The Butterfly Tattoo

by M. D. Thomas

  There was more talking and more questions. Jon answered but didn’t pay them close attention. He stared at the ambulance ceiling, replaying over and over the moment he’d closed Lee’s door.

  Calm…

  “When can I go?” Jon asked for what must have been at least the tenth time. He was desperate for information about Lee, but all they’d say was that he was in surgery.

  “Very soon, Mr. Young,” said the social worker who’d been assigned to him shortly after he’d arrived in the emergency department. She was a plump, docile looking woman who had the kind, patient air of a grandmother even though she looked a bit too young for that milestone. The frequency of the question didn’t rattle her and she’d given nearly the same response every time. “We just need to get the results of your CT scan back. Assuming everything looks fine, you’ll be given the okay to leave and we’ll get you up to your wife and son.”

  Calm, Jon…

  More than two achingly slow hours had passed since his arrival, most of that time spent staring at the ceiling. After a physician assistant had cleaned and sutured the laceration on his head, he’d decided to get out of bed and leave. But one of the nurses—a giant of a man whose hairy arms were as thick as Jon’s lower legs—had persuaded him that it was in his best interest not to leave until they said he could. Sometime later a tech had taken him to get the scan.

  Very soon turned out to be almost an hour later, when the scan results came back negative. When they discharged him, he threw on his filthy clothes and sprinted through the hospital corridors, the cut on his head throbbing in time to the fall of his feet. He didn’t bother with the elevator, instead taking three flights of stairs up to the surgery floor.

  A quick conversation at the reception desk resulted in an escort to the waiting room where Sarah sat alone inside, unaware of his presence behind a plate glass window.

  He stood outside the waiting room breathing hard, resisted the urge to rush inside and find out what had happened to Lee. It was important to be calm. Sarah would need him to be calm.

  Jon breathed deep, heart still racing, and examined his wife. He wasn’t surprised that she was alone. His parents were dead, his brother and sister on the west coast, while Sarah’s family was two states away and two states too close. Both of them had acquaintances but no close friends. Work, school, and travel baseball ruled out free time for socializing.

  Sarah stared ahead, eyes fixed and hollow, and her face appeared more gaunt than it had earlier that day, as if some of her vigor had already been sucked out by the accident. Jon wondered how his own face looked.

  Calm…

  Jon took one last deep breath and pushed through the door. Sarah rose, but when she saw who entered the room the fear and hope on her face faded and she sat, dashing the expectation that she’d jump up and embrace him, perhaps cry on his shoulder. She stared at him for a moment, her expression unreadable, then looked away. Jon let the door close behind him, took one hesitant step toward her, then stopped.

  A sense of awkwardness toward her filled him for the first time. Their marriage had been solid before Lee, built on mutual trust and admiration and a deep love for each other, and had become even stronger when their family went from two to three. But now Jon sensed a gulf between them, an emotional gap as real as the physical space between their bodies. Fear that the survival of their marriage depended absolutely on Lee’s recovery crept into him. For years Lee had been at the center of their relationship, and if he died, there would be a void. Jon didn’t know if they were capable of filling such an emptiness.

  Lee won’t die… but Jon knew the thought was as much an admission of the possibility as it was a denial, and it filled him with terror.

  Calm…

  Jon walked slowly across the room and sat next to Sarah. He was afraid to ask and he waited, hoping she would speak, but she remained silent until the need to know outweighed his fear. “How is he?”

  “Stable,” she said without looking at him. “They said that’s important.” Her voice didn’t tremble, didn’t waver or halt, lacked any emotion at all. “His brain is swelling from the injury and they had to remove a piece of his skull to give it room to expand. They’ll keep him in a drug-induced coma until the worst of the swelling has gone down. And then, hopefully he’ll wake up when they stop administering the drugs. He might not though. Maybe not for months.”

  Jon might have admitted to himself that Lee could die, but that speculation, that nightmare possibility, didn’t compare to the reality of what Sarah told him. A piece of his skull removed and placed in his abdomen. A coma that might last for days or months. His body wasting away. Jon had trouble speaking. “When will they know?”

  “They won’t,” Sarah replied, her voice still flat, still… dead. “Whatever needs to be corrected is beyond their ability to fix. He’s on his own. It’s up to him if he comes back to us.”

  “There isn’t anything they can do?”

  Sarah didn’t respond which was answer enough.

  A piece of his skull… months…

  Calm…

  Jon rested his head against the wall and closed his eyes. The bite of pain from the injury on his head—forgotten since his arrival in the waiting room—returned, though without the teeth it had earlier.

  Months… no. Not months. He’s strong. He’ll wake up when they take him off the meds and he’ll get better.

  He wanted to believe that but wasn’t sure if he could.

  “He got three hits tonight,” Jon said, eyes still closed. “One of them a three-run homer. He stole two bases. Slid into home. How is this possible?”

  “Because you took the parkway.”

  Jon picked his head up and looked at Sarah. Her head was down, staring at the floor. “Because you took the goddamn Accotink parkway,” she said and her voice was not so dead as it had been.

  Sarah never cursed—never—and a baseball bat to the temple couldn’t have stunned him more. He had no idea what to say. Out of that blankness surfaced the memory of blinding light. “There were two of them. The people who hit us. A man and a woman. They were talking.”

  Sarah’s head shot up, the look on her face one he’d never seen before. “What does it matter if there were two of them or ten? We wouldn’t have been there if you hadn’t decided to take the scenic route.”

  “They ran us off the road, Sarah. That wasn’t my fault.”

  “No? Well then whose fault was it that Lee didn’t have his seat belt on?”

  Jon flinched as if she’d slapped him.

  “He was on your side of the car, Jon,” Sarah said. “You were supposed to make sure he had his seat belt on.”

  Jon started to tell her that Lee had his seat belt in his hand, but then snapped his jaws shut. He hadn’t waited to see it on. Lee had been so excited. Excited enough to forget his seat belt. He should’ve waited.

  Three more seconds and everything might have been different…

  Four

  ELLE

  The coke made it hard to be quiet.

  That’s what he wants too… quiet quiet quiet. She’d known him for less than forty-eight hours but she damn sure knew that much. Drinking had made him even more quiet. But she had as much chance of keeping her mouth shut as the guy with the bloody face had of strolling away from his car without a headache.

  “That guy looked pretty fucked up,” she said. “And who knows what was wrong with the chick. She was stone cold out. Or dead.”

  Harvey kept his eyes on the road. “She was breathing.”

  “She looked dead to me.” That was a lie though, because she couldn’t even remember what the woman looked like. The man either for that matter, except that his face had been covered in blood. A lot of it. Like a mask. “You should call 911.”

  Harvey shook his head. “I haven’t changed my mind.”

  “Why not? What difference does it make to you, Mr. Keitel? We’re not there anymore. No one would ever know it was us. Unless they can trace the call. You think t
hey can do that?”

  “I told you not to call me that.”

  Quiet Keitel said no gonna go to hell… the made up tune danced through her head. “That man was fucked up. And who knows about that chick. You don’t want to feel guilty tomorrow.”

  “They’ll be fine.”

  “You sure about that, Mr. Keitel? How do you know? What if they had internal injuries or something?”

  “Christ, would you let it go? They’ll call an ambulance and they’ll be fine.”

  “If you say so,” Elle mumbled as Harvey brought the car to a stop at an intersection.

  Quiet Keitel said no wants to ring my bell… well, he was probably right. They’d spend a few hours in the emergency room and that would be the end of it. “Where in the hell are we anyway? You’d think we were like fifty miles out in the country or something. Bum fuck Egypt, right?”

  “Nowhere,” Harvey said as he took a right. “Better for you to forget about it anyway.”

  “You can be a real downer, Harvey. You know that?” Elle turned on the overhead lights and searched the console and floor. “I need another hit after that. Where’s the coke?”

  “You snorted it all.”

  “Really? Jesus. Let’s get drunk then.”

  Harvey shook his head. “Fun’s over for tonight.”

  Elle shook her head, her curls dancing. “Hell no. It’s early still. Crazy early. Let’s go back to your place and get a drink. I could make it worth your time, Harvey.” She reached over and ran her hand over his thigh and onto his crotch.

  Harvey glanced at her. “Forgot about those two in the car already, huh?”

  “I come down without something else in my system and I’m gonna feel like shit the rest of the night. Come on.” She squeezed and felt him respond as he sighed.

  “We’ll see,” he said. “But we go to your place, not mine.”

  Quiet Keitel said yes who coulda guessed…

  They parked in front of her apartment building twenty minutes later. Harvey shut off the engine, got out, then stood eyeing the damage to his car, a grimace on his face. Everything past the rear tire was a crumpled mess, the end of the bumper swept outwards, although it looked like it was still solidly attached to the car. Somehow none of the windows had broken, although the rear glass was spider-webbed.

  Elle stepped up beside him, was quiet for the two seconds she could tolerate, then said, “I hope you know a good body guy.”

  Harvey only grunted.

  “You’re getting me down, Mr. Keitel. Worry about it tomorrow.”

  Harvey turned away from the car and looked at her, his Italian features blank, hard, unreadable. She was dying to know what he was thinking, but damned if she’d ask. Normally she could tell—shit, with most men it didn’t take a mind-reader to know what was going through their one-track brains—but Harvey was a mystery. That attracted her and made her nervous at the same time. She put on her best smile.

  “Is that how it works for you?” Harvey asked. “You just put everything off?”

  She stepped forward and kissed him before he could react, bit his lower lip, then pulled away. Ending the kiss was harder than she’d expected. He was damn good-looking and close up he smelled like a mixture of shaving cream and cinnamon, a scent that made her want to lick his naked body from neck to knees and back again with some lingering pauses in-between. “Life’s a bitch and then you die, Harvey. So might as well live today like it’s all going to hell tomorrow.”

  She wanted him to smile, was disappointed when his face remained blank. “You really believe that?”

  “I said it, didn’t I? Now stop worrying about your goddamn car and let’s go inside.”

  “It’s not the Ritz but I can afford it on my own,” Elle said as she entered and flipped on the living room light. She tossed her keys and money clip into the ceramic bowl on top of the rickety table by the door and kicked her shoes off. “No roommate.”

  Harvey didn’t say anything as he followed her inside, only looked around the small one-bedroom apartment. He was always looking at everything and she wondered what the hell he was trying to find.

  He wouldn’t notice anything interesting in the apartment. It was neat, but only because she owned so little. The worn and stained carpet was straddled by a few pieces of furniture that were all second- or third-hand. The scuffed beige walls were bare. The television in front of the saggy black couch was small and cheap, only displayed what the bent antenna next to it passed along. There was a microwave, a toaster, and a fifth of Jim Beam White on the six feet of laminated kitchen counter. That was it.

  “Nice place,” Harvey said as he closed the apartment door, his voice as flat as paper.

  Elle reached past him and flipped the deadbolt, grabbed him by the arm and led him to the kitchen. “Don’t bullshit a bullshitter, Harvey.”

  She pulled a couple of mismatched glasses from one kitchen cabinet and set them down on the counter, filled them halfway with bourbon. She picked up one glass for herself and pushed the other toward Harvey, who raised it and said, “Salute.”

  “Bottom’s up,” she replied, drained the glass, and returned it to the counter with a clink.

  Harvey took a sip and set the glass down gently.

  Elle poured herself a second and took him by the arm again. “Come on.”

  The inside of the bedroom was a little more personal, the room dominated by a large psychedelic tapestry hung on the wall behind the full-sized bed. She’d gotten the bed and the tapestry at the thrift store, along with a nightstand, a lamp, and a dresser. A stereo—also used—sat on the dresser along with stack after stack of jewel-cased albums. The only other thing in the room was a framed picture on the wall opposite the bed.

  Harvey glanced at the bed and the dresser, then went to the picture, which hung askew. He straightened it and examined the image, a snapshot of Elle standing behind her mom—who was sitting in the grass and glancing over her shoulder at her toddler—both of them smiling.

  Elle turned on the bedside lamp, then went back to the door and turned off the overhead light, leaving the room dim. She went to the dresser, drank a third of the bourbon before setting down the glass, and rifled through the CD’s.

  “That hair came straight from your mother,” Harvey said.

  “I didn’t get it from the family dog,” Elle said as she discarded yet another disc. She’d know what she was looking for when she found it.

  “She’s beautiful, just like you.”

  Elle felt her face flush, was glad her back was toward him. The picture was taken when Elle’s mother was twenty-three, probably during one of the few times she’d been around for more than a day or two before flitting off on another adventure. Elle had taken the photo with her when she left home at sixteen and it’d been the only constant in her life for the past ten years. “I already invited you into my bedroom, Mr. Keitel. You don’t have to work your way into my pants.”

  Harvey sat on the end of the bed. “How long have you been here?”

  She found the album she wanted—turned out it was an early Zeppelin—and put it in the stereo. “Since I started working at the Hill.”

  He didn’t respond and she wondered if he was waiting on more. Well, he’d keep on waiting. She hit play and turned the volume up to the level that was just below what would make the neighbors call the super.

  She stood in front of Harvey, the picture behind her, and undressed down to her underwear. He watched, his eyes expressionless and unflinching, taking her in the same way he’d examined the apartment and the picture. She could feel the coke starting to wear off, but the warm bourbon in her belly and the thumping music in her ears were almost enough to ignore it. One more distraction and she wouldn’t even notice as she came down.

  “You sure this is a good idea?” Harvey asked.

  “Good ideas are overrated,” she said as she straddled him and wrapped her arms around his neck. She inhaled, caught a whiff of cinnamon. “I want to. You want to. What else matters?
”

  His only answer was to pull her closer.

  They lay in the bed later, the stereo on a second disc and her glass empty, their naked limbs tangled together beneath the sheets. Normally she didn’t linger in bed with a man—it gave the wrong impression—but she couldn’t make herself move. Even the thought of the bourbon in the kitchen wasn’t enough to rouse her.

  She spoke first. “You think we did the right thing?”

  Harvey, who’d been staring at the ceiling, turned his head and examined her. “We did what we had to do.”

  “You sure?”

  “Yes. A few stitches, a headache, and they’ll be fine.”

  Elle contemplated that, then said, “I wish I had a cigarette. Do you smoke?”

  “Yeah. You need one?”

  “No. I smoked for a while but then the goddamn things got too expensive. Quitting wasn’t really a choice. I think about starting up again pretty often though.”

  She was rambling and knew it, but couldn’t stop herself. Harvey got out of the bed and gathered his clothes. His body was lean and fit.

  Like a greyhound, she thought as she watched him dress. Lithe. Fast. He hadn’t been tender during sex, but not rough either, had given as good as he’d gotten. She realized with surprise that she wanted to fuck him again.

  “I’ve gotta go,” he said, as he pulled on the boxer briefs she’d barely noticed earlier. “Hope you don’t mind.”

  She rolled onto her side to get a better view, hated herself for what she said next. “I’ll see you again?”

  “You won’t,” he said, as he pulled his shirt over his head. Pants followed and a moment later he sat on the edge of the bed and started pulling on shoes and socks, his back to her. “It’s best if we don’t ever see each other again.”

  Quiet Keitel said no gotta go go go… and the bourbon called out to her.

  Harvey glanced over his shoulder and it was hard to keep her face blank. “There’s really only one way we get into trouble for what happened tonight. You know what it is?”