Faces in the Fire

by Hines

  But then, she knew people often did things that didn’t make sense. (You got the dead blood, child) For instance, some mothers, whacked in the head, cut their daughters’ arms to drain the dead blood out of them. And in turn, some daughters terrified themselves when they casually started wondering if their own daughters had the dead blood in them.

  She shook her head. Stop. Right now, she just needed to keep him occupied. Keep him away from that gun, because if he went for it, she was going to have to reach it first. And she wasn’t sure she could.

  “It’s not hard to learn,” she said. “I can teach you.”

  Psychology 101: get him to think of the man on the floor as a person, get him to think of her as a person. Offer him something to pique his curiosity.

  She sensed his reluctance, even without watching his face.

  “I—” he said, but she cut him off.

  Take control of the situation.

  “Three fingers up from here,” she said, demonstrating as she placed her hand at the junction of the man’s rib cage. “Hands together, steady pressure, kinda like kneading bread when you think about it.”

  She wasn’t sure about the kneading bread analogy; this guy didn’t seem like much of a baker. But maybe it would trigger thoughts of family, his mother, something. Get him to see her as something other than the failure she was. Positive associations.

  “You try it,” she said.

  She grabbed him again, this time on the arm, and the blood itch returned immediately. Why was that? What was it about this man that awakened the . . . well, that awakened the dead blood inside?

  Still, as uncomfortable as it was, it kept him where she could see him. She swallowed the acidic taste bubbling at the back of her throat, ignored the burn radiating throughout her body, and urged him to his knees again.

  Amazingly, he followed her instructions and began doing compressions. Sometime in the last few seconds he’d slipped on surgical gloves, which did nothing to settle her discomfort. Surgeons wore those gloves, yes. And she didn’t even want to think about the other kinds of people who used them.

  He was too tentative, barely applying any pressure.

  “Harder,” she said. “You’re massaging the heart, keeping the blood flow going.” There. Reinforce him, let him know he’s doing something to help. Keep his hands occupied.

  The man did as instructed, putting more effort into the chest compressions, and she began to think it might be her way out of this. With his hands busy, she could go for the gun herself, hold him off, back out of the room. She could do that now, remove herself from the situation, because an ambulance was on the way. She’d done her superhero bit.

  She glanced quickly at the gun on the floor, then back to the stranger doing chest compressions.

  Then her opening came.

  Russian Guy gasped and began to breathe.

  The guy doing chest compressions stopped for a moment, seemingly stupefied, as he stared at Russian Guy’s face.

  She took advantage. She slid to her left, staying on her knees, and cradled the gun on the floor in her left hand before slipping it into the waist of her jeans.

  And still the guy kept doing the compressions, pressing on Russian Guy’s chest like an automaton. He was really getting into it, as if he were the one whose life was being saved.

  “Stop,” she said, sliding back over and putting her hand on Russian Guy’s wrist. There was a pulse there, erratic but definite.

  “He’s back,” she said, trying to study Gloved Guy’s face for a reaction. For a moment she almost thought he was having a heart attack himself; his skin went the color of oatmeal, and his eyes seemed to have trouble focusing. A two-for-one deal when the EMTs showed up.

  Okay, do something. Don’t give him a chance to look around for the gun. Don’t let him realize it’s missing.

  She leaned back, pulled a pack of cigarettes from the back pocket of her jeans. She’d never smoked before, but after leaving her perfect little home in the woods in Red Lodge, she’d pulled over for a pack of Camels. She’d smoked a pack a day since then, was almost at the point where she could get through a cigarette without coughing.

  She offered him a cigarette, but he refused, so she lit one for herself, trying to calm the jitters.

  Immediately, he spoke. “You shouldn’t do that.”

  She narrowed her eyes. “Shouldn’t do what?”

  “Smoke. You’re pregnant.”

  She felt like a balloon with a slow leak for a few moments. She looked at her stomach. Too early; she wasn’t showing yet. That’s why she’d run away, after all, why she’d come to Seattle. To fix this second . . . mistake.

  Slowly, keeping her eyes on his face, she stubbed out the cigarette on the floor between them. Both of them remained on their knees at Russian Guy’s side, as if they were here to pray for a sick friend.

  Change the subject, just change the subject.

  “What’s with the gloves?” she asked, blurting out the first thing that came to her mind.

  He looked at his hands a moment before holding them up, a look of disgust in his eyes. Germ freak? Maybe. But she guessed that wasn’t his only reason for the gloves.

  “Long story,” he said.

  She stood, her knee protesting with a crack, before her attention was again distracted by the Russian Guy on the floor. He was moaning, a low, soft keening sound. The sound her veins had made when Gloved Guy had touched her with his bare hand. Maybe . . . he had the dead blood, too?

  “Probably a heart attack,” she said. “Or a stroke. His body’s going to be in shock for a while. Probably won’t fully come back around until he’s in the hospital.”

  She wasn’t sure why she was saying all this suddenly. Maybe just to keep talking, keep Gloved Guy occupied. Keep him from looking for that missing gun. Of course, if Russian Guy was going to live, that might not be such a good thing. After all, Gloved Guy was here to kill Russian Guy, she was now sure of that. The gloves, the gun . . . well, if those didn’t say “hit man,” what did?

  (But what was with the shoes?)

  Okay, just keep control of the situation. She could do that. She held out her hand, an offer to help him stand. She wasn’t surprised when he refused and stood on his own. He was a twitchy one, for sure.

  “I can take it from here,” she said after he stood.

  “What do you mean?”

  “You’ve been itching to bolt ever since I got here. Probably would have, if I hadn’t come over.”

  He remained quiet, probably considering his options.

  She let her left arm drop to her side, where it would be closer to the gun if she needed it. “And I’m guessing that’s an even longer story.”

  Just leave, she said quietly in her mind now. She had the gun, so she was safe; she’d fired one before. Back in Montana.

  His face contorted, and she guessed this was a guy with a few secrets in his past. Secrets he’d rather not think about. She could identify with that.

  “So go,” she said. “Most of the time, you only get one chance to run.” She tried not to think about that too much as she said it.

  He nodded, stumbled a bit on his way to the door. She relaxed just a bit as she watched him, but tensed again when he turned before opening the door. Just a few feet away.

  She wasn’t sure what else to do, so she gave him a small, knowing nod.

  He turned and left her standing there, gun hidden and clutched in her left hand.

  After she heard the front door click shut (mostly shut, she noted), she returned her attention to Russian Guy on the floor. She should probably find a blanket, cover him, keep him warm. They taught her that in CPR class too. But she was tired now. And hot, in contrast to her earlier shivers. And . . . scared.

  Well, she’d been scared the whole time. But she was more scared now, because she didn’t know what lay ahead of her. She was alone and pregnant in Seattle, not very pregnant, true, but pregnant all the same, and she needed to be not pregnant because you pas
sed the dead blood to your kids and she’d already made a mistake with Tiffany and—

  Something else caught her eye on the floor now. A piece of paper. No, a napkin. She bent down and picked it up, turned it over. It had one long number scribbled on it in a shaky hand: 1595544534.

  She took the gun and the napkin, rushed back to her room, put them both into her purse. She reached into her pocket for the cigarettes, pulled one out, paused, then threw it into the trash can along with the rest of the pack.

  What was she thinking? She’d run out on her life a few days ago because . . . because she was scared she was becoming her own mother.

  Which was a contradiction in terms, of course.

  She remembered the first time Dear Old Mom—Flo to everyone else—sat her down and gave her the dead blood talk.

  Mom had dead blood in her veins because she had received the dead blood from her own mother. And dead blood was a bad thing, because it made you think crazy things—things doctors had long words for if you talked about them, but still just crazy things. And now Mom could see she’d given the dead blood to her own child.

  To her.

  “You got the dead blood in you, child,” Mom said, and suddenly Mom had her arm pinned to the table, a kitchen knife in her hand. “Gotta get the dead blood out,” Mom said, and she cut.

  Not a deep cut. But not the last cut, either. Years later, when she was much older than ten, when she was much wiser, she heard someone use the term “a death of a thousand cuts.” She didn’t know what it meant, not at the time, but she found tears welling in her eyes instantly.

  Yes, for six years, she’d died a death of a thousand cuts as Mom tried to get the dead blood out. And so when she’d met Kenneth, she’d seen him as a way out, an escape. She’d run away, far away from Dear Old Mom, not realizing the dead blood would follow her.

  Even here, to Seattle.

  She sat, staring at the floor of her hotel room. She couldn’t get rid of the baby. Not now. Maybe she never could have; she’d been here for four days, after all, the number for an abortion clinic scribbled on scratch paper, and never called it.

  She wasn’t her mother. Never would be. Never.

  So . . . maybe she could go back, smooth things over, just tell them she’d simply needed a long weekend away. She could sell it, because she was a good actress.

  She had, after all, played the part of the Good Wife and the Good Mother for a few years. And she’d fooled everyone except herself.

  24.

  Drawn from the memory, Grace went back to her Dark Room, put down the water bottle, searched in her purse until she found it. The napkin, which she’d encased in a plastic sandwich baggie shortly after returning to her former life, if only briefly.

  She’d run once, come to Seattle for a few days, but got cold feet. And she had gone back, apologizing to her family and vowing she would do better. She’d given birth to a second child, a son she named Joey, and for a while, she’d played the part well.

  But then.

  Well, then she found herself wondering about Tiffany. Looking at her forearms, wondering if she had the dead blood coursing in her veins, because it passed from mother to daughter, after all.

  After she thought that for the very first time, she felt her whole body shaking. Shivering. And she knew she’d been a poor actress, because the dead blood still flowed in her own veins, after all.

  Despite her mother’s best efforts.

  And so, saying she was going to the store for a pack of cigarettes (a habit she’d returned to after the birth of Joey), she found herself inexplicably back in Seattle. And along the way she’d found the comforting, magical napkin with the numbers on it, safely encased in a plastic sandwich bag, still in her purse.

  She had been wrong, then. Sometimes you do get a second chance to run.

  Grace shook her head, pushed away the plastic bag, tried to push away all the memories it represented. Untouchable memories, now that she’d slid deeper into oblivion.

  All of it, in some way, could be traced to this napkin, this mysterious number. And after all that time, she still couldn’t let go of it. Was life really that random?

  It was midafternoon, and she was still good. Still happy. Still golden-creamy, far from that gray zone that always hungered for another hit of heroin. That gray zone didn’t descend until late afternoon or early evening. Usually. If she felt the gray zone descending, she would leave immediately, return to her apartment. She never did heroin here. Not in GraceSpace.

  Before she left, though, she could get a few more things done. Order some supplies. She went to her laptop, keyed in her password, fired up the browser. She was running low on cap tops especially, but she could also use more tubes, and maybe she’d look at some inks.

  At her supplier’s Web site, she went to the order form, pulled up her order history. Under inks, she had ordered item #8174-2296-75, which was Jet Black from Bail Ink; as well as item #8724-1289-44, Midnight Black from Chisel Color; and #7721-8954-30, Squid Green, also from Chisel Color. She paused, wishing she could find the perfect black. She’d tried inks from at least half a dozen manufacturers in the past couple years, and while she liked them all for different applications, she’d never stumbled on the perfect black. Not yet. She entered order numbers for some dispenser bottles and rinse cups, caps, and hit the checkout button. The screen asked her to confirm all the order numbers and quantities, and as she scanned them, something struck her.

  All of the order numbers, she noticed, were ten digits. She pulled the napkin in the plastic bag toward her again, looked at it even though she didn’t need to. She knew the number.

  Curious, she hit the Keep Shopping button and entered the number from the napkin into the search box: 15955445-34. She felt her heart leap a bit as she read the result. An ink called Black Tar from a manufacturer she’d never heard of named Catfish Industries.

  She clicked through to the description and discovered it was a special-order ink, shipped from a new company in China. An introductory special listed a bottle for $25, which was pretty spendy. Still, Black Tar. The street name for pretty much the best heroin you could find. How could she go wrong? She added a bottle and hit the checkout button.

  26.

  The UPS guy showed up at the shop just after she opened.

  “Hey, Joe,” she said. “What can brown do for me today?” It was a joke she always threw at him, and he always took it good-naturedly.

  “Brown can deliver some other colors,” he said, motioning at the boxes he carried on the dolly. He left them in a pile by the front desk, then shoved the electronic signature display her way.

  She signed her name and handed it back to him. “You should come in for some work,” she said. “I can do a UPS logo on your arm for you, get you a promotion for your dedication.”

  He smiled, tipped his hat at her. “I’d put the UPS logo somewhere else, and I’m pretty sure it wouldn’t get me a promotion.”

  She smiled and waved him off as he walked out the door.

  Okay, still an hour or so before Vaughn and Zoey would be here, and about half an hour before her first appointment showed up. She could put away these supplies before then.

  She carted the boxes back into her space one by one, kicking herself for not asking Joe to just trundle them in on his dolly. She removed the packaging, checked to make sure the order was complete, remembering only then that she had ordered ink from a new manufacturer.

  Quickly, she put the other supplies away in her converted dresser, then opened the last box marked Catfish Industries. Inside, the tops of ten bottles glistened back at her. Most ink—okay, all ink—came in plastic dispenser bottles. These were more exotic.

  She lifted one out of the box, held it up to examine it. Was it glass? Maybe. Crazy. She swirled the ink, noting its consistency, and was instantly excited. The light danced off the ink like stars, the substance inside thicker, heavier than normal. Like . . . well, like tar.

  She popped off the top of the bottle, s
melled. Like most ink, it smelled a bit like paint, but she detected a whiff of difference under the paint smell. Something mossy, organic. If she could just lay down some of this stuff, play with its consistency, she could get a better sense of its color.

  Pigskin. She needed pigskin, which would let her lay a few practice lines, discover more about this ink and how it behaved. Ray wouldn’t be at the butcher shop yet, so that was a no-go. Thick-skinned fruit—oranges or grapefruit—were options, but not horribly realistic. Besides, she didn’t have any oranges or grapefruit in her refrigerator right now, only apples. Maybe when Vaughn or Zoey got in, she’d send one of them to Ray for some pigskin.

  “Hey, Grace.”

  She jumped, startled by the voice. It was Candy, her ten o’clock appointment. She glanced at the clock on the wall. Ten before the hour. Somehow she’d been sitting here, absently holding this new ink, for fifteen minutes. And it felt like fifteen seconds.

  “Sorry,” Candy said, gum popping in her too-white teeth. “Didn’t mean to scare you.”

  Grace put down the bottle, pushed the carton with the rest of the Black Tar back beside her dresser. “No problem,” she said. “Just concentrating a little too hard, I guess. Didn’t hear you come in.”

  “The bell clanked.”

  Candy was referring to the cowbell above the door, an inside joke among the three of them in the shop. Whenever anyone walked in, one of them would say “More cowbell.”

  “Guess I just didn’t hear it. Come on in. Take about ten minutes to set up and get you started.”

  Candy walked to the chair in the middle of the Dark Room, a dentist chair Grace had carefully researched and purchased. Not many tattoo shops spent money on their chairs, just going with standard office seating. But Grace always thought the chair was part of the process; when potential clients saw it, they thought, unconsciously, of medical facilities. A very good thing.

  “Just have a seat.”

  “What’s that?” Candy asked as she watched Grace bend and start to slide the black ink into the empty slot of the carton.