Ink

by Sabrina Vourvoulias

  Mari stands as my witness when I marry Neto; I’m with her when she receives Finn’s ashes.

  His death gets lots of attention from the media – nothing like one of your own dying for you to start taking things seriously – which makes us think perhaps some good will come of the tragedy. Still, in the official obituaries Finn dies a single father. It is a safeguard for Gus, but just another in a line of obliterations and unmakings for Mari.

  Then there’s the fact that three agents, one cop and 17 inks die alongside Finn that night. The agents and cop get a couple of paragraphs to themselves at the end of the story about Finn, the inks are reduced to a number.

  Not even we, who care about such things, know their names.

  * * *

  “Ever wonder who, exactly, the FedEx Brigade are?” Jobs asks me as soon as I walk in the door of the trailer that is the hub of geek gavilandom.

  “Duh.” I seem to lose whatever maturity the years have bought when I’m around him. It’s probably the reason I love working by his side. With him I’m still the Abbie waiting for her life to begin.

  “Why? Who’s claiming to have pinned down their identity this time?” I ask.

  “Nobody. Their latest missives say they’re going to out themselves, a week from now, in front of Hastings city hall,” he says.

  I lean over him and touch the screen to zoom. The fuzzy cell phone photo of a FedEx label gets more pixilated but easier to read. “You’ve signal boosted this?”

  “Of course. I’m seeing photos of Brigades in other places echoing the same call. At least a hundred at my last count. It’s all over the web. There’s a hashtag trending nationwide, too. #FXax.”

  “I wish we had a brigade contact,” I say. “Depending on what they’re planning I’d offer gavilán support.”

  “Yeah, well, they’re resolutely Luddite. I haven’t been able to trace any digital footprint.”

  “Luddite, or better than we are,” I say, leaning back on my heels while I study the screen.

  “Nobody’s better at this than we are. Except maybe Anonymous or LulzSec in their prime.”

  “How many gavilanes in Hastings this rotation?” I ask.

  “Two and one.”

  Meaning two traditional cells of three, and one digital, seven people total.

  “Any top corps?”

  “Only Ana. The rest are junior. Virtual gavilán is the ink newbie,” he says.

  “All right. Keep monitoring and let’s figure out what we can do from here. I’ll talk to Neto about freeing up some more traditionals to send down to Hastings for the unveiling.”

  “And I’ll go,” I add as I start out the door to pick up Lucy from daycare.

  “Gates, this could be a whole lot of nothing,” he says. “Or worse, a whole lot of head-busting, widow-making stuff.”

  As if I didn’t already know that.

  As if I didn’t carry that around like a stone in my heart.

  * * *

  Neto drives.

  It’s against all rules for both firsts to be on the same job, and in the same limo to boot, but no matter how I argue Neto won’t relent. And I won’t either. So we leave Lucy and the gavilán hub in Remi’s and Jobs’ hands.

  “What is it?” I say when I notice the expression on Neto’s face on the ride down to Hastings. I pitch my voice so it’ll stay undetected beneath the babble of Spanish coming from the gavilanes in the back.

  “Carlos contacted me,” he says.

  A ghost. An original gavilán.

  “And?” I say, my voice hard.

  “He wants to meet,” Neto says. “He says he has information about that night. About what went down, and the gang that was in on it. He wants to trade the information for a place in the new gavilanes.”

  “And you’re tempted to hear him out.”

  He looks at me. “He’s my blood, the only family I have left.”

  “Except Lucy.”

  “Except her,” he says. For a moment I think he’s ashamed of his oversight, but it turns out he’s resentful instead. “Remi’s a fine second, but look at us here, no second for either of us. You know I’ve got your back, but who’s got mine?”

  “I do, isn’t that how it’s supposed to work?” If my voice was hard before it’s nothing to what it’s become now.

  He laughs. It isn’t a pleasant sound to hear.

  “No virtual gavilán has ever had to raise a gun. You’re in this in a different way than I am, Abbie.” The tiny diamond solitaire I gave him on our wedding night is in the piercing a quarter-inch beneath his mouth. Its facets flash – cold and hard – as he speaks.

  I want to protest, but I stay quiet instead. I know I can be ruthless but it’s all just keystrokes and code.

  He glances at me. “And when there’s no more disinformation to blow apart, when there are no more inks to protect or hide or reinvent or secure safe houses for, then what? Are you still going to be here?”

  “Toño wouldn’t do it.” I keep it low, so none of the gavilanes in back will chance to overhear our argument. “He wouldn’t risk what we’ve built together just to have Carlos at his back. And he certainly wouldn’t risk his daughter.”

  Neto’s face closes up.

  It’s a cheap shot, but I’m not above using cheap or nasty or dirty if I need to.

  “Don’t ever think you have to remind me that I’m not Toño,” he says after a long moment.

  His voice is pitched as low as mine but it must carry because the limo goes quiet.

  It’s the last thing he says for a long time.

  * * *

  I’m there when it happens.

  I really shouldn’t be given that I’m on digital but the newbie turns out to be a Jobs in miniature, and I leave her at the gavilán safehouse happily fiddling with livestream while I join the traditionals. For once I don’t have the distancing of a screen between me and what happens in the world.

  They come one by one and form themselves in neat rows in front of the steps that lead up to Hastings City Hall, all with FedEx labels stuck to the front of their shirts. They’re inks, of course, because who else cares?

  But then more arrive and even though nobody is directing, they automatically fall in place behind the first until the mall is filled. Some have labels, others not. And there are non-inks among them. Actually a lot of non-inks and, at some point, it seems nearly fifty-fifty. They line up together in the street and the park beyond. Thousands of them. Maybe tens of thousands.

  Everyone stands in silence until City Hall’s clocktower marks 11. Then, as one, the ones with labels lift the posterboards they carry. They hold them above their heads, with each of the photos pasted on the flats facing City Hall. The unlabeled ones, those who carry no posterboards, lift their hands to the sky.

  One of the gavilanes tries to catch my hand as I surge forward from the edge of crowd. I walk down each row. Slowly. Taking my time. The faces below are composed to stillness. The faces on the placards, two-dimensional and held up to a bright August sky, belong to the disappeared. Border dumped, in hiding, inkatorium residents. The ones killed in the Art Clash, as it’s come to be known. Their names are there. The numeric code of their tattoos are inscribed on the placards, or if the tattoos are falsified, that’s written there too. I wonder if it’s a trick of my eyes that so many of the two-dimensional faces look familiar.

  When I get to the steps of City Hall and turn to look back, it reminds me of the photos I’ve seen of Arlington Cemetery. The placards and upflung hands aren’t crosses, but they, too, are reminders of what we have been willing to lose. And they’re endless.

  I feel Neto come to stand beside me.

  “They don’t need us,” I say when I turn to him.

  He nods, then fits his hand to mine and leads me down the steps of City Hall, and into the crowd. These are my people, I catch myself thinking. I mean both sets, faces above and below, and then I realize it’s the first time in my life I’ve truly felt this way. There is no other, just us.<
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  Real life – what can you say? – every so often it rivals virtual.

  2.

  Neto lays quiet in bed beside me. Since the FedEx foray there’s been something like an ice field between us. I reach over and lay my hand on his bicep. At my touch, he turns to look at me.

  “You were whimpering in your sleep.” There’s no emotion in it, just statement of fact.

  When people speak of gang members as if they were all of a kind they don’t get it. They are distinct, driven by their own motivations and natures even if the circumstance of their gang existence is the same. Though there is a physical resemblance, Neto is very different than Toño. He has never been willing to reveal his vulnerabilities to me in trade for closeness. And he’s never asked me to do so either.

  “Just a dream,” I answer.

  His eyes slide to the scars that cover me from collarbone to ankle. Then he leans in to kiss me.

  He never hesitates or shies away from my disfigurement. His body has never betrayed anything but desire for me. And yet every time we have sex I experience that one moment when I can’t breathe for fear of what might one day break through his eyes.

  “I’m sorry,” I say as the last few shudders from my body coax the same from his. I lay my head on his chest and close my eyes, relishing the feel of his hands still on me. “It wasn’t disrespect, I just have a stupid mouth.”

  I know I don’t have to say more, he understands what I’m talking about.

  “Forget it,” he says. “It doesn’t matter.” His hands continue their motion, teasing goosebumps on my skin.

  “If you still want to hear Carlos out, I won’t stand in your way.”

  One of his hands strays to my hair and tugs it so my face turns up to his. His eyes lock on mine. There is such a mix of emotion laid out naked for me in that look I have to turn away.

  “But you can’t meet him here,” I say as I bury my face in his chest again. “And not at any other gavilán stronghold either. As co-first I have the right to demand that.”

  He laughs and pulls me tighter to him.

  I never intend that he should do it without a second.

  Two days later I’m off duty and putting Lucy down for her afternoon nap. It is always a struggle. And it’s not just your regular kid fuss. It is as if every time she surrenders to sleep it confirms a personal failing.

  The lids flutter over her eyes. She’s got my eye color and Toño’s eye shape, but the look she gives me is pure Neto. Hard, stubborn, fiercely striving. It stops my heart for a moment. It really does. I feel the stutter in the center of my chest and in that second before it resumes its regular beat and my daughter finally loses her daily battle, I know.

  I take out the phone and hit my app. I’ve never named it and its icon is inobtrusive enough that no one who borrows my phone is ever tempted to use it. A grid pops up with dots to indicate the exact location of the people I track through their phones. I touch Neto’s dot.

  It’s moving, but not giving me a body temp readout so the phone isn’t in his pocket nor close to his body. It’s headed south, some ten miles outside of Smithville already. He could be going to Hastings, but I don’t think so. I think he’s headed for the unstaffed rest stop at mile marker 324, the freezone where I first met Toño and felt the borders of my small world shatter.

  Code is like this, and parenting, and my life too: patterns that repeat and repeat and repeat.

  I throw open the throttle on of one of the limos, slam it into gear and tear out of the trailer park at a speed only another car with a 12-cylinder Lamborghini engine could hope to match.

  I rapid dial Neto. Straight to voice mail. I text him. Wait. Nothing.

  I text Jobs next. I know he’s on digital rotation at the hub so he can coordinate everything at once, traditional backup and babysitter. If it weren’t for the heavy feeling lodged inside me I might laugh at the stunning incongruity of my needs.

  The limo is flying on the interstate when I find myself rapid-dialing another number out of the irrational hope that she’s really as powerful as I believe her to be.

  When I get her voice mail, I hesitate, then pour out the details and my fears jumbled together in one incoherent mess of words. I don’t actually know what I expect Mari to do, in all likelihood she won’t get the message until it’s all over, but I feel stronger afterwards.

  Minutes from the destination I hit my app again, hoping I’ll be wrong and that Neto’s dot will still be moving steadily toward Hastings. But it’s static and just where I feared it would be.

  I park at the closed truck weigh-in station a quarter mile from the interstate stop because driving the limo into the stop would be a dead giveaway and there’s no telling whether there might be another gang involved.

  I run until I reach the border of the rest area, then stop to peer through the scraggly trees that shield it from sight. The front parking lot is strangely empty of cars. When I turn my eyes to the entry ramp I see a pair of roadwork stanchions with chain stretched across the roadway to block access.

  I work my way through the trees to the back of the stop. The limo is parked where 18-wheelers would normally pull in. That’s it. No other car. Which means either this isn’t the final meeting place, or Carlos is counting on someone else to drive him out of here when he’s done. Not good.

  I pull the 9 mm ACP from the back of my waistband and release its safety as I edge around the back, then cross the parking lot fast and in plain sight. There’s nobody around the limo, but I find Neto’s phone next to the front driver-side wheel.

  I ease the back exit of the rest stop open and peer in. The fluorescent lights give the big, open room a bleak look. The only sound in the space is the humming of the lights. There’s no one in the main area. No one in the men’s or women’s bathrooms, either.

  The only other enclosed space, behind a grey metal door, is padlocked. I shoot the hasp off. There, I think, I’ve announced myself and my caliber. But it turns out to be a supply room full of paper products, five-gallon buckets of industrial cleanser and nothing else.

  I go out the front and quickly scour the open, empty lot. Nothing out of ordinary. I hug the wall and double round the corner. Twenty feet to my right, I see a flash of movement out of the corner of my eye. I turn to it.

  Some ten or fifteen sourceless shadows teem in the asphalt between me and a commercial dumpster parked far into the weedy, woody stretch where people lawn their dogs. I can’t really focus on the shadows and I find I don’t want to. Whatever they are, they fill me with an immobilizing dread.

  While I stand there a fire springs up from the asphalt. Sparks borne up in the same endlessly repeating patterns hem in what I now see are dwarves. I hear a crescendo of panic emanating from within.

  But then a harsh, croaking laugh cuts through the panic. One of the dwarves barrels through the etheric flames. Others follow. In instants, I’m surrounded by identical malignant faces. The first punch doesn’t physically hit me, but as it’s thrown I feel its impact in my chest. I stagger when my heartbeat threatens to go irregular again.

  The air next to my right ear displaces and in front of me, scattering the dwarves temporarily and facing them down, is the magical twin that just jumped over my shoulder.

  Go now.

  The voice that forces itself into my head is a juvenile’s and achingly similar to Gus’ voice. Gus, who, every time Mari brings him up on her visits, reiterates with absolute certainty he’s going to grow up and marry my Lucy.

  No matter what layers of world I’m straddling, I’m not letting a child take a hit for me.

  I draw a bead on one of the dwarves just as the tiny twin launches itself into the mass of bodies, exactly where I’m aiming. I hear a thin, escalating cat wail as the dwarves’ huge fists catch him and knock him around. Fire springs up again, this time separating some of the dwarves from the young cat.

  Mari’s jaguar jumps over me and into the fray. She knocks the remaining dwarves away from her son, and when one
refuses to let go, she opens her mouth and crushes its head between massive, merciless jaws.

  A moment later it is Mari’s voice that fills my head. Go, or the time Meche and we are buying for you means nothing.

  I run toward the dumpster, then draw up short. Neto’s sprawled on the ground well behind the dumpster, and bleeding from a terrible gunshot wound to his shoulder. Carlos turns to the sound of my steps.

  I try not to sway from the sight of my husband’s blood. “Move away from him,” I say, aiming my gun at Carlos’ face.

  “You don’t really think you’re going to make that headshot, do you?” he says. “Not a chance, gabacha. You need to be as close as I am to a target to pull that off.”

  Then he laughs as he moves his gun so it’s aimed at Neto’s head. “If you’re nice to me I might let him live long enough so you can say goodbye.”

  “What do you want?”

  Another laugh. “What was always mine to claim. The gavilanes.”

  “There is no gavilanes without Neto.”

  His eyes narrow. “Funny, I think Neto used to say the same thing about Toño. And now here he is, acting the gavilán first and regularly fucking Toño’s girl.”

  Neto tries to pull himself to sitting but Carlos turns so fast it makes me dizzy and aims a kick that connects with Neto’s head.

  If I were a real gavilán I would be able to take advantage of this. But I can’t. My hand shakes and the gun slips a bit.

  I hear a grunt of pain as my husband hits the ground again, then, when Carlos’ heavy boot cracks down on his shoulder, he stops moving.

  “I knew you couldn’t take the shot, gabacha,” Carlos says when he turns back to face me. He doesn’t even bother to aim his gun at Neto anymore, and what that means is almost enough to make me drop my shaky gun arm. But that stubborn look I see in my daughter’s eyes every day isn’t learned entirely from Neto.