Strawberry Tattoo

by Lauren Henderson

“Anyway, you had a soft landing.” Lex prodded his stomach. “On my beer belly.”

  “Nothing a few crunches at the gym wouldn’t fix,” Kim said. “I’ll take you along sometime.”

  “Uh, hello?” I said. They were so absorbed they had forgotten my presence. I noticed that Kim seemed in no hurry to get up. Clearly, in the space of time it had taken us, this afternoon, to have a coffee and go to the blade shop, she had decided that Lex wasn’t the Strawberry Fields Strangler after all. Or perhaps it had been his boyish charm. Well, plenty of girls had made that mistake with Ted Bundy.

  I was miffed. Kim was supposed to be my friend; I hadn’t seen her in ten years, and here she was practically ignoring me in favour of knocking down and falling on a young man who, merely last night, she had suspected of having evil designs on my windpipe. I admitted that Lex stood up well to the harsh test of being seen in natural light. Still, there were limits.

  “Hey, Kim,” I said in a louder voice, “do you need a hand up or are you going to stay down there for the rest of the day?”

  To do her justice, she did look a touch embarrassed.

  “Right, off we go,” she said, rising lightly to her feet.

  “Lex,” I inquired, “can you feel all your limbs? If not, I’m sure Kim would be happy to do it for you.”

  Kim shot me a filthy glance.

  “In her role as instructor, of course,” I said smoothly. “Come on, up, up, up. I want to go and see the sailboats.”

  Some kind of festival was taking place at the boat basin. Two lines of pumpkins were arranged along the moorings, their bright orange gleaming against the blond wood like little fires, and a small crowd of people was gathered on the far end of the j etty. We took our blades off and hung them over our shoulders so we could walk onto the jetty and see what was happening. A big sailboat was moored at the end, its deck piled high with pumpkins. White sails beat above them like wings in the wind. The fittings on the boat were painted dark blue, and the hairy coils of rope curled on the boards were sunbleached to the neutral shade of sand. The orange of the pumpkins burnt against their background, the only touch of bright colour, flaring up into the sunlight. One by one we went up the plank and stood on the boat, which rocked softly under our feet. Suddenly I found myself appreciating the attraction of messing about on the water.

  “It’s owned by this local charity,” Kim said, reading the information off a leaflet someone had handed her. “For underprivileged kids. They take them out and teach them how to sail.”

  “That’ll be useful in later life,” I commented.

  Kim cuffed the back of my head. “And I thought I was cynical. Jesus.”

  “You ladies want to buy a pumpkin?” said one of the boat’s crew. He was tall and tanned and superfit, with short fair hair and those fine silvery sailor’s lines running in crow’s-feet out from the corners of his blue, blue eyes. I blinked in appreciation.

  “No thanks,” Kim said, her tone full of regret.

  “Hallowe’en’s coming up!” he persisted charmingly. “You’ll need one then!”

  “It’s all we can do to stay on these things as it is,” I explained, pointing to my blades. “A pumpkin would crucially unbalance us.”

  He spread his hands wide. “Hey, come back on foot,” he suggested. “We’ll be here.”

  “Sure thing.” We flashed him besotted smiles. And I gave him a little wave as we crossed the gangplank onto terra firma.

  “What a poser,” Lex said sulkily once we were out of earshot.

  “Just because he was good-looking,” I said. “You guys are always so down on a handsome man.”

  “No, I thought he was a wanker,” Lex insisted. “And pushy.”

  “Oh, for God’s sake, Lex, get a grip.”

  “Did you see how blue his eyes were?” Kim said to me dreamily.

  Lex made a snorting sound and skated off. To everyone’s surprise, including his own, the impetus took him on a few good strides.

  “Look at me!” he yelled over his shoulder. We clapped. He executed a turn and swung round to face us, doing a little bow.

  “We obviously need to piss you off more often,” Kim said.

  “I skate better when angry,” Lex said. “Hey, look up there.”

  My hippy-scenting antenna started twitching frantically as soon as I caught sight of the group of people up on a grassy knoll above the boat basin. A large hand-lettered sign pinned to a tree behind them said:

  “Free Soup! Made only from Natural Organic Ingredients. Taste it and See. Absolutely Free!”

  “This is really sad of me,” I said to the others, “but that makes me deeply suspicious.”

  “I know,” Kim said at once. “It’s interesting, isn’t it? How to pick out all the mistrustful urban cynics.”

  “Free soup!” Lex said cheerfully, unaffected by this cultural analysis. “I’m going to get some!”

  He bladed off in the direction of the hill.

  “He’s so sweet and unaffected, isn’t he,” I said sarcastically. “Like a little child.”

  “I’m really getting to like him,” Kim agreed, missing the irony. “After all these New York guys just wanting a piece of ass. And then they just hide out on you, the guys here don’t want to get serious. But Lex seems really open. You know, at ease with women.”

  “That’s because he wants a piece of ass and he’s worked out the best way to get it,” I pointed out.

  Kim sighed. “Still, I like him,” she said.

  “What happened to your dark suspicions?” I asked evilly.

  “I just don’t see him as a mad strangler, do you?” she said.

  “I never did.”

  “Kim! Help!”

  Lex had stalled halfway up the hill and was gripping onto a tree to avoid sliding down again. His legs were splaying out behind him and he was scrabbling desperately to keep his balance. Kim shot off to the rescue. I took a deep breath, remembering that Kim had said earlier that uphill was much less difficult than down, and set off up the slope. I found that I had to work my limbs like a skater in a race, elbows thrusting out, legs pumping; but once I had realised that it was comparatively easy. I reached the free soup canteen well before Lex, half under his own steam, half shoved from behind by Kim—copping a feel of his derrière in the process, I noticed—joined me, panting and exhilarated.

  The group of people round the soup burner were definitely nouveaux hippies. They reminded me of Tom’s ex-girlfriend Alice, the one who had abandoned him in India for the American with the facial hair problem. Only Alice, being a social worker, had always had a slight frown, being weighed down by the cares of the world, while this lot couldn’t have looked more serene and at peace if they’d been on a cocktail of Prozac and Temazepam. They wore shapeless trousers with drawstrings at the waist and big baggy sweaters hand-knit from dog hair, and apparently they considered shampoo and conditioner to be decadent twentieth-century inventions.

  We queued up for soup. I was still having a lot of difficulty with the concept of someone just giving you something for free. The guy ladling it gave me a tolerant smile as he threw back his dreadlocks in order to see where the saucepan was.

  “It’s all organic vegetables,” he said. “We grow them ourselves.”

  “Oh, are you selling them?” I said enthusiastically, thinking I had found an angle.

  “Nope. We just make the soup.”

  Another understanding smile. It was very frustrating.

  “This is what you should be doing for your show, Lex,” I said, joining him and Kim where they stood at a remove under a tree, leaning against it and sipping from the recyclable paper cups. “Give stuff away in the gallery. It would send everybody crazy.”

  Lex looked meditative.

  “Hard to sell.”

  “Oh, just video it and flog them at $5,000 a time,” I said impatiently. “I mean, there’s that girl now who sells videos of her friends dressed up in silly clothes. You can sell anything. Artist’s shit in a can.”


  “Shit in a can?” Lex said excitedly.

  “Been done, you ignoramus. Years ago.”

  “Anyway, those videos are in slow motion, those ones you’re on about. And at 360 degrees.”

  “Oh, right, so that makes them art. I knew there had to be something.”

  “This soup is great,” Kim observed. She was looking a little disappointed.

  “Were you expecting it to be crap?” I asked.

  “Oh no, it’s not that. No. I guess I was sort of expecting you two to be really into all this new wave of British stuff. I mean, that’s what you do, right?”

  “Lex does,” I corrected her. “He’s fashionable. I’m not. I actually make things.”

  Lex bristled. “Look, you’re talking about some of my best friends!” he objected.

  “That’s the point, isn’t it? You’re all mates, so you’ve got this pact that no one’s going to mention the Emperor’s New Clothes.”

  “I liked the shark,” Kim said quickly. “The one in formaldehyde.”

  “It has a certain primitive attraction for the first five minutes,” I admitted. “Then it’s just a dead shark.”

  “Who do you like?” Lex said crossly.

  “Marc Quinn,” I said at once. “The blood head. Have you seen that?” I asked Kim. “He drained off his own blood, gradually, till he had enough to fill a cast of his head. Then he froze it, put it in a clear glass refrigerated box and took off the cast. It has this crust on it from the freezing, which is paler, and underneath it you can see the blood cracking through—very beautiful and spooky.”

  “Trust you to like something like that,” Kim said, grinning at me. “Once a Goth, always a Goth.”

  “You should know,” I said pointedly. I sipped my soup. “Mm, this is delicious! I hate them! How dare they give away something like this! It’s messing with my whole concept of human existence.”

  “Maybe hippies really are happier,” Kim said maliciously.

  “Bite your tongue,” I warned. “Or I’ll bite it for you.”

  By the expression on her face, Kim seemed to be following instructions. Only she was staring away from me, down towards the river path, and so was Lex. He raised one hand in greeting. The man he was hailing saw the gesture and waved back, clambering up the grassy bank to join us.

  “What’s he doing here?” Kim said in a furious undertone to Lex.

  “I rang him before,” he said easily. “Told him what we were up to. He said he might come and find us.”

  The man had nearly reached us by now. He was of medium height, so thin he was nearly skin and bone, with a sharp jaw and nose, accentuated by the fact that his hair was caught back in a ponytail at the nape of his neck. Big workman’s trousers, with several deep pockets at knee height and a loop at the back to hold a hammer, hung off his narrow hips, and his T-shirt was stained and worn thin with use. From his waist hung a long silver wallet chain looping down to his right knee and back up again. He was almost ugly, his features too narrow and close together, but he had a powerful charisma. A friend of mine who had a neat way of putting these things would have said unhesitatingly that this guy looked like he was a really dirty fuck.

  Kim was silent, and out of the corner of my eye I saw that she had gone very still. I was powerfully curious; and the stranger seemed wary, aware that the situation would be a tricky one to handle. Lex was the only one of us who was happy and relaxed. That little child motif again.

  “Leo! Hey man, great to see you! How’s it going?” he exclaimed.

  I stared even harder at the new arrival. So this was the notorious Leo. Drug abuser, possessor of a ridiculous knee-length chain, and perhaps even a dirty fuck into the bargain. What a lot of strings this young man had to his bow.

  I found myself wondering whether Kim had succumbed to Leo’s down-at-heel charm. It would explain the iciness of her demeanour. She was sending out vibes as cold and unwelcoming as the chilled section at the supermarket. One young British artist with the overenthusiasm of an imperfectly trained puppy; one dissolute junkie; one life-size freezer cabinet; and me. What fun the next few minutes were going to be.

  “Hey, guys,” Leo finally said. His voice was a light tenor which too many cigarettes had rasped into a cracked lower register. Like the rest of him, it was ugly but oddly compelling. “Shit, I feel like a midget with all of you on blades. Lex, my man!”

  They exchanged a complicated handshake, their thumbs sticking out at weird angles and their wrists rotating back and forth. Doubtless it was copied from LA gangs, as seen on TV. I bet even the LA gangs copied their handshakes from ones seen on TV.

  “Sam,” Lex said, turning to me, “this is Leo.”

  “Yo,” Leo said to me with something of a swagger. This annoyed me. I mean, “Yo”? It reminded me of Notting Hill trustafarians trying to sound black.

  “Hi, Leo,” I said politely. “I’ve heard a lot about you. Nice to finally meet you in the flesh.”

  I didn’t think Leo would like my saying that I’d heard about him already, and so it proved. His eyes, already screwed up against the sun, narrowed still further, and his head tilted to one side as if he were assessing me. Well, better men than him had tried and failed.

  “Oh yeah?” he said unpleasantly. “What exactly have they been saying?”

  “Oh, don’t worry,” I said cheerfully. “It was all bad.” And I gave him my best limpid smile.

  No one knew whether I was joking. Least of all Leo. We stared each other out for what could only have been a few seconds, but felt much longer. The moment was broken by Lex, which was probably a relief for both myself and Leo. Neither of us were the kind of people to back down from what we’d started.

  “Hey man,” Lex said, his bright tone attempting to ignore the by-play, “guess what? Free soup!” He waved his cup in the air. “Cool or what?”

  “Free soup?” Leo said mistrustfully. “What’s the catch?”

  “That’s exactly what Sam’s been saying,” Kim commented, breaking her silence. “She doesn’t trust people who give stuff away.”

  “Yeah, well, neither do I. Maybe they’ve put mushrooms in it or something,” Leo suggested. “You guys tripping already?” He was squinting into our eyeballs with the air of an expert. “You giggling much? Seeing little green monsters?”

  “Hey, man, I know what happens when I drink mushy tea, and it’s not. Happening, I mean,” Lex said firmly. “Besides,” he added, “it’d be too early. We only just had it now.”

  “You never know,” Leo said profoundly. “Still, if it’s free….” He loped off towards the soup stand. Lex followed him.

  “You OK?” I said to Kim.

  “I can’t believe Lex didn’t tell me he was coming!” she said furiously. “Shit, of all the people I really didn’t want to see—”

  “Did you guys have a thing?” I inquired.

  Kim shrugged. “Sort of. As much as you can with Leo.”

  She closed her lips tightly. Leo and Lex, both carrying cups of soup, were coming back. They were an ill-assorted pair: Lex, walking on the blades as dumpily as Frankenstein’s monster, and Leo, moving like a tango dancer, knees a little bent, eyes fixed on me and Kim. He walked well, I had to give him that.

  “Do you actually keep your wallet on that chain?” I asked him. I could never get over how stupid they looked.

  Leo stuck his hand into one of his trouser pockets and produced a battered old wallet to which the chain was attached through a hole punched in the corner.

  “Sure,” he said. “It’s OK here, but in LA they’re not wearing them anymore. Too many guys on motorbikes getting their kicks grabbing at chains, pulling people along the street. Not so funny. Mm, this soup’s good.”

  “I might go for some more,” I said. “Get some vitamins down me while I can.”

  “I’ll come with you,” Kim said at once. We clunked off. Walking with blades on a grassy surface required you to hold your feet at something of an angle to avoid toppling over. It was abo
ut as graceful as Harpo Marx dancing flamenco.

  The same guy served us seconds of soup with as generous a smile as before. Maybe they were recruiting for a cult. The thought cheered me tremendously.

  “Know what they’re called over here, guys like that?” Kim said when we were out of earshot. “Crusties. You know, the ones who have their dogs on strings.”

  I looked at her pityingly. “You’ve been away too long. That started in England, years and years ago. And they’re called crusties because they don’t wash much.” I mimed scratching off a layer of dirt.

  We blew on our soup to cool it down, in no hurry to get back to the boys. “Kim,” I said tentatively, “are you still painting?” I had been waiting for the right moment to ask her this question.

  Her face fell. “Not for years.”

  “That’s terrible! You were so good! I still have that painting you did of all the fruit in weird colours. It’s hanging in my kitchen.”

  “I liked that painting.” Kim was wistful. “I just—oh, when I first came here I had all these grand ambitions. I was determined to make Dad help me out, and he would have done. It was Barbara. She didn’t actually tell me I was crap in so many words, but she was incredibly discouraging—kept going on about how hard it was to make it as an artist. And gradually she just got Dad around to her way of thinking, that I’d better give up. I dunno, it kind of beat me down. I started waitressing, and I was still trying to paint, but it was so expensive, and I didn’t have any space … and then I started going to the gym, and really got into that. I’m studying for my personal trainer qualification,” she said more enthusiastically. “And I’ve got a whole lot of clients lined up already, as soon as I get it.”

  “That’s a great idea,” I said encouragingly. “I just think it’s a shame you’re not still painting as well.”

  She sighed. “I know. When I look at what you’ve done …”

  “I’ve been really lucky,” I said firmly. “I’m riding a wave that isn’t my own. I’ve got nothing to do with Lex’s lot, you know. They’re all self-obsessed conceptualists.”

  “Whereas you’re a self-obsessed sculptor,” Kim teased me. “By the way, I’ve been meaning to say—you shouldn’t call yourself a sculptress, it’s really out of date. I heard you say it the other day.”