Poison Ink (7 page)

“It has to be something that’s just for us, that only the five of us will ever have,” Letty went on. She shrugged almost bashfully. “It’s a best friends thing, y’know?”

Dante nodded. His smile, sort of lopsided, had a warmth and charm that gave him total command of the room.

“I think I do,” he said. “Wish I’d had friends that mattered that much to me. I won’t even give you the usual warnings about how difficult it is to remove tattoos and how you should really think about it so that you don’t regret it later.”

T.Q. had been quiet, as usual, from the moment they entered the shop. Now she seemed to come alive. “We haven’t thought about much of anything else all week. In fact, Caryn—”

“Hang on,” Dante said, holding up a hand. He went to his drawing table. He seemed almost to have forgotten they were there. Pushing aside his work, he placed a fresh sheet of paper on the table in front of him and picked up a pencil.

Sammi glanced at Caryn. T.Q. had tried to bring up her sketches, but Dante had interrupted. Someone should have said something to him, but for the moment they were all captivated by him. Sketching quickly, Dante drew a small circle—perhaps an inch in diameter—and then began to design around it. At first Sammi thought the sketch represented some stylized image of the sun, or a star, with rays of light coming off it in lines that curled to the left.

Then Dante picked up a pen and started inking black lines over the pencil sketch. The central circle became heavy and thick, leaving only a small, round blank in the middle, like the eye of the storm.

“It’s a hurricane, or a tornado, something like that,” she said.

The tattooist smiled and glanced up at her, and Sammi realized they were the first words she had spoken since coming into the shop.

“It’s meant to be many things at once,” Dante said, returning his attention to his work. “Kinda like friendship.”

He continued inking in the little hooked fingers that extended from that central circle, marching around the circumference counterclockwise. It reminded Sammi also of Egyptian hieroglyphics they’d studied in ancient history the year before.

Dante paused and straightened up, cocked his head, and studied the design. Apparently satisfied, he discarded the pen and picked up an eraser to remove any stray traces of pencil.

“Is it some kind of eye?” Katsuko asked.

The tattooist looked up from the table, his expression unreadable, but Sammi thought the question had irked him somehow.

“It shows the power of the storm,” Dante said, with a smiling nod to Sammi. “Friendship is like that, isn’t it? Gathering in strength, all of its elements—each of you—working together, becoming more than you could ever be on your own. Nothing can stand in the path of the storm.

“But like I said, it’s many things.” With one long finger, he pointed to the ring at the center. “This is the core, the world itself, the bond you share. Circling the world is the ocean, and here are the five of you, waves on the water.”

Sammi saw that he meant the curling prongs that swept up from the outer rim of the sphere, and felt foolish that she had not seen that before. There were five of those stylized waves, one representing each of them. As they watched, Dante added small dots around the waves that might have been stars in the sky above the world, or parts of the storm, whatever metaphor they wanted to use to interpret the design.

“It’s beautiful,” Letty breathed, staring at the drawing as the tattooist put down his pen.

There were fans blowing in the shop, a small one in this front room and at least one larger one in the back. Sammi could hear the buzz through the half-open door that led back there. Despite the fans, the shop had begun to grow uncomfortably warm. She reached back and lifted her hair off her neck.

T.Q. looked a bit flushed, but whether from the heat or embarrassment or excitement, Sammi couldn’t tell.

“It is,” the redhead said. “It is beautiful, and very cool of you, but we’ve actually got…Caryn, she’s an artist. She designed a bunch of—”

Dante glanced at Caryn. “I’m sorry. I should’ve heard you out before I let inspiration run away with me. If you’ve already picked something out, that’s fine. Can I see your designs?”

Caryn reached for her back pocket, where she’d carried the folded-up designs they had all discussed at Letty’s. On the way over here they had all seemed unanimous about which design they liked best. Now, though, Caryn hesitated, then gave a small shrug.

“Yours is much better.”

“But we want something just for us,” Katsuko said, all business. “Unique.”

Letty touched the edge of the artist’s drawing table, staring at Dante’s design. “This is unique. I love what Caryn did, especially the Pisces kind of thing with the fish, but this is, like, the perfect symbol for us. Don’t you guys see it?”

T.Q. nodded, crossing her arms. “Yeah. I see it. I just don’t want to see it on anybody else if it’s supposed to be
ours.
”

Dante slid off his chair and stood. He put a hand on Letty’s shoulder and reached out to touch T.Q.’s arm. Both girls drew stares wherever they went, and at school were considered startlingly beautiful. According to a lot of guys Sammi knew, T.Q. seemed unapproachable to them. They mistook her shyness for disdain, as though her academic ability made her think herself their superior. In truth, guys made her nervous as hell, and whatever she saw in the mirror, Simone Deveaux did not think herself beautiful. Most guys left Letty alone simply because she was a lesbian, although some of them flirted with her harder because of it, as though that were a kind of game for them.

Next to Dante, both girls seemed only ordinary.

Letty smiled when he touched her shoulder. T.Q. flinched and shifted her weight from one foot to the other, blushing furiously.

The tattooist seemed not to notice. He looked around at the other girls, at Katsuko, then Caryn, and finally at Sammi.

“I won’t pressure you. But the design exists because you came into my place looking for something special, and that inspired me. I created this for you. If you like it, I promise you I’ll never tattoo it on anyone else. No one else in the world will have it. You can take the design with you when you leave.”

The other girls all exchanged glances, and the reality of the reason for this visit swept over Sammi again. She could see just from their eyes and from their body language that Dante had persuaded them.

Hell, he’d persuaded Sammi, too. His design was perfect for them. She felt a tingling pleasure at the idea of having it tattooed on her skin, a silent rebellion taking place in her head. But her parents might never forgive her.

She’d never felt so torn.

Letty took a deep breath and looked around at her friends with a nervous, coquettish smile. “I’ll go first.”

Dante clapped his hands happily. “Excellent!”

He did not bother to check their IDs or even ask them how old they were. With a playful glint in those pale, wintry blue eyes, he led the way through the door into the back of the shop, and they all followed.

If the front of the shop existed as the artist’s studio, the room they now entered was his operating room. Sammi took it all in, thinking that it looked a lot like a dentist’s office. On one side of the room sat a heavy-duty reclining chair, and on the other a padded table that looked like something from a doctor’s examination room. Next to both table and chair were separate sets of tools on long cables like dentist’s drills, but Sammi also saw a shelf full of metal instruments. Racks of towels sat on shelves, and there were containers both for hazardous waste and for needles, as if they’d come to give blood.

The tools of the tattooist were on top of rolling cabinets whose drawers, she imagined, were filled with different inks. Sammi couldn’t look too long at the instruments without feeling a little faint. She glanced away and caught Dante studying her curiously.

“Now,” the tattooist said, “are you all going to have the same color, or different? And if it’s the same, do you want black or something more vivid?”

His accent made the question sound exotic. The girls exchanged silent looks.

“Black is bold,” Caryn said. “If it’s just going to be one color, black makes a statement.”

T.Q. and Katsuko nodded. Sammi gnawed her lower lip. When Letty glanced at her, she smiled, a mask she put on to hide the turmoil inside her.

“Black it is,” Letty said. “Where do you want me, on the table or in the chair?”

Dante spread his hands open. “Where am I going to be working?”

Sammi arched an eyebrow, wondering how daring her friends might be, or how secretive. If she herself was going to go ahead with this, there were very few places she could imagine hiding from her parents. The tattoo might go on one of her breasts, or on her lower abdomen, low enough that even her lowest-waisted jeans would not reveal it. Either way, she would have to bare part of herself to Dante that she would hide from almost anyone else.

The thrill of the forbidden tingled through her, now joined by a rush of embarrassment.

“The base of my back,” Letty said, reaching around to show exactly where. It occurred to Sammi how fortunate Letty was that her parents would be okay with the tattoo. After she’d come out as a lesbian, a small, tasteful tattoo would probably get barely a blink.

“You want your friends to step out?”

Letty shook her head. She ran her tongue over her lips, revealing a nervousness that surprised Sammi.

“All right,” Dante said, as he made his way over to the table and began to spread clean towels over it. “You can leave your shirt and panties on. Lie on your stomach on the table, and we’ll get started. Let me just get the design. I left it up front.”

The tattooist hurried out, and the girls all exhaled as if they’d been holding one enormous breath. They smiled, a bit uncertainly, but then Letty slipped out of her skirt. She climbed onto the table and lay down on her stomach, as though she expected Dante to give her a massage.

“You know, we didn’t even ask how much,” Letty said.

As she spoke, Dante reentered the room with the design in one hand. “It’s all one color, and the design isn’t very complex. Unless one of you wants it really big, I’ll charge you seventy-five apiece. Call it a group rate.”

None of them replied. They had agreed to bring a hundred bucks apiece, not sure what the cost would be. Sammi thought of the things she could do with seventy-five dollars.

Dante folded Letty’s shirt up to just below her bra strap, then slid down her panties a few inches to prepare the space for her tattoo.

“In some tribal cultures, tattoos used to be hand carved,” Dante said as he went to the sink and washed his hands with water so hot it steamed, even with the warmth in the room. “They would cut the design in, then rub pigments or dyes, sometimes ashes, into the wounds. Some people still do it that way, believe it or not. Barbaric, I think. I’m an artist. I prefer not to use my art to serve some bizarre fetish. Cutting flesh is for surgeons.”

He pulled on a pair of latex gloves. “No latex allergies? Good.”

At Letty’s side, he squirted a brownish liquid onto her lower back and then began to spread it with his fingers, rubbing it in, covering the entire area. “This is a combination of disinfectant and topical anesthetic. It helps dull the pain.”

At the mention of pain, all the girls seemed to pause. Letty, however, seemed perfectly comfortable.

“In Japan, they sometimes use sharpened bamboo needles and create the tattoos by hand, moving slowly, inserting one needle at a time. I respect the discipline of
irezumi,
but I’m not that patient.” He smiled. “Also, I don’t believe art has to ignore technology. With the machine, the needles puncture the skin a hundred times a second or so.”

Sammi arched her eyebrows. “And, oddly enough, that doesn’t comfort me.”

Dante nodded. “I see you’re nervous. You don’t need to be. It stings, sure, but I promise that you have been hurt more than I will hurt you tonight.”

Having once tripped over a board studded with bent and half-rusted nails, Sammi still didn’t feel reassured.

“Can we stop talking about the pain and the needles?” Letty called out from the table. “I’m trying to stay in my happy place here, and you’re all making it very difficult.”

Dante went to a small silver machine and flicked a switch. It hummed almost like a microwave, and when he turned it off and opened the door, steam billowed out.

“Every one I use will be sterile,” he said. “Even so, you’ll have to care for the tattoos properly afterward, to avoid infection.”

The tattooist continued talking them through what he was doing, sharing odd facts about the history of tattooing and body modification, very serious about his business. Sammi watched his hands, how deftly his fingers moved, and she studied those blue eyes.

Only when he set to work on Letty’s back, glancing again and again at the design he had drawn and then pressing the tattoo needle against her flesh, did Sammi have to look away. As she did, she noticed another door off to one side, between a metal cabinet and a shelf filled with plastic containers. The door had a padlock on it, and she wondered where it led. Not to the alley in back of the building. She tried to imagine the layout of the strip of shops on this block. If Dante had more space beyond that door, it must be storage or something. But if the shop was locked up, why would he need a padlock there?

Letty hissed through her teeth.

“You’re all right,” Dante assured her. “The closer we are to bone, the more it hurts. We’re above the tailbone here.”

“Be gentle with me,” Letty said, as though she were the heroine of some old romance novel.

Dante did not glance up from his work. He pushed the needle down again, moving it in a circle, creating the world, the ocean, the storm of his inspiration.

“Always.”

Katsuko offered herself up next. Since she was a swimmer, there were very few places she could hide the tattoo, and though she had made a lot of noise about wanting to shock her parents, when it came down to it, she became more wary. Her tattoo went on her right hip, low enough to be hidden by her pants or skirt, but high enough not to be revealed by her bathing suit. It did not take Dante long at all, because Katsuko’s tattoo covered only about an inch of flesh.