Ready to retire,
candle flame long extinguished.
The smoke still rises—Szan
In that spirit, I look sharp about me as I walk the Miracle Mile, jump at anything metallic that glints in the corner of my eyes but no Eternitis with gun ports dog my heels.
Day ends sooner on the Miracle Mile than it does in the rest of the city. The feverish sunset glow isn’t natural, it’s neon. Business is brisk at the Metro where the dancers have been at it since eleven this morning. The bouncer who knows me as a “special friend” of Nikki’s isn’t on duty, some other Bluto is, and he is hell bent on keeping me out of the dressing room. I can’t badge him and I can’t bribe him, I don’t have enough money. I could try to bully him but given that he looks like a contestant in a monster truck rally, that’s likely to end up hurting me more than him. The path of least resistance turns out to be the cigarette girl. I flag her over.
“Oh I remember you,” she says. “You’re the shy guy.” She arches her back and throws back her shoulders, which pushes her tray out farther. I shake my head.
“What’s your problem? Something wrong with the merchandise?”
“I need information more than uh, cigarettes. Is Nikki around?”
“Tonight’s her night off.”
“Where can I find her?”
“Don’t know. Sorry. Sure you don’t want something after all?”
“Nah. That’s OK.”
She gives me an indifferent shrug and sashays off.
Here I am, looking for Nikki again. Where to begin? Maybe Lix Gemini knows. He said he was on his way to see her when he found me unconscious in the alley behind the Metro.
Although the handmade “Tattoo” sign is missing from the parlor’s door, a thin line of light outlines the drawn window shade. The knob turns but the flimsy door won’t budge. Locked with a deadbolt, maybe. I knock.
From inside, a feeble voice calls, “What?”
“It’s Will Mansion, Lix.”
There’s a brief interval of silence, then a rattling at the door.
“Hi.”
Lix wears a jaundiced white poet’s shirt with balloon sleeves and a drawstring neck. Instead of tight leather pants he wears looser brown wool ones, shiny with wear, the legs tucked into jodhpur boots and bloused over the top. A waist-length black leather vest and gold hoops in his piercings give him a gypsy look. He has a dreamy expression and pinpoint pupils, either of which could be from the glare of the task lamp, or drugs.
“Did I wake you?”
“No, I was just relaxing,” he answers. He shuffles over to the half-reclined barber chair, climbs on, and stretches out. “An artist got to take a break once in a while. Recharge.”
“Sure. Say, you haven’t seen Nikki today, have you?”
“You still looking for Nikki? What do you want with her, anyway? Oh, yeah, I remember. That guy you’re looking for. I thought you gave that up.”
“Changed my mind.” I take out a Verve and offer him one. He declines. Not his brand, he says. On second thought, I pass too, and replace the cigarette in the pack.
Lix straightens up, takes a sketchpad and red pencil from the rolling supply cart, and begins to draw. “How come?”
“Just seems to be in my best interest.” I saunter around the room looking at the sample tattoos.
“And you think Nikki can help?”
“Maybe. That’s what I want to ask her. So, do you know where she is?”
Lix’s sketchpad hides his face, but not the rancor in his voice. “Why should I tell you? You went and told everyone I gave her up.”
“No, I did not ... Yes. Yes, I did.”
“See? Now everyone thinks, ‘Lix Gemini, you can’t trust him, he’s a snitch.’” He raises his eyes over the top of his pad and fixes me with an accusatory glare. “Now how am I supposed to go on living here?”
“I needed to find Hector—”
“Yeah, that’s it, isn’t it? It’s about what you want. Always about what you want, screw anyone else.” Lix trades his red pencil for a yellow one and returns to his sketch. “Story of my life. No one ever does, I don’t know why.”
Yet he helped me last night in the alley. “I’m sorry. I’ll make it right.”
“Yeah? How?”
“Well, I don’t know, I—”
“Unzip your pants.”
A five-car pile-up of words forms against the brick wall in my throat. In the silence I can hear Lix’s pencil skritch on the rough sketch paper. He looks up over the top of the pad, his expression innocent and serious.
“Go on,” he says
I am frozen in place.
“You don’t have to take them off if you don’t want, just unzip and tuck in the flaps.” He slides down off the chair and mimes what he wants me to do. “I just need to get at your navel, actually the real estate below it.” He twirls his pencil.
“A ta ... a tattoo?”
“Yeah, a tattoo, what did you think?” He blinks his dark, long-lashed eyes once. “Oh, that?” His lips look very moist. “Is that what you want?” he asks.
“Me?” My voice is a squeak. “I thought this was about what you want.”
“What I want ...” His eyes get that wistful look again. He picks up his sketchpad and turns it around to show me his drawing. “It’s a lotus blossom.”
Maybe. But a fierce one. The petals are tongues of flame, their rose color hot with orange undertones. Its yellow heart is a glowing ember. “A lotus?”
“Uh huh. I know what you’re thinking: ‘a flower, that’s a hell of a tatt’ for a tough guy like me.’ But see, the lotus, it starts off in the muck at the bottom of the pond but then it grows up through the water and finally breaks the surface. A good symbol for you, Will, the way you can’t quit nosing around. And if I put it here, below the belt,” he pats his own belly, “no one will see it unless you show it to them. It’ll be your secret. Our secret.”
A tattoo. The man wants to tattoo a lotus on my belly. The lotus, symbol of the pure perfection of the awakened mind, blooming only after it has risen above the murk of ignorance and beguiling desire. Outrageous. But temptation tingles my spine and my skin is warm as if Lix’s campfire of a lotus already burns there.
“That’s what you want to do?” I ask.
“Yeah.”
“You like it, huh?”
“Tattooing? Yeah.” He lowers his glance, and his voice. “I like getting close to people. Don’t get much of a chance to, otherwise.”
No, I don’t suppose he does. Prettier than many girls, he probably appeals more to men. Maybe that simply isn’t his style.
He looks up through his lashes.
It would make him happy, and I’d rather have him as an ally than an enemy on this street. At least, that’s what I tell myself. “All right. Where do you want me?”
“You will?” He smiles like a delighted child.
“Hey, you’re the best, right? If I’m gonna get a tattoo, I might as well get it from the best.”
“I’m the best, man.” He pats the barber chair. “Lie down. Stretch out.”
With nervous fingers I unzip my pants, skim them down a little, and tuck the ends under as he instructed, then hop up on the chair and lie back. The stiff leather creaks and a torn spot scratches my neck. Shades of being at the dentist’s quicken my pulse.
Lix hits a button on his boom box and rock music blares. It’s one of those guitarists whose fingers characteristically squeak on the strings, irritating as fingernails on a chalkboard.
Lix picks up a pencil. He leans over me and I pick up the smell of incense permeating his hair.
He presses the pencil point on my skin. “First, I sketch the design.”
The pencil tugs and sticks, a stomach-tightening foretaste of the needle.
“Then I get my colors ready.” He picks several bottles—the yellow, orange, and pink of a western sunset—and puts them on the swing-out tray. Next, he selects a needle, loads it up with color, and moves toward me.
“Didn’t you forget something?” I nod toward the cardboard dispenser pack of latex gloves on the tray.
“No,” he replies. “You don’t need protection from me, Will. Do I need any from you?”
“I guess not, no.” My heart drums double-time against my sternum. “This will hurt, huh?”
“Depends on how much you can take. I’ll warn you, though. This ain’t no simple design. I’m using lots of colors.”
He fans the fingers of his left hand around my navel, positions the needle and begins. Though I consider myself to have a decent pain threshold, this is far worse than I would ever have imagined: stinging, piercing, burning, armies of fire ants with buzz saw teeth relentlessly bite their way through to my bones. The gnawing radiates to my back, my feet, my head.
“Am I hurting you, Will?” Lix asks, his voice a dreamy whisper.
I struggle to rise above the pain enough to speak. “Not much worse than getting shot.”
“Yeah, I guess you would know about that. Well, hang on. We’ve got a ways to go to get the gradients in.” He reaches for another color. “You can grunt if you want, it’s OK. A lot of people do. They say it helps.”
I wouldn’t think of it.
“You want something to take the edge off?”
“Like what?” A shot of whiskey, or—
“Actually, I got some Nearvana.”
Of course he has. That would definitely take the edge off. I hear a voice that sounds like mine, only breathier, say, “Yes.”
“You chip or pop?”
Oh, God. “Chip.”
He turns the needle off, sets it on the tray, and steps over to the corner nook. When he returns, he has a crimp of paper with a little powder in the crease. I know what to do with it. Shrike showed me.
When Lix takes up his needle again, I no longer find the sickly sweet chemical smell of the ink nauseating. The guitarist’s squealing chord changes don’t aggravate me. Lix’s petals of flame lick my navel with fiery tongues, but it’s OK. With my thoughts no longer obsessing on what Lix’s right hand is doing, I can focus on his left, braced against my groin. Strong, sure fingers that definitely know their way around the human body gain purchase on my abdominal plate, oddly soothing in their confidence. The loops and whorls of his fingertips engrave their impressions on my skin.