a while and sit by himself and usually pay me for a couple of table dances. I don’t know what it was about this one guy in particular, but Blue just didn’t like him. Just took an instant dislike to him. He never touched me or anything like that, but yeah, he was kind of creepy.”

  “Fucking child molester,” Blue mutters.

  “Blue’s got some idea about this guy … Well, anyway,” Amy continues. “This one night a while back, Blue’s there getting drunk and the old guy comes in, parks himself in a chair, and hands me a hundred dollars to dance a song for him. Once that song’s over, he gives me another hundred. And then he tries to do it again. Usually you only dance two songs, you know, max. But the guy’s paid a lot of money, so I start dancing for him, and then Blue walks over and shouts, ‘Time’s up, buddy!’

  “It’s a little weird for me, because, you know, I’m working, and the guy just looks at Blue and they start fighting.

  “I’m like, ‘Blue, it’s okay, I can handle this.’ You know, I’ve dealt with creeps before, but Blue won’t leave it alone. He says he’s going to cut the guy’s dick off. Then Larry, the manager, comes over and tells Blue not to interfere when I’m working. You know, Larry’s a good guy and everything, but business is business. He says he’ll get Blue barred from the place if he keeps interfering. So Blue backs down and Larry gives the guy back his hundred bucks and says to him, ‘Maybe some other night, buddy,’ and the guy skulks off.

  “We were both pretty stressed out by the whole thing, but I thought we were okay until one night I found a knife in Blue’s jeans. So I asked him, ‘What are you carrying this around for?’ and he’s like, ‘Just in case.’ So I’m like, ‘Just in case what?’
And then he says, ‘Protection.’ I knew what he was thinking. And I got all upset because I just didn’t think that was the way to handle things. It never is. Anyway, then he got really mad at me and said I didn’t get it, and so I’m like, ‘So tell me, I want to understand,’ but he just clams up. Not a word.”

  Emma and Amy both look at Blue then, but he’s just silent, staring down at the carpet. He takes a giant swig from his can of beer.

  “So I let it go,” Amy continues. “Fine, he’s got to make his own decision about this. I mean, I didn’t think he’d use the knife or anything, but things can get rough in there, and like, why even give yourself the option?

  “So, wouldn’t you know it, the guy does come back a couple of weeks later. And he sits in exactly the same place and fixes his eyes on me and hands me two hundred dollars this time. What am I supposed to do? The guy’s paid, it’s my job, he might be a lech, but as long as he’s not touching me he’s not really doing anything wrong. Blue walks over toward me then, and, of course, he absolutely freaks. He pulls me by the hair and tells me to get out of the way, and starts shouting at the guy. Says he’s been waiting for him to come back so he could do what he promised. He pulls out the knife and says, ‘I’m going to slice your fucking dick off!’ I’m pleading with him because I know he’s going to get thrown out, and sure enough, there’s Larry saying, ‘Blue, I warned you the last time.’

  “God. Then the guy grabs the knife out of Blue’s hand and takes a swipe at his ear. Holy fuck, Blue was bleeding and then the bouncers are on top of the both of them, pounding the shit out of them. I’m scared out of my mind, and then we’ve got the cops in there and there’s a fucking ambulance waiting to take them to the hospital.

  “It’s me and Blue and this creepy fucking guy together in the back of the ambulance. Can you believe it? These two guys have to go to hospital together. And the whole time, the guy’s staring at me and Blue’s saying, ‘I’m gonna fucking kill you.’ You know, and his head’s like pouring with blood and everything.”

  “So what happened?” Emma begs.

  “It was awful. After they get all stitched up, then they have to go down to the police station. They both get charged with D and D and the guy wants to charge for attempted murder. I’m like, ‘Blue, let me just talk to him and see if I can get him to drop the charges.’ You know, like I can just say, ‘Sorry about my boyfriend, he gets a little jealous sometimes, especially if he’s had a few beers,’ but Blue says, ‘No way. You have no idea what guys like this are capable of.’ I’m not really sure what he means, but he won’t say any more.”

  Amy lets out a big sigh and shakes her head.

  “Blue?” Emma prods him.

  “Em?” he says, shrugging. He has nothing to add. He doesn’t want to be having this conversation. Amy can go ahead and tell the story, because when she does, it doesn’t sound like him at all. It sounds like some angry young man, some guy he’s not sure if he wants to know. He doesn’t remember it exactly this way. He doesn’t actually remember much about it. He remembers the guy walking by him and saying something provocative along the lines of “jailbait pussy.” He remembers the guy’s eyes and he remembers slow motion and then a surge and the whack of the floor and then blood and an ambulance.

  The guy Amy’s describing isn’t him. But he can’t always keep that guy at such a distance. He’s stopped looking in the mirror lately, because occasionally he can see evidence of him lurking in the reflection.

  “Is there any more?” Emma asks Blue.

  “Nothing to tell. Guy dropped the charges.”

  “Well, thank God for that.”

  “He was scared of getting busted.”

  “But why? You’re the one who pulled a knife on him.”

  “Yeah, but my record’s clean.”

  “Do you know the guy?”

  “I know his type.” Blue sits motionless for a moment, and then goes to the fridge to get another beer. He opens the fridge door and stares at the cans distractedly. He begins to rearrange them into the shape of a pyramid. A precarious balancing act.

  “Is he okay?” Emma whispers to Amy.

  “He’s up and down,” she says. “But it’s been better since we came back here. Blue’s really doing well with this tattoo thing,” she enthuses. “Right, hon?”

  ID Me

  The next time Emma sees Blue he looks about a thousand times happier. She, on the other hand, is feeling like shit. She grits her teeth through work. Her job seems so pointless she thinks about quitting at four-thirty every day, but point or no point, she knows she has to continue.

  Amy is making pasta in the kitchen and Blue passes Emma a beer and starts talking about his plans. “I really want to establish a reputation with my shop—you know, for quality work. Billy’s done a lot. He’s got himself a reputation, but he’s more like a mechanic than an artist, if you know what I mean. So anyway, what I’d like to do is maybe open up a bunch of other shops, and maybe one day I’ll even have a chain of stores across the country,” he beams.

  His plans are so big they sound familiar to Emma, not the details, but the sheer magnitude of them. He’s got it too, she thinks. He’s got Oliver’s vision, but she can see there is a critical difference. Blue’s dreams seem to be coming true.

  Elaine had said that there were similarities between Emma and Oliver, confirming her worst suspicions. But when she said it, she had tried to give it a positive spin—she’d fallen in love with Oliver because he was a dreamer. When Emma looks at Blue, luminescent as he describes his big plans, she can see how attractive it is. He’s found a space to rent and he’s going and picking up equipment from dental supply stores, and he has a business card of a naked woman on her stomach with a snake crawling out of her ass. Not quite pornographic, but not exactly something Elaine is going to want to carry around in her purse.

  He’s among the first of a new tribe of tattoo artists in Niagara Falls. His work appeals to the newlyweds from small Canadian towns who come to honeymoon and cement their union with snapshots of falling water and his-and-hers tattoos. He does cops and cocaine dealers in adjacent chairs. He pierces the nipples, clits, and labia of all the strippers in town, and then at night, the cops and cocaine dealers sit in strip clubs and admire Blue’s work on their own bodies and the bodies of women dancing for them.

  Blue seems to have found some sort of salvation through punching needles full of ink into skin. He’s not at all New Age about it—he doesn’t use words like healing or spirit, but rather, speaks in tough monosyllables which pop out of his mouth like cherry pits onto hot pavement.

  “Show Emma that piece of work on your arm,” Amy encourages, peeling a wet string of pasta off the wall.

  Blue pulls up his sleeve and Emma moves in, searching for the initials that once branded him; close enough to brush her lips against the hair on his arm and catch the scent of his patchouli-and-tobacco-infused skin. The initials are obscured now, lost in a sea of overlapping blues and greens. That doesn’t seem to matter to the boy disguised as a biker daddy who is Emma’s baby brother. He pulls up his other sleeve to reveal an airbrushed Jesus—all blood and thorns. The tattoo begins just below his elbow and swims laps around a fleshy, undefined bicep.

  “He’s reading a porno,” Blue tells her proudly.

  “Charming,” snorts Emma. Although she finds the tattoo tacky, even offensive, she’s nevertheless impressed by the large boy in front of her. The ability to dream is apparently a talent or a curse, it all depends on what you do with it.

  Blue just thinks he’s being resourceful, and he sees Emma as someone who is much less sure of her own resources, and always has been. She’s had more success disguising herself in the lives of others than creating a life of her own—a pattern Blue has noticed, but has never fully understood. He just knows that whenever she’s eventually expelled from whatever universe she’s been trampling through, she lands belly up on his doorstep in the tattered remnants of some costume that never suited her. He sees her that way
now. Wasted and spent from a summer digging in vain and standing here wearing a tacky uniform, looking like a fish out of water.

  “Come down to the Artful Dodger on Saturday,” he says to her when she leaves with a belly full of beer and pasta. “Let me do some ink on you.”

  She hears: That’ll fix you. Pin you down. Make you my sister again. She’s been serving ice cream, reading mysteries, and dreading going back to school in the fall. She needs to belong somewhere. She needs to be a sister again.

  Emma goes down like she’s promised, and does her utmost to look cool in the presence of her brother’s command. The shop is full of guys loitering, smoking, hanging out in the loud, tight space thick with stale sweat. The tall, lanky one who looks like he has hamburger for brains is Billy, the shop owner. Blue’s usurping him now, and Billy’s getting less and less friendly. He knows he is only a technician; Blue, on the other hand, is an artist, and he is rapidly outgrowing the place.

  Emma still calls her brother Blue, although he finds it a little embarrassing. He winces when she says it in front of the guys in the shop who otherwise know him as Big Lou. They’re not his friends, he doesn’t have any friends, never has really, except Amy, and if you can count your sister, Emma. It’s kind of a family tradition. These guys are admirers—people who mill around the shop because it’s cool to have a buddy who’s a tattoo artist, although they’re all a little bit scared of him and he knows it. That means “respect,” he tells Emma, pronouncing it without the t and punching a clenched fist against his chest.

  He’s pierced his tongue and he sticks it out to provoke her. She recoils because it looks to her like a hook caught in some prehistoric fish. He flicks the silver ball against his teeth then and says it gives Amy enormous pleasure. He knows that will get a reaction out of her. He wiggles his tongue, licks the air.