The Missing Ink

Chapter 5

For a few seconds I was frozen as if my feet had grown roots, my Tevas clutching the mall floor so tightly I couldn’t let go.

He walked into St. Mark’s Square, along the other side of the canal.

I noticed little things, like how he was wearing a jean jacket with the sleeves cut off, a Harley logo on the back. His legs were slightly bowed, and he had an exaggerated cowboy saunter. He wasn’t in a hurry; his stride was slow, methodical. Like he was giving me a chance to come after him.

But truth be told, I didn’t really want to.

I waited until he passed the footbridge before I finally took my first step, gradually speeding up and power walking in the same direction he’d gone. By now, however, I was too far behind and I’d lost sight of him as he turned the corner.

Joel Sloane, one of my tattooists, was coming toward me. He was carrying a big soft pretzel and a coffee. Breakfast of champions.

I waved, a frantic, I’m a little crazy kind of wave. I was still creeped out, even though the guy had disappeared.

Joel saw me, grinned, and stopped, raising the pretzel in a greeting.

The woman walking behind Joel crashed into him. Not difficult, since Joel weighs about three hundred pounds and could stop a freight train, and the woman probably weighed ninety pounds wet.

I was close enough now to hear the woman telling Joel how rude he was, how could he just stop in the middle of a walkway? Joel’s face was red with embarrassment as he apologized profusely. When I reached him, I touched his arm in support, and he nodded at me.

The woman must have been in her sixties, according to the skin on her neck, chest, and hands, but her face was smooth as silk. Either exceptional Botox or a fantastic face-lift. Maybe both. Her hands clutched several shopping bags, and she flipped her hair back over her shoulder as she stared at my arm, taking in the whole garden scene, her expression showing disgust. She looked from me to Joel, noticing now the Betty Boop intertwined with a black-and-red geometric design on his left arm, the skeleton and hatchet prominent in the sleeve on his right, and the barbed-wire tat around his neck.

“Be more careful next time,” she said to Joel, flouncing past.

Joel chuckled. “She needs to loosen up,” he said when she was out of earshot.

“Maybe we should give her some tats on the house,” I suggested. “Hey, did you notice that big guy with all the ink? He was across the canal.” The canal wasn’t that wide; it was a mini-illusion. How else would it fit in a mall?

Joel frowned. “Yeah, I saw him.”

“Look familiar?”

“It’s not my work, but that eagle that wrapped around his neck was pretty cool.”

Now that he mentioned it, my memory flashed on it. It was cool, but that didn’t mean the overall package wasn’t creepy.

Joel started walking toward the shop, and I fell into step beside him. “So, who is he?” he asked.

“I don’t know. But he was watching me, and it was uncomfortable.”

Joel immediately looked concerned. “In what way?”

I told him about how he aimed his finger at me and pretended to shoot.

His concern deepened. “I can call a couple of people and see if they know who he is. It was enough ink so someone should be able to identify him just on a description.”

Joel knew everyone in the tattoo business in Las Vegas.

“That would be great. I don’t want to run into him again.” Major understatement.

Joel started to breathe a little more heavily. All that weight was a chore to carry around.

“Pretzel for breakfast?” I asked.

Joel took a bite. “I’m going to start Weight Watchers next week.”

I nodded, like he really would this time, instead of going out after a couple hours and sneaking some Häagen-Dazs or gelato or Godiva chocolate on his break. It wasn’t my place to say anything.

“That woman was pretty rude,” I said to change the subject.

“I shouldn’t have stopped short.”

“So what? She didn’t have to talk to you that way.”

“You’re right, but she’d had some fabulous work done. And she’d been shopping at Privilege. They’ve got gorgeous stuff.”

Joel’s tats belied his nature. The ink, his size, the blond braid that hung down his back, and the hoop earring-as well as the long chain looped into his jeans pocket that kept him from losing his keys-indicated a brawny, tough guy. His tone told a whole different story. He’d never talked about a boyfriend, but he never talked about women, either, unless it was to comment on their clothes or shoes or plastic surgery. It made Ace uncomfortable, but Ace had his own problems, so he kept his mouth shut.

“So, what are you going to do about that guy?” Joel asked as we reached the shop.

I pushed the door open. I tried to be nonchalant. “Unless I see him again, nothing. I mean, I could’ve been overreacting.” I knew I wasn’t, and Joel was onto me.

He shook his head. “Don’t underestimate it. You knew he was watching you, and you don’t know why.”

Bitsy was standing on her stool, helping Ace straighten a new painting over the front desk. Ace’s most recent artwork was a rip-off of Ingres’s Odalisque-he’d taken to doing his own comic-book versions of classic paintings that also included da Vinci’s Mona Lisa, Vincent van Gogh’s Starry Night (although it could invariably be argued that it’s already a cartoon), and Botticelli’s Birth of Venus (which I dubbed Venus on a Half Shell). The Degas on the far wall was one of his. Because we looked like a gallery, he actually sold some of his work on a fairly regular basis.

The people who wandered in here by mistake were relieved they could buy something other than a tat.

Generally, we were by appointment only, no walk-ins, and we got a lot of referrals from the hotel concierges.

“Bitsy says that missing woman was here.” Ace ran his hands through his abundantly thick dark hair, which fell gracefully just above his shoulders. It was a gesture meant to draw attention to himself; Ace was all about attention. He had those chiseled good looks that indicated possible plastic surgery-because what man could be so striking without it?-and clear blue eyes that seemed somehow reflective, like a pool. Even his tats were perfectly aligned on either arm, dipping ever so slightly onto the backs of his hands into fleurs-de-lis. He was a true artiste, lamenting his plight as a tattooist, unable to pursue his art as he wished, frustrated-but not enough to cut off an ear for anyone.

It was enough to make us all roll our eyes in unison.

“Tim needs to talk to you,” I told Bitsy.

The stool still didn’t take her to eye level with me, but it was close. I noticed she had on a new pair of khaki trousers and a white eyelet blouse. Bitsy was rather conservative in her style, wearing no makeup except for a little mascara, but she didn’t really need any. She had flawless skin any woman would kill for. She was the only one in the shop without ink. I’d asked her once why she didn’t have a tat, and she said she just didn’t want one. I’m not into peer pressure, so I let it alone.

“He called. He should be here soon.”

I knew he was doing his job, but wasn’t it enough that he’d already told me he’d be by? Like he didn’t trust that I’d relay his message to Bitsy. Sometimes he still treated me like his little sister. If the rent weren’t so good, I’d move out and get my own place.

I put my bag in the staff room. I’d left a design only partly done on the light table the night before. An older woman wanted “something special” to cover her mastectomy scar, something that indicated emotional growth and physical strength. I’d started drawing an oak tree, delicate leaves at the ends of thin branches that gradually grew thicker into the trunk and ended in a mass of roots.

I took the pencil and sketched it out further, adding more details. When I was in school at the University of the Arts in Philadelphia, I’d dreamed of going to Paris and putting up an easel next to the Seine, painting on a stiff white canvas.

Instead, my canvas was alive, soft and moving, and my brush had turned into a machine with a needle on the end of it.

The first time I’d touched that needle to my own skin, I knew this was what I wanted to do.

My mother, who moved with my father to a retirement community in Port St. Lucie, Florida, right after I left for Vegas, said a Hail Mary for me every day.

I heard some sort of commotion out in the front of the shop. I pushed the sketch aside, put my pencil down, and got up. As I moved toward the door, I heard Bitsy arguing with a man.

“She’s busy. I can help you,” Bitsy said.

“I want to talk to the owner!”

For a second, I froze, wondering if it was the big tattooed guy who’d been watching me. I shrugged off the apprehension, telling myself that if it were, I’d at least know what he wanted now. Still, I tentatively pushed the door open.

The man Bitsy was arguing with didn’t have one tat. At least none that I could see. He was in his late twenties, early thirties maybe, as clean-cut as he could be, with a short, military-like haircut, nicely pressed button-down shirt, and jeans that looked like they’d been ironed.

I took another look at his face.

He was the spitting image of his father.

It was Chip Manning, jilted groom.