Faces in the Fire (19 page)

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, smelled. 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.

“Some new ink. Never used it before; just checking it out.”

“What's it called?”

Grace smiled. “Black Tar.”

Candy's gum stopped popping for a few seconds. “Wicked cool.”

“Yeah.”

“You gonna use it?” Candy said, settling into the chair.

“No. Haven't worked with it yet. Going with the Midnight Black—good stuff. Relax. Thousands of people walking around with it in their skin.”

Candy settled into the chair, shifting around. “You think I want the stuff everyone else has? Gimme the Tar.”

Grace was surprised to feel her throat constricting a bit with excitement. She had to admit, she
did
want to use the new Black Tar ink. But she couldn't, not without knowing more about it. She shook her head. “Can't. I'm not gonna stick you with anything I haven't tested.”

Candy rolled her eyes, looking closer to fifteen than her true age of twenty-two. “Thousands of people walking around out on the streets with ink from the office store in them, and they're fine.”

“Most of them.”

“Yeah, well, is it specifically tat ink?”

Grace paused. “Yes.”

“So it's sterile. That's half of it. You get it from a place you trust?”

Another pause. “Yeah.” She got all of her items from a single supplier, and she'd never, ever had a problem with the safety of anything she'd ordered.

Candy raised her eyebrows. “So let's live a little. Gimme the Tar.”

Grace felt anticipation coiling inside her, not quite believing she was even considering it. But after a few seconds of thought, she nodded. “Okay,” she said. “We'll take a look. If I like the feel, we'll try it.”

“Too cool.”

For a moment, Grace thought Candy
was going to kick her heels together and say “Goody goody gumballs.”

Grace turned away, donned sterile gloves, went to her worktable. She pulled out some plastic wrap and circled it around the new bottle of Black Tar, creating a moisture barrier, then put it on the back of the table with the other wrapped bottles and instruments. From a metal tray next to the worktable, she carefully selected packages of single-use needles and tubes. Other shops still went with autoclaves, but Grace was extra careful; everything in her shop was single-use.

She stripped the packaging off the needles and the tube, then turned them over and slipped them onto the sterile surface of her worktable. Finally she pulled off the gloves, threw them on the metal tray's pad, wrapped it all together, and threw the whole package into the waste container to be incinerated later.

She rubbed her hands with alcohol cleanser, slipped on a fresh pair of gloves, and looked at Candy. Candy smiled, popping her gum again.

At her worktable, Grace chose a jar of petroleum jelly and used a tongue depressor to slather a bit on the front part of the paper. She pulled a cap out of the dispenser, put it in the jelly where it wouldn't slide or fall off the work area. Then she assembled her gun, slipping the needle into the armature and positioning the tube and reservoir over the needle.

Finally she was ready for the ink. The Black Tar. She selected the bottle, now encased in plastic, poured a few drops of it into the cap. It was the darkest black she'd ever seen, a slightly thicker consistency than anything she'd ever used. Interesting.

“Okay,” she said, turning to Candy. “Let's see your hip.”

Candy wanted a biohazard symbol, about two inches across, just above her right hip. Black was the only color she'd need to use.

Grace rubbed the whole area above Candy's hip with a sterile alcohol pad, then looked up at Candy. “You ready?” she asked.

“Do it to it,” Candy said.

Grace turned back to her worktable, picked up her gun, drew up some ink, and brought the gun over Candy's hip.

There were lots of stencils and flash art for tattoos out there, and many artists used them whenever they could. Grace was the opposite. She was a freehander whenever possible, and only sketched out the most intricate designs ahead of time. Freehanding, she thought, helped her individualize each project. Kept it more interesting.

She put the needle on Candy's flesh and triggered the gun, outlining a circle. The gun moved easily, smoothly, and the ink put down a strong, solid line. Grace barely had to wipe away any excess. “Wow,” she said under her breath.

Up above, Candy lifted her head for a look. “Good stuff?” she asked.

Grace looked at the tip of the gun, at the circle she'd just tattooed into Candy's skin, and simply nodded. Smiling, she triggered the gun again.

27.

“That rocks!”

It was Candy's voice, coming from somewhere distant. Grace shook her head a moment, noticing that she was cleaning the tattoo with antibacterial soap. She paused, looked at the clock. An hour had passed, and she barely even remembered doing the tattoo. That wasn't good.

She looked at Candy. “That went pretty quick.”

Candy nodded eagerly. “Tell you the truth,” she said, “I kinda dozed off. It felt . . . relaxing.”

Clients had various reactions to tattoos, but no one ever called it relaxing. And no one ever dozed. Grace looked at the tattoo in earnest for the first time and had to agree with Candy's assessment. It rocked. The color was dark, almost shined with an oily brilliance, and the whole thing seemed to shimmer, as if she were looking at it through a kaleidoscope.

(Bulimia)

The letters formed inside the tattoo, as if part of some intricate pattern, but as obvious as neon to her eyes—

(Bulimia)

—followed by an image of Candy, crumpled and crying beside a toilet.

“What is it?” Candy said, sensing something.

Grace shook her head. “Nothing,” she said. “Just need something to eat, I guess.”

Or maybe she was jonesing for some smack extra early today. She didn't feel her blood boiling, but that strange image in her mind had to be the drugs talking.

“That's the last thing I need,” Candy said, snapping her gum again.

Grace looked at the bony hip jutting from Candy's skin, then back to her face, but said nothing as she applied a bandage to the tattoo.

28.

After Candy left, Grace put away the Black Tar. She had two other appointments that day, and Vaughn had an appointment to work on a simple barbed wire design she supervised. He did nice work; he was more careful, more patient than Zoey. A couple years from now, she knew, they'd both be good artists, probably move on and start their own shops. Maybe even sooner.

But even as she worked on the butterfly tattoo on Rae's foot, even as she watched Vaughn outlining the barbed wire on his client's arm, she found her eyes, her mind, wandering back to the bottle of Black Tar sitting on her worktable. Something about it was . . . intoxicating.

And the more she thought about the bottle, the more she thought about Candy. About bulimia. That image of Candy, a collapsed heap, refused to leave her mind. Where had that come from? The tattoo world was full of New Age mumbo jumbo, to be sure, people who looked at the whole thing as some kind of spiritual journey. More power to them, but she'd never been one of them. It was art, yes. But nothing more.

Certainly not clairvoyance.

She left the shop at four o'clock, but not before retrieving Candy's phone number and address from her database.

And then, without really planning to go, she was standing at the door to Candy's apartment.

Why? This wasn't her issue at all, and she had more than enough issues to go around. How was she going to be any help to this girl when she couldn't even help herself? Junkie Woman, the Superhero.

She closed her eyes, paused, knocked. From somewhere behind the door she heard shuffling footsteps, a muffled “Who is it?”

“Candy, it's Grace. From the tattoo shop. Just dropping by to make sure everything is okay.”

She heard more shuffling, a toilet flush. Finally, after several more seconds, Candy opened the door, wiping at her mouth with the back of her hand.

Grace offered a smile, tried not to read too much into that. “Did I catch you at a bad time?”

“Hmmm? No, no, not at all. Just—just about to brush my teeth. Come on in.”

“I'm sorry I didn't call first,” Grace said. “I figured, you know, first time with that ink and all, I wanted to check, make sure everything's looking good.”

Candy led her into a small efficiency apartment, showed her to a threadbare couch.

“Yeah,” Candy said, uncomfortably standing while Grace sat on the couch. “I was kinda surprised to see you.”

“Better safe than sorry,” Grace said.

“Sure, sure. Actually, to tell you the truth, the tat is great.”

As if to illustrate, Candy lifted her shirt, showing the area. The bandage covered the fresh tattoo, but Grace could see the swelling was minimal, if any.

“I've . . . uh . . . peeled it off a few times just to look at it,” Candy admitted.

“That's no problem, as long as you're keeping it clean, keeping it bandaged for the first week. Just soap—no alcohol.”

Candy smiled. “Yeah, I've heard your lecture before.”

Grace
returned the smile, peeled back the girl's bandage, stared deep into the dark recesses of the round propeller-like biohazard symbol. It seemed to glow in the low light of Candy's apartment.