by Hines
“Okay, sure,” Grace said, crossing the floor to pick up the headset and then punching the Play button. The first message was someone asking about a Black Tar tattoo. So was the second message. And the third. All of them.
She hung up the phone, feeling excitement—not pain—boiling in her veins. A hunger for a new kind of Black Tar.
“What’s Black Tar?” Corrine’s voice asked behind her.
Grace spun around to face the pasty-faced woman with impossibly dark hair.
“Sorry,” Corrine said. “Your headset—I couldn’t help but hear it.”
Grace nodded, pasted on her own smile. “Black Tar is a new ink I’m using,” she said. “Good coverage, darkest black you’ll ever see.”
Corrine chuckled. “I’ve seen some pretty black stuff.”
Grace paused, knowing already she was going to use the Black Tar ink on this woman. It was . . . fate, after all. She was supposed to use the Black Tar on the people who came seeking it. To offer them salvation, hope. A paradoxical shining light created by the darkest black.
She was becoming addicted to this new Black Tar, yes. But this wasn’t a Black Tar that killed. It was a Black Tar that gave life.
“Let’s do it,” Corrine said. “Let’s use some Black Tar.”
“Okay, well, I usually do a consult on a design—give me an idea what kind of tattoo you’re looking for, where it’s going, that kind of thing. Then we schedule a time.”
Grace said all this, knowing none of it was going to make a difference. This woman, Corrine, wanted a tattoo. And she wanted to give it to her.
Corrine nodded before she spoke. “Here’s the thing,” she said. “I made an oath to myself a couple months ago to be more impulsive. Only I haven’t been. Until now. Until last night, actually. I decided I wanted a tattoo, so today I’m getting a tattoo.”
“Well, that’s part of why I do the consult. Make sure you’re not doing it on just an impulse, make sure you’re comfortable with something that could last the rest of your life.”
An odd look came across Corrine’s face, and she took a deep breath. Grace absently wondered what sort of story was spooling inside this woman’s mind.
“I, uh . . . I was diagnosed with incurable cancer a couple months ago. That’s when I decided to be more impulsive, like I said. And . . . I guess I’m running out of time to be impulsive.”
Great. She’d given the “decision you’ll regret for the rest of your life” lecture to a woman with terminal cancer. If nothing else, that sealed the deal. That also explained the wig. Chemo. She mentally stepped back, took a breath. “What were you thinking of doing?” she asked.
“I don’t know. Impulsive, like I said. Call me a blank canvas.”
A blank canvas. No rules. And Black Tar. Grace felt a fire dancing in her belly, the kind of fire only smack could usually bring. “Okay, then,” she said. “Let’s do it.”
She led Corrine into her Dark Room and began preparing the work space. Grace kept her back to Corrine, giving her time to adjust, see the facilities, trust that she was in good hands. She often did that with first-timers: introduced them to the room, then just sat quietly and worked until they had time to get comfortable with the idea.
Ready to go, Grace fastened a surgical mask over her face and turned back to Corrine, who still hadn’t moved from the doorway. She just needed a little coaxing. “Time to be impulsive.”
That seemed to thaw Corrine; she walked across the Dark Room floor, slid into the seat. She was still tense, nervous, but they were progressing. Baby steps.
Grace turned back to her workspace to lay out the single-use needles and tubes, and to give Corrine more time to get comfortable in the chair.
She waited patiently a few minutes, then grasped the tattoo gun and turned back to Corrine. She smiled. She knew Corrine couldn’t see the smile beneath her mask, of course, but it was an old trick she’d learned. You could always hear a smile in someone’s voice.
“This is the tattoo gun. I attach the needle here, draw ink into the tube up here. Just relax.”
She watched Corrine take a deep breath, offer a tentative smile, nod her head.
“Okay,” she said. “Any more thoughts on what you want? Where you want it?”
“My arm,” Corrine said immediately.
Good; the timidity was melting away quickly.
“Something big. Something strong.”
Grace nodded, adjusted the task light so it was focused on Corrine’s arm. “Maybe slip this arm out of your shirt,” she said. “So we don’t stain it.”
She didn’t tell Corrine that getting a full-arm tattoo as your first one was typically a Very Bad Idea. One of the most sensitive parts of the body was the back of your arm. She didn’t say any of this, because she knew this wasn’t going to be a typical tattoo.
“Now,” she said, looking at Corrine and trying to keep the smile in her voice, “like I said before: just try to relax.”
She triggered the gun, began tracing a swirling line on the upper arm with the Black Tar, and thought to herself: What am I doing?
It was a question she’d asked herself so many times before. Every time she chased the dragon.
42a.
Chasing the dragon. That’s what she’d been doing on Corrine’s arm, she decided, as she came out of the increasingly familiar stupor. She looked at Corrine, who seemed to be dozing, as she washed the skin of Corrine’s arm with soap. The whole thing had taken four hours, and in that time, she had created a dragon.
The head of the dragon stretched from the shoulder almost to the crook of the elbow. Glints of blues and greens and golds filled in the scales; Grace looked at her work area, noticing that, sometime during the tattoo session, she’d added other colors to the mix in her work area.
Chillingly, it looked like the dragon was eating Corrine’s arm.
“A catfish,” Corrine’s voice said.
She looked at Corrine, whose eyes were open and wide now. “What’s that?”
“I said, a catfish. A beautiful catfish,” Corrine repeated.
Grace stared at the tattoo. “I was thinking more like a dragon,” she said. Somehow, the idea of this work of art being mistaken for a catfish insulted her. It was a dragon.
“Same thing, really, in Chinese culture,” Corrine said. “To the Chinese, the catfish is a dragon, a fighter, a symbol of strength. It’s perfect.”
Grace continued to scrub the tattoo, choosing to say nothing. Instead, she looked at it, and as she did, patterns inside the scales moved, swam as if the catfish itself were swimming beneath a rippled surface.
Slowly, inked numbers began to shimmer and glow inside the scales at the tip of the dragon’s snout. She read the numbers in order and recognized them instantly: 1595544534. The numbers written on the napkin she’d kept for eight years. The numbers that had led her to the Black Tar ink only a few days before.
Once again, an image flashed in her mind: Corrine sitting in a dark room, an IV in her arm, a single tear trickling from her eye. But the IV in her arm wasn’t hooked to a bag of fluid. It was hooked to a computer screen, with blood flowing down the front of the screen. On the screen itself, a single word, followed by two exclamation points, steadily flashed: DISASTER!!
Grace didn’t fully understand the image, just as she hadn’t fully understood the images of Candy or Ryder. But she understood the message clearly. The numbers weren’t hers any longer; they were Corrine’s. Because if she didn’t give the numbers to Corrine . . . well, DISASTER!!
She spoke softly. “I . . . uh, need to give you something,” she said as she turned and threw the used needles and tube into the sharps container.
“Yeah? What is it?” Corrine asked from behind her.
“You’re gonna think it’s weird, but it’s . . . I guess it’s a memento of something I’ve been holding on to for a long time. Call it a good luck charm.”
Now Grace crumpled everything into the paper that lined the top of the table, threw it into
the garbage behind Corrine.
She returned her attention to the other woman’s face; she seemed to be . . . disappointed, somehow, for a few seconds. Then her face brightened again and she nodded.
“Hang on just a second,” Grace said. She went into the front office and pulled the napkin in clear plastic from her purse, then returned to the Dark Room and held it in the light of the task lamp.
“What is it?” Corrine asked, taking the bag from her and examining it.
Well, that was a question, wasn’t it?
“It’s a . . . I don’t know. I’ve held on to it for years now, and . . . anyway, I want you to have it. Sometime, after you’ve beaten this cancer, you’ll hand it to someone else who needs a good luck charm.”
Corrine smiled, and Grace knew everything was going to be okay. Evidently, she’d said something right.
Corrine clutched the plastic bag in her hands, saying, “It’s Fu.”
“Fu?”
“Chinese symbol for good luck. So this is your symbol for good luck—your Fu.”
Grace smiled. “No, it’s your Fu now.”
Even so, as Corrine thanked her profusely and left, Grace
wished she had the napkin. Just to hold one more time.
45.
That night, Grace dreamed of Tiffany and Joey, her children back in Montana. And Kenneth, her husband. In the dream she chased the dragon, lighting up some Black Tar, taking the smoke deep into her lungs, exhaling and letting the white tails of smoke caress her body.
But in the haze, through the dragon tails, she saw the faces of her children. Her husband. They called her name—her real name, not the fake one she’d used since moving to Seattle to become a junkie.
“Janet! Janet!” she heard Kenneth say, louder and deeper than the voices of her children calling out for their mother.
“I’m here!” she tried to scream, but she couldn’t talk. Every time she opened her mouth, her vocal cords froze.
And still her family called out to her, trying to see her through the haze of the white dragon tails.
Eventually the smoke coalesced, massed, took shape, and Grace (Janet) knew she was now surrounded by real dragons with real teeth. Real dragons that could bite.
Still, her family called to her, and the noise they made drew the attention of the dragons. She opened her mouth again, trying to tell her family to stop, trying to scream something at the dragons to draw away their attention, but the only thing that came from her mouth was more thick, steaming smoke.
She grasped at the tails of the dragons, trying to hold them back, feeling the grit of the scales sliding off under her fingernails. But there were too many dragons, dozens of them.
They were hungry. They knew where her family was.
And they rushed toward her family with mouths open, saliva stringing heavily from white teeth.
47.
Grace awoke, tears in her eyes. She’d been crying as she slept. Was such a thing even possible?
The dreams of her family had fueled the tears, she knew. How long since she’d dreamed of them? How long since she’d even thought of them? A couple years, at least. Like so much of her life, her family had become nothing more than trash, kicked to the curb by the ever-hungry dragon.
When all was said and done, that’s exactly why she used the heroin. To inoculate herself against everything she’d left behind.
And now she’d gone a couple days with no smack at all. Nothing to smoke, nothing to shoot. Her body felt strong, and no withdrawals were ravaging her body.
She scratched absently at the spot above her heart. There was the mystery tattoo, yes, appearing magically like some kind of oily rash. The door. But even that image was somehow correct, somehow fitting. It was a thick, heavy door, solidly locked.
But now memories were returning, along with a yearning for the family she’d left. How else to explain the dreams? Going back was out of the question; they’d never take her. Abandoning family was like stepping off a cliff; once you stepped off the edge, you left the world at the top of the cliff behind forever. You were destined only to fall.
Also, there was the little matter of dead blood, and what she might do to her daughter in the name of said dead blood.
She looked at the clock, remembered she had an early appointment at nine. Dane. She’d finish his tat then make some calls. No, she hadn’t experienced any true hunger for smack, any withdrawal symptoms. But her mind still needed the escape hatch the junk provided. She could score something, and by late afternoon she’d be blissfully floating high above any ghosts of her past, caramel-smooth and creamy.
She needed the smack to kill the memories. To kill the guilt. To kill who she once was.
49.
Dane showed up about ten minutes after she rolled up the shop’s front gate, an ear-to-ear grin on his face.
She’d inked four previous tattoos on him and scheduled a fifth one for his upper back. He wanted a phoenix, a bird rising from the flames, on his upper right shoulder.
Dane was a good kid, but maybe a bit overeager. Whenever he came into the shop, she almost felt like he was going to start hopping everywhere, a human pogo stick. He had that manic energy in his eyes, as if getting a tattoo were the most wonderful experience anyone could ever have.
Personally, she thought he should just switch to decaf.
“Great day, isn’t it?” Dane said as he closed the front door behind him, turned, flashed that toothy grin her direction.
His smile made her whole face hurt. “Morning, Dane,” she said. “We’re doing a phoenix, right?”
He nodded vigorously, stripped off his jacket, and threw it onto one of the wooden chairs in the lobby area. He was well built—not beefy, but solid—and the tattoo of a flaming sword on his upper arm was impressive. Not Black Tar impressive, but still one of her better pieces of early work.
He followed her into the Dark Room and settled in the chair almost before she was seated at her work area. She smiled. At least it would be nice to work with an old pro.
“You’re gonna have to turn over for this one,” she said, and he did as instructed, peeling away his shirt and putting it on the floor.
She prepared her inks and needles, listening to him chat about the Mariners, the commute on I-5, the miserable working conditions at the seafood restaurant where he cooked.
She nodded and said yes at all the appropriate pauses as she prepared, her mind retreating from Dane and embracing the Black Tar. Dane hadn’t said anything about it; evidently, he was one of the few without connections in the sizable Seattle area body-art grapevine. So really, there was no reason to use it in his case, was there? He just wanted a black phoenix on his upper shoulder.
And yet, did he deserve any less than the others? The Black Tar, she now knew, was meant to be part of a sacred ritual for her, a sacred ritual to be shared with others. Look what had happened with Corrine. She’d been able to channel something secret inside the woman’s life, deliver the numbers, save her from DISASTER!!
Dane was a good kid. He should have her best.
She looked at the bottle. She was already at the end of the eighth bottle—partly because the Black Tar bottles were unusually small, partly because Corrine’s dragon tattoo was unusually large—but no matter. Grace had the stock number, and she could order more. She could create wondrous tattoos for clients every day, offering them salvation from the past sins that haunted them.
She understood she must do this because she could not be saved from her own mistakes. Images of Tiffany, Joey, and Kenneth, fresh from her dreams, danced in her head for a moment.
She noticed Dane had gone quiet behind her. Evidently pausing to take a breath.
Corrine smiled, picked up the bottle of Black Tar, squeezed the last of the ink into a cap, and stuck it in the smear of petroleum jelly.
“Are you ready to see a phoenix rise from the ashes?” she asked.
Dane fairly giggled behind her. “I was born ready,” he said.
50.
Just over an hour later, she snapped out of her daze. The phoenix, turned in profile inside a large circle with flames licking at the bottom of it, glowed in the beam of her task light. She turned to get the antibacterial soap and began washing the area; as she did so, Dane stirred.
“How’s it look?” he asked.
Grace wasn’t the kind of person who took easily to bragging, but she said, “I think you’re gonna love it.” And she knew he would.
She continued to wash, waiting for a word to form inside the tattoo, waiting for an image to flash in her mind. She was ready, willing, to help Dane. It was her burden to carry.
After a few more seconds of scrubbing, she saw letters begin to resolve inside the inky blackness of the tattoo: F. I. R. E.
Fire.
Immediately an image came to her mind: Dane standing in the foreground, a Zippo lighter in his hand, opened and burning, familiar manic energy dancing in his eyes. Behind him, in the photo, a building burned.
The image dissolved abruptly, and Grace had to take a few seconds to catch her breath.
Dane, intuiting that something was wrong, lifted himself from the chair a little, turned on his side so he could see her sitting behind him. “You okay?” he asked.
She smiled. “Didn’t eat breakfast,” she said. “I’ll be fine.” Wow, how many times was she going to use that line?
Dane stood, grabbed his shirt.
“There’s a mirror out in the front lobby,” she said.
He turned and smiled at her, and she could see his eyes, his teeth, glistening in the darkness of her room.
“I know,” he said. “This isn’t my first time here, you know.”
Shirt in hand, he walked out her door and disappeared from view.
She felt her lungs wanting to panic, wanting to hyperventilate, but she controlled her breathing.
She’d just given a tattoo to the arsonist who had been burning down buildings all over Seattle. The man who had lit at least a dozen fires, killing five people, and propelling himself to the top of the local news cycles. The person all of Seattle knew simply as “the firebug.”
Numbly she walked out into the front lobby, saw Dane with his back to the mirror, head turned to the side to admire the burning bird on his shoulder.