Dianna stood outside the tattoo shop, rain hammering down on her umbrella. The lights were on, including the WALK RIGHT IN sign in neon, but the door was locked. No little sign with a clock saying BE RIGHT BACK. If Patty was planning to close early, she could have texted.
“Well,” she said, “damn.”
She was feeling tired, a little sick, and glad to be away from the shop. After that first client, the day had canted sideways and fallen off the rails. No psychic was right all the time—if they were, all they’d do would be to play the damn lottery—but sensitives like Dianna were right more than they were not. Especially with her regulars. Not today, though. She’d been so completely off that she’d had to fake her way through readings, relying on the face value of the tarot cards, rather than interpreting their meaning. Most of the newbie customers couldn’t tell the difference, though she doubted they’d come back because the readings had had all the energy of a dead battery. The regulars, though, had given her odd looks. They knew she was off. It felt like she was cheating them, and some of them had that awareness in their eyes. No one said anything, but they knew.
They knew.
Maybe Patty would cheer her up. She was a new friend, but Dianna felt like she’d known the tattoo artist forever. Not her type in a romantic way—skinny to the point of looking emaciated—but kindred. They both had baggage and even though that was never the topic of their conversations, it was there. To a degree that was a comfort. Fellow travelers through the storm lands.
Plus, Patty was a real artist. Dianna had several tattoos, but until she’d met Patty Cakes, the ink was just symbolic. Phases of the moon, an LGBTQ rainbow. That sort of thing. She’d come into the shop the day it opened, stopping by on a whim, or maybe pulled there. Guided there. The small Vietnamese woman had been cleaning her equipment and simply stopped, turning to look up as if Dianna had called her name. Then Patty walked over to her and held out a hand. Not to shake, but palm up, nodding toward Dianna’s left arm. Without even a flicker of confusion Dianna placed her forearm on the upraised palm. There was no tattoo there, but it was where Dianna wanted one.
Patty placed her other hand over the unmarked skin and then began rubbing it very gently. It was in no way sexual. It was so much like the way Dianna held crystals or an unshuffled deck of cards. Reading potential. Letting the moment speak to her.
“The moon,” said Patty.
“I have the…” began Dianna, but trailed off, embarrassed because she’d spoken before listening to her heart. There was even a flicker of disappointment in the artist’s eyes. There and gone.
Patty let her arm go. “Show me the one you have.”
Dianna hesitated, momentarily losing her grip on her confidence. She glanced at the big picture window. Patty nodded, walked over and lowered a privacy shade, then turned, hands clasped lightly.
“Show me.”
Dianna nodded. She felt her throat and cheeks burning a little, which was odd. She was never embarrassed. Not anymore, and not in this town. But she felt oddly naked. Exposed. Her fingers moved to the top button of her blouse, trembled, then Dianna took a breath and undid the buttons. All of them. She slipped out of her blouse and turned to show her spine. She reached back to unclasp her bra, but Patty made a small dismissive sound.
The tattoo of the phases of the moon ran from midback to a few inches below the nape of her neck. With anything more than a tank top it was hidden. The work was good and the job had been very expensive.
“Brooklyn Jack?” asked Patty.
“Yes, how did—?”
“It’s good work,” said Patty, “but it’s a man’s art. Jack tries, but he isn’t…” She let the rest hang, then after a moment added, “And it’s in the wrong place. Not the back for the moon. Never there. It should be on your arm. Left arm. Heartline.”
“Yes,” said Dianna.
“Put your blouse on.”
Dianna picked it up from the chair where she’d dropped it. She buttoned it quickly.
“It’s not the phases,” said Patty. “You know that, right?”
Dianna nodded. “I know it now. Didn’t then.”
“Phases are transition. You’re not becoming something. You’re there. You’re not bi, you’re pure.”
Pure. The word was so beautiful. Once, long ago, her mother accused her of not being pure because Dianna liked girls. That was high school. Later, after a disaster of a marriage, Mom had told her she was impure because she’d left her husband for a woman. That was six years ago, when Dianna had realized she wasn’t bisexual but a lesbian going through the motions of being bi in order to try and fit in and make an ill-considered marriage work.
“Pure,” said Patty again, nodding as if in agreement with her own judgment.
Dianna held out her arm and they both looked at the pale skin.
“What do you think?” she asked. “There are other symbols…”
Patty made that face. “Are you campaigning?”
“What?”
“Are you looking for a slogan? ‘Come join the lesbian army’?”
Dianna laughed. “No.”
“No,” agreed Patty. “You’re not recruiting and you’re not uncertain anymore, are you?”
No,” said Dianna, “I’m really not.”
“Right.”
“So…?”
Patty held out her left hand, palm down, to show the exquisite tattoo on the back of it. It was of a lovely little girl with huge eyes and a smile that could melt all the ice in the world. But when Dianna glanced at the artist’s eyes, she saw a sadness so deep that it clawed a hole all the way down to the blackest darkness. Dianna did not have to ask. She did not need the details. Her sensitivity clicked on like a switch had been thrown and she felt the pain, heard the echo of screams—the child’s and the mother’s, but not screamed at the same time. Separated by a wall of horror that was too high for anyone to climb. In that instant Dianna knew that this little girl was dead, and that she had died apart from her mother; and that she had died in the most ugly way possible.
Just as she knew it was her mother who had, through a process of heartbreak, need, and the deepest artistry, inked that face on the back of a hand that could never touch the lost girl. Dianna felt her heart break and tears burned in her eyes. But Patty said, “No.”
Patty took the hem of her T-shirt and pulled it up to just below her chin. Around her neck she wore a small glass vial filled with a pinkish liquid. Her breasts were tiny, the nipples dark. But between the areoles was a flower Dianna recognized—a white climbing rose. Or a Cherokee rose, as it was known in the States, whose history was forever tied to the Trail of Tears, the forced and brutal migration to a reservation in Oklahoma. The delicate petals were believed to represent the tears the women had shed along the way. But Dianna knew that it was an invasive species, brought to the United States by travelers from China and Vietnam.
The flowers on Patty told their own story. The ones closest to the nipples were withered and crumbling as if they, like the milk that once fed the little girl, had dried up never to blossom again. But as the other flowers got nearer to the small woman’s heart they burst with color and detail and looked so real that Dianna could almost smell their fragrance. She slowly raised her eyes as Patty let the shirt fall. They stared at each other for a long time. Some conversations didn’t need words.
Dianna held out her arm again, and Patty smiled.
The artist turned off the OPEN neon, locked the door, and began. It took hours. They talked some, but not of the tattoo. They talked about the town of Pine Deep, about its energies. The ley lines that ran like streams of power—light and dark—along irregular paths through every part of the town, the farms, and the state forest. They talked of the new streets that had been built, and which had come to form the Fringe. Boundary Street, which ran like the main street of the growing community. Mercy Street, where the best music could be found. Autumn Lane, with all of its specialty shops. Coyote Court, where the children played, with different members of the community volunteering to watch them, including one of the locals—the big, red-haired cop named Mike. He wasn’t inked or pierced, was a straight white male, didn’t even drink. But he wasn’t a Norm. He was accepted there more than in the town he grew up in.
They talked about seeing and knowing. About the burden of understanding.
There were tears and laughter, and a few pauses to hug or hold hands.
It took four hours for Patty to finish, and when she was done, they both wept.
A green vine, delicate with the sweetness of early spring, seemed to sprout from a blue vein near Dianna’s wrist. It curled and coiled up Dianna’s forearm, sprouting roses in dozens of shades, as if all of the colors of nature were gathered there, part of that single vine. Each flower was larger and more vibrant than the last, and also subtly different—more realistic, more defined—until a final rose, whose lush petals brushed against the tender inside of her elbow. This final rose was ripe and full, with a red so deep that it was black in places, and so luscious that it seemed to rise from her skin and perfume the air, insisting on its own immutable reality. Not a flower in transition, but one that was so clearly itself that seeing it was a celebration of joy.
They both stared at the tattoo, smiling, sobbing, as tears ran down their faces. Dianna kissed Patty on both cheeks and the lips. A sisters’ kiss, but the kind of kiss only real sisters could ever hope to understand.
That had been how Dianna met Patty a couple of months ago.
Now she stood outside, rain hammering on her umbrella, staring in through the glass at an empty room.
She wore a long gray trench coat over her clothes, a burgundy scarf wound around her throat, and gloves that matched the scarf. But she was cold, and only some of that was because of the rain and wind. She was angry and confused and scared. Her left arm hurt.
She wanted to show the tattoo to Patty, to get some answers. Maybe to yell at the woman. Her heart wanted to break, too, because that beautiful tattoo had lost its luster. The vibrant colors were washed out, and that big, beautiful rose now looked like it was withering. What the hell? What the actual fuck?
She pounded on the door.
Nothing.
She pulled her cell and called the store, got nothing. Texted Patty. Same result.
“Damn, damn, damn,” she said. The tattoo throbbed very faintly. And not in a good way. After five furious minutes she turned away and walked through dirty puddles to her car.
Dianna did not see the flies clustered around the light under the small awning above the parlor door.
They, however, saw her.