by Joey Bush
THE SEXY TATTOOIST
By Joey Bush and Claire Adams
This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places and incidents are products of the writer's imagination or have been used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, actual events, locales or organizations is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2016 Claire Adams
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1.
Graham
“A rose.” The girl gestured vaguely to her tanned, freckled cleavage, of which there was plenty. “Right here.”
I tried not to roll my eyes, which was generally a frowned upon reaction when a customer was telling you what they wanted you to tattoo on their body.
“Okay,” I nodded and tried to arrange my features into an expression that suggested I thought getting a rose tattooed on her cleavage wasn’t a completely overdone and tired idea. Not that someone like her would care—I could tell her mind was made up about it, regardless of what anyone said.
“A red one with thorns,” she said after a moment. “You know, so it’s like symbolic of who I am … I have a hard exterior but inside I’m like—”
“I know exactly what you mean.” It was two o’clock in the afternoon, but still way too early in the day for this kind of talk. “Give me a minute and let me sketch something up for you.”
“Great. I’m so excited to see how this will turn out.” She grinned, lines creasing the corners of her eyes. She wasn’t so much a girl as a woman who was still trying to be a girl, with her tight tank top and short shorts. She probably dedicated a considerable amount of time to working out, and it wouldn’t be long before she delved into the world of plastic surgery, if she hadn’t yet already. “You come highly recommended, you know,” she said, widening her eyes at me.
“Oh yeah?”
“Yeah. You tattooed my best friend, Stephanie. She got a ... like a flower or something, half a flower, really. No, it was a lotus. I don’t totally remember, but it was here,” she gestured to her inner forearm, right below the wrist, “and you did it this special way, I forget what it’s called? Jab? Stab? No, not stab—”
“Stick and poke,” I said. “Or hand poked.” That nasal, high-pitched voice of hers was starting to shred my eardrums.
“That’s it! It was so beautiful. I might get something like that next time, but I’ve always wanted a rose, so I’m going with that first. But I really do like the idea of the stick and poke tattoos. It’s like, going back to the basics or something. That’s why Stephanie said she wanted one.”
My thighs were covered with the rudimentary stick and poke tattoos I’d been giving myself since I was a preteen, sitting in my small, shitty bedroom, my stepfather, Wade, taking up all the space in our small, shitty living room, watching TV in a haze of cigarette smoke, surrounded by crushed PBR cans. I used a sewing needle, a chopstick, and some Bic ink and decorated my legs with all the things I wanted to say to Wade but couldn’t: Fuck off & die, Eat a dick, You are a cunt. Oh, I’d said a few things to him before, but that had always resulted in black eyes, broken ribs, a few concussions. The worst of it was when I was ten and he hit me in the face with a two by four. It didn’t knock me out, but it left a spectacularly jagged scar right along my jawline, which I’ve since erased by growing a beard. The last fucking thing I wanted was a daily reminder of Wade’s existence every time I looked in the mirror.
It only took me a few minutes to sketch the rose exactly to this particular customer’s liking—so she said—and then she sat in the chair and I got to work. She kept up a steady stream of chatter that was easy enough to nod mindlessly to while tuning out at the same time. I felt a building sense of discontent, some sort of strange malaise, even though I knew how little sense that made. On Point Tattoo—my very own shop—was doing better than I ever could have imagined, and showing no signs of plateauing any time soon. I’d been doing so well, in fact, that eight months ago, I’d hired a second artist, an art school dropout named Helena with an uncanny ability to recreate, from memory, pretty much anything she saw in exacting, photographic detail. She was better than I was, though that wasn’t something I was willing to admit out loud. At least not yet. She probably knew it, but she hadn’t brought it up, and she didn’t seem like she was one of those people that needed to prove something about themselves. Besides, it would be good for business, which was what I told my buddy Todd when he started giving me shit about it.
“When I think of On Point, I think of you, Graham,” he’d said. “Not Helena. Which, by the way, is way too an exotic of a name for someone with as plain a face as she has.”
It was true: Helena was a plain Jane with spaghetti legs and no tits to speak of. She had brown hair she wore in a no-nonsense braid and had a penchant for wearing baggy, skater shorts and white tank tops that only accentuated the fact that she was flat chested. I guessed she was a lesbian, but we didn’t talk about our sex lives.
But this discontentedness, I’d say that started not long after Helena started working for me, though I didn’t think the two were related. No, it had more to do with the fact that I’d broken things off with Danielle, and that Danielle also happened to be a bit mentally unbalanced. That’s putting it nicely. She turned out to be a complete psycho. Not a dangerous one, but I hadn’t ruled out the possibility that her pregnancy and subsequent miscarriage were actually figments of her imagination. There was also the fact that we’d both discussed, at length, the fact that neither of us was really interested in being in a relationship and would prefer to keep things casual. At some point, she’d changed her mind, though she hadn’t bothered to let me know it.
Other than that, though, there was absolutely no reason for me to be feeling anything but satisfaction with the way things were working out in my life so far—successful business, fulfilling work, as much sex as I wanted. Women like tattoo artists, and women like beards. Even the women that you might peg as too straight-laced to get an actual tattoo themselves. There were a couple weeks this past winter—before Danielle—when I slept with a different woman every night for two weeks straight, culminating in a face slap when I accidentally called Hattie (Night 14) “Katie” (Night 2).
“Oh, wow, that looks great.” I’d finished with the rose and my customer was beaming down appreciatively at her cleavage. The skin was red and puffy around the outline of the rose, but it’d come out as good as you could expect something like that to look. As I taped a gauze pad to her, I gave her the spiel about the “dos” and “don’ts” of caring for her new tattoo.
“I’m going to tell all my friends about you,” she said. “I hope you’re ready for an onslaught of business.”
She reached out and touched my arm, letting her fingers linger there just a few seconds too long. Long enough for me to know I could suggest we take a detour to the back room and she’d be on her back in two seconds flat.
But ... no. I didn’t find her that attractive, and there was some part of me that had begun to suspect my feelings of ill ease were stemming from all the sleeping around I’d been doing. I hadn’t really investigated these feelings any further, mostly because I wasn’t the sort to sit around analyzing my moods and shit, but it was getting a bit harder to ignore. It was like an annoying, yappy dog, or a mosquito that kept buzzing by your ear: You’d try to ignore it, tune it out, but it was right there, demanding that you pay attention.
I didn�
�t want to have to think about any of that, though, and I’d put it off for as long as I could, the hope being that eventually the feeling would just disappear. Things were good right now—as good as I could really expect them to be—and I planned to do whatever I could to make sure it stayed that way.
*****
I was just adding some black power lines to one of my regular customer’s latest—an elongated koi fish devouring its own tail—when Todd showed up. He gave me a mock salute when he saw I was with a customer and sat down in one of the lounge chairs up front to wait for me to finish.
“You up for a ride tomorrow?” he asked once we were alone in the shop. “I’m thinking twenty, twenty-five miles.”
“Sure,” I said, though it hadn’t been on my agenda. Todd and I were somewhat unlikely pals, at least looks-wise: he was your typical, clean-cut jock, a category 1 mountain bike racer. Maybe more surprisingly, I was also a cat 1 mountain bike racer, though I wasn’t affiliated with any club and I sure as shit didn’t wear a spandex kit. I ran flat pedals and a rode an all-mountain, full-suspension bike, which pissed off a lot of the cross-country racers who actually took the racing circuit seriously. Todd, though, found it more amusing than anything else, and for that reason, we hung out and went riding together fairly often.
“Cool. Oh, and if you’re not working tomorrow night, Amanda said she wanted to hang out. I’m supposed to forward her number to you.” Todd gave me an expectant look when I didn’t reply. “Amanda? Remember? Tall, blonde chick? Legs for days? Those tits that look fake but aren’t?”
I stifled a laugh. “Wait—you’re trying to hook me up with a girl you’ve already been with?”
“Who says I’ve been with her?”
“Uh ... you just did, if you’re telling me her tits look fake but aren’t.”
“We’ve never hooked up, though not because I haven’t tried. I just know I’m not her type. She likes the bearded tattooed guys. Know anyone who fits that description?”
“So, how do you know her tits are real?”
“I can just tell. But if you want ... you can verify it for me.” He pulled his phone out of pocket. “Here, let me send you her number.”
I didn’t say anything as he started tapping on the screen. I’d let him send me the number, but I probably wouldn’t call her, amazing tits or not.
“She’ll be expecting a call from you,” he said.
“You told her this? You want to be my personal assistant or something?”
He grinned. “I’m far too busy to be anyone’s personal assistant. But I’m always happy to help a bro get laid.”
“I don’t actually need any help in that area.”
“I know. But I figured after all the shit with Danielle, you at least deserved to sleep with someone who wasn’t a total head case.”
The thing was, I’d already slept with a few girls since Danielle. The sex itself had been great, but the other stuff ... not so much. One of them had a boyfriend, who somehow found out and had come down to the shop ready to fight, but once he got sight of me, he’d quickly changed his mind. The other girl had a four-year-old son, and while I certainly didn’t have anything against kids, I sure as hell didn’t want to be the step-father she was so obviously looking for. And the third girl had just been whiny and clingy and completely insecure, in spite of having supermodel looks.
I wouldn’t be able to properly explain it to Todd—and we didn’t talk about that shit really, anyway—but I wasn’t going to call Amanda, because I wanted a breather from all the bullshit. This was why, I suspected, that people got divorced after thirty-five years of marriage: at some point, you just got fed up with all the shit that some people brought to the table. I’d never been in a long-term relationship, but even the most casual of relationships could still come with strings attached.
So, what if, just for this summer, I took a break from all that? It’s not like I wouldn’t have plenty to do, with it being the shop’s busy season and the height of the mountain bike racing season. It would be like one of those thirty-day challenges that people are always posting about on Facebook—except instead of having firmer abs or being able to do a plank for two minutes, by the end of the summer, I might have some sort of peace of mind, which, after all the shit I’d been through, didn’t sound too bad at all.
2.
Chloe
I swear, Tara had some sort of psychic abilities or something.
She had texted me a few days ago about when I planned to get to my parents’ summer house, and I’d written back something sort of noncommittal: Not sure, still have some packing to do and other stuff to take care of. I’ll text you when I get there.
This wasn’t a lie; I had to clean out my studio and then go back to my apartment and tidy up a little bit there, too. Freshman year of college, I thought that I could do the Airbnb thing—rent out my little, Back Bay apartment to travelers, maybe to people on a budget or something, with Boston prices being so expensive—but my dad vetoed the idea the second he caught wind of it.
“You have no idea the sorts of people that might be living there,” he’d said, giving me one of his stern looks that still had the ability to make my throat go dry. “We’re not a charity, Chloe.”
What could I say to that? He was the one footing the bill for the apartment, so there wasn’t much arguing I could do. He and my mother already didn’t approve of me majoring in art; where was the money in that? That’s what they both wanted to know—neither of them saying, of course, that only the really talented or really lucky people ever made good money in art. Neither of which they thought I was, though they didn’t come out and say it.
But anyway. Tara. I had planned to give her a call a few days after I arrived on Cape Cod, to give myself a little bit of quiet time, because anyone who’d ever met her knew that Tara was anything but quiet. I figured I’d check out a few art galleries, treat myself to a latte and a new book, and spend a few mornings at the beach, zoning out to the sounds of the waves and the seagulls.
I’d only just pulled into the gravel driveway when my phone went off. It was Tara. I let it go to voicemail, only to get a text message a few seconds later:
Call me the second you arrive!
And just like that: instantaneous guilt. There was no reason for it, but I was already feeling bad for not calling her back. I turned the key in the ignition and sat there for a moment. Tara was just one of those people who was really good at getting what she wanted. She lived in New York, but our fathers had been playing golf together for about as long as we’d been alive. Her parents had a summer house a quarter mile from ours, and Tara and I had, by default, spent our summers growing up together.
If I didn’t call Tara back now, she’d probably end up driving by and seeing my car, or, she’d keep calling/texting. I sighed and picked up the phone. So much for a few days of quiet.
“Chloe!” she exclaimed. “Are you here?”
“Just got in,” I said. I got out of the car and went around to the trunk to get my suitcase. I could at least start unpacking while we talked.
“I’ve got impeccable timing!” I could practically hear her grin.
“Yeah, you do—I mean, I literally just pulled in.”
“Well, that’s perfect. That means you haven’t made any plans for tonight, right? Don’t let your mom talk you into going to that wine tasting tonight. My mom already tried to convince me that it would be exactly how I wanted to spend my Friday night, but honestly, that’s the last thing I feel like doing. And you’re twenty-one now! We can actually go to a bar or something.”
I’d turned twenty-one back in April, but I still hadn’t been to a bar. Pathetic, I know, but I’d been so busy with school that there just hadn’t been any time. And I knew Tara would be dragging me out to all the bars and clubs she could this summer—she’d had a fake I.D. since she was eighteen and knew all the best places to go.
“What did you have in mind?”
I walked up to the side entrance and went
inside. My parents’ summer house was the sort of place you’d expect to see in some sort of luxury magazine, and I’d always felt like something of an imposter when I was here, despite the fact that I’d been coming here most of my life. The house was spacious and airy, with big windows looking out onto Oyster Harbors. My mother didn’t work, but she did have an eye for interior decorating and liked to say that if she were to ever enter the workforce, she’d be a design consultant. In the meantime, though, she was more than satisfied to tastefully furnish the summer home here and their apartment in New York.
“What did I have in mind?” Tara repeated. “Well, quite a lot, actually!”
“We do have the whole summer ahead of us—we don’t have to cram everything into one night,” I said, already feeling tired. She was one of those people who just seemed to have an endless supply of energy.
“I know we don’t have to do everything in one night, but we need our first night to be something spectacular, just to set the tone. Okay? And you better believe I’m going to get laid—I saw on Facebook Michael is still in Paris with that bitch, apparently still having the time of their lives. I need to meet a guy who’s even hotter than Michael and post a shit load of pictures so he can see that I’m completely over him and have moved on to better things.”
“Michael was an ass,” I said. “And you’re better off without him. And why are you Facebook-stalking him, anyway?” I’d never been so relieved to hear that someone had been broken up with as I was when Tara called to tell me Michael had dumped her. He’d spent part of the summer with her last year, and there was something incredibly unsettling about him, despite his refined manners and fashion-model looks. He was the sort of guy my own parents hoped I’d end up with—a fact that they’d brought up endlessly last summer.
“I’m not stalking him,” Tara said, a hint of indignation in her voice. “The photos popped up on my feed and I checked them out. She’s hot, but not that hot. Anyway. You know how competitive Michael is; I just need to find someone better looking than him and sleep with him and that’ll be that.” She sounded infinitely optimistic, like it would be no trouble at all. Actually, for her, it probably wouldn’t be. “Enough about him. You and I are going out tomorrow night. Don’t make any other plans. We’re going to properly celebrate your twenty-first.”
