Chapter 2

West End was buzzing, people coming alive as the temperature dropped ahead of the incoming storm. Harry climbed out of his car and negotiated a path down the pavement, past an eclectic collection of cafes, bars and grocery stores, to where Dave had parked. Suits sipped wine and imported beer, jostling for space with Gen Y hipsters slurping coffee and jabbing at their iPhones, and world-weary locals who’d seen it all.

West End Tattoo had a low-key shopfront. No gaudy artwork on the window, venetian blinds to discourage gawkers. Harry had walked past the place dozens of times without realising it was a tattoo parlour.

‘Now, when we get in there, let me do the talking,’ Dave said. ‘You don’t want to piss them off, okay?’

Harry was angry, but the anger was offset by a sickening feeling in his stomach. He was sweating, his heart racing. It wasn’t all the hangover, and he wasn’t scared of a looming confrontation. He had to ask plenty of hard questions in his job. Questions people would rather not answer. In his personal life he found confrontation harder to deal with, but he could still flip the ‘journalist’ switch if he had to.

The place looked just as foreign as every other time he’d passed it. So much so that as Dave pushed the door open, he knew what the result was going to be. No. No, we did not do that tattoo. Sorry, pal. A shrug. A see ya later. Which would leave Harry facing the prospect that he had been so bombed he actually went out of his way to get the tattoo. What else had he done, and couldn’t remember?

‘You okay?’

Harry jumped. Dave was staring at him.

‘Not really. None of this is familiar,’ he said, shaking his head.

The walls were covered in framed tattoo designs. On the far side of the small room a woman sat behind a counter. People were crammed in shoulder to shoulder on bench seating around the other three sides of the room. A young guy with bleached blond hair clutched an art folder. A woman with a pram flicked through a magazine. From the doorway behind the counter, tattoo machines buzzed. Stairs led up to the second storey, and Harry could hear more tattooing going on up there.

The woman behind the counter looked up. ‘Hey, Dave!’

The ring through the middle of her lip glistened when she smiled. She wore a vintage dress: red flowers on a cream background. Her hair was pinned up, revealing the art that cascaded from her neck down over her shoulders and under the fabric of her dress, before continuing out from under the sleeves and down her arms. Flowers, faces and intricate scrollwork.

‘Hey, Sian.’

She nodded at Harry. ‘Brought in a convert?’

‘Kinda. Um…’

‘I’ve already got a tattoo,’ Harry said. ‘I just don’t know how.’

Dave seemed happy to let Harry do the talking, once he realised he wasn’t going to explode. When he finished the story, she shook her head.

‘Not ours.’

‘You haven’t even looked at it!’ Harry said, a little louder than he intended.

Sian’s lips set in a firm line. Dave touched her arm. ‘He’s a little…things have been a bit fucked up lately.’

Her eyes flicked to Dave and her face softened a little.

‘Well, for a start, we’re not some 1950s dockside operation. We don’t open at night unless someone’s got an appointment. Even if we were open, we wouldn’t be doing walk-ins. There’s a two-month waiting list for most of the artists here. And even when we do walk-ins, we don’t tattoo people if they’re wasted. Too much grief for all involved.’

Harry blinked. The rising anger dissipated. Now he could feel a lump in his throat. Sian rolled her eyes.

‘Let’s have a look at it then,’ she said.

She came out from behind the counter, pushed Harry’s head forward a little more roughly than was necessary.

‘Hmm. I was gonna say you might’ve got it done at Stones Corner. But this doesn’t even look like it’s been done with a tattoo machine. The edges aren’t defined enough. Looks more like krob kru.’

‘What’s that?’

‘Buddhist monks in Thailand have a ceremony where they tattoo people using shafts of bamboo. Mix the ink with snake venom. It’s pretty full on.’

‘I think I’d remember that.’

‘Yeah. You’d think so, right?’

She let go of his shirt, and he turned to face her.

‘It’s weird though,’ she said, frowning.

Harry rubbed his neck. ‘Oh yeah? It gets weirder?’

‘Yeah. They’re not krob kru tattoos. I mean, it’s not a krob kru design. In fact, it looks kinda Persian.’

‘Persian?’

‘Yep.’

‘Don’t suppose you happen to know what it means?’

‘Um. Offhand, no. Sorry.’

***

Harry stared into his coffee. ‘Worst. Day. Ever.’

Dave shuffled his feet under the table, watched the waitress as she delivered another couple of drinks. Tight black t-shirt, tight black shorts. Cars and buses droned past. Up and down Hardgrave Road steel shutters clattered down. The storm was edging nearer, flashes of lightning illuminating clouds in the west.

‘Well, she could be wrong,’ Dave said.

Harry stared at him. ‘Er, she looks like she might know a thing or two about tatts, Dave.’ He slurped his coffee.

‘Just sayin’.’

Harry searched for a subject that wasn’t going to lead back to tattoos or Bec. ‘So, you ready to get hitched?’

‘Yeah, pretty much. There are some last-minute dramas about the seating arrangements for the reception, but that’s about it. Ellie isn’t too impressed that I’m on night shifts every night leading up to the wedding but, ah, she’ll get over it.’

‘No, I mean, are you ready? Emotionally?’

Dave laughed. ‘Ha! You know me. I wasn’t fussed. It was mainly Ellie’s family. I mean, I love her. A ring on the finger is neither here nor there. You live with someone long enough, you just know, right?’

Harry looked into the street; an old guy in a tattered blue jumper was pawing through an overflowing bin. Harry thought about the last conversation he and Bec had. If you could call it a conversation. He provoked her, but then she really let him have it. About how he was still at the Chronicle. About how all he ever did when he was at home was watch TV. She even had a go about the middle-age paunch he was growing.

‘Sorry,’ Dave said. ‘I just mean…’

Harry waved it away. ‘I better get going. I’ve got a big day at work tomorrow.’

‘Oh yeah. Toastmasters’ convention? Over-60s Blue Light Disco?’

‘Har-dee-fucking-har-har. You should be a fucking comedian.’

‘That’s what the director of nursing keeps telling me. Maybe I should.’

‘Our local MP wants to talk election coverage.’

Dave tipped his head back, offered a fake snore, jolted awake. ‘Sorry. Did you say something?’

‘He’s not that bad.’

‘Ron Vessel. Man of Action,’ Dave said, delivered deadpan.

‘Laugh all you want, but Andrew Cardinal is Opposition Leader, and Ron is his right-hand man. If Cardinal gets up, Vessel’s going with him.’

‘Uh-huh. Like that’s going to happen. Cardinal would have to stop running marathons to have a successful run at the Lodge. And that’s not going to happen.’ Dave leant in close, offering a conspiratorial whisper. ‘He’s addicted…to the endorphins.’

‘Well, I think he’ll get plenty of excitement on the campaign trail.’

Harry stood, started loading his possessions into his pockets.

‘Hey, do you want to catch up for a coffee during the week? Last coffee of freedom?’ Dave said, picking his wallet, car keys and phone off the table.

‘Yeah, maybe.’

‘Cool. If not, I’ll see you Saturday.’

‘I wouldn’t miss it for the world.’

Harry turned to leave.

‘Hey, Harry.’

‘Yeah?’

‘Thanks for coming last night. I mean, I know you haven’t really had much to do with the guys since high school. It really means a lot to me. And I do feel bad about the tattoo.’

‘Not your fault. I’ll talk to you during the week, okay?’

***

Harry was still a hundred metres from his car when thunder boomed through the sky and the heavens opened. He sprinted through the rain, gasping as he fumbled for his keys. He slid into the front seat and sat there for a moment, catching his breath, listening to the rain smashing against the roof.

He opened the glovebox and pulled out a well-worn cassette tape: Counting Crows’ A&EA. Dave thought it was hilarious that Harry still had the Corolla – his second-ever car – and even funnier that he had never bothered to buy a car stereo with an iPod dock or CD player. Harry wasn’t averse to technology. He just figured there was no point putting a new stereo into a car that could die any day now.

He’d been saying the same thing since he bought it, shortly after joining the Chronicle. Back then, he didn’t have a choice. He needed a cheap and relatively reliable vehicle. These days, he could afford the repayments on something better, but he’d grown fond of the old girl. The Corolla rolled off the assembly line the same year he did.

He keyed the engine, watching the steam rising from the road. As he pulled out into the street the first guitar strains of ‘Round Here’ came crackling through the speakers. The music, like the car, pre-dated Bec. Dave had introduced him to Counting Crows, back when they were delivering pizzas and Harry was in the process of running his first car into the ground. The music anchored him in a time before Bec, when he was alone, when he was still full of twentysomething angst and thought he’d never find anyone.

Yeah, it was depressing. But right now he needed that. He drove out of West End, eyes tearing up in sympathy with the sky. Across the Grey Street Bridge, the chocolate-coloured waters of the Brisbane River churned below him. City lights refracted off the raindrops on the car’s windows.

He made it through Rosalie Village before the tears got so bad he had to pull over. He switched off the engine. The music fell silent but the song played on in his mind. He leant his head on the steering wheel and gave in to it. Tears cascaded down his face and to the floor below, as the storm raged around him.