by JD Hawkins
“Anyway,” Ginger says, settling his eyes back on the girl, “you were saying? Burlesque? Tell me about that…”
The girl giggles, and then a second later I hear Kayla again. This time she’s a little louder, a little clearer.
“No. I’m sorry. But no. You need to leave.”
“Come on!” the boy says, in a tone of voice that aggravates my already discordant nerves.
I put the needle down on the tray and get up. At the front desk I move to stand beside Kayla and glare at the kid, who looks at me like I’m a bad smell.
“What does this guy want?” I ask Kayla, without taking my eyes off him.
He points at Kayla, as if indignant that I’m interrupting.
“We’re just talking.”
“About what?”
“Teo,” Kayla says, soothingly, “I can handle it.”
“I asked you a question. What you two talking about?” I repeat.
The kid snorts, as if finding me too strange to understand.
“Relax, buddy. Ok?”
“If there’s one thing I hate,” I say, already moving around the counter toward him, “it’s people telling me to relax.”
He makes a feeble attempt to plant his feet, raise his hands and get into punching position, but before he’s even done that I’ve got a hand around his collar, fingers twisting his shirt. I drag him to the door, shouts swelling behind me.
I yank the door open and toss him outside like a bag of trash. He lands with thump, a strangled wail of pain. I see red, blood hot and pumping as if some pressure valve has been let off inside of me. Some aimless, charged manifestation of all the shit I’ve been stacking there for days.
I step toward him, ready for more, ready to pound him into a pulp, but before I can take a second step my arms are grabbed, and I’m being pulled back toward the shouts, back into the tattoo shop.
“Holy shit, Teo,” Kayla scolds.
“You wanna get your ass involved in a damned lawsuit or something?” Ginger says.
“Take him in back,” Kayla shouts, moving toward the dancer, who’s clutching the chair like she’s just heard an air raid siren. “I’ll finish up in here.”
Ginger pushes me into the back room and shoves me down onto the sofa, where I suddenly feel how fast my heart’s racing, how hard I’m breathing.
“The hell was that about, Teo?” Ginger says, pacing in front of me. “Damn near lost your shit!”
“I can’t have people abusing my employees,” I say, though it’s a feeble excuse.
“Just some dumb kid with a crush, for God’s sake. You only needed to scare the shitkicker.”
I put a hand over my eyes, Ginger’s words making the wave of regret come quicker, harder.
More than Ginger, though, I think of Ash’s father, as if he were right there, watching it. I think about how he’d probably smile in victory. He’d probably say something about my ‘violent tendencies,’ about me being ‘criminal minded,’ an ‘animal with no refinement.’ And I wouldn’t have anything to say back, because the bottom line is that he would be right.
Ginger drops to sit beside me, the weight of his body making the couch bounce a little.
“I know it’s been rough,” he says, slapping a hand on my shoulder, “but you gotta keep it together a little more than that. Especially during business hours.”
“I know,” I say, still rubbing a fist across my forehead.
“I ain’t gonna give you some speech or anything—I ain’t no psychologist, and I sure as shit have done worse things than get tough on a punk over a woman—but one thing I do know is that when you’re acting like that, it’s probably ‘cause you know you should be doing something else.”
“I’m just stressed,” I say quickly, leaning forward, elbows on knees to stare at the ground. “Losing Ash, and my dad getting out of jail—it’s a little too much for one week.”
“I hear ya,” Ginger says.
We hear the door to the shop bang open, and immediately look at each other, thinking the same thing. Maybe the kid’s back.
“Stay here,” Ginger says cautiously, as he gets to his feet and goes to see who it is. I hear him from the back. “Well hey… Sure he is… Come on back—maybe you can get through to him better than I can…”
When he emerges into the back room again, Isabel is close behind.
“Teo, there you are,” she says brightly.
“I’m gonna go handle this lovely redhead that you’ve just scared seven shades of purple out of,” Ginger says, leaving us alone.
“Hey, Isabel,” I say, forcing as much happiness into my voice as possible—which isn’t very much, despite my best efforts.
“I’ve been trying to reach you for days,” she says, leaning back on a counter, folding her arms, and directing a concerned look at me. “Messages, calls—”
“Uh, yeah,” I say, apologetically. “Guess I’ve been a little…out of it.”
“No shit,” she says. “I’m leaving in a few days—going to New York to finish off the album, and I’m not sure we’ll even be back for a while. I figured we could meet up—you, me, and Ash. Except both of you seem…I don’t know. What happened with you guys?”
“You spoke to Ash?” I ask, with more interest than I’ve had in anything for days.
Isabel notices, and nods slowly.
“Just a phone call. She sounded…a little strange, to be honest. I asked about you and she just told me she had no idea—told me to talk to you if I wanted to know anything.”
I sigh heavily.
“Yeah,” I say, looking down at the ground again.
“She lost her job,” Isabel says, sorrowfully.
I snap to attention. “What? How?”
She just shrugs her shoulders.
“I don’t know. She said she got fired, but that she didn’t care. Honestly, she didn’t sound that upset about it. Like I said—she sounded strange. And to be honest, looking at you now I’m getting the same vibe.”
I don’t answer, my mind too full of new questions, new angles to think about the conversation at hand. Ash losing her job and not being cut up about it could only mean one thing. Perhaps she finally decided to bite the bullet and take her father up on his offer. Deciding at last to take that big executive producer job he had lined up for her, instead of continuing to struggle and ‘earn it’ the way she had wanted to.
I remembered the way she had spoken about it before, how sure she had been about cutting her own path, the enthusiasm she had for bringing her own ideas to the table. Then I remember how frustrated she sounded when she found herself coming up against walls, bosses who didn’t appreciate her, who held her down and kept her from flourishing. That would be enough to make anyone fall back on their connections, their ‘safety net.’ And I can’t blame her.
Maybe I had been the one to push her. Maybe I made her realize that her best future didn’t lie with me, in the unfurnished apartments and outcast-ridden tattoo shops of the world, but the manicured lawns and stale conversations of success, of people who had all the breaks, who put the barbecue grill far away so their clothes wouldn’t smell.
I feel my heart sink and my tensions dissolve, leaving only misery, a sense of bitter vindication. I was right, but about all the things that I didn’t want to be right about. Ash was better off without me…and I would just have to suffer without her…
“Teo? Are you ok?”
Isabel’s voice draws me back to the present moment, as if I’m waking up.
“Huh?”
“You ok?”
“Yeah. I’m fine.”
Isabel looks at me like I’m a terminal patient.
“I’m going to see her again before I leave town. Do you want to come?”
“No,” I say, resolutely. “I can’t.”
“Well, do you want me to tell her anything, at least?”
“No,” I repeat. “Nothing. Just tell her that—” for a moment I hesitate, but then my resolve hardens. “Tell her that whe
n you came to talk to me, I didn’t care.”
The words hurt, the lie of it twisting ugly and deep in my soul, but deep down I know—it’s better this way.
21
Ash
A giant tub of ice cream—eaten with a big spoon. An old romantic comedy I’ve seen so many times I know all the words—more like an audio-visual comforter than entertainment at this point. A blue hoodie with paint stains all over it that should have been thrown out three years ago, pajama bottoms that are worn thin enough to see my skin color through.
This is my life now.
I have an idea for a segment: Hollywood breakups. Interviewing major stars on how and why their breakups with other major stars happened, how it affected them, how they got over it. I could tag it ‘Celebs reveal the hardest part of breaking up.’ I’d have no problem getting approval for it.
Then I remember I’ve only got my job for another week, and after that there won’t be any more segments, no more ideas to manifest (or have crushed by Candace). My stomach sinks to an even lower state, and I shovel another spoonful of melting, sugary, chocolate fudge brownie ice cream inside of me to numb the sensation for a few more minutes.
The hardest part of breaking up is how much more difficult the rest of your life gets. It’s like pulling that final Jenga piece, wavering on a tightrope. Flickering back and forth between that moment of believing it might just hold up, and the utter hopelessness of realizing it won’t.
It’s not just work seeming so pointless and insignificant, or the giant spaces of time that would have otherwise been filled with spending time together—it’s the smaller things, the details you only notice in terms of absence. No late-night phone calls where you lower voices and raise the volume on your phone, only realizing by the cramp in your hand and the dying battery level how many hours you’ve been talking. It’s the way the world suddenly seems full of couples, and everything seems like it’s about love. Commercials, music, every single TV show—relationships everywhere, only now they seem so gloating and envy-baiting. It’s the way seemingly random things always draw your mind back to him, how anything you see or hear is just three degrees of separation away from thinking about him. The Santa Monica Pier. Motorcycles. Germany. Any tattoo anywhere.
Actually, maybe the hardest part is knowing that you’ve only got yourself to blame, and beating yourself up over it. Finally seeing the things that you ignored so easily, and kicking yourself for being so blinded. Teo had literally done this exact same thing to me already. Nothing from him in seven years. Then as soon as he pops up again I let him back in without a real explanation, without guarding myself, without any restraint. How could I blame anyone but myself for that? Fool me once…
My phone rings and I jump a little. Partly because I’m so locked in my own bubble of self-pity that even the sudden blare of my phone feels like an intrusion, and partly because there’s a shameful, lingering hope that it might be Teo.
I see that it’s Grace, and take a deep, steadying breath before I answer.
“Hey sis,” she says.
“Hey.”
“You ok?”
I take a moment to actually consider it.
“Not really. But I’m getting there.”
“I’m sorry. I can’t imagine what this must be like for you.”
“Did Dad say anything?”
Grace pauses on the phone, and I can sense she’s biting her lip.
“Um…”
“I’ll take that as a yes,” I say.
“He’s just glad that you found out before Teo did anything worse… To be honest, I think he’s drawing up a list of replacements for you.”
“Oh, God,” I say, facepalming with my phone.
“How’s work? Any better?”
“Um…” Now I’m the one biting my lip. “About as good as my relationship status.”
“What’s wrong?”
“I kind of lost my job.”
“Ash!” Grace says, as if I’m falling off a cliff.
“It’s kind of my own doing,” I say. “I just got tired of being everybody’s lapdog.”
“I’m so sorry,” she says, sounding even more sympathetic than she did about Teo. “So you’re just sitting at home alone?”
“No. I’ve got my ice cream.”
“Listen,” she says, her voice renewed with a decisive edge. “I know you’re gonna want to say no, but we’re having a fundraiser—”
“Oh, Grace, I can’t—”
“Shh, just hear me out,” she interrupts, with political firmness. “I want you to be there. It would be great for me to have my whole family at this thing, and—”
“And I suppose it’ll be a great opportunity for you and Dad to set me up with some ‘appropriate suitors’?”
“Well…” Grace says, drawing the word out. “I mean, there will be a lot of eligible men there. And if you’re not interested in that, fine, but at least come for the chance at networking with people who could help you get a new job.”
I sigh heavily, trying to consider whether I’m actually above this anymore, whether everything blowing up in my face the past week is a sign I should just bite the bullet and start following my family’s advice.
“There will be cameras there,” she says. “It’s going to be on the news. Big networks, anchors, maybe a few producers. You’ll probably struggle not to come away with a promising job lead or two.”
“Ugh…I don’t know.”
“Do it for me,” Grace says, as if sensing my hesitation. “I want to see you. I can’t bear the thought of you sitting at home alone in such a state.”
“Ok,” I say, unable to resist her tone. I would like to see her, and I know that she barely has time for a simple coffee or brunch these days—a fundraiser is about as intimate as it gets when your sister is the mayor of a small town.
“Wonderful. I’ll text you the details.”
“Sure.”
“See you then. Take care, sis.”
I hang up and grab my ice cream spoon. Maybe this will be good for me. A new start, a clean slate. Maybe it’s what I’ve needed for a long time. Maybe my father was right all along. I mean, it makes a kind of sense. I just wish it didn’t feel so wrong.
22
Teo
Work consumes me. I take on all the appointments I can in order to push my real life into the background, so that I can go home late enough that there’s no time for me to mope before crashing out, so that every second of the day is filled with images and art and the narrowing, almost zen-like focus of needle on skin.
The customers are happy for it, especially those who thought they’d spend months waiting for an opening. I’m doing three, four, five tattoos a day, my phone is blowing up with the comments and likes on our Instagram page, and I’ve drawn almost an entire book’s worth of new designs.
But I still can’t sleep well.
So here I am, sitting at the drawing desk in the back of Mandala at close to midnight, sketching with a focus even Buddhist monks would be impressed with. I hear Kayla and Ginger step into the back.
“You guys still here?” I ask, without looking up. “Go home. I’ll close up.”
They don’t answer, and instead I hear Kayla close the curtain, Ginger pour a deep whiskey and plant it on the table beside me. Kayla comes up on my other side and puts a hand on my drawing arm. I glance up, frustrated that I’ve been interrupted.
“What’s going on?” I ask.
“We just want to talk,” Ginger say.
I grab the whiskey and spin around in my chair to face them.
“You sound like the cops,” I smile, then gulp down a burning mouthful. They look at each other seriously, then back at me. “Tough crowd.”
“How are you feeling?” Kayla asks me like I’m laid out in a hospital.
“What is this, an intervention? I feel fucking fantastic,” I say. “I kicked my dad out, business is booming, and I’m drawing some of the best designs of my life. Yeah. Fucking fantastic.”
“You have been pulling a lot of overtime,” Ginger says, as if it’s a bad thing. “Working real hard...”
“Maybe a little too hard?” Kayla suggests cautiously.
I exhale deeply so they know this isn’t the time. I can tell where this is going, and I’m not in the mood to go there.
“Look: If you came by to tell me you’re worried about me, or to try and get me to talk about Ash—forget it. Everything’s fine.”
I gulp more from the whiskey, then spin back around to the drawing desk. Ginger grabs my shoulder and spins me back to face them, though.
“This isn’t healthy,” Kayla says. “You can’t leave it like this.”
“What’s not healthy?” I say. “I’ve never worked this good.”
“The fact that you’re working so hard shows there’s a problem,” Ginger says. “You ain’t hardly eaten or slept, I can tell, and outside of the tattooing you’ve just been walking around this place like a zombie. When you gonna relax? When you burn out?”
“If I burn out.”
“And you’re just gonna give up on Ash?” Kayla jumps in.
I sigh and check my glass to see if there’s anything left, but I’ve downed it all. Ginger pours a little more in there.
“She doesn’t want to talk,” I say, taking a sip. “What am I supposed to do? Bust down her door? Demand she hear me out? I’ve done enough damage already.”
“You’ve got to try, Teo,” Kayla says. “At least give her your side. Maybe she’s calmed down a little, now. Maybe she’s willing to listen.”
I take a few moments to think, to sip again and let the alcohol burn that emptiness inside.
“She’s better off without me.”
“Maybe she is,” Ginger says, and Kayla glares at him like that was the wrong thing to say. “What? I’m not gonna lie,” he tells her, then turns to me and slaps a heavy hand on my shoulder. “You fucked up, buddy. And you’re gonna have to make up for it. She probably thinks you’re a crazy, uncontrollable asshole right now. So you’ve got to show her how sorry you are, try to convince her you’re not the asshole you acted like, prove to her that you deserve her despite all that—because if you don’t, then that’s proof she thought right.”