A Good and Useful Hurt (8 page)

The kid liked the squid, so that little matter was attended to easily enough.
What happened later that day was a little more unexpected.

Mike was tattooing a gold koi fish on a customer’s arm when Becky poked her head into the booth and said, “You need to take a break. Doc’s in your office.”

“Is everything alright?”

“I’m not sure.”

“OK.” Mike turned to the customer. “You mind if we take a fifteen-minute break?”

“No problem. I hope everything’s alright with your friend.”

“Thanks. I’ll come fetch you from the lobby once I’m done.”

“Cool.”

Mike stood and stripped off his gloves before washing his hands. He dried them quickly, used the towel to shut off the water, and left the room to head to his office. He could hear Lamar talking as he walked, but he was unable to decipher the words over the stereo. He opened the door to the office and saw Doc.

“What happened?”

Doc said nothing. He was disheveled. Always immaculate, never a hair out of place or an unfastened button, today he looked as though he’d dressed in a wind tunnel. His hair was a mess, and his clothes were in utter disarray. This alone was enough to unnerve Mike, but his eyes were the real story. Normally alight with interest in life and pleasure, today they were a pair of twin dull globes that betrayed his age in a way that they never had before. Doc was older, Mike had always known that, but he had never been the mummy he was today.

“My niece Annie was killed two nights ago.”

Mike sat at the table and said, “I’m so sorry.”

Doc’s niece was the closest thing he had to a daughter. He doted on the young girl, and she was a frequent topic of conversation at the store. The last time they’d talked of her she’d been accepted to grad school at the University of Michigan. Doc had brought her around a couple of times, and Mike had tattooed a small Japanese character on her wrist. It wasn’t like Doc to share his tattooed friends, or secret lifestyle, with anyone. It just made it worse to have lost one of his few confidants. Annie had been more than a niece.

“What happened?”

“She was murdered.”

“Jesus Christ.”

“The police haven’t told us the specifics, but they think, and I think, that she was killed by that bastard who’s been raping and murdering women. My sister and her husband are just wrecks over it. My sister found her in her apartment. I just can’t imagine.”

“That’s awful. Is there anything I can do?”

“Not just yet. I’d imagine I’ll want to get a memorial piece at some point, but it’s going to be a little bit. I’ve taken a week off of classes to help my sister get the funeral arrangements taken care of. I’m just going to try and be as strong as possible for her.”

“Where’s the funeral going to be?”

“Haven’t figured that out yet.”

Mike thought then of the ashes and the others, but when he made to speak of it, something, some inner voice, held him back and he let Doc finish.

“Probably at some claptrap of the poor girl’s father’s choosing. I suppose it won’t matter too much either way.”

He sighed deeply and stared at the floor.

“In any case, I’ll be missing the next couple of appointments. I wanted to tell you in person, and I just wanted a good excuse to get out of the house. I should be getting back to my sister. I’m sure if you watch the news they’ll have more information soon enough.”

“Well whenever you’re ready, we’ll be here.”

“Thanks for letting me talk, Mike. I’ll be in touch.”

Mike watched him leave. Even his walk had changed. His gait was off, as though he’d suffered a leg or back injury. Mike looked around the room twice, trying to focus his attention back on work, and stood on wobbly legs. He left to tattoo.

Mike watched the news that night with Deb.
The fuzzy signal was awash with reporters speculating and smirking. Most of all the focus was that this made seven. Seven young women beaten, raped, and strangled in their homes. They showed the seven faces, focusing on Doc’s niece, of course, over and over again. Also repeatedly mentioned was the apparent utter absence of information or clues. The mouthpiece from the police department had little to say other than that they were dedicating all available manpower to follow their few leads. He did not, nor need to, mention just how thin such threads likely were. Six other times over the last two years, the same thing; surely this wouldn’t be the time they figured it out.

Deb was furious watching it, and she continued to be angry long after Mike had gone back to the kitchen to work on art. Particularly offensive to her was that, somehow or another, one reporter had managed to get Doc’s sister and her husband on the tube for a short interview. They’d said little, of course, but why were they being paraded around for ratings after the death of their child?

The particulars of the crimes were grisly, and the smiling blonde reporter on the NBC affiliate was more than happy to talk about them in detail.
What,
Mike wondered in the kitchen,
happened while you acquired a communications degree that would allow you to smile as you talked about a twenty-three-year-old woman who’d been raped and murdered?
He pushed the thought aside as best he was able and tried to focus on the task at hand, an upper arm half-sleeve of Jesus carrying a man. The reference he’d been given had the “Footprints” poem on it, and he’d read it twice before drawing. Mike wasn’t religious, but it was pretty cool to imagine a superghost carrying you when shit got a little too real.

Mike thought about Doc while he worked. His mind had become worn raw with it. For him, Doc had been a good friend and a great client. For Doc to come to him for a mental reprieve was yet another reminder of just how close some artists and customers got to one another. Sure they’d had drinks a couple of times, but for the most part theirs was a business relationship. Except for Doc, it wasn’t. He came to Mike not just for work, but to unwind; he came to explore himself, and to live. Mike tattooed Doc for money, that was his involvement. As much as he enjoyed the man’s company, it wasn’t the same for him. They had no common ground without Mike’s art and Doc’s wallet, and as smart as Doc was, it was odd to Mike that he didn’t appear to make the same distinction.

At the same time, though, Doc knew about Sid. Doc was more than just another customer. Doc had gotten into a swearing contest with Lamar about how the younger man’s dating habits would lead to nothing but ruin. Lamar had apologized, and not because Mike had told him to, which of course he had. If Lamar had said “bitch” around Doc since then, Mike hadn’t heard it. Doc was a friend to him as well, even if Doc had to keep their friendship a secret because of his job. Mike knew Doc was watching the same TV coverage he could hear right now, and he knew it had to be eating him alive. To hear how they believed the killer stalked the women for days to learn their patterns. To hear how his niece had suffered, and tried so hard not to die that way. There were no new leads to supply her family with the possibility that the death of their loved one would help keep others from meeting the same end. She was dead, and that was it.

Ashes. Ashes. Why had he said nothing to Doc of the ashes? Mike knew, knew without a doubt, that the tattoos he’d done on the three other suffering loved ones had helped them immensely, but he’d still held back from telling Doc. Why? Doc was precisely the kind of person least likely to take offense, and it potentially would have benefited him even more than it had the others who’d gone through it. Doc understood the blade; he lived it. A grouping of needles to him was a means to an end, and the pain that came with it was part of the payment. Mike knew that part of the pact, and so did Doc, which was why that small withholding on his part, that one betrayal, was so huge. It was a thing that hampered Mike in bed that night. He labored next to Deb, a twisting and turning mess of sleeplessness.

When he woke he felt better, a little better, but that voice still stirred in his head. He shut it out as he made them breakfast: eggs, toast, and hash browns.

“What’s on your mind, sailor?”

“How do you mean?”

“I mean, you slept for shit last night, and right now you’re awake for shit. Eggs are perfect.”

“Thank you. That crap with Doc’s niece getting killed really struck home. Nasty shit.”

“Agreed, but you need to let it go. You can’t fix it. You’re not some crazy action hero who can go guns blazing on that scumbag, even if you could find him.”

“That’s not it, though. I can accept that bad stuff happens to good people, and every variation on that imaginable. It’s that I didn’t tell Doc about the ink. About people getting the tattoos with ashes in the ink. I think he would have liked it. It might have helped him, and I just couldn’t say it.”

“You know him better than I do—if it wasn’t right to say, then it wasn’t right to say. Do you think Doc would want a chunk of his niece, no matter how small, floating in him forever? I mean, and you know this as well as I do, that is some heavy shit. I think, internally, a part of you knew that might not be right for an uncle. It’s not like a father, or a mother, or a sister. As close as they were, it’s just a different bond.”

“You close with your father?”

“Cheap shot, below the belt, you lose a point. No, and you know that. Beside the point entirely.”

“Bullshit. You were close to your aunt.”

“My aunt, as saintly of a woman as any that has ever walked the earth, would not want my hide in her. Trust me on that. Some people are close, but not shoot-a-bit-of-dead-you-into-them close.”

“You, my argumentative cohort, are not Doc. He’s my friend—a weird, perverse friend, but still a good friend. There are not many men I’d let tell me about the hows and the whys of fisting. Doc covered two memorable appointments on just that subject.”

“Don’t get any ideas.”

Mike rolled his eyes. “What I mean is, Doc is different, even more different than most of our customers. This is the kind of thing that could be right up his alley. I should have said something.”

“You think that would be appropriate? You cannot just suggest to people that they should get bits of their dead relatives shoved into their arms. I see nothing wrong with it—point of fact, I think it’s cool as fuck—but you can’t say that first.”

“She was a sweet girl.”

“Tell him that, let him bare his soul as much as you can, but Mike, there are two things you cannot do for him. You absolutely cannot suggest this to him. If he comes up with it on his own, fine, but that can’t be on you. The other is that we can’t go to the funeral. You know it, I know it, Lamar and Becky know it.”

“Lamar and I talked about it just yesterday, right after Doc left. We’d show up, stay in back—”

“No.”

“What?”

“No. You can’t. ‘Doc,’ as we so affectionately and appropriately know him, is off-limits in public. He’s told you just as much in person, I guarantee it.”

“He has, but this is different.”

“I just cut a two-gauge hole in a magistrate’s outer labia two days ago. I know people, and I know they have secrets, secrets that might make them like us more than even their public friends, but those same secrets include us. It would be worse for Doc, personally and professionally, if we were to go. Had he been lucid, and he might have already done this, he’d have lied to you about where the funeral was. He wants us there, Mike, have no doubt about that, but we’re as good to that funeral as his dead niece is.”

Mike dropped his fork so hard that it clattered off of his plate and onto the floor. “Are you fucking serious?”

“Yes. We can’t go. We’ll use our initials and donate money to some charity and send him a letter; he’ll figure it out, he’s not a dumb guy. Soon enough, he’ll be back, and we can tell him again how sorry we are in person.”

“I want you to know that you’re right, but also that I do hate you for it.”

“I have to get ready fo’ work, boss, do excuse po’ Deb.”

Deb left the table for the bathroom. She left the door open, and on the bathroom floor Mike could see Sid’s ruined corpse grinning at him through broken teeth and two eyes pushed almost out of their sockets. He could smell the gunpowder as Deb stepped into view, naked, turned on the shower, stepped inside, and rotated toward him on the other side of the glass door. On the floor, that body was shifting slightly as the relaxed muscles let the head and torso slide to the floor. The gun sat limp in Sid’s right hand.

“Cheer up,” Deb called from under the spray. He could see her teeth flash. “Doc’ll be fine, I promise.”

On the floor, the Sid thing lay flush to the tile, the blood pooling in the circle he’d found her in. Mike stared at Sid, the steam was pouring out of the bathroom, and a spike of pain ran through his head. When he opened his eyes a few seconds later, he began sketches for a painting of a backpiece.

He only got to work for about fifteen minutes before Deb came out of the bathroom. She was wearing her robe, and Sid was gone from the floor behind her; Mike checked twice, blinking in between. It had been almost a year since he’d seen Sid. He’d been sure she wasn’t coming back, but he’d been wrong, because she’d been right where he’d found her that day, and where she’d made sporadic appearances ever since.

Jean didn’t go biking with her older sister Bruce, or climb rocks, or do any other of the incredibly dangerous things that her sister had loved so much.
Instead, while Jean was sleeping, she and her sister had plans to go out for lunch.

The plans were already set in place by the time the dream started. That part was the same every time, but everything else was different. Sometimes Jean was back from college, sometimes it was Bruce returning from some expedition. On occasion, it would be Bruce who had gotten a short new haircut, and after their embrace Jean would ask her what was going on with the hair. Sometimes, Jean was the one with the drastic new change in appearance or style.

It wasn’t just fashion or the reason for the get-together that changed. So too did the restaurant. Sometimes it was French, with perfect plates of steak frites and duck confit, other times Chinese, with massive piles of dim sum and fried tofu with broccoli. Drinks too, Jean and Bruce always grew thirsty during lunch, and bottles of French wine, German beer, and Kentucky bourbon would flow. Sure, it was lunch, but when was the next time they’d be together again?

Every time it was different, and there was never any planning involved. The dream would start, and Jean would be walking, knowing exactly where to be and at what time. If anything, the only odd bit was the way her hip would hum where the bicycle wheel had been etched into it. Not an audible hum, but something Jean could feel in her skin. It didn’t bother her—it was part of the experience, nothing more and nothing less. Besides, there was no reason to get upset over such a minor detail. The sun was shining, she was wearing an adorable new sundress from Anthropologie, and her big sister was back from Colorado, which was perfect timing, because that new sushi place had just opened up on Fulton.