Felix was smiling like crazy as he prepped Tawny for her tattoo. She was restless in the chair as he cleaned her arm off with antiseptic, waving her hands demonstratively and talking to her girlfriends. Andy sensed what an exciting opportunity this was for me, and since we were two hours away from closing anyway, he told me to go help Felix while he kept an eye on the front. Felix explained everything he was doing as he began the tattoo process; I think more for my benefit than for Tawny’s. He hadn’t specifically brought up the licensing test again with me, but I had gotten to know Felix well enough to be aware that he never let go of an idea once he had it, even if he didn’t mention it often. He had already determined that I’d be taking that test so that I could tattoo clients, too, and increase my income.
We got an earful while Felix carefully recreated the portrait I had done of my horse on Tawny’s left upper arm, from time to time referencing a copy of it to make sure he was duplicating it perfectly despite the stencil containing the design that he had carefully positioned on her upper arm after shaving all the arm fuzz off of it. It sounded like Tawny had just ended her year-long relationship with rap star Grayson earlier that night. I had a feeling that Tawny was going to be all over the gossip pages the next day, not that I ever made a habit of reading those.
Everyone who was on shift stopped by to peek their head into Felix’s area to see who was in his chair. Aimee mouthed, “oh my God” to me excitedly. Smokestack gave no indication that he had any idea who Tawny was, but even if it had been the president in Felix’s chair, Smokestack would not have been impressed. That was just how he was.
Halfway through the tattoo, Tawny had an idea. “Hey, could you make this horse into a unicorn? I like things that are magical.”
“That’s what you need, girl,” Shanika agreed. “Magic in your life.”
“No problem,” Felix said.
He carefully added a slim horn to True Heart’s forehead and then turned to me. “This girl right here is the artist who designed this tattoo. Her name is Gigi. Her work is really hot right now.”
“Of course it is,” said Tawny’s stylist, nodding at me appreciatively. “Tawny has impeccable taste. She always knows what’s on trend.”
Then, shockingly, Felix handed me the grip. “The last dot,” he said.
My heart was pounding in my chest. Was he really suggesting that I tattoo even a molecule of celebrity skin?
Fortunately, he placed his hands over my own to steady my grip and guided my fingers with his to place the very last drop of black ink on Tawny’s arm – the very tip of the unicorn’s horn.
“That’s tight,” Tawny’s other girlfriend commented at the final design.
It looked gross to me, swollen around the line and bloody, and Felix covered it tenderly with gauze and then plastic as he reminded Tawny about how to care for it once she got home.
It was only after Tawny and her crew paid and left that I texted Jacinda to tell her that I had met, and tattooed Tawny.
After the excitement of having a celebrity entourage in the store, Andy drove me and Felix down to Chinatown in his Scion after we closed the store and pulled the heavy iron gate over the storefront. The neighborhood in which the Blue Phoenix was located was already getting wild with revelry for the holiday. Girls in fancy dresses blew on noisemakers as they walked from bar to bar on the sidewalk. Boys skipped and slapped one another on the back, threw champagne poppers at the sidewalk and hopped when the firecrackers went pop! Pop! Pop! The somber quietude of Christmas Day had been replaced with a raucous, jubilant celebration.
“Felix, this is my brother, Eric,” I said as I opened the door to our apartment and made introductions.
Felix extended his arm without a smile to shake Aaron’s hand very formally. I was relieved for that. Felix had the sense to know that my brother would take note of respect.
“It’s very nice to meet you,” Felix said.
“Nice to meet you, too,” my brother said. “So, you guys work together?”
Thankfully, in that moment, Felix did not look at me with hurt eyes as if to ask why my brother had no idea who he was.
“Yes, at the Blue Phoenix,” he confirmed. “Gigi has a lot of artistic talent. The owner of the store really wants her to get licensed so that she can tattoo and make more money.”
I blushed as my brother reacted in exactly the way I expected, with good humored surprise.
“My sister, the tattoo artist,” he mused.
“Really,” Felix insisted. “When someone comes in and specifically asks for one of my original designs and for me to tattoo it, depending on the size of the tattoo and the location on the body, I can make as much as a thousand dollars.”
I knew that, of course, because I had been ringing up sales. But it was a complete surprise to my brother how much people were willing to pay to have eagles, sharks, and hearts tattooed onto themselves. What I didn’t know was how much Andy had charged Tawny for my design or for Felix’s efforts, but I had to admit, while I hadn’t been curious before, I was then. If there was a chance I could be making more than my hourly wage for handling the counter, then I knew I needed to pursue it.
Aaron surprised me by emerging from his bedroom with two crisp twenty dollar bills and announced that he was ordering a pizza. I didn’t question him in front of Felix because I was quite honestly so hungry for pizza – couldn’t remember the last time I’d eaten it – but it was evident that my brother had stashed away at least a little money from his restaurant days. I didn’t like that he had obviously been keeping secrets from me, but then again, sitting on our couch with us was my own shaved head, tattooed secret, so I had no right to get too angry.
“Pepperoni and onions?” my brother suggested, his own disgusting favorite pizza toppings.
“I don’t eat pork,” Felix said, “but you could put pepperoni on half.”
My brother didn’t question the comment about pork even though it made me cringe. My brother finding out that I had a boyfriend was enough stress for one night. I didn’t need to also have to get into a debate with him about dating people of different faiths.
We watched as much of the television broadcast from Times Square as we could get through the static, and I seriously hoped that Felix wasn’t wishing he had ditched me to instead party with Jake and Mark and his skateboarder friends at some amazing party. When the pizza arrived (an extra-large monstrosity with onions, peppers, pineapple, pine nuts and pesto), we pigged out in silence for a few minutes, and then Felix and my brother began talking.
Shockingly, they kind of hit it off. Felix asked my brother what he did for a living and rather than talking about his accident at the restaurant, my brother told him about wanting to be a pediatrician. He told him about our trip to Vietnam and spending time with sick kids there. The conversation turned to Quian, and Aaron bragged about what an incredible job I had done raising money to help the Chans pay for her treatment.
I had vaguely mentioned to Felix what had happened with Quian, but I definitely had left out details regarding her being our next door neighbor, and the organization of the raffle. To have gone into those details would have required me to explain my acquaintance with Anthony Michaels, which was obviously part of a much bigger reveal about my real name and my parents’ identities and how Aaron and I came to reside in Chinatown. I wasn’t ready to share any of that with Felix yet. I glared at my brother, wishing he would shut up.
At eleven-fifteen, I got a text from Jacinda.
WHERE ARE YOU? IT’S OVER WITH THIS FOOL.
I texted her back and she said she was taking a cab over to our place. She arrived twenty minutes later, looking stunning apart from her smeared eye makeup, presumably from crying.
“Felix, do you remember Jacinda, from the club in Williamsburg?” I asked, reintroducing them.
“Yes, of course,” he said.
“Nice to see you again,” Jacinda said. “This girl right here never pipes down about you.”
Mortification.
>
“So what did Orlando do this time?” I asked.
I knew Jacinda really loved Orlando, but I really kind of hoped he would break her heart once and for all so that she could move on. It was plain to see that they would never have any kind of stable future together. I was tiring of his antics. I couldn’t understand how she wasn’t sick of the drama yet.
“What didn’t he do, girl?” Jacinda sighed. “He spent five hundred dollars on tickets to this all-night party when he knew there would be go-go dancers there and open bar. He knows I don’t like when he drinks. He got there and immediately starting drinking and said it was because he already paid for the open bar, so he wanted to get his money’s worth. I wish he would have just saved his money and we could have done something chill like this in the first place. I got my girl and my pizza. This is all I need to say farewell to last year.”
She squeezed my shoulder and then sat down on the couch with a greasy, drippy slice of pizza.
Just before midnight, we clambered up to the roof of our building, unconcerned with the racket we were making. Aaron clutched a six-pack of soda from the pizza delivery man in his right hand, and kicked open the door that led from the landing at the top of the staircase to the rooftop with the hard plaster shell of his cast.
A few rats scurried away, no doubt surprised to have human company. From up here we could see into the apartments of our neighbors, where they gathered around their television sets drinking beers and cheap champagne. We could see the bright lights of Times Square uptown illuminating the cloudy winter sky, and could even vaguely hear the roar of the crowds gathered there in anticipation of the ball dropping. I leaned over the edge of the roof to see the street below, and saw drunken partiers, dressed up in their highest heels and fanciest coats, tottering by with silly New Years hats.
“Now this is what I’m talkin’ about,” Jacinda said to no one in particular.
We were all in rapture for a moment from the sheer majesty and energy of the city around us.
I smiled widely. This was the New York I loved; the whole city awake and basking in a happy couple of minutes together. It was impossibly cold out – bone-chillingly cold, but no one seemed to notice. I tried to remember what I had done the previous year for New Year’s. We had been in Switzerland and I was pretty sure I had gone to bed early, far before midnight. Last year, I had no reason to stay up and celebrate the start of a new year, a new beginning. I had no friends to stay awake with me. I had no one to kiss at midnight.
“In Russia, we celebrate the old year before we celebrate the new year,” Felix told us. “We would usually have a big dinner and go around the table sharing what we had to be thankful for from the year that was ending.”
“This last year, I learned not only how much my sister loves me, but what an amazing person she is,” my brother said from his corner of the rooftop. “I have always thought of you as just my kid sister, but you are so much stronger and smarter than I ever would have thought. You’re the strongest, bravest person I know.”
I started getting choked up. I didn’t want Jacinda or Felix to really understand what my brother was talking about, so I simply said, “Thanks.”
“I’m thankful that I’m almost done with hair design school,” Jacinda said. “Whoo whee, it’s been a long haul and I am ready to start makin’ some money! This year has been a lot of hard work. Next year is all about Jacinda makin’ it rain.”
We all applauded her.
“This year I finally figured out what I’m supposed to be doing with my life,” Felix said, reaching for my hand when we had simmered down. Fortunately my brother was on the other side of Jacinda and most likely didn’t see this happen.
We heard the thunderous voices of thousands from Times Square begin chanting “Ten, nine, eight…”
The year was almost over.
We had been in hiding for two months and it felt like we had been occupants of this building in Chinatown forever. It was almost as if our old lives had never existed and I had never really been Grace Mathison. I allowed myself to believe that, just for a moment as the old year passed into the new on our rooftop. I was Gigi Martin, future tattoo artist and downtown hipster. I had never been a nerd at a posh boarding school, teased for being a Jesus freak. My parents were not on the lam somewhere in South America, with their assets frozen by the Feds. My brother was not involved any kind of sensational crime trial in another state.
Life would have been so easy if everything on our rooftop had been true at face value.
“Four, three… two… one!”
Felix pulled me closer to him and kissed me on the cheek. We all gazed out over the sparkling city, breathless. We were just cool kids scraping by, having the time of our lives, watching fireworks erupt over the East River against the cold night sky. Who knew what the next year of our lives would bring? Certainly Jacinda and Felix had no idea what horrible choices my brother and I were going to be faced with in the next few months. But at least that night, on our roof, I knew that I wasn’t going to be alone.
We heard a commotion on the roof two buildings over as a ton of people not much older than us spilled out through a doorway. Someone flipped a power switch and Christmas lights encircling that rooftop space blew on, filling the night with a golden glow. Those people were setting up speakers on a card table, and began jamming out 80’s pop songs. Several women emerged from the stairwell leading up to the rooftop with huge platters of cut vegetables and dip, bowls of pretzels and corn chips.
“Oh, my goodness,” Jacinda muttered. “I love Duran Duran.”
“Come over!” the people on the other rooftop summoned us when they noticed us watching their party being set up.
Aaron shook his head. “You guys can go. I’ll never make it up all those stairs.”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” Felix told him. “We’ll help you.”
And so we patiently waited while Aaron maneuvered his way down our six flights of stairs, walked down the block to the building further down on Baxter St., pushed our way through the broken lock on its front door, and up seven more flights of stairs to the rooftop, where we sang our hearts out until the sky was pink and our throats were raw.
Chapter 16
“I’m so glad you could make it.”
I was in Hoboken a week after New Year’s Day. Tony Michaels had summoned me to meet him and his wife at their house in New Jersey. He had offered to pick me up in his Audi, and true to his word, he was parked right outside the entrance to the Path train station, patiently waiting for me with a giant cup of coffee. His car smelled like cigarette smoke and he rolled down my window as soon as I climbed in.
“Sorry, it kind of stinks in here,” he admitted. “I told my wife I quit smoking, but she doesn’t know that I quit everywhere except in the car.”
“It’s OK,” I said, even though I hated the smell of cigarette smoke. “Did you enjoy your holidays?”
“Sure,” Tony said. “My wife’s family is from New Zealand, so some years we travel, and some years we stay put. This year we stayed put and just had an endless stream of family come to visit.”
I remained silent as we drove through the residential streets of the cute community until we parked in front of a small house with aluminum siding that I guessed was Tony’s. It had been a month since I had last met with him, and while I still trusted his intentions about wanting to talk to me, it was going to take me a while to warm up to him again.
It was a Saturday morning, my day off, and even though I would probably stop by the Blue Phoenix later in the day to say hi to Felix, I hadn’t told him that I was venturing out to New Jersey that morning. He had casually asked me if my family had traveled a lot when I was young, presumably in reference to the story my brother had told on New Year’s Eve about visiting Hanoi. But I still hadn’t filled him in completely about our lives. Partially because it was an all or nothing situation; I couldn’t tell him a fraction of it without disclosing the whole truth about my parents’ business, their
legal troubles, and how Aaron and I came to be living under assumed names. The other part of it was that if we were somehow breaking any laws by hiding out for this long, I didn’t want to tell Felix anything that might somehow implicate him in our mess.
“Joanne’s home,” Tony informed me as he locked the doors on the car. “You’ll get to meet her. Politely decline if she offers you Vegemite. Trust me on this.”
“OK,” I said, smiling.
As we walked up the short cement path to the Michaels’ front door, I thought weakly of the Note from Mama feature that had been in the December issue. The letters to me and Aaron had been noticeably short and infuriatingly vague.
Dear Grace, Mama had written. Every year as Christmas songs begin to play on the radio, and as trees begin to appear in front windows, I can’t help but think about God’s plans for baby Jesus in the weeks leading up to his birth. I can only imagine it must have been very difficult for him to trust that the cruel world into which he was sending his only son would embrace him, care for him, and be receptive to the message he had arrived to deliver. All parents share these same feelings of fear that our children won’t be accepted, won’t be loved, and that the preparation we give them before they enter the real world won’t be enough to help them navigate their way. This Christmas season, I ask of you to embrace those around you and love with an open heart as if each stranger you meet is Jesus, himself. Christmas is a time for family, but sometimes we need to be reminded that we are all God’s family.
Tony took my pink denim jacket and hung it in the front hallway closet alongside his winter coat. The Michaels’ house was orderly and cool, as if an intellectuals’ loft in Soho had been lifted and dropped into the middle of suburban New Jersey. The furniture was all dark wood, Scandinavian custom design. The couch in the living room was chocolate-covered leather. Anthony’s desk was a calamitous disaster, piled high with books, towers of paper, file folders, and magazines.
“As you can see, my wife’s knack for home décor does not extend to my work space,” he apologized when we stepped inside his office. Joanne, he told me, was a managing director of an advertising unit at a major magazine publishing company that specialized in fashion and interior design.
The Believer's Daugher - [A Treadwell Academy - 02] Page 26