When Lightning Strikes

by Brooke St. James

  The sketch was done on a small piece of tracing paper that was trimmed into an oval. He picked it up, and held it out for me. "Show me where you were thinking about putting it," he said.

  I lined it up on my forearm and glanced at him to see how he'd react.

  "Do you like that size?" he asked.

  "I think I might have pictured it bigger, but this might be better."

  He cocked his head a time or two as he inspected my arm. "I think that's a good size," he said. "I'm happy to do it bigger, but I think this fits that spot well."

  I smiled and set the piece of tracing paper next to me. "I think it's great," I said.

  Patrick went through the process of setting up, which took about ten minutes. During that time, he asked me what I did for a living, and that got us started about teaching and history.

  He was busy preparing for the tattoo, so he didn't look at me the whole time we spoke. I was thankful for that, because I was relatively sure I was physically shaking. And yes, I blamed my nerves on the impending tattoo, not my attraction to Patrick Mallory.

  He placed the stencil in a perfectly centered location on my forearm, and pulled back to stare at it. He gripped my arm and tilted it back and forth, studying the way it looked in its current location. "I'd be happy to adjust it, if you don't like it," he said finally, "but I think it's pretty good where it is." He lifted his chin toward the wall to his right. "Go take a look in that mirror over there and see what you think."

  I hopped off the table and crossed to the mirror to take a look. I loved how the cross looked, and I told him so. Within a few minutes, I heard the familiar buzzing sound of the tattoo machine. He was wearing gloves, but I could still feel the warmth of his hands as he gripped my arm.

  I looked away. "Ready?" he asked. I nodded and he made the first line. "So, you like crosses?" he asked. We glanced at each other when he asked it, and I smiled.

  "Yes," I said. "I got into a car accident," I added feeling compelled to explain.

  He smiled. "Oh, so you found God and whatnot?"

  I felt like I was on the verge of turning into a babbling idiot, and I said a short, silent prayer asking God to help me say the right thing so I wouldn't misrepresent Him or embarrass myself. I let out a little laugh. "I guess something about almost dying makes you reevaluate," I said.

  "I know a lot of people turn to God when something traumatic like that happens," he said. "You're not the only one."

  His statement made me feel like he thought the idea of God was a crutch for all the weak people out there. I didn't know what to say. I wanted to defend myself—defend God, but I decided to err on the side of being quiet.

  He continued to work on my arm. I asked him about the music that was playing. It was a band I recognized. They were obscure, and I could tell he was impressed that I knew about them. That got us talking about other bands and music in general. We had similar taste in music and movies, and we talked and laughed and teased each other for the next thirty minutes while he completed the simple tattoo.

  He looked up at me when he was all done. It was the first time we made eye contact since we started getting along so well, and he studied my face for a long second. I could tell he was intrigued by me, and I felt my gut clinch with nervous anticipation.

  He tore his gaze from mine to look at the tattoo. "I assume you know about aftercare," he said.

  "I do," I assured him. I smiled as I looked down at it. "I love it. Do you like it?"

  He smiled back, but then glanced down at it and said, "Men never commit evil so fully and joyfully as when they do it for religious convictions."

  My smile faded. I'd been paying attention to his gorgeousness, and the quote he'd just spouted off mostly fell on deaf ears. I took a second to think about what he said. I'd heard it before. It was just the type of thing I would have quoted before my accident.

  "Pascal said that." I said.

  He stared at me, seeming amazed that I'd know such a thing. I couldn’t hold back a smile.

  "Atheists use that quote, but Pascal was a Christian if I remember right," I said. He stared at me in disbelief and I smiled. "I like history," I said. "I like studying people and what made them tick."

  Chapter 3

  Patrick put some plastic wrap over the new tattoo and taped the end to keep it in place. I looked down at my arm. "Thanks for doing such a great job," I said. I phrased it as a goodbye, and I turned to leave. "Should I just pay the girl up front?" I asked.

  He shot me a patient, easy grin that made me seem overzealous. "I'll walk up there with you," he said.

  The other two guys had chimed into our conversation about music, and I told them both goodbye before we walked out. I followed Patrick down the hall toward the desk. He stopped and turned around before we reached the front. "I have a minimum of $150 but this one's so little that I'll do it for $100. Just please don't tell anyone I gave it to you for that."

  "You told me about the minimum in your email," I said. "I came prepared to pay $150."

  "It's all right," he said. "Just don't tell anyone I did it for you."

  I smiled. I was so charmed by him it wasn't even funny. He was smart, witty, and without a doubt the most handsome creature in Texas. I fell into an instant trance staring at him.

  "So it's a hundred," he said, drawing me from my thoughts. I gasped and instantly started digging in my backpack purse for my wallet.

  He ran my card and I signed the receipt, adding twenty-five dollars as a tip.

  "Thanks," he said, taking the receipt from me. He stashed it in a drawer. I started to say goodbye and that it was nice meeting him, but he spoke before I could. "Hey, I'm walking down to Moshi's to grab a cup of coffee before my next client comes in," he said. "You want to come with me?"

  I didn't even have to think about it. I, by all means, wanted to go, but I acted like I was trying to remember if I had anything else going on.

  "I could go for a cup of coffee right now," I said.

  "Great, let me grab my wallet," he said.

  I stood by the door when he went back to his station, and I watched as he made his way back toward me. He had on simple dark clothes, but they fit him perfectly. He was well put together, and it was a curious contrast to the rebellious look the tattoos gave him. His smile was bright against his tan skin.

  "I'll be back in a half hour," he said to the front desk girl on the way out.

  She looked me over with a disapproving scowl that made me drop eye contact with her. I just looked down and followed Patrick. I almost asked why the girl was being so hostile once we were outside, but I chose no to mention it.

  He walked slowly so I could fall into stride next to him on the sidewalk. "So why do some of you guys think it's a sin to get a tattoo and others don't?"

  I didn't expect him to start in on the God talk right away, if at all, so I felt nervous and on the spot. I said a split-second prayer that I wouldn't say something wrong.

  "It's from a passage in the old testament where God's warning his people about a specific pagan tradition—one where they cut or marked themselves in a ritual for the dead. It had nothing to do with tattooing as we know it, but some Christians still choose not to get them."

  "How do you decide which rules you want to follow?" he asked. "Why is it a sin for some people and not for others?"

  We walked slowly, but my mind was racing. I could see the sign for the coffee shop a couple blocks ahead, and I wondered if we'd continue this conversation once we got there.

  "I think it's more about how you look at sin," I said.

  "Aren't there a set of rules and if you break them it's considered a sin?" he asked. "Isn't that the whole point of the ten commandments?"

  I sighed, hoping I could answer without sounding uninformed. "Yeah, but it's not like that," I said. "God's not just up in heaven shaking His finger at us and making up rules just because it's fun to watch us follow them. It's more like if He knows something's going to hurt us, He wants to see us avoid those thin
gs. For our own good. It's like a dad telling his toddler not to play with a knife. God knows sin hurts us, so He warns us about it."

  "So the ten commandments are more of a suggestion?" he asked.

  "No," I said, feeling frustrated. "I mean, yes, if you want to look at it that way. Ultimately, we make our own choices."

  "So you see God as this caring being who just wants to keep his kids from playing with knives?" he asked.

  I giggled. "I guess so," I said. "That's more how I see it than Him shaking his finger at me."

  We walked a few paces in silence before he said, "Why would God create evil in the first place? If He made everything, why didn't He just not make evil?"

  I looked at him with wide, disbelieving eyes. We were just approaching the door to the coffee shop, and here he was spouting off an expert level question with the same nonchalance that he'd ask if I was having coffee or tea.

  "Are you seriously asking me this question right now?" I asked.

  He glanced at me and laughed at my perplexed expression. He reached out to open the door and stood back so I could walk through. I went up to the counter and ordered a cappuccino. I started to dig for my wallet, but he stopped me. He added his drink to the order and said he'd pay for both.

  "You didn't have to do that," I said.

  "I wanted to," he said. "Plus I got a tip just now, so I have a little extra cash."

  I thanked him for the coffee and we picked a spot to sit down. The whole encounter felt very date-like. Maybe it was just the fact that I was attracted to him that made it resemble a date in my mind, but I was shaken with nervous jitters as I sat down across from him.

  "You were saying…" he said.

  "What?" I asked.

  "You were just about to tell me why God made the knife that's gonna hurt us."

  I shook my head at him, letting him know just how incredulous I thought he was. "He had to give us a choice," I said. "If He created us pure, and there was no opportunity for us to deviate from that, we'd be robots. He'd get no joy out of having us love Him back, because we'd have no other option."

  Patrick Mallory stared at me from across that table. I knew he thought I was crazy for believing in God, but he was openly curious about me. It sort of seemed like he was surprised that he liked me even though I was a Christian. I hadn't meant to be so open about it, but that's just where the conversation led because of the cross-like nature of my tattoo.

  "What do you have coming in next?" I asked, changing the subject.

  "I'm working on a sleeve I've already started," he said. "I have the outline done. I'm just doing some shading today."

  "Is there ever anything you won't tattoo?" I asked, probably hoping he'd say pentagrams.

  "Nazi stuff, racist stuff, whatever strikes me the wrong way I guess… I have no problem refusing someone if they want something that doesn't fit into my style. I'm thankful to be at that point."

  "My brother said you used to live in California," I said unintentionally changing the subject again.

  "I did," he said. "I came here about six months ago."

  "Why'd you pick Austin?"

  "I'm an only child with a deadbeat dad. My mom died six years ago, and since then, I've been doing a lot of traveling. I was living in Santa Ana half the time and traveling the other half. I came through Austin often, and never wanted to leave, so now this is my Santa Ana. I still travel quite a bit, but Austin's my new home base."

  "What do you mean by travel, exactly? You just take trips and go sight seeing or what?"

  "I work while I'm traveling. That's how I pay for it. I book guest spots at studios all over the world. I take appointments and work part-time while I get to play a little too."

  "That sounds fun," I said. "I've been as far east as Birmingham and as far west as Midland. I don't know what I'd give to see the world." I stared blankly at the table while imagining all the historical places I wanted to visit. "That's seriously the coolest thing ever. I can't believe you get to travel around and see the world while being creative and making people happy. If I had any artistic abilities, I'd quit my job right now and do what you're doing. That's amazing."

  He nodded. "I don't take for granted how lucky I am," he said. "I've tattooed in sixteen different countries. I've tasted and seen and… smelled things I can't even describe."

  "Try," I said, smiling.

  "What?" he asked.

  "Try to describe something for me," I said. "I want to live vicariously through you." I closed my eyes as if ready to imagine whatever he said.

  "I once saw a monkey that smoked cigarettes," he said. "He inhaled and everything. His owner dressed him in human clothes and he sat around with us like he was just one of the guys." Patrick let out a low laugh. "Actually, that's true, but that's one of my more random memories. I'm not even sure why I told you that."

  I opened my eyes, laughing at the thought of a smoking monkey.

  "How about you?" he asked.

  "What about me?"

  "What'd you see in Birmingham?"

  "Nothing nearly that interesting," I said. "My aunt Carol lived there for a few years and we went to see her twice. I saw her house and the mall, but that was about it. I've had much more interesting experiences in places that weren't Birmingham."

  "Like where?"

  I thought back to some of my crazy weekends during college. "New Orleans for one, but I've seen some crazy stuff right here in Austin."

  He laughed. "Was the stuff crazy or were you maybe just looking through crazy eyes?"

  I giggled. "I think it was mostly just my eyes," I said, giggling. "I'm amazed I'm alive or not injured from the stupid stuff I did. The trip to New Orleans was especially sketchy. I was working in a coffee shop like this, and I decided to go to New Orleans for Jazz Fest with a few of my friends who worked there too. Anyway, on our way there, Kent, this guy who was with us, opened a round tin, like the ones with Christmas candy. I think it was literally a Christmas tin. I remember a Christmas tree on the lid, and I made a note of it because it was May. Anyway there were six Oreo cookies inside when he opened it, and he told us that there was a few drops of liquid acid on each of them. We each ate one on the way to New Orleans, and the whole weekend was a complete blur after that. I know we spent the weekend in New Orleans, and I'm reasonably sure we stuck together, but I don't remember most of that weekend. I remember trying to communicate with a gas station attendant at one time, and Hannah coming in to tell me I better just leave before I got us all arrested. I don't think I was doing anything wrong, I just remember her saying that and then I got all paranoid and ended up leaving extra money on the counter just in case." I laughed a little. "I can't believe I didn't have some sort of medical repercussions. Kent ate two of those cookies, I think. Can you imagine what he must have been feeling?"

  Patrick smiled as he listened to my story, but I couldn’t tell what he was thinking. "Are you still friends with those people?"

  "Matt and Kent both moved since then. They were just here for college. Hannah's still here, but we were never were really that close." I shrugged. "It's not as cool as a monkey smoking a cigarette in—wait, where were you when you saw that?"

  "Spain."

  "Definitely not as cool as a Spanish cigarette smoking monkey."

  We sat there for fifteen minutes more, talking and laughing like we'd known each other for years. He told me some more stories about his travels, and I told him some of my funny, mostly drug-induced college experiences. They weren't as interesting as his travel stories, but it was all I had, and he seemed entertained.

  Patrick was a year older than me, which was young to have such a successful tattoo career, but he had a distinct style that set him apart. Two different people recognized and approached him before we left the coffee shop. One of them had something tattooed by him already and was saying how much he loved it. The other said she emailed him three days ago and still hadn't heard back. Patrick said he was busy and sometimes slow to respond, but that he would get
back to her soon. She was pretty and obviously charmed by him, and I felt a wave of unnecessary jealousy. I looked out the window for the remainder of their conversation, which was short.

  Chapter 4

  "I'm headed this way," I said to Patrick as soon as we stepped onto the sidewalk in front of the coffee shop. He assumed we'd be walking back toward the tattoo shop, so he looked surprised when I pointed in the other direction.

  "Really?" he asked. "Where'd you park?"

  "In the garage by the library. I couldn't find a spot on the street by the shop."

  "You can park in the garage by the museum next time," he said. "We can validate for that one."

  "This one's not too far," I said, with a flick of my keychain.

  "You want me to walk you to your car?"

  "Oh no, don’t worry about it. I'll be fine. You should probably get back to work anyway."

  He cocked his head as he looked at me, and if I didn't know better, I'd say he maybe looked disappointed at the thought of saying goodbye. "So I guess I'll see you next time you get a tattoo Ms. Mia Porter the history teacher."

  I smiled. "Unless you take an eighth grade American history class at Maxwell."

  He stared at me. "I think I might actually wish that were an option."

  I laughed and put my hand up to give him a high five. "I guess it'll be the next time I get tattooed by you, Patrick Mallory the tattooer."

  He high-fived me and I gave him a big smile as I turned to head down the sidewalk. I glanced back to find that he was still standing there watching me. I wanted to go back to him and say I changed my mind about being walked to my car, but I just turned and kept on walking.

  By the time I turned again, he was walking the other direction. I let my shoulders slump, feeling like I could finally breathe. I was so physically attracted to Patrick that I felt like I'd been plugged into some sort of breath-zapping machine for the last two hours.

  I sat in my jeep for a minute before I decided to call my new friend Lauren. She was younger than me, twenty-three I think, and she was married to the guy, Eli, who called me the chameleon. They were two of the ones I'd met at church recently. Anyway, I decided to call her because we'd been hanging out a lot lately and she was easy to talk to.