Gypsy Blood

by Vernon, Steve

  She’d be hungry too.

  You mean thirsty.

  Carnival counted faster.

  Chollo walked in. The door was locked so he must have picked the lock. Or maybe he had his own key. Carnival hadn’t heard a crash so he probably hadn’t kicked it down. Still, you could never tell with Chollo.

  What’s to tell? This one wears his mysteries in wide open sight, as ugly and plain as homemade soup.

  “Got beer?” Chollo asked.

  “How do you know? Can you smell a six-pack?”

  “My secret-cider-senses tell me that something has successfully fermented. Are they cold?”

  “Soon,” Carnival said.

  “How soon?”

  “I’ve got 3800 more Mississippi to go.”

  “Count faster,” Chollo urged. “Think cold thoughts.”

  Carnival tried, but all he could think of was Maya. He wasn’t certain if that thought was hot or cold

  “Are you feeling strong?” Carnival asked.

  Chollo nodded grimly.

  “Let’s drink it warm.”

  Carnival opened the freezer and took the six pack out. He yanked two tall bottles from their cardboard cage and slid the remainder back into the refrigerator. It would take longer to chill but he didn’t want to take the chance of them freezing. The sight of Chollo crying over the lost beer would be too much to bear.

  “Let’s drink them outside,” Carnival suggested. “We can scandalize the neighbors.”

  Chollo smiled.

  “We’d be fools not to.”

  It was a warm evening. The streetlights hadn’t turned on yet. Carnival smelled a balcony barbecue up the road. Roast pig or maybe the sausage house was burning down.

  The doorway to the upstairs floor had a separate entrance with three neat little concrete steps leading up to it, just perfect for sitting. Carnival didn’t figure the tattooist would mind. If he did Carnival would sic Chollo on him. Maybe take a few bets on the outcome, two falls out of three.

  Don King had better watch his fat ass. My son the entrepreneur makes bookie dreams.

  “You take care of what needed doing today?” Chollo asked.

  “Yes and no,” Carnival answered.

  “Yes and no?”

  “One thing leads to another.”

  “It surely does.”

  Carnival took a swallow. The beer wasn’t bad warm. Maybe the British were on to something.

  “Did you get the part?” Carnival asked.

  Chollo shook his head.

  “God damned director wouldn’t know talent if it tore his throat out.”

  Carnival didn’t ask, because Chollo just might have.

  For the time being Carnival just kept staring down the street. He saw somebody coming up the sidewalk, a kid, maybe eighteen, maybe twenty, about as long and skinny as a malnourished soda straw.

  “Lookee yonder,” Carnival warned Chollo. “There’s a-going to be a showdown.”

  “Someone best call the marshal,” Chollo drawled.

  They tried unsuccessfully not to laugh when the young man walked up.

  “Is this where the tattooist lives?”

  The kid wanted a tattoo. Chollo started singing softly to himself. Lydia the tattooed lady. Groucho Marx would have been so proud. Carnival recognized the tune and tried his best not to grin.

  The kid didn’t flinch. Carnival had to give the kid some credit. It took a lot of nerve to walk up to a disreputable looking gypsy palm reader and a two hundred and thirty pound thug singing “Lydia the Tattooed Lady” slightly under his breath and ask them for directions.

  Chollo kept singing, and to make matters worse Poppa joined in on the chorus.

  Carnival gave Chollo an elbow in the ribs that he barely felt. The kid repeated his question. He must have been shy, because he had a hard time looking directly at Carnival as he spoke.

  Chollo kept singing. Poppa began to harmonize. The two of them were nearly in tune. Chollo even stepped his pitch up a notch, as if to accommodate the old gypsy.

  “Night of the Living Undead Smothers Brothers,” Carnival muttered.

  “Huh?” the kid said.

  Carnival wondered if the kid knew the difference between the Marx Brothers and the Smothers Brothers.

  Carnival fixed the kid with a hard steady glance.

  “Are you sure you want to go up there, kid?” Carnival asked. “A tattoo is forever, you know? Once you start a thing like that there’s no turning back,”

  Chollo and Poppa kept on singing. Carnival tried to ignore the two unlikely troubadours, which was about as easy as ignoring a burning three ring circus. The kid nodded in that curt surly teenage fashion. Fuck you old man, I’m still prepubescent and damn proud of every pimple stained inch of it. Carnival smiled. Was he ever that young?

  “He’s upstairs,” Carnival gestured with a hook of his thumb. “Go on up. There’s a bell upstairs. Ring it and he’ll answer.”

  He was making it all up. He’d never been to see the tattooist. He figured it didn’t pay to get to know folks you’d only have to say goodbye to, sooner or later. The kid squeezed past leaning away from Chollo’s singing. Carnival didn’t blame him. The sight of the short ugly thug crooning softly to himself was enough to scare a drunk man sober. It was even worse hearing Poppa. Carnival stared closely at Chollo, trying to decide if the ugly thug could actually hear Carnival’s Poppa or not.

  It was hard to decide.

  You never could tell with Chollo.

  The kid closed the door behind him.

  “Well you were a lot of help,” Carnival said to Chollo.

  “You can learn a lot from Lydia,” Chollo deadpanned.

  “Another beer?” Carnival asked.

  “Can’t fly on one wing.”

  Carnival went and got the beer, not wanting to disturb the concert. When he got back Chollo and Poppa were half way through “A sailor’s not a sailor until a sailor’s been tattooed.”

  “Careful,” Carnival warned. “There’s no telling what the singing of show tunes can lead to.”

  Chollo stuck out his tongue. It made him look like a Maori on steroids.

  “You ever think of doing that?” Carnival asked, sitting back down.

  “Getting a tattoo? How do you know I don’t already have one? Tattoos are like secrets that way. There’s lots of ways to keep them hidden.”

  “Sure, but did you ever do it?”

  “Not me. If I want to get cut I’ll run down Cage Square shouting racial slurs. They’ll cut you up permanently down there, and they’ll do it for free.”

  They sat in silence and finished the second set of beers. Chollo rose up and took the last two beers from out of the refrigerator without asking. He sat down and popped them open, handing Carnival the last one.

  “So what’s going on?” Chollo asked.

  “Going on?”

  “Look. I’m not stupid. You’re sitting there with a wound on your throat that looks like you’ve had a run in with a sabre-toothed tiger.”

  Carnival touched his throat. “I cut myself shaving,” he started to say, but it felt different this time.

  He could feel the soft jagged borders of an open wound.

  “Were you shaving with a broken bottle?” Chollo asked.

  Carnival stared at his fingertips. They felt wet, but he saw nothing.

  “Are you okay?” Chollo asked.

  Carnival tasted his fingertips. Lightly, like he was kissing them. He tasted blood.

  Open your eyes, boy. It’s as clear as the tattoos on Lydia’s backside.

  Carnival looked into a curtained window. He could see his reflection. As far as he could tell his throat was unmarked. He stood there, staring, not knowing what to make of it.

  “Are you going to tell me what’s going on?” Chollo asked. “Or am I going to have to yank the truth out of your larynx?”

  “You won’t believe it,” Carnival said.

  “Try me,” Chollo replied.

  So Carni
val told him what had happened.

  He told him it all. Up above their heads he could hear the patient gnawing of the tattooist’s needle, working away at the kid.

  Carnival hoped the kid was having a better time of it than he was.

  Chapter 23

  Needle Work

  The shadows of the prison bars striped the kid’s bare bent back like intangible lines of latitude. Warren Bassie liked the look of it. It was like the kid’s back was already graphed and gridded for the tattoo needle. Warren was an appreciator of fine art - graffiti, centerfolds and especially tattoos.

  “A man’s not a man until he’s wearing some ink,” he always said.

  So he’d set out to build Enrico’s character by giving him his first tattoo. The fucking punk kid ought to be grateful. Warren often said as much.

  And he said it again.

  “He ought to thank us,” Warren said.

  The tattooist Warren had hired for a carton of cigarettes and the promise of continued life, nodded. The tattooist wasn’t really listening to what Warren was saying. He was concentrating on the job at hand, working the needle into the boy’s flesh and trying not to listen to the screams of protest.

  Tattooing took concentration and delicacy. Especially with the home made gear he had to work with. The tattooist had often bragged how he’d practiced on oranges from the commissary to get used to the feel of working on skin.

  Still, he was used to working on arms, backs, legs and chest. The butt was a whole lot more sensitive. The kid, Enrico, kept on screaming. It didn’t matter at this time of the day. The guards were thinking about their shift being over. They were thinking about their long awaited supper. They were thinking about anything but what was going on in the cells below.

  The two hired cons holding the boy down, grinned. They were enjoying this. They enjoyed anything that didn’t consist of personal risk. Holding down some punk bitch was a cheap rush.

  The tattooist’s needle was homemade, from a guitar string sharpened on a brick, the hollow shaft of a ballpoint pen, a slot car motor and a nine volt battery. He’d worked with cruder implements in the past when he’d had do. He’d done it by hand, with a safety pin and ink he’d made from ashes and toothpaste. He was an artist.

  Warren watched him work. It was a bonus, like coming twice. He got to see his property being marked and he got to see some tat work. He’d used the little artist in the past. He had the phrase “100% PURE” inked on his right bicep, to show the world that his blood was pure anglo. He had a picture on his chest of a prison block wall with bricks falling outward to show his need to be free. That last one was a lie. He liked it way too much in the joint to ever want to get back outside. In here, he was a king, of sorts. A small king, but a king none the less.

  He didn’t have any ink on his back. He didn’t like having anyone back there for any amount of time. The tattooist kept working away. The kid kept screaming into the shirt they were holding over his mouth. The sound made Warren’s cock stand up and quiver.

  He stroked it thoughtfully through the fabric of his trousers.

  He unzipped himself, notch by notch, with each lazy stroke of his tattooed hand.

  And slowly, like the hand of god in an old time movie, the tattooed words formed upon Enrico’s butt – PROPERTY OF WARREN T. BASSIE.

  Chapter 24

  More Needle Work

  Andrew Morton picked at the puckered white crown of a pimple and stared at the wall full of colorful designs. The place looked like a fucking freak show. Dragons, and panthers and mermaids. Hey cool, there was a knife through a burning skull.

  Far fucking out.

  “How much does a tattoo cost?”

  The old tattooist stared at Andrew. Andrew didn’t like that. He didn’t like the old guy’s face. Dark, like he’d rubbed it in dirt. He looked like a Pollack or one of them Lithuanian assholes. Maybe an Iraqi. Yeah that was it. Probably a fucking raghead terrorist. Maybe he had a fucking bomb under his bed.

  Cool.

  Andrew didn’t like the way the old guy looked at him. Like he was hungry. Like a coyote staring at a nice plump roadrunner. The old guy was a freaking old pervert. A homo, probably. Andrew thought about leaving. It had been bad enough getting past those two assholes on the front steps. The big guy hadn’t been bad, just singing some shit assed song about tattoos. It was the other guy that had nearly got to him. The way his throat looked. For just a half a minute it had looked like it was torn out, like he was talking through a frigging wound.

  Fuck it. It was just a trick of the light. He wasn’t ready to punk out now.

  “Not too much,” the old guy said. “Probably you’ve got enough.”

  It sounded like he meant it. Cool. If the old bastard was stupid enough to sell his work for cheap then Andrew was sure as hell interested. He’d tried the fancier shops downtown but they wanted a lot of cash. Too fucking expensive for what he wanted. He just wanted to make Angela Devough say he was cool.

  “It depends what you want.”

  “I want a web on my face. Like Spiderman. That’d be cool.”

  That was another thing. Most of the tattoo places he’d talked to wouldn’t touch the face, especially not on a high school kid. So Andrew came to the rough side of town. He wasn’t scared. Not with a jack knife in his pocket. Besides, he knew tae kwan do. He’d been taking lessons for two whole months. He was freaking awesome deadly.

  So he came to this shop. A walk up, for God’s sake, upstairs from some bullshit fortune teller. What a fucking laugh. Ask about our fucking rainy day special.

  “Are you for real?” Andrew asked. “I mean, do you really do this shit?”

  The tattooist rolled up his sleeve. His skin was all cracked like a lizard and covered in maybe a hundred dozen pictures. Snakes and bats and lizards and octopuses all tangled up in one long fucking knot like every groaty creature in creation had gathered together on the old man’s walls for a midsummer’s gangbang.

  “Cool,” Andrew said, drawing out the middle vowels so that they sounded like a cow mooing. Rico had taught him that. He’d said that it was the cool way to say the word.

  “Sit down,” The old man said - gesturing towards a chair that looked like something Andrew’s grandparents might have sat in.

  “How much is this going to cost?”

  “How much do you have?”

  Is he for fucking real?

  “Thirty dollars,” Andrew said.

  He had over fifty in his pocket. Twelve that he’d saved up, twenty that he’d stolen from his mother’s purse and another twenty that Rico had loaned him but there was no fucking way he was telling this old coot how much he really had. Fucking old bastard might want to rob him. Feel him up and rob him.

  Fuck that. The old prick was too old for fucking Viagra. There wasn’t any lead in his pencil, no way for fucking sure. Hell, as old as he was he was probably using a mechanical pencil. He grinned but wiped it away quickly. He didn’t want to fuck up the deal by laughing at the old guy.

  “Thirty is good.”

  Fuck. This was like robbery. The shops downtown had wanted three hundred bucks for what Andrew was after. But what if it hurt? This wasn’t his shoulder he was talking about. This was his fucking face.

  “Is this going to hurt?”

  “No worse than a shave,” the old man said.

  That didn’t comfort Andrew much since he was barely old enough to grow peach fuzz.

  “Sit,” the old man ordered.

  Fuck. What’s he doing giving orders like that? Yet he sat. He told himself it was because he had balls. One tough fucker, that was Andrew as far as he saw himself. He told himself he was just going to do this. Like the man said, fear was not a factor here. But the truth of it was, he sat down because he no longer had a choice.

  The old man leaned over. Like a street magician, he produced a long thin needle from beneath that pig-sack of a jacket, and poked it deep into Andrew’s neck.

  “Hey,” Andrew flinched. “T
hat fucking hurts.”

  “Does it now? Does it really?”

  Andrew stopped for a minute. Fuck. He couldn’t feel his face. Like when the dentist pumped that frigging Novocain into his jaw. He’d gone numb.

  “No,” Andrew corrected himself. “It doesn’t hurt at all.”

  The old man smiled. It was like watching a cat smile at an unguarded fish tank.

  “Like the doctor, boy, before the operation.” he said, tapping the head of the needle. Andrew felt it like a dull wiggle. “I’ve studied acupuncture, as well as skin illustration. I use the needles to remove any pain.”

  “You could have warned me.”

  “Would you have let me slide it in you?”

  Andrew had to admit he probably wouldn’t have allowed it. The old fart slid another needle in, down closer to Andrew’s neck. Andrew felt nothing.

  “See? Painless. Like curare.”

  The old fuck was right. He couldn’t feel a thing. Like when he got pins and needles, to the max. The old guy slid another needle into Andrew’s neck. Just beneath the chin, between the jugular and carotid blood pipe.

  “Cool,” Andrew said. He knew he probably sounded like a dork with his mouth all buzzed out and stuck up like this but there wasn’t any other word for it.

  The needles were cool.

  Numbing.

  Paralyzing.

  Thirteen needles in all, each inserted at a critical nerve point, until the boy lay before the old man, his face sardonicized into a numb mindless grin, his eyelids fluttering like soft thin butterflies.

  The old man kept talking as he worked. He told the boy of the ancient Maori, carving their life history upon their flesh with bamboo needles. He told him of how the early Africans ritually scarifying their cheeks to mark the coming of manhood. He told him of the ancient master Norasu Tomaji, who had his entire body tattooed, cell wall by cell wall. It took a dozen illustrators three centuries to accomplish the deed, until Norasu Tomaji was nothing but one long spinning design. Legends and pictures spun into words carved upon flesh. When he finally died, his bones and flesh rotted away, but the designs hung on for uncounted years.

  And all the while the old man kept working those needles, digging deeper and deeper, closer towards the bone’s lonely truth.