Tattoos & Teacups (17 page)

There was no point in asking him where he was taking me—he wouldn’t tell me, even if I begged. But it would be an understatement to say I was surprised at pulling up outside a tattoo parlor. Tattoo studio. Whatever they call them now.

“Really?” I asked him.

Chris nodded. “I just want someone to hold my hand,” he said innocently, blinking his big blue eyes at me.

And how was I supposed to resist that?

The studio had a peculiar smell of ink and antiseptic that assaulted my olfactory senses the moment we stepped through the door. That and the buzzing of what sounded like a swarm of angry bumblebees and the presence of a pink-haired, highly pierced young lady made me feel like an old, old man.

“Chris Ford,” Chris said to the young lady, who I took to be a receptionist. Of sorts. “I’m booked in with Payne.”

“Pain?” I said faintly.

He laughed and spelled it to me. The receptionist snapped her gum at us. It was the same color as her hair.

“Take a seat. She’ll be out in a minute.”

“Payne is a woman?” I whispered as we took a seat on a wide black leather couch.

“She’s the best in the area,” he said. “I’m going to get my chest piece started.”

My opinions toward tattoos were changing the more I got to know Chris; his told a story, that of his life, his family and friends, the experiences that had shaped him. That wasn’t to say I wouldn’t hit the roof if my own daughter came to me with one, because I’d absolutely never forgive her if she did. But on Chris, they were nice.

Payne seemed, at first, to be a thoroughly sensible young lady, unlike her gum-snapping receptionist. Her rich dark hair was braided down her back, and she wore soft makeup, long socks, brogues, and a blue and white dress. It was only when she removed her thick knitted cardigan that I realized both arms were covered in ink from shoulder to wrist.

I tried not to stare as she led us back to her station, a long, black leather-covered table and a tiny, fingertip-sized pot of black ink.

“Is that all you need?” I asked, imagining pots of the stuff would be needed to cover Chris’s chest.

“Yeah,” she said with a small smile. “I’ll only do the outline today. The color will come later.”

It took a while for her to finish setting up, to get the stencil aligned over the curves of muscle and bone that shaped Chris’s skin. I allowed myself to be pleased with the fact that she opened a new needle in front of us and threaded it through her machine and snapped on a pair of black latex gloves before asking Chris if he was ready.

“No,” I answered for him.

Chris just laughed. “Go ahead,” he said.

There was a black plastic chair next to the table, and I took my seat there and reached for his hand as the buzzing started.

“Does it hurt?” I blurted after a few minutes.

“It’s not so bad,” he said. “Not the worst. Not yet, anyway.”

“My chest piece was pretty rough,” Payne said. “But I’m a girl. And our anatomy in that particular area is obviously different.”

“Why do you have them?” I asked. “You’re so pretty.”

She glanced at me with a small frown. “I get that a lot,” she said carefully. “People think that girls can’t be attractive if they have tattoos. Or that they’d be more attractive if they didn’t. Do you think Chris would look better without his?”

“No,” I said. “I like them.”

“But it’s different on a girl?”

I was forced to reassess my views on modern femininity pretty damn quickly. “I have a teenage daughter,” I said after a moment’s hesitation. “I’m using that as an excuse right now.”

Payne smiled then, just a little bit. “I don’t blame you,” she said. “It’s a standard view that women with tattoos are still on the fringes of our society. It’s almost like we’re still in the 1930s, with the tattooed lady being the freak show at the circus.”

“I don’t think you’re a freak show,” I said quickly.

“Good.”

“Is your name really Payne?”

She laughed then, lifting her needle from Chris’s skin and throwing her head back. “Yes. Elizabeth Payne.”

“You don’t look like an Elizabeth.”

“I know. For this job, going by my surname works rather well for me.”

Our conversation drifted to other areas as Payne worked on the heart and crown and wings and fire that would eventually make up the bold design that stretched outward from his sternum to the tips of his shoulders.

“How long have you two been together?” she asked after a while. I looked at Chris and smiled.

“About a month.”

“Is that all? You act like you’ve been together forever.”

“We’re pretty tight,” Chris said. I liked that. I knew the modern connotations of the phrase, but to me, it always brought to mind keeping him close. Holding him tightly.

“Would you ever get a tattoo, Rob?” Payne asked. “One for your daughter, maybe.”

“No,” I said quickly. “My mother would kill me.”

“How old are you?”

“Too old,” I said, at the same time Chris answered, “Thirty-two.”

“Ancient,” I added. “And far too old to worry about what she thinks. But the fact remains that she would kill me.”

“Just a little one,” Payne said slyly. “What’s your daughter’s name?”

“Chloe,” I said. “And still no.”

“Rob was telling me once about living in Edinburgh when he was a kid,” Chris said and winced when Payne hit a sore spot. “His house was next to a church that was covered in gargoyles. I thought that would make a great upper arm piece.”

“Black and grey,” Payne said immediately. “Something that wraps around the bicep a little bit. Sort of coming out of the skin.”

“Exactly,” Chris agreed.

“It sounds wonderful,” I added. “But you’re not doing it.”

Chris squeezed my hand. “I thought you said you weren’t going to be a grumpy old man anymore?”

“When did I say that?” I demanded. “I like being a grumpy old man. It suits me.”

“You need to be young and cool to keep hold of your young and cool boyfriend,” Payne said, teasing me. She yelled out into the shop for someone called Chad. Another highly pierced young person appeared, dressed head to toe in black.

“What’s my next appointment?” she asked.

“You don’t have one,” he said with a grunt. “You wanted to finish early today.”

“Can’t think why,” she said breezily. “Would you mind doing some research for me? Gargoyles on churches. Scottish, if you can find them, but that doesn’t matter too much. Don’t bother with anything that looks too much like, you know, ‘fantasy’.”

“Look,” I started in my most reasonable voice. “I really appreciate you taking the time to think about this, but I really don’t want a tattoo.”

“Of course you don’t,” she said in the same reasonable tone. “I’m nearly done with Chris.”

After a few more minutes, she wiped over his chest with more antiseptic wipe. It looked red and angry, the black lines raised on sore, swollen skin, little dots of blood still welling from the needle. He took a look at it in the mirror and smiled, then let her wrap the skin with plastic wrap and tape.

“Have a seat,” Payne said to me. “And take your shirt off.”

Chris was re-dressing in his plaid shirt and smirking at me. I shot him a panicked look, and he took long strides over, catching my chin in his fingers and kissing me hard.

I took my shirt off.

Chad arrived with several printed pictures of the external stonework of churches, and Payne handed them to me silently to look through as she packed up and cleared away from her session with Chris.

“This one,” I said, handing him a picture.

“Looks like the painting in your apartment,” he agreed.

When she was done, Payne studied the image for a few minutes and nodded. “I can work with this.”

I was terrified to the point of raised heartbeat and sweaty palms but fortunately still had control over the most base of bodily functions. She rooted around in a drawer for a moment, then produced a bunch of Sharpies on a key ring.

“Marker pen,” she said, selecting an orange one. “All I’m gonna do is draw it on you.”

“You’re going to freehand it?” Chris asked, sounding impressed.

“Yeah. It’s easier than trying to make a stencil work.”

I hated her for putting me through the entire ordeal, but let the girl manipulate my arm this way and that as she sketched the orange ink onto my skin.

Chris held my hand, same way I did for him when it was the needle on his skin. I startled when she reached for a red marker, and Chris assured me she was just adding the detail.

When she was done—it took about twenty minutes—she nodded to herself and then to me.

“Go take a look.”

I felt silly, going to look at a drawing on my skin while others around me were making it permanent.

And it was fairly perfect.

Despite the fact that it was drawn in orange and red ink, the gargoyle snarled and sneered out from my skin, its neck arching and jaws wide. I could see the marks she’d done to guide the shading, and my head filled in the details, making it look like stone.

“Can you do it?” I asked. “I wouldn’t want to disturb your afternoon.”

“It would be my pleasure,” she said with a disturbing Cheshire Cat grin. “I always love to pop an ink cherry.”

The feelings of nausea only increased as I watched her unwrap a fresh needle and set up the station again. This time it was for me. Chris had replaced his shirt but left it unbuttoned over his chest; he grabbed my hand and ran his thumb back and forth over it reassuringly.

“Just relax,” he said.

“It’s going to hurt,” I said grimly.

“Probably.”

“That’s not so reassuring. Why am I doing this?”

“Peer pressure,” Payne offered. “To fight your fear. Rebellion.” She paused and tilted her head to the side. “Delayed rebellion in your case, maybe. Because it’s cool. To impress your young, cool boyfriend.”

“All of the above?” I offered.

“Excellent,” she said. “Let’s get started.”

To be fair, it didn’t hurt as much as I had expected. Chris and Payne kept up a seemingly unending stream of chatter, asking about my job, my daughter, Scotland and my heritage…. There were points when I winced, or the low, constant pain turned into more of a burn, but I couldn’t quite face looking at the needle, and after a while my arm ached more from holding the uncomfortable position than from the actual tattoo itself.

“If you ever tell Chloe about this…,” I said to Chris.

“Won’t,” he promised.

“Or Luisa. Or my mother.”

“Are you going to introduce me to your mother?”

“No,” I told him. “She’s the most conservative, uptight, WI woman you will ever meet.”

“What’s WI?”

“The Women’s Institute. Google it, you heathen.”

Laughing, he leaned over and kissed me lightly. “It’s nearly done,” he whispered.

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

“Thank fuck for that,” I whispered.

Payne heard me and laughed, pulling her machine away from my skin for a moment.

“I’m just going to do a few more highlights, then we’re good,” she said. “Thanks for letting me do this. It’s been fun.”

“For you, maybe,” I said darkly.

The pain was starting to set in now, feeling like the worst sunburn of my life with sharp edges around the throb. Each time I dared to glance down at my arm, it was smeared with a combination of ink and red, red blood.

“It looks a funny color at the moment,” she was saying, and I forced myself to concentrate. “And it will until the swelling goes down. Chris knows how to take care of it properly, but I’m going to tell you as well.”

She proceeded to give me a list of instructions on how to best care for my tattoo, to not wear anything too close to my skin for the next couple of days to let it heal and to keep applying lotion. And most importantly—to not pick at the scabs.

“Scabs?” I repeated faintly.

“Yeah, Rob, scabs,” Chris said, sounding amused. “They won’t last long, but if you pick them off, you’ll be left with holes in the tat.”

“That’s disgusting,” I muttered.

“Right,” Payne said, interrupting our bickering. “Done. Do you want to take a look?”

“No,” I said. “Frankly, I’m terrified.”

Payne smirked as she wiped the last of the blood away with a cloth soaked in alcohol; it stung but soothed my abused skin at the same time.

Chris took my good arm and tugged me to my feet, lacing his fingers with mine as he led me over to a large mirror mounted on the wall.

I didn’t have time to feel self-conscious about my semi-naked state. It was beautiful. Behind the welling drops of blood, the gargoyle clearly looked like it was carved from stone, crouching, its face following the lines of my arm so much so that it looked like it was designed to go there. Which, of course, it was.

“It’s amazing,” I said as Chris ran a comforting hand down my back.

“It really is,” he agreed. “I almost feel jealous that it’s not on me.”

I tore my eyes away from the mirror long enough to look at him. “It wouldn’t fit on you,” I said, my throat somehow making my words sound hoarse.

Chris shook his head. “No. But it’s beautiful on you.”

He tried to pay for it as Chad wrapped dressing around my arm, claiming it was a gift, but I wouldn’t let him. Still, Payne charged me what I was sure was a lot less than her standard rate for the work she’d done on the condition that I’d go back to her when it was healed so she could take a photo and pin it to her wall.

That night the sting had gone out of it, but the ache remained, and I was convinced this had more to do with the awkward angles I had been forced to hold than with the tattoo itself. It was a little thrill to think I had a tattoo. It was so, so far beyond anything that I had ever considered myself doing. Prior to this my greatest act of rebellion had been Chloe, and even that hadn’t been calculated.

I let Chris order pizza for dinner even though it was far from my favorite thing to eat. He seemed to live off the stuff, and I preferred to cook for myself. Even so, it was Saturday night and we were both coming down from an adrenaline high, and I wanted to snuggle with him on the sofa.

Not that I’d use the word snuggle in his presence. He’d never forgive me for it.