Ink

by Sabrina Vourvoulias

  “Because you know everything.”

  “That. And my sister has a friend whose parents bought up all of Robert Math’s buildings. He designed a lot of them with access to interconnected underground tunnels so the ship owners could unload and secure their human cargo sight unseen. There are miles of tunnel under the asphalt of Hastings, all the way from Old City to the pier. Sarai – that’s Cassie’s friend – used to pull together raves down there.”

  “Does Father Tom know about them?”

  “The raves?”

  “No, the tunnels. Anyway, listen, there’s no ink bus for another half-hour so I’m not going to make it to Mass.”

  She doesn’t lector anymore. Or receive Communion. Not since us. But she still goes to Mass. Every day.

  “I’ll swing by and get you.” I check my pockets to make sure I haven’t left anything important in the newsroom, then punch the elevator button.

  She’s waiting outside the Hipco archives, a ramshackle building a good 20 blocks from the rest of the population control offices. She’s been working here for a couple of months, demoted by recent ordinances stripping inks of security clearances.

  I’m thinking I’m going to get her to Holy Innocents on time when we hit one of the semi-monthly roadblocks. Most of the cars get through pretty fast, a quick glance through the windshield is all the cops need to wave people through. Of course, we end up in the inspection line.

  Mari rolls down the window on her side of the car. An agent dressed in a Hipco field coat leans in.

  “Sorry ’bout this Mari,” he says. “It’s only the fake tats we’re checking for but I still have to do it.”

  She pulls her sleeve up, sticks her wrist out the window. “It’s okay, George.”

  He scans her tattoo.

  After he waves us on I turn to look at her. “You know him?”

  “I trained him,” she says, looking out the window. After a few moments I see her pull out her cell phone and punch in a number.

  “Nely? Let Father Tom know there’s an identity roadblock on Callowhill and 39th. He’s going to want to announce it before Mass, or after, or whatever. Just in case anyone’s headed in this direction, okay?”

  After she ends the call she goes back to staring out the window.

  The hair on the back of my neck stands on end. “Which Holy Innocents congregants have fake tattoos?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t want to know.”

  “You think Father Tom knows?”

  She turns to look at me. “You never stop digging for stories, do you? Ask him, he’ll tell you.”

  “Things have gotten, umm, chilly between us since I corrupted you.”

  She starts laughing. “Go to confession. Absolution can be yours. Just promise you’ll never sin again.”

  “I’d rather have a sharp stick driven into my eye.”

  She smiles, but it’s wistful. She wonders if I love her enough to marry her and make us legitimate in Father Tom’s eyes. And God’s. And hers.

  I know this. And though I’m in love with her, I won’t ask her to marry me.

  I can’t.

  * * *

  I’d like to say it’s my mother’s fault. I’ve told her about Mari. All of it. Or really, as much as I know. Suddenly she’s developed this overriding interest in Central American legends and folklore. Particularly the tales about half-human, half-animal beings.

  “They’re terrible stories,” she says during one of her weekly conference calls to Cassie and me. “Fundamentally uglier than others I’ve studied.”

  “Oh for crying out loud, Mom,” I hear Cassie’s voice fading in and out. Cell phone towers upstate are spread out and the coverage spotty. “They’re allegories and morality tales and make-believe, not reality.”

  There’s a moment of silence. “He described her as a creature out of myth.”

  “Metaphor, Mom.” I can hear exasperation in my older sister’s voice. “New girlfriend-itis.”

  “No, really, listen to this,” my mother’s enthused, the way she always gets when she talks about her work. “There’s this one from Guatemala, La Siguanaba. She seems to exist only to entice men sexually. Then, after she’s led them to abandon everything and follow her into the dark – but before anything’s actually consummated – she reveals that under the curtain of her hair is the face of a horse. The sight alone kills them. Hmmm. Really more of a fable, then. Where lust leads.”

  “Well, that’s not it,” I finally get a word in then, to test if either of them is listening. “Not if it’s unconsummated.”

  “Lovely,” Cassie mutters.

  My mother, clearly not paying attention, continues, “or maybe it’s more about women’s genitalia, and the primitive masculine fear of sighting something so beastly and animal amid otherwise human features.”

  “I’m hanging up if we continue along these lines,” Cassie warns.

  “How did I raise such a prude?”

  “Prudishness has nothing to do with it. And Finn and I raised ourselves. Look, can we get real here? I’m more worried about what it means for Finn to be involved with an ink in this political climate.”

  “Hey, I’m on the line, remember? Can we do away with third person?”

  “Fine. How do you know she’s not with you only for the advantage you provide? You know, like getting around the restrictions?”

  “Jesus, Cassie. I can’t do anything like that for her. I had to move to a different part of town just so we can live in the same apartment.”

  “Well, then, what happens if you get married, have kids? Have you thought what it’d be like to see your children tattooed and monitored like all the other inks? Because at a quarter ink, they’d still be subject to it, Finn.”

  “No marriage,” my mother interrupts. “No unbreakable bond until we know the nature of the creature she hosts, or changes into, or whatever.”

  “Is twinned with,” I say.

  “Oh. My. God. I give up. Talk to you guys next week.” Cassie hangs up.

  “Two days ago she was in church when I was waiting to go to confession. Tom pointed her out to me,” my mother says. “She’s not your type.”

  “Priests are worse than old women. And, she’s redefined my type.”

  She does her snorting laugh thing that has, in my lifetime, gone from endearing to annoying and back to endearing.

  “Finn?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Did you read my last monograph?”

  “The Tibet one? Bits of the intro and first chapter.”

  “So much for filial devotion. You should dig it out and read it. Chapter ten for sure.”

  “One of these days.”

  “It’s just … there are places in the world where the mythic doesn’t stay buried in the past. And within those places, pockets of people who are swimming in the fantastical. And within those pockets, individuals who’ve inherited magic.”

  When I don’t say anything she adds, “Tell me it wasn’t metaphor.”

  “I sort of wish it had been.”

  “What I wouldn’t give to interview her. But you’re not going to introduce us, are you?”

  “No. Not until I exact a vow that she won’t be part of some study you later publish. And that’s never going to happen, is it?”

  Silence. Then she says, “Protective. Must be love.”

  After it’s clear I’m not going to respond, she sighs.

  “Just don’t slip up and have a kid, okay? This sort of magic seems to be passed along in the mother’s blood. Like baldness.”

  “First Cassie, now you. Who said anything about kids?”

  That snort laugh again. “You really should pay more attention to my work. Everything, and I do mean everything, comes round eventually to legacy, children and blood.”

  4.

  The day distinguishes itself by being the first time we have a fight.

  I make the mistake of telling Mari I interviewed Toño for a piece I’m writing about the subterranean inks wh
o run the peñas and hold the freetrade zones right under the authorities’ noses.

  “You just make it worse for the rest of us by writing about them,” she says while she pours our morning coffees. “The gangs provide all the excuse anyone needs for the imposition of ink restrictions.”

  “There’s a difference between the cartel gangs and indie gangs like Toño’s,” I say.

  “Yeah? You think you can tell which is which when the bullet rips through you?” She hands me the cup with enough violence that some of the coffee spills over and scalds my hand. “You’re such a white boy sometimes.”

  Her reverse disdain pisses me off.

  “So tell me why Nely agrees with me.”

  “Oh, she flirts with it – with Toño – but she’s a moral person. She’d never fall in with a gang.”

  “She’s in.”

  “What?”

  “Who do you think convinced him to do the interview?”

  She slams her cup in the sink. “You knew and you weren’t going to tell me, were you?”

  I could lie, I suppose, but I don’t. “No.”

  She closes her eyes for a moment, then brushes past me to pick her Hipco badge out of the basket where we keep our keys and lanyards.

  I glance up at the clock. “We’ve got ten minutes before we have to leave.”

  “I’m going to take the bus.”

  “There isn’t an ink bus for another 20 minutes.”

  “It doesn’t even bother you to say it, does it? Ink bus. Like it’s the most normal thing in the world that I can’t ride the same bus as you.”

  “Of course it bothers me. But it is normal now.”

  For the first time in daylight I see her face unsharpen and the features of the great speckled cat overlay themselves. But in a moment the animal visage is gone and it’s only the face of the woman I love. Her eyes are round and glazed with water.

  She runs out the door.

  Her cell phone goes to voice mail, every time. I call the Hipco landline, but I get hung up in the switch from one extension to the next and end up in interdepartmental limbo. Texts and emails go unanswered. Finally, when she doesn’t come home in the evening, I go looking for her at Holy Innocents.

  “She hasn’t been here,” Father Tom says as he guides me to sit in one of the empty pews after Mass. “I thought perhaps you had finally convinced her to stay away altogether.”

  I drop my face into my hands. I’ve already disappointed the old man in dozens of ways, but I don’t want him to see me fall apart.

  “Nely wasn’t here either. I wonder if they went off somewhere together? That must be it.” He pats me on the shoulder

  “Toño would know where Nely is, wouldn’t he? Now that she’s one of his?” I say, looking up.

  He looks like he’s been fed something sour. “That’s the way it seems to work.”

  “Can you get in touch with him, somehow?”

  He hesitates, then, “Yes. Come. Let’s go to the rectory.”

  He ensconces me in the kitchen, a fresh pot of coffee at hand. I hear him making two calls from the hallway before he comes back in.

  “Did you talk to him?”

  “To someone who can reach him,” he says. He pours himself a cup and sits across the kitchen table from me.

  “I’m so fucked, Father. I feel like I did when my dad left. Like my heart is leaking blood.”

  “I don’t think she left you, son.”

  “We had a fight.”

  He waves it away. “Everyone fights. Listen, I’ve got someone checking to see if they’re unconscious in some hospital somewhere, but I fear worse.”

  “Worse than a hospital?”

  He nods. “There’s a very active set of Cleanse America groups working the area. My people have traced three border dumps in as many weeks.”

  “Your people? You mean like nuns and priests?”

  “Well, there are some of those too, but mostly just an assortment of lay people who help me whenever an ink from my congregation comes up missing. Mari traces GPS chips for us. She knows some sort of back door that gets her into the tracking program even though she’s only supposed to have access to the computerized archives. Of course, we’ve never had to trace a citizen. They don’t usually get dumped.”

  “And don’t have GPS chips embedded in their necks.”

  “But Nely’s a temporary worker, so she does. And I have photocopies of all my congregants’ tattoos. So long as we can figure out the corresponding numeric code – and I’ve been assured we can – we’ll be able to go online and get Hipco to flag them so they can’t be taken through a border checkpoint without setting off all sorts of figurative bells and whistles.”

  Around 9 p.m. the rectory’s doorbell rings and when Father Tom comes back into the kitchen a tall blond follows him. She’s stunning, all honeyed shades: hair, skin, eyes, clothes.

  “Finn, this is Meche. She owns Peña Caridad, among other things.”

  Caridad – Our Lady of Charity. Cuban, then.

  “You’re the journalist,” she sticks her hand out to shake. As soon as the pleasantries are done she sits down and pulls out a tablet so new I don’t think it’s officially hit the market yet.

  “All right, so according to Toño, Nely was slated to run some stuff up to a freetrade zone this afternoon and never showed. Now, since we’ve lost the only one of us who could trace GPS chips, we’re going to have to rely on eyes to monitor dump routes. Mexican mafia’s got the Rooseveltown corridor, Toño’s group has Route 17, and the maras the thruway. I don’t have as much contact with the non-Latino gangs but there are reciprocal agreements in place when it comes to dumping, so western corridor’s covered as well.”

  “You don’t look like a gang member,” I say.

  She gives a short bark of a laugh. “And what would that look like? But you’re right, I’m not. I’m a businesswoman. And a chemist. Which makes me someone the gangs like knowing. And since Father Tom doesn’t like dealing with them, I run interference. Any other questions?”

  I shake my head.

  “Hand over the copies of the tattoos, Father. I’ll get them flagged.”

  I don’t recognize the app she uses. “Proprietary,” she says when she notices my look. “Reads the tat and converts it into its numeric code, just like the proper scanners. Though sometimes it hits a snag. Like now. It can’t seem to convert Nely’s tat.”

  She slides the papers back to Father Tom. “But with Mari’s tat flagged it’ll be near impossible for the group to get her through an official crossing. Just pray they don’t split them up.”

  She leans back in her chair. “Damn, I hope we get your girlfriend back soon, or that she walks in tonight from some spa day she didn’t tell you about. And not just for your sake or hers. This is all so much more hit-or-miss without the information she pulls for us from Hipco’s database.”

  “Do you know her?”

  She shakes her head. “Just Father Tom. He’s the hub of our little group.”

  I turn to the priest. “Why didn’t you bring me in on it?”

  He looks away guiltily.

  “Well, now that you’re in,” the blond says, leaning forward, “are you all in? Because there’s more.”

  “Like what?”

  “Like we’ve got to recruit more people with undeniable rights and not a hint of ink. Preferably ones with homes adjoining or within hailing distance of the proposed inkatoriums.”

  I clench my hands so hard I’m scared if I look down I’ll see blood seeping out of the folds. “The rumors about sanitarium-internment centers are completely unfounded. I know. I dug around.”

  She gives me a sidelong look. “They’ve finished almost all of the facilities on the southern border already. They’re called Fair Hills hyphen Maricopa – or whatever the locale is – appended on the end.”

  “You mean the ritzy rehab chain?”

  “Yeah. Funny front, huh? But people don’t question top-flight tech and huge structures when the
y imagine it protecting the privacy of detoxing celebrities.”

  I feel sick to my stomach. I think the Gazette even ran a wire story about the Fair Hills phenomenon.

  “Things are taking a little longer up here. Only one has opened instate so far, and it’s nowhere near the attention hog its southern kin are. We’re calling them health centers, and from what I can gather there’s a state board forming to refine detention criteria and start hiring staff. It cost me almost as much as my brownstone to secure, but I’ve got locations and timetables for the remaining 12 sites, so we know exactly where, and how fast, we need to get to work.”

  She keeps talking but I stop listening.

  If I help them, I can’t write the story; if I write the story, I can’t help them. And each means losing what I love.

  I know I said I’ve never felt fear.

  I lied.

  Mari: Once upon a time

  1.

  When I try to open my eyes they are glued shut. Also, my shoes are gone. I feel air curling under bare toes. For a second I imagine they stuck me in a coffin thinking me dead. But they don’t kill, only maim and intimidate and count on the shackles of fear and isolation to do the rest for them.

  I understand the seal on my eyes isn’t embalmer’s glue, even so, it takes all my faith to rip lid from lid. It’s not my skin I hear tearing, I tell myself, it’s gunk from my wounded sleep. A sleep that might have been hours. Or days.

  The space I’m in is much bigger than the coffin of my imagination. I know this because somewhere behind me – somewhere I cannot turn because the first attempt to do so has left me swamped with pain – light leaks in. Not much but enough to see the curve of a shoulder on the floor beside me.

  I reach out, touch. Nely doesn’t move. But under my fingertips I feel pulsing warmth. My hand comes away smelling of flaked iron and blood. I call to her, but if the word finds its way in her ear and through the byways of the brain it loses itself before it arrives. She doesn’t respond. Not a twitch.

  I turn my face away from her.

  They struck her harder than they did me. The tire iron splintered something. I heard it.

  I had caught up with her a few blocks from Holy Innocents. We were yelling at each other so loud we had to duck into the narrow alley next to the Golden Cup coffeeshop to avoid the notice of people walking down Callowhill. No good comes from drawing attention to yourself when you’re an ink.