Quills and Daggers - A Second Chance at Love Romance: The Collective - Season 1, Episode 5

by Chris Genovese

  Her eyes burned into mine and for a moment I thought she might slap me. Then she relaxed into her seat and smiled again.

  “You’re right,” she said. “Fuck him.”

  “I have an idea,” I said. “Just ‘cause you lost your breast doesn’t mean you’ve got an empty space there. Let me create something you’d be proud to show off.”

  “Create something?” she asked. “Like you’re gonna whittle a new tit out of wheat?”

  “I’m not Rumpelstiltskin,” I said, “But I do have one pretty cool skill if you’ll trust me.”

  “You guys gonna order something?” came the voice of a waitress.

  Her nametag read Laura. She was very pretty but looked disheveled and exhausted. For some reason the song Beauty School Dropout from Grease came to mind. This one seemed sick of all the shit life had to hand her too. She stood, tapping her shoe as she waited on my reply.

  I hadn’t even looked at a menu. I’d never intended to stay for a meal. This was my safe haven from whatever creep lurked outside, but it made sense that the restaurant management wouldn’t allow me to sit and take up space.

  “Coffee,” I said.

  “Me too,” my new friend said.

  “And…pie? Do you have any pumpkin pie?” I asked.

  The waitress put her hands on her hip, her notepad dangling from within her pinched fingers, and stared at us both for a second.

  “What’s with everyone and pumpkin pie?” she asked. “No, we don’t have any pumpkin pie. Usually we do, but we don’t right now. We have lemon meringue and we have cherry.”

  “Cherry then,” I said. “With a side of less attitude, please?”

  The waitress looked at my friend and must have seen her tear stained cheeks because her face suddenly softened.

  “I’m sorry, y’all,” she said. “Looks like you’ve been through the ringer. It’s just been a long night. I’ll go get your coffee and your pie with much less attitude.”

  As she walked away, my friend laughed and I realized I’d never asked her name.

  “If I’m going to dazzle you with my artistic skills,” I said. “Maybe I should at least know you’re name.”

  “Jane,” she said.

  “Like sweet baby Jane,” I replied.

  “No, like Tarzan and…” she said. “My parents were ridiculous.”

  Ridiculous would be fine with me. I never had the chance to say such things to my parents. I grew up in foster care for the most part, bouncing from home to home, meeting new families and saying goodbye to each. Yes, ridiculous parents would have been nice.

  Over coffee and pie we exchanged numbers and parted ways. Nobody was waiting for me outside when I left. No secret assassin leapt from the shadows to swipe his blade across my belly. I felt foolish remembering how I ran through the alley and into the diner like I was Sarah Connor and the Terminator was hot on my trail.

  You are the biggest wimp.

  That night, after leaving Jane with the promise I’d be in touch, I went to a place I’d avoided like the plague since returning to San Francisco. He worked there. I’d been searching for a shop that would allow me to rent a space for some part time work when I saw him through the window. It had to be him. We knew each other as kids, both in the same foster home, but he’d left a lasting impression. There was no shaking James Wills.

  Chapter 2 - Ivory

  Dead bodies are bad for business.

  At least that’s what you’d think. They say a girl was found with needle marks all over her and strangled to death or choked to death or whatever the fuck happened. Still the “new adults” swarmed around the ten block radius of Banyon Street.

  My tattoo parlor, The Motor Quill, was smack dab in the center of it all and only half a mile away from the blood-stained alleyway where they say it happened. Gossip always made its way through my doors and this murder business floated in on the lips of a frequent customer who’d hung around the crime scene

  I’m Ivory Wills, James by birth, Ivory given as a nickname meant to describe my immaculate code of honor. Ha. Not really. It was actually a name bestowed upon me in prison because I was the only white guy on my cellblock. Well, not the only white guy, but apparently the only one worthy of receiving a friendly nickname.

  Now I was just a war weathered, prison hardened, exhausted entrepreneur lucky enough to have inherited a few bucks from a deadbeat dad and intelligent enough to invest it in a business in a vibrant city. The Motor Quill was where I really felt at home. Inking skin was what protected me on the inside and since my parole it had become my savior on the outside.

  Looking out at the gaggle of hipsters making their way toward THAT alley, I couldn’t escape my reflection in the neon illuminated window. The sign above my shop blinked a bright blue outline of an elephant with long ivory tusks. It was kind of my trademark. My logo.

  Seeing myself in the glass reminded me that my hair needed a trim. It was getting so long on top that what had once been spikes of sorts were bending over and threatening to curl in a Beverly Hills 90210 kind of way. My muscular arms looked almost animated as the sporadic neon glow gave life to my tattoos. I couldn’t decide whether to grow a full beard or shave, so my face seemed to stay in a constant state of two week old scruffiness.

  I’ve never been one to talk about myself, but I suppose I’m a good looking guy. I’ve never had a problem getting women into my bed but let’s just say I never got the chance to finish any TV show season with the same woman.

  It’s sad that’s how I’ve resorted to gauging my relationships.

  “You still with Ashley?”

  “Nah, man. We didn’t even make it through season five of The Walking Dead.”

  A single mom passed by the shop window and I couldn’t help thinking how depressed she might be. To me, depression was one of the four horsemen. It rode in and wiped out everything its path. The woman’s downtrodden face and the way she practically dragged her little girl down the sidewalk told me she was dealing with that plague herself. Nobody that exhausted could have a partner in life.

  The light blinked on me again and my eyes were drawn to my forearm where I rocked my own version of the semicolon tattoo. Yes, I was a survivor of depression myself, but nobody would know from glancing at my ink. I hid the shape of the symbol in the details of a severed ear. The ear of Vincent Van Gogh dripping blood into a baby’s sneaker. My son’s sneaker. It was the one thing my ex left behind when she ditched me during my time in incarceration. Now, the shoe had a permanent spot on a bookshelf while my son had a permanent spot on the other side of the U.S. with his mom.

  The bloody ear sounds gross and probably completely random, I know. But it’s not. The ear, to me, serves two purposes. It’s a reminder that things could get worse. I could go crazy enough to chop my ear off in the name of love. It also reminds me to listen more than I speak. People don’t listen enough. If they did, if they really listened, there wouldn’t be so much miscommunication.

  “Wh…wh…wh…what are you lookin’ at, Ivory?” my older brother, Kevin, asked, shaking me from my moment of self-reflection.

  He was older but I took care of him. Kevin wasn’t the most responsible guy in the world, but he was one hell of an artist, much better than I was.

  “Been peepin’ these oblivious nincompoops out there on the street,” I said. “Life must be good for twenty-somethings with no problems.”

  Kevin laughed.

  “Nin…nin…nincompoops,” he said, having dealt with his stutter so long it no longer bothered him. “They come…come…for the G…G…Golden Gate Bridge and s…stay forever.”

  I turned to face my brother who was leaned back in his booth chair when the tiny bell above the door jingled. Kevin had his upper lip raised to one side and the eye above it squinted. This look meant one of two things. Either he had no fucking clue what you were talking about or he was confused about something else. Either way, he was puzzled.

  I expected to see some hot stripper or maybe one of the kin
ky college chicks who liked to flash their titties on a dare, usually to ask if we pierced them, before running back outside the shop to giggle with the other sorority pledges. That kind of thing happened more often than you’d expect. I never expected to see Nikki.

  Her scent hit me before I ever saw her, and still, to this day, I can’t tell you what it was. Even after all the time I spent with her in Mrs. Rebecca’s house, I never could quite figure out what made her smell so good. It was just her. Like the pleasant scent on the plastic of a Cabbage Patch doll, there was just no washing away something that smelled that good.

  Mrs. Rebecca was mine and Kevin’s foster mom for a long time. Nikki spent some time there, much less time than us, but she was there nonetheless. Before you ask, yes, I did mention being left money by a deadbeat dad. That would be the dickhead who ditched me in the first place after mom died. Seems he grew a conscience on his death bed and wrote me into his measly will. I accepted the pity payment because, well, why the hell not? If he didn’t do a damn thing for me in his life, at least let the motherfucker help me after it. Kevin got some of the money too, but not nearly as much as I did. Enough about that piece of shit sperm slinger. Let me get back to her.

  When I looked over my shoulder, my arms collapsed at my sides all on their own, as weakness spread throughout my limbs. She was absolutely stunning, even prettier than I’d remembered. Her long hair was straight, a bit messy but not the curliness of her youth, and her face was stunning. Plump lips, killer green eyes, and the body of a belly dancer. Nikki had always been a tough chick so it didn’t surprise me that she’d taken care of herself.

  Her black dress hugged her body with what little material it possessed. She held a black leather jacket draped over her arm and above it was what appeared to be a Native American woman with a bear skin over her head and a flower beneath it. That was the only tattoo I saw but I knew she had more. Nikki had stories built up inside and women with tales like hers tend to wear it on their skin like a fucked up tapestry of gloom. Half my customers were storytellers in their own illustrated form. I guess that made me the narrator.

  “N…N…Nikki?” Kevin said. “H…h…how have you b…been?”

  “Kevin,” she said as she looked past me and over at my brother.

  Her eyes drifted over to me and with a smile that melted my heart, she said, “James.”

  She came closer to me and I wrapped my arms around her in a hug. The way she rested her chin on my shoulder reminded me how vulnerable she was. She’d always tried to be tough but inside I knew she wanted to be held. If nothing else, I’d done that for her. A lot. For nearly a whole year I’d been the one to comfort her when she was down.

  “When did you get back in town?” I asked.

  She pulled away from me and looked up at the ceiling. She blew a strand of hair away from her face and the gesture whisked me back to our childhood, to a place I never liked to dwell for too long.

  I was thirteen and she was a year older. A neighborhood boy tried to hold her down and have sex with her. She’d refused and had fought him off, but as she ran away, he yelled out that she was a dirty, ugly whore and he’d only wanted to fuck her so he could brag about it to his friends. That night she cried harder than usual. It seemed to confirm to her that she was worthless, only an old dirty rag to be used and discarded.

  I never saw her that way. To me, she was beautiful in every sense of the word. The last time I’d seen her, she’d been engaged to get married. I saw her at an art gallery opening and old feelings rushed back, slamming into my chest like a hurricane-force wind. She’d been taken though. She’d chosen a wealthy, suave, and true gentleman. As much as I wanted to dislike the guy, I knew she’d found what we’d always talked about, her knight in shining armor. Competing with that would have been useless. So I’d only hugged her, kissed her on the cheek, and told her it was nice to see her.

  I asked about her at the gallery a couple of months after that and found she was no longer bringing her work to them. She’d left town. I imagined her new beau, I think his name was Darren or Desmond or maybe it was Derek, had flown her off to Italy or Paris. He seemed like he earned frequent flyer miles and if anyone deserved to be whisked off on whirlwind adventures, it was Nikki. I figured I’d never see her again. Yet, here she was, standing in my shop.

  “I’ve been back for a while,” she said.

  “How’s the married life?” I asked.

  “That…” she looked down at her feet, then back up at me, lost in thought. “We didn’t get married. We…um…it didn’t work out.”

  A strange mix of joy and sorrow raced up and down my limbs as I felt ecstatic that no other man was keeping Nikki warm at night, but then there was a sense of sadness that she’d been hurt and felt alone.

  “Sorry to show up like this unannounced, but I have a friend who has agreed to let me do some cosmetic tats,” she said. “She’s a breast cancer survivor and she’s suffering because of it. I’d like to create something special for her.”

  “And you need equipment,” I said.

  She nodded.

  “And a workspace,” I added.

  She nodded again.

  “You looking for a permanent workspace or is this just a one and done?”

  Please say permanent.

  Truth is, I didn’t have a permanent workspace available but I did have a booth at the back of the room being used for hoarded crap. I’d have to talk to the rest of the team about moving all their shit out to the storage to make room for her. I WOULD make room for her.

  The bell rang again and we were interrupted by a big guy, Italian looking, with one of those new-school mohawks. You know, where the hair is shaved short on the sides and the strip across the top is slightly longer. He had the look of a boxer in jogging pants and a tank top, which allowed an easy view at his tatted up arms. A dagger stretched from the back of his right hand up to his elbow. Above that was a hodgepodge of random symbols only he knew the true meaning of. His left arm was much the same.

  This guy held the hand of a young woman, mid to late twenties, who looked nervous. Her top was short, showing off her toned stomach and bellybutton ring. She was well-built, thick but in a good way. Her brown hair was pulled back into a ponytail that dangled over one shoulder. She gave me the eye, as in checking me out, but then rubbed anxiously at one arm, a tattoo-less arm, and I got the feeling she’d been dragged in for her first piece of artwork. I didn’t like the grip the man had on her arm, as if he controlled her every move.

  “Get off me, Davey,” the girl complained. “I hate it when you get like this. I said I’d do it.”

  “Whatever, man,” Davey said.

  I’d already decided this “Davey” was an asshole. I’d let Kevin take care of him. I don’t do assholes.

  “Come on in,” I said.

  “We’re kind of already in,” Davey said. “You do good work?”

  Confusion took hold of me as I tried to figure out if he’d asked me a question or if he’d made a statement. Was he complimenting me on good work I’d done in the past, or was he just fucking stupid and that was his way of asking about my level of expertise? My expression must have given him the idea that I wasn’t going to be answering anytime soon because he looked at his girlfriend and smirked.

  “Fuckin’ joker don’t know how to answer nobody,” he said.

  His accent was more Brooklyn than San Fran. He was a long way from home but seemed comfortable here. He wasn’t on vacation. He must’ve moved to the bay area awhile back and had already settled in.

  “I didn’t understand the question,” I said. “Was there one?”

  I glanced over at Kevin and saw him sit up straight in his chair. Most of the time it seemed I took care of my older brother, especially when it came to money matters or anything else that required a certain amount of responsibility, but for what he lacked in patience and accountability, he more than made up for in trust and protection. He might not look the part, but my big brother was a quiet, res
erved, and mild-mannered badass.

  The bell rang again and in stepped a few more flunkies. The first was larger than Davey, with a lot of leftover fat from days when he may have been ripped with muscle. A Tapout hat rested so softly on his head that I had to fight back the urge to take a deep breath and blow it off. I wondered if he knew what Tapout meant. Everyone loved watching MMA (mixed martial arts) on TV but did this dude really practice the sport? A Latin male right next to him wore a black bandana down low over his eyes. His black slacks and vest was the club hopping outfit I’d expect from douchebags this age. Each of the men had a young woman with him, none of them memorable. I do remember one smacked her bubble gum loudly.

  Nikki moved to the side so we could deal with our new customers. Long before I’d gone to prison, I’d become well-versed in the California gang scene. Everyplace I went, in each of my foster family’s neighborhoods, I’d come face to face with a gang. I’d even joined a couple myself. Nikki was no stranger to the gang life either. These guys didn’t rock the colors of any particular gang so I figured if anything they were probably members of some sort of car club, many of which acted like gangs. They probably had their Nissan Skylines or Hyundai Accents or whatever the fuck kind of car they could paint racing stripes on parked somewhere along the strip.

  “Welcome to the Motor Quill.” I said. “We were just about to close up the shop. We usually work by appointment.”

  “Sorry,” the cute, nervous girl said.

  “So who here is looking to get a tattoo?” I asked.

  “Right fuckin’ here,” Davey said while lifting up the sleeve of his shirt. “Right here. I want the puppet master tattoo.”

  “The puppet master?” I asked, not quite sure what he was talking about.

  “The Goddamn Godfather,” he said. “You know the wooden thing you hold when you control a puppet? With the strings hanging down? I want that right here on my arm.”