Faces in the Fire (10 page)

She'd already been to most of the sites before, right after her diagnosis. But now she had a renewed sense of urgency. She'd moved from “highly curable” lymphoma to “investigational treatment” in the span of three rounds of chemo. Four months. And one head of hair.

She looked at the white Styrofoam heads in the corner. Three of them, each holding a different wig. One auburn red, one dusty blonde, one coal black. Her mix-and-match headgear.

She stared at the wigs, realizing for the first time that it was unlikely she would regrow her own natural hair, a nice chestnut brown. Not now. Not ever.

She would die before it happened, because she would most likely be on chemotherapy of some kind for the rest of her short life. Sure, maybe she'd participate in one of the Phase I clinical trials Swain had talked about. But then, if those did nothing in a couple of months, Swain would move on to “palliative care”—yet another medical euphemism for
dying
.

And because anything she did from here on out would probably involve heavy chemotherapy of some kind, maybe even some experimental new kinds of chemotherapy (hello, Phase I clinical trials!), her hair would never be back.

Tears began to flow, and within seconds, Corrine was sobbing uncontrollably.

41a.

The next morning, Corrine caught a cab to the address
for GraceSpace, the tattoo shop she'd picked out of the dozens she'd found and researched on the Web.

After her crying jag, she had decided to do what she'd pledged to do at the beginning of the ordeal. To be more impulsive. Like Lance Armstrong.

She had seen a documentary on TV just a few weeks after she'd first heard the
lymphoma
word, a puff piece about Lance Armstrong, the most famous man to have cancer.

During the interview Armstrong had said, “Cancer's the best thing that ever happened to me,” and Corrine had laughed. That Lance Armstrong, he was almost as funny as good old Dr. Swain. Most people laughed when they heard things that were truly humorous; Corrine, on the other hand, laughed at anything absurd. Or painful. Or, truth be told, frightening. Laughing gave her so much more control than the alternative.

But after watching all of Lance Armstrong's interview, after absorbing everything he had said, she hadn't laughed. In an odd way, what he'd said made sense. A little bit. After all, this whole cancer could be a chance to change her life, reprioritize, get back in touch with people she hadn't talked to forever, explore the things she'd always wanted to do someday.

But she hadn't done that. Two weeks after diagnosis, a round of chemotherapy under her belt, she had told herself she was going to be more impulsive, do some different things the next week. Just as soon as she'd recovered from the chemo a bit, which had exhausted her.

Two weeks after that, well, she was just a week out from her next chemo, and she didn't want to do anything that would interfere with it. Her blood counts needed to stay high, and if she went anywhere, caught a cold, she could jeopardize it all.

Two weeks after that, she'd been in the middle of a new project, and the second round of chemo hadn't been that bad at all, and another two weeks after that—

Well, that's what brought her here now. With incurable lymphoma, it turned out.

When it all started, she had a
highly curable form of cancer.
That had seemed somehow comforting. That made it a test, a thing to be conquered, a challenge that could be referred to in the future as
the best thing that ever happened to me
. That's what Lance Armstrong had said, and that's what she had believed.

So she went through the motions, believing all along that she would have time to make all those healthy changes, do all those impulsive, life-celebrating things. She was already ahead of most people, ahead of people who never faced any kind of scary diagnosis like cancer. It was a wake-up call, but she could press the snooze button and go back to those changes at some point down the road. After all, she had a
highly curable form of cancer
.

But now she realized she'd done nothing with the wakeup call. Instead, she'd slipped into that dark zone where you never woke up. She'd been told, in a lot more words, that this cancer was going to kill her. It wasn't a challenge, or an obstacle, or a chance to reprioritize. It was death.

Maybe it was the best thing to ever happen to Lance Armstrong, but it would be the last thing to ever happen to her.

And so, it really was time to be impulsive. She'd always wanted a tattoo. What better time to get one? What better time just to drop everything and do something unexpected?

Two weeks ago she might have told herself it was dangerous to get a tattoo at this time, with her immune system impaired by chemo and the risk of infection or complications or any of a thousand other things going wrong. Swain would have a coronary if he saw her doing this.

But really, what was the worst that could happen? She would die? Cancer was already taking care of that; might as well enjoy the ride on the way down.

The cabbie pulled to the curb, pressed the button for the final fare, turned, and looked at her. “Fifteen-sixty,” he said, announcing the fare.

She pulled out a fifty, shoved it at him. “Keep the change,” she said.

He paused. “Fifteen, not fifty,” he said, pointing at the fare.

“Yeah, I know,” she said, smiling. Her wig—the dark, dark one—itched her scalp, but she ignored the sensation. She wanted to concentrate on Spreading a Little Love to others, and she'd start by giving a cab driver a giant tip.

The cabbie held the bill up to the light, inspecting it.

“You think I'm passing you a counterfeit fifty?” she said, a bit incredulous and insulted.

He shrugged.

“How about, ‘Wow, lady, thanks for the big tip,' something along those lines?”

“Wow, lady, thanks for the big tip,” he deadpanned, stuffing the bill into his pocket and looking out into traffic, waiting for her to get out of the car.

She slid out the door, turned to speak to the cabbie again. “You know, I have terminal cancer, so I'm trying to spread a little goodwill. You're not helping.”

He flipped on his left turn signal without turning. “I got hemorrhoids, lady. I keep 'em to myself.”

She closed the door, and he zoomed out into traffic. So much for that good deed.

She was in the heart of Fremont, the Seattle neighborhood generally acknowledged as the artsiest, quirkiest, funkiest, everythingiest. With a troll under the Aurora Street Bridge and a Lenin statue on its most famous street corner, the neighborhood embraced the odd, and Corrine had always liked that. In Fremont, she could find Fellow Travelers, people who weren't afraid to let their bottom-feeder flags fly.

She liked the tattoo shop. Tattoo parlor. Whatever you wanted to call it. It was sandwiched between a taco shop and a place billing itself as a “bohemian outfitter,” one of the small street-front spaces in a converted warehouse of some kind. She'd been drawn to the name immediately when she'd done her Web search the night before: GraceSpace. Sounded like a place for a fresh start, a renewal.

A giant chained gate covered the storefront, and a round, hand-painted iron sign was bolted to the brick above her.
GRACESPACE
, the iron sign said, intricate black cursive letters on a lemon yellow background, with ivy adornments. Artsy. She liked it.

She was drawn out of her reverie by a woman unlocking the chain gate in front of the storefront. The woman didn't look like a tattoo artist, but what did Corrine know? She'd never gotten a tattoo.

Maybe she'd expected some Goth girl with powdered makeup and pierced, bloodred lips; instead, she was staring at a middle-aged woman with shoulder-length hair, unassuming slacks, and a long-sleeved print blouse. Corrine stepped in and helped her raise the gate.

The woman turned, thanked her. Corrine noticed dark, sunken eyes. Clammy skin. Almost as if she were a chemo patient herself. It added a bit to the Goth vibe, but still, she seemed more Soccer Mom than Tattoo Chick.

“I want a tattoo,” Corrine said, watching the woman now unlock the door behind the gate and feeling like a fiveyear-old asking for candy. She followed the woman inside, offered her hand when she turned around again. “I'm Corrine,” she said.

“Grace,” the woman answered, shaking her hand.

Grace. That would explain the name. GraceSpace. Grace's Space. Corrine decided she liked that, too, this woman who was unafraid to claim her own bit of land. Like some kind of intrepid explorer at the North Pole.

A soft beep was coming from the phone's digital answering system, and she could see the woman—Grace—glance in the phone's direction nervously. Obviously, she didn't want to check messages with a potential customer here.

“Better check your messages,” Corrine said, trying a smile. It felt grotesque. The wig itched her scalp.

“You sure you don't mind?”

“No, no. Not at all.” Corrine sat in one of the wooden chairs in the main reception area. Nice and cozy inside, almost a Beaux Arts feel. A little help from the “bohemian outfitter”
next door, maybe. She waved her hand at the woman, a motion that said go ahead.

The headset on the woman's phone was way too loud, and Corrine heard every message. She tried not to listen, but attention to detail had been pounded into her since her days on the traveling sales crew. Standing at someone's door, you always looked for clues to help you make the sale; harvesting e-mails from the Web, you always looked for clues that would tell you what kinds of messages people might respond to. Details.

Every message the woman listened to revolved, in one way or another, around something called Black Tar. Tattoo slang, obviously.

Eventually, the woman hung up the phone.

“What's black tar?” Corrine asked, and Grace spun to look at her, seemed to lose her composure for a moment. “Sorry,” Corrine said, filling in the awkward silence. “Your headset—I couldn't help but hear it.”

The woman nodded. “Black Tar is a new ink I'm using. Good coverage, darkest black you'll ever see.”

Corrine felt a bitter smile on her face.
You want to see true
darkness, try looking at the blood that drips out of your vein after
they finish a six-hour chemo session. Try sitting in Swain's office
while he stares at his reports, stumbling his way through a complete
sentence. Try looking at your bald reflection in a mirror after
you've been told a transplant is a no-go.

This woman had no idea what the darkest black looked like.

“I've seen some pretty black stuff,” Corrine said, but she could tell the woman was just giving her a polite smile.

Still, Corrine liked her. She felt . . . comfortable with this woman. Grace. Especially after being stuck in rooms with nurses and radiation techs and Swain, people who stuck needles into her skin and prodded her while barely acknowledging her presence.

It would be nice to have needles in her skin by choice for a change.

“Let's do it,” she said too cheerfully. “Let's use some Black Tar.”

The woman offered another polite smile. “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.”

Corrine nodded, feeling oddly lightheaded and chipper. “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.”

The woman seemed serious for a moment. “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.”

For once Corrine controlled the impulse to laugh. It was her natural reaction to bad news and stress, true. But now would be a bad time. Still, that was a good one—right up there with some of Swain's zingers. And Lance Armstrong's. A tattoo from a box of old Cracker Jacks might last the rest of her life, as far as she knew.

She took a deep breath, looked at Grace. Time to play the cancer card.

“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.”

So she'd fibbed a bit on that; she'd actually been diagnosed with a
highly curable
form of cancer, but . . . well, that had been a fib told to her, now, hadn't it?

Grace stared for a few moments before she nodded. At least the woman didn't spout off about being sorry, her voice going syrupy-sweet as if she were talking to a three-year-old. It had happened to her before. More than once. Often in the chemo room at the oncology center. Or at the front desk. Ms. Tight Blouse.

“What were you thinking of doing?” Grace asked her.

“I don't know. Impulsive, like I said. Call me a blank canvas.”

The woman sat in thought, then abruptly stood. “Okay, then,” she said. “Let's do it.”

Corrine followed her to a small room at the back of the shop. Dark. No windows. Grace crossed the room, turned on a light clamped to a small table covered by white paper. Next to it was another table, this one sans paper on its gleaming chrome surface, and a large dentist's chair.

“Have a seat,” Grace said, sitting down on a wheeled stool and pulling on surgical gloves.

Corrine hesitated. Maybe this was a bad idea. It looked a little too much like . . . a little too much like a chemo session. Comfy chair, designed to make you think this really wasn't a Big Deal at all, this poison getting injected into your bloodstream. Low light to keep you quiet and still. Sharp instruments on a clean worktable, ready to Make Everything Better. Grace was even fastening a surgical mask to her face, of all things, and she turned to peer through the darkness at Corrine.