Dorothy Parker's Elbow

by Kim Addonizio

  The tattooist had told him not to come until ten in the morning, but when he arrived at that hour, Parker was sitting in the dark hallway on the floor, waiting for him. He had decided upon getting up that, once the tattoo was on him, he would not look at it, that all his sensations of the day and night before were those of a crazy man and that he would return to doing things according to his own sound judgement.

  The artist began where he left off: “One thing I want to know,” he said presently as he worked over Parker’s back, “why do you want this on you? Have you gone and got religion? Are you saved?” he asked in a mocking voice.

  Parker’s throat felt salty and dry. “Naw,” he said, “I ain’t got no use for none of that. A man can’t save his self from whatever it is he don’t deserve none of my sympathy.” These words seemed to leave his mouth like wraiths and to evaporate at once as if he had never uttered them.

  “Then why…”

  “I married this woman that’s saved,” Parker said. “I never should have done it. I ought to leave her. She’s done gone and got pregnant.”

  “That’s too bad,” the artist said. “Then it’s her making you have this tattoo.”

  “Naw,” Parker said, “she don’t know nothing about it. It’s a surprise for her.”

  “You think she’ll like it and lay off you a while?”

  “She can’t hep herself,” Parker said. “She can’t say she don’t like the looks of God.” He decided he had told the artist enough of his business. Artists were all right in their place but he didn’t like them poking their noses into the affairs of regular people. “I didn’t get no sleep last night,” he said. “I think I’ll get some now”

  That closed the mouth of the artist but it did not bring him any sleep. He lay there, imagining how Sarah Ruth would be struck speechless by the face on his back and every now and then this would be interrupted by a vision of the tree of fire and his empty shoe burning beneath it.

  The artist worked steadily until nearly four o’clock, not stopping to have lunch, hardly pausing with the electric instrument except to wipe the dripping dye off Parker’s back as he went along. Finally he finished. “You can get up and look at it now,” he said.

  Parker sat up but he remained on the edge of the table.

  The artist was pleased with his work and wanted Parker to look at it at once. Instead Parker continued to sit on the edge of the table, bent forward slightly but with a vacant look. “What ails you?” the artist said. “Go look at it.”

  “Ain’t nothing ail me,” Parker said in a sudden belligerent voice. “That tattoo ain’t going nowhere. It’ll be there when I get there.” He reached for his shirt and began gingerly to put it on.

  The artist took him roughly by the arm and propelled him between the two mirrors. “Now look,” he said, angry at having his work ignored.

  Parker looked, turned white and moved away. The eyes in the reflected face continued to look at him—still, straight, all-demanding, enclosed in silence.

  “It was your idea, remember,” the artist said. “I would have advised something else.”

  Parker said nothing. He put on his shirt and went out the door while the artist shouted, “I’11 expect all of my money!”

  Parker headed toward a package shop on the corner. He bought a pint of whiskey, and took it into a nearby alley and drank it all in five minutes. Then he moved on to a pool hall nearby which he frequented when he came to the city. It was a well-lighted barnlike place with a bar up one side and gambling machines on the other and pool tables in the back. As soon as Parker entered, a large man in a red and black checkered shirt hailed him by slapping him on the back and yelling, “Yeyyyyyy boy! O. E. Parker!”

  Parker was not yet ready to be struck on the back. “Lay off,” he said, “I got a fresh tattoo there.”

  “What you got this time?” the man asked and then yelled to a few at the machines. “O.E.’s got him another tattoo.”

  “Nothing special this time,” Parker said and slunk over to a machine that was not being used.

  “Come on,” the big man said, “let’s have a look at O.Es tattoo,” and while Parker squirmed in their hands, they pulled up his shirt. Parker felt all the hands drop away instantly and his shirt fell again like a veil over the face. There was a silence in the pool room which seemed to Parker to grow from the circle around him until it extended to the foundations under the building and upward through the beams in the roof.

  Finally someone said, “Christ!” Then they all broke into noise at once. Parker turned around, an uncertain grin on his face.

  “Leave it to O.E.!” the man in the checkered shirt said. “That boy’s a real card!”

  “Maybe he’s gone and got religion,” someone yelled.

  “Not on your life,” Parker said.

  “O.E.’s got religion and is witnessing for Jesus, ain’t you, O.E.?” a little man with a piece of cigar in his mouth said wryly. “An o-riginal way to do it if I ever saw one.”

  “Leave it to Parker to think of a new one!” the fat man said.

  “Yyeeeeeeyyyyyyy boy!” someone yelled and they all began to whistle and curse in compliment until Parker said, “Aaa shut up.”

  “What’d you do it for?” somebody asked.

  “For laughs,” Parker said. “What’s it to you?”

  “Why ain’t you laughing then?” somebody yelled. Parker lunged into the midst of them and like a whirlwind on a summer’s day there began a fight that raged amid overturned tables and swinging fists until two of them grabbed him and ran to the door with him and threw him out. Then a calm descended on the pool hall as nerve shattering as if the long barnlike room were the ship from which Jonah had been cast into the sea.

  Parker sat for a long time on the ground in the alley behind the pool hall, examining his soul. He saw it as a spider web of facts and lies that was not at all important to him but which appeared to be necessary in spite of his opinion. The eyes that were now forever on his back were eyes to be obeyed. He was as certain of it as he had ever been of anything. Throughout his life, grumbling and sometimes cursing, often afraid, once in rapture, Parker had obeyed whatever instinct of this kind had come to him—in rapture when his spirit had lifted at the sight of the tattooed man at the fair, afraid when he had joined the navy, grumbling when he had married Sarah Ruth.

  The thought of her brought him slowly to his feet. She would know what he had to do. She would clear up the rest of it, and she would at least be pleased. It seemed to him that, all along, that was what he wanted, to please her. His truck was still parked in front of the building where the artist had his place, but it was not far away. He got in it and drove out of the city and into the country night. His head was almost clear of liquor and he observed that his dissatisfaction was gone, but he felt not quite like himself. It was as if he were himself but a stranger to himself, driving into a new country though everything he saw was familiar to him, even at night.

  He arrived finally at the house on the embankment, pulled the truck under the pecan tree and got out. He made as much noise as possible to assert that he was still in charge here, that his leaving her for a night without word meant nothing except it was the way he did things. He slammed the car door, stamped up the two steps and across the porch and rattled the door knob. It did not respond to his touch. “Sarah Ruth!” he yelled, “let me in.”

  There was no lock on the door and she had evidently placed the back of a chair against the knob. He began to beat on the door and rattle the knob at the same time.

  He heard the bed springs screak and bent down and put his head to the keyhole, but it was stopped up with paper. “Let me in!” he hollered, bamming on the door again. “What you got me locked out for?”

  A sharp voice close to the door said, “Who’s there?”

  “Me,” Parker said, “O. E.”

  He waited a moment.

  “Me,” he said impatiently, “O. E.”

  Still no sound from inside.

&nb
sp; He tried once more. “O. E.,” he said, bamming the door two or three more times. “O. E. Parker. You know me.”

  There was a silence. Then the voice said slowly, “I don’t know no O. E.”

  “Quit fooling,” Parker pleaded. “You ain’t got any business doing me this way. It’s me, old O.E., I’m back. You ain’t afraid of me.”

  “Who’s there?” the same unfeeling voice said.

  Parker turned his head as if he expected someone behind him to give him the answer. The sky had lightened slightly and there were two or three streaks of yellow floating above the horizon. Then as he stood there, a tree of light burst over the skyline.

  Parker fell back against the door as if he had been pinned there by a lance.

  “Who’s there?” the voice from inside said and there was a quality about it now that seemed final. The knob rattled and the voice said peremptorily, “Who’s there, I ast you?”

  Parker bent down and put his mouth near the stuffed keyhole. “Obadiah,” he whispered and all at once he felt the light pouring through him, turning his spider web soul into a perfect arabesque of colors, a garden of trees and birds and beasts.

  “Obadiah Elihue!” he whispered.

  The door opened and he stumbled in. Sarah Ruth loomed there, hands on her hips. She began at once, “That was no hefty blonde woman you was working for and you’ll have to pay her every penny on her tractor you busted up. She don’t keep insurance on it. She came here and her and me had us a long talk and I…”

  Trembling, Parker set about lighting the kerosene lamp.

  “What’s the matter with you, wasting that kerosene this near daylight?” she demanded. “I ain’t got to look at you.”

  A yellow glow enveloped them. Parker put the match down and began to unbutton his shirt.

  “And you ain’t going to have none of me this near morning,” she said.

  “Shut your mouth,” he said quietly. “Look at this and then I don’t want to hear no more out of you” He removed the shirt and turned his back to her.

  “Another picture,” Sarah Ruth growled. “I might have known you was off after putting some more trash on yourself.”

  Parker’s knees went hollow under him. He wheeled around and cried, “Look at it! Don’t just say that! Look at it!”

  “I done looked,” she said.

  “Don’t you know who it is?” he cried in anguish.

  “No, who is it?” Sarah Ruth said. “It ain’t anybody I know.”

  “It’s him,” Parker said.

  “Him who?”

  “God!” Parker cried.

  “God? God don’t look like that!”

  “What do you know how he looks?” Parker moaned. “You ain’t seen him.”

  “He don’t… look,” Sarah Ruth said. “He’s a spirit. No man shall see his face.”

  “Aw listen,” Parker groaned, “this is just a picture of him.”

  “Idolatry!” Sarah Ruth screamed. “Idolatry! Enflaming yourself with idols under every green tree! I can put up with lies and vanity but I don’t want no idolator in this house!” and she grabbed up the broom and began to thrash him across the shoulders with it.

  Parker was too stunned to resist. He sat there and let her beat him until she had nearly knocked him senseless and large welts had formed on the face of the tattooed Christ. Then he staggered up and made for the door.

  She stamped the broom two or three times on the floor and went to the window and shook it out to get the taint of him off it. Still gripping it, she looked toward the pecan tree and her eyes hardened still more. There he was—who called himself Obadiah Elihue—leaning against the tree, crying like a baby.

  “In 1992, I had the tattoo on

  my arm redone…”

  LESLEE BECKER

  In 1992, I had the tattoo on my arm redone by a woman in Denver named Lady. The original tattoo was of a cowboy on a bucking bronco, but it really looked like an Eastern European country. A waitress in a local café asked me what my tattoo was supposed to be, and I told her it was a cowboy on a horse. “Hon,” she said, “the head don’t look right.”

  I now have a lizard on my arm, and so far, no one has questioned what it’s supposed to be.

  Ten years I’ve had this lizard, but recently went into a new parlor for a consultation and advice about getting some touch-up work on what was once a colorful design. The tattoo artist and his associates looked at me as if I might be a specimen. His shop was filled with tribes of curious young people, all of them glancing at my tattoo and letting their eyes travel up to walls filled with samples of fabulous tattoo selections. I had the feeling that I’d hurt the tattoo artist’s trade that day, and that he was regarding me as someone who did not practice sound dermatological habits.

  I aim to return to the tattoo artist once my cash flow and ego problems improve. I’ll have him add highlights to my lizard, and maybe I can pretend I’m not at a place called Millennium, but at the tattoo parlor I visited in my youth. It was located in an old brick building, third floor, at the end of a hallway containing a warren of abused-looking doors, behind which might’ve been private detectives, dentists, and fugitives. The humble sign said ARBUCKLE’S TATTOOS. Below this was another sign: ARBUCKLE’S TATTOOS REMOVED.

  Zowie

  KAROL GRIFFIN

  “You look like a knocked-up hillbilly,” Savic says. I am wearing green socks, combat boots, a black sweater that hangs funny, and a pinkish brocade dress that is ankle length in the back and barely to my knees in the front. Seven months pregnant. When I cross my arms over the wriggling mound that is both me and not me, tattoos shoot out from my sleeves. This looks somehow obscene, and I find myself wondering about the absent father and his tattooed arms that are both like and not like my own. I wonder if he thinks of me when he looks at my artwork on his arms, or if he only thinks of me when he cracks his knuckles before curling his hands into fists.

  Savic looks out the door of the tattoo shop at the snow blowing sideways across the parking lot, takes a long drag on his cigarette, and closes his eyes like he’s getting ready for something big. “Picture it,” he says. “I’m a traveling salesman and you’re standing on a porch in that outfit with a Coca-Cola in one hand and a little black dog tucked under your arm. As I’m walking up the lane, you say ‘Sho’ is hot today.’” Savic’s falsetto Appalachian impersonation fades away, and he is smiling to himself.

  “Savic!” Karen looks like an angel, her beautiful face framed by cotton-candy pink hair. She’s not mad at him. She’s just concerned that her husband will offend someone, which he sometimes does, but usually on accident. I don’t take his daily foray into weird sex fantasies seriously. It’s more outrageous than obscene. But Karen worries.

  “What’s the dog for?” I ask. Savic grins and lights another cigarette.

  Savic is my boss at Zowie Tattoo, and I adore him, even though he is the tiniest bit scary, a whole lot moody, and prone to verbalizing lurid thoughts. His usual work uniform is this: black leather pants, a red lamé shirt, and a black leather Confederate cap with sunglasses clamped above the brim. He is from Georgia, and everyone in Wyoming who isn’t wearing Wrangler jeans and a cowboy hat looks like a hillbilly of one sort or another. It’s the opposite of an insult, seeing as how Savic comes from hillbilly stock himself. It’s just that Wyoming isn’t quite what he expected.

  Shortly before Zowie Tattoo opened, the shop was burglarized. The burglars took everything—the designs off the walls, the machines, needles, ink. This was the third tattoo shop burglary in as many months, and the police didn’t seem to be taking this sort of crime very seriously. Savic and Karen were determined to open the shop, no matter what. They used up the last of their savings to replace the stolen equipment, and tattoo artists across the country contributed whatever they could. Cash, flash, an autoclave. Business has been good, but not good enough. The shop rent is exorbitant, especially for a gas station turned office space in desperate need of environmental remediation. Eventually,
all our best efforts won’t be enough, and Savic and Karen will move bitterly back east. But for now, the big question is WHY. The shop resonates with Savic’s plaintive mantra—I just want to draw pictures on people—which doesn’t seem like too much to ask.

  I knew who Savic was long before he arrived. Pick up almost any tattoo magazine, and you’ll see his work. I met with Savic and Karen at the Buckhorn Bar a month before they moved west. Sure, we agreed. Lots of clients. Lots of turnover. A great place for a tattoo shop. My portfolio had been lost somewhere, so I spread out my meager collection of loose photos on a sticky bar table. Savic nodded approvingly.

  “Why’d you quit?” he asked.

  “The first time, I got married and moved to San Francisco. The second time—” There weren’t really words to explai? it, but Savic and Karen were looking at me expectantly. I left out the part about the absent father and chose a reason that was less personal and easier to articulate. “There’s this guy who works at Mini Mart,” I said. “His face has been pierced so many times that it looks as though he’s had an unfortunate encounter with a Slinky. And he’s got a Maori moko design tattooed on his chin.”

  “And?” Savic looked confused.

  “He’s co-opted a culture he knows nothing about,” I said, “and, he’s got a tattoo right in the middle of his face. Yet he looks somehow confused about why he’s working the graveyard shift at a convenience store. I got tired of contributing to other people’s lapses of judgment.”