A Paradise for Fools

by Nicholas Kilmer

  Fred shook his head. “Still Fred.”

  “You look different,” Flash continued. “But you found the place all right.” He attached his machine to the extension cord and laid his equipment out on the seat of one of the chairs. “It’s informal. Still beats a lot of setups. Prisons and that. I’m clean. So you found the place?”

  “I’m here now,” Fred said.

  “What did you say you want? The cat in the hat? Was that you?”

  “Could be a different conversation,” Fred said.

  “We weren’t talking that place in Quincy? The other end the Red Line?”

  “I’m looking for Arthur,” Fred said.

  Flash took the available folding chair and set it across the landing where he could sit facing Fred, his back to the railing. “Light’s better from the window. You say you’re not Mike. OK. Whatever you want Arthur to do, I can do it,” he added. “Arthur…”

  Fred said, “Tell me about Arthur.”

  Flash reached inside the leather jacket, pulled out a fresh cigar and lingeringly started to unwrap cellophane. “Whole different world when I first got into it. I’m never gonna go high end, highbrow. I don’t get along with those people. I started in the Navy? Liked what the Japanese did, admired all that—but not for Americans. People are people, OK, I get that. At the same time, Americans are Americans. They should look like Americans. For years I moved around. Any big city, I’d find a place to work. People. Then I move on.

  “Don’t get me wrong. You want Japanese, I do it. Runes. Tribal, I can do that if you show me what you want. I have no flash for tribal. How I got my name, Sammy Flash: working San Diego, the docks. I keep a couple hundred designs posted, which we call flash. But you know that. Guy and girl come in, three the morning, I’m open, he wants to remember her name next morning, she wants to remember his, they run through my flash on the wall, say ‘This one,’ and ‘This one,’ they’re both enough in the bag they’re laughing while I do them and tell you the truth half the time I was half in the bag myself, another reason you move from one town to another. Next morning they wake up, he has an eagle with a banner on his shoulder, says Edna. She, on her hip maybe, depending how far she’ll go, has his name Wilfrid. There is no way in the world to spell Wilfrid right, I don’t care what you try, and a rose or a snake or a snake swallowing a skull, one of my specialties.

  “That may be how I met Arthur. No. I’m lying.”

  Flash lit a kitchen match on a stained thumbnail and lit the cigar after warming it. “So you’re in a place, settled, and you wake up one morning, it’s noon, there’s a lady next to you that’s the same lady’s been there for weeks. She’s a dancer, tends bar, or she’s hooking—your school teacher keeps different hours. I found that out. Anyway, the lady, you learn, in her opinion a contract has been mutually agreed that only she knew about.

  “Now you start listening to that train whistle blow with more attention.

  “By now I have pals everywhere. I’d turn up in a place, Tucson, Crazy Charlie Geech had a shop there, said, ‘Use my chair when I’m sleeping.’ I’d do anything from Disney. Disney was big. Which brings me to Arthur. No, I’m wrong. So any town I thought I’d try, I knew someone there. We’d get together, swap designs, ideas, what we’d heard, what we’d seen. Legal, but underground. People show up want a bulldog and Fuck Jimmy Hoffa under it, three pals the size of refrigerators are sitting outside on their bikes waiting, you do it, you don’t ask questions. Tell the guy, ‘I oughtta clean the area first,’ he like to takes your head off. Last time he had a bath he also had a mother. Which brings me to Arthur. You asked about Arthur?

  “There’s guys now, doing it, call themselves artists. Which is not me. And the client is—are you ready?—a collector. Me, I’m a tattooer. That does it for me.” Flash tore a paper towel from the roll, clenching the cigar between his teeth, and polished his machine.

  “Which brings us to Arthur,” Fred said.

  Chapter Ten

  “Nashua, New Hampshire. Right?” Fred said. He’d never gotten over his training; listened to what people said, Kim, back in Cut - Rate - Cuts even if it was not interesting. Put it together, file it. It’s there later, with a lot of other crap.

  “Nashua, New Hampshire, isn’t anywhere,” Flash announced. “Which is where I needed to be at the time. This and that happened, some other things and the rest of it. Money. Well, and I did some time. Learned to work like they did in the stone ages. Ink from a ballpoint pen. Can’t bring a machine in there obviously. Scary guys want you to write Sweetheart on their dick, it’s not like they’re not sitting there watching while you do it, leave it with you, come back in the morning, tell you if they like it or not. These are some scary fucks. That was before.

  “Is it Wednesday?

  “You’re asking, Arthur. Wherever you are, there’s gonna be a law. Under a certain age. Contributing, delinquency of a minor. Girls they get particular. It’s they can say statutory rape and assault, she’s under eighteen. And a girl you can’t tell. Whatever she tells you, forget it. Says she‘s eighteen, the boobs, everything? Back she comes next day with her father, the sheriff, turns out she’s fourteen. You outlined a parrot on her left shoulder, she’s supposed to come back for the color? She comes back all right. And Dad’s with her.

  “As I was saying, my friend in Nashua, heard I got out, said come on up, I can help out while I get my license, sleep in the back room. That’s, did I mention Harley Petersen? Everyone knew Harley. You couldn’t not know Harley. One of the old timers, went way back. Him and I. He did the whole thing, not like me. Japan, Okinawa, apprenticed himself to, I forget the guy’s name, one of the big ones over there, came back, he was a changed man. Came back with theories, but still no attitude. That’s, in my opinion. Well, he’s into Zen now in a big way, he picked up over there, and not too particular who he does Zen with. Which I guess is part of it. But the thing—talking about Arthur, Harley Petersen is now calling himself Kenzo Petersen, with a shop in Nashua he calls Kenzo. It’s complicated, he was looking for something Japanese-sounding that he could believe he had a right to, without attitude, and there’s a Japanese wrestler Kenzo Suzuki. Suzuki’s the name of a bike, and Harley is the name of a bike, and he said what could be more natural. Harley became Kenzo. His hair goes back in a pony tail at the same time. Hell, I don’t care. Harley, Kenzo. It all comes out the same hole.

  “Arthur’s in the shop cleaning up nights, odd jobs, runs out for pizza, makes the green tea clients hafta drink while they wait. Arthur’s in school, high school. In the shop whenever he can manage, soaking it in. Reads the magazines, making copies from the flash and the magazines and the photos. Ideas he has himself. Watches everything and talks to Kenzo, everybody he can, until the kid…there’s no law I know of an underage kid can’t handle a needle. I don’t know. Due course Arthur is an apprentice. Harley’s excited. Kenzo, he is now, but to look at, aside from all the green tea in his veins, you know there’s no Japanese blood in him. The blood is American.

  “I’m sleeping in the back room. There’s enough business I get my share. Arthur watches. He learns. We make him draw. Friends of his come in, underage, we let him draw designs on them, make transfers, they can see what it would look like, but no needles. Not when you’re underage. I learned my lesson and Harley, that’s Kenzo now, is Mister do-it-right-or-don’t-do-it. I get into it too, having this kid to boss around, clean up, check the needles, check the ink stock, answer the phone. It’s good, too, because Arthur’s a geeky kid, but he’s got the other kids interested. They start coming around, they start turning eighteen and it’s almost, you’ve heard of Sweet Sixteen? Party they throw, coming of age? Kids’d like to sneak in right after, maybe midnight the morning they turn eighteen, get their first ink.

  “Mike shows up, tell him I’ll be right back.”

  Flash stood abruptly, parked his cigar, and followed his green exte
nsion cord into the apartment, swinging the door to behind him. Fred twiddled his thumbs one way and then the other, until they came out even. In three minutes Flash came back, rubbing his palms on the seat of balding brown corduroy pants.

  “That’s better,” he said. He stooped to the shoulder bag, withdrew a pint bottle of Early Times and took a swig. Wiped the neck on the sleeve of his jacket, held the bottle toward Fred’s shaking head, wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, put the bottle back. “That’s even better,” he said. “OK, Mike, let’s get started.”

  Fred said, “Not Mike. Fred. Waiting for Arthur. What’s Arthur’s last name?”

  “Tattoo clubs,” Flash said. “The S & M routines, music. People do what they want.”

  “Arthur,” Fred murmured.

  “Next thing, Arthur turns eighteen. Xerox copy of his birth certificate he brought in a year before so it will be ready, we’ve been talking all this time, what he’s gonna do to pop his cherry. New idea every time he comes in. Flag of Switzerland with the doves? Black sun around his left nipple? There’s a Japanese mermaid he’s in love with for about a week to wrap around his thigh. By now he’s done so much work around the place for no pay, he’s gonna get his ink in trade. He’s already doing some lining, even some shading on the simple stuff. We can see the kid could be a genius. Could be, ten or fifteen years, one of these guys he can live wherever he wants, people from all over the country make appointments, hell, all over the world, plan their vacation time to come where he is, get their work done. When Kenzo’s free, the two of them talk together, look over plans, speculate how many years this design takes to execute, where to start, once he turns eighteen. It’s going to be a big deal.

  “What a man like Kenzo doesn’t get very often, a guy like Arthur, he’s in love, he’s still a virgin, he knows all about it, though. He hasn’t made half-assed mistakes already in the back seat before he gets wise to how beautiful love can be, you follow? Let a scratcher start him with something that has to be covered later if that’s even possible. Or it goes too deep and blossoms. Or it fades. Go to the wrong person, a thousand things can happen. And they do. He hasn’t started with a mistake like most people do, for the simple reason he hasn’t started.

  “So, there’s not a mark on Arthur yet. Kenzo sees him for a long-term prospect that will become a billboard, in the magazines, photos, with the name Kenzo Petersen underneath as the tattooer. If Kenzo takes his show on the road in a few years, conventions, Arthur can be the main exhibit. I know this is in Kenzo’s mind. But in Arthur’s mind, the kid? One week it’s nothing but swans, then it’s fish, then it’s an English rose garden in June but each rose different, Lord Baltimore, Fanny Crisp, Gloria l’Amoria. Then it’s big carp the Japanese do, scales and the weeds everywhere, so everyone is wondering. What Arthur is going to choose. Where he will start.

  “With Arthur, the one thing we know, he’s got discipline. He starts something, he’s going to see it through to the end. He promised his Dad he’s gonna finish high school, you can take that promise to the bank. So once he’s set on a design…”

  “This is how long ago?” Fred asked.

  “Couple of years. Say, you’re not law?”

  Fred shook his head.

  “Funniest job I ever did. Cleveland. Whole college football team got that naked lady tattoo from somebody, a year or so back, a way to keep together, souvenir, they played in another town. Now, still keeping together, they all decide they’ll join the service, no service will take them on account of the naked lady. My job, I’m in Cleveland, seventeen pairs of panties, I did them all different colors, stripes, polka-dots, the works. Presto-changeo the naked lady’s ready to pass inspection.” Flash picked up his cigar and examined it critically. It had gone out.

  “That’s what Arthur went with?” Fred prompted. “Naked ladies? After all that?”

  “Why do I smoke these fucking things?” Flash asked.

  Fred stood and stretched. “I’m going to use Arthur’s bathroom.”

  Flash held up the thumb and finger of his right hand in a ring. “One blue circle this size on his right shoulder. One sixteenth of an inch wide, the line. One color. Blue. That’s it. That’s what Arthur wanted.

  “‘I’ve thought about it,’ is all Arthur would say.”

  Chapter Eleven

  Fred pushed into Arthur’s apartment, leaving Sammy Flash yammering along. The man was like one of those talking dolls with the pull-string in back, but the string activated a Moebius strip recording inside that flipped from side to side infinitely, only occasionally and accidentally making tangential reference to the matter at hand.

  Arthur lived like a monk. The Thomas Merton of tattoo artists. His apartment occupied a large space that had been intended as a living room but was now understandable as Arthur’s shop, furnished with street furniture: chairs, a small table, a rudimentary platform bed or divan. A few lamps that could be moved as needed. The minimum tools required. Kitchen off one end of this room; small bedroom, equally austere; bathroom also giving off the living room, or shop. The smell was bachelor: unclean bathroom and kitchen, dust, garbage waiting to be remembered. Fred knew it well. Cleanliness may be on the shelf next to Godliness, but they are not even close to being the same thing.

  “Don’t touch nothing,” Flash called out. He’d moved into the apartment’s doorway and was going to stand there while Fred used the john.

  On the bathroom wall, over the toilet, a print was attached to the wall with pushpins: Piero della Francesca’s Baptism of Christ from the National Gallery in London. David Hockney had the same print taped to his studio wall. Arthur was a monk all right. You want images of Western myths all over your body? Why not start with Piero’s humane angels? The carefully delineated foliage on the tree over Christ’s head; the dove, the holy ghost, the paraclete; or Christ himself: in shape, confident, humble, at the top of his game but only now getting started.

  Fred hadn’t closed the bathroom door. He became aware of Flash standing there as he zipped up. “Center of an altarpiece for the chapel of Saint John the Baptist in Borgo Sansepolcro,” Fred said. “Painted some time in the 1450s.”

  “You don’t say.”

  “How England got hold of it I don’t know,” Fred said, looking at the reproduction.

  Not that religion hadn’t inspired plenty of bloodshed in the Europe of the 1450s—but there was no sign of trouble, pain, or misery in the moment Piero had chosen to reflect on. And no sign anywhere of the ghoulish extravagance of funhouse caricature that by now had come to infect representations, on American bodies, of Christian religious themes, if Fred’s brief skimming trip through the magazines on the landing were any guide. “Seems to me you could use those little plants in the foreground,” Fred suggested. “No? Piero had a mighty fine hand, nice nose for detail. None of the plants alike. Maybe a woman turns up who wants something delicate?”

  Flash said, “I come in here, do my business, I can’t stop wondering. Since they both have beards, which one is Jesus? It’s obviously religious, the scene, I see that, the story, even without haloes.”

  “The one doing the baptizing is Saint John, aka ‘The Baptist.’ He’s wearing clothes.”

  “Arthur doesn’t want people in the apartment, he’s not here,” Flash said.

  Fred flushed the can and followed him out. Seated on the landing again, he asked, “That’s where Arthur gets his ideas?” He was intrigued. The only image visible inside Arthur’s place was in the bathroom, where Arthur was obliged to confront it every time he took a leak—the reproduction of an ancient painting austere, complex, and beautiful, unlike the frantic garbage pinned to the wall in the vestibule. A medieval painting. Depending when you want to start the Renaissance. Not Fred’s problem. But in the brief time he’d had to glance around, there’d been no sign of what Kim had described—an “old dark wooden painting” that had that gremlin
in it.

  “Wait out here,” Flash said. “There’s plenty to look through. Like as not the client has something with him. Most times. Or, this is worse, something they saw they try to describe and hope you can draw it like they saw it? A snake inside out? You tell me. Let’s get started.”

  “No rush.” Fred stretched his legs. “Arthur, when he left Nashua, figured on art school?”

  “A lot of them do that,” Flash said. He relit his cigar, taking his time. “Not Arthur. High school was about it for Arthur, and that was pushing it.”

  “You followed him down,” Fred said.

  Flash lapsed into a distracted silence before he reached into his bag and took another pull from the Early Times. The look was furtive, almost hunted. He put the bottle away again.

  Fred tried, “Kenzo’s still in business? In Nashua.”

  Another silence until, “Kenzo is not the easiest guy in the world to get along with, I warn you. He’s also way the fuck up in Nashua, for God’s sake. Why do you need Kenzo? Whatever you want, I can do,” Flash said. “Tell you the truth, I can use the…”

  “It’s more a business proposition,” Fred said. “With Arthur. It’s Arthur I need to talk to. What’s the best way to deal with Arthur? Clue me in.”

  “Funny guy,” Flash said, sullen. “For a guy with a place to sleep. I’ll give it to him, he’s generous. Generous but private. For one, I can’t sleep in the apartment. I have the keys, he lets me use the electric, I’m not complaining. I appreciate. He doesn’t mind I sleep on the landing like a fucking wino, big of him,” Flash said. “Except the landlord catches me there I’m out in the rain. Don’t think I don’t appreciate that also. But Arthur won’t let me help. With his clients. Lining, shading? My hand is steady. Look.” He held out both hands and, indeed, they were steady. “I could do brain surgery, I knew my way around in there. And I haven’t eaten yet today.”