Chapter 6 #2
“I booked three hours. I really want it gone.” Now it was uncovered, the urge to scratch at the damned tattoo was strong. I crossed my arms instead. “Can we do anything today? Just a black box, if we have to.”
“I think I can do better than that.” River reached for a couple of binders.
“Let me look through these and see what might work for you.” He leafed through the pages, pulling out three.
Those he lined up on the counter for me.
“Okay, option one, make it something like Celtic knotwork, but with straight lines. Weave through it like basketwork. Would have to be quite a bit bigger than the original, to hide the lines best, but it could look cool.”
He tapped the second sheet. “Or this waterfall. Put rocks in where the lightning bolts bend, add flowing water, could be a calm soothing image…
“Or this one.” Turning the page, he gave me a better look at the next drawing.
“A storm-struck tree. You see where there’s this big gap where a branch broke off, but then this other side is still growing, leafing out.
The shape of the trunk fits the original well enough, I can work around this. A symbol of healing from damage.”
I hesitated. “Could you do the tree today?”
“Probably. Depends if you need breaks. I can do all the line work. Might have to come back for some of the colour in the leaves.”
“Whatever you can, I’m ready for it.” I turned to Callum. “I don’t want you to get bored. You could take my truck, go get some food or something.”
“I’ll stick around till you’re started.”
River waved me back toward three partitioned-off booths at the back of the space. “I’m by myself today, so I have to keep an ear out for the door. Sorry. Our receptionist has a sick kid.”
“I can do that,” Callum volunteered. “Make myself feel useful.”
“Um.” River eyed him.
“I promise, I won’t say any stupid shit or drive your customers away. What do you think I am?”
“I was worried about you getting bored,” River said mildly.
“Oh. Well, I’ll be fine.”
“Right. Then Zeke, you come on back here, and Callum, you sit there where you can see the door.” River directed me to a comfortable chair with an upholstered armrest and began shaving the hair off my forearm.
“I’m going to freehand the design with surgical markers and you can see what you think.
Then if we’re good to go, I’ll do what I can today, and we can plan for follow-up. ”
“Sounds good.” I tried to relax as he wiped and cleaned my arm and set to work. I didn’t want to look down and get sucked back into the last time I did this— eager and scared and determined, with zero clue what I was getting myself into— so I said, “Callum, entertain me.”
“Huh?”
“You must have, like, hockey stories. Locker-room stories. Worst game you ever played. Best game? Take my mind off this.”
“He’s not even using a needle yet.”
“Pain is not my problem,” I said, though I didn’t want to explain what was. “I’ll owe you a favour. Well, two favours, one for the introduction.”
“Oh, well, sure.” Callum tilted his head.
“Best game? Probably three days ago, against the Stallions in Calgary. They outshot us thirty-seven to nineteen and we still won, two-nothing. A shutout against a rivalry team when they were playing better than we were is super satisfying.” He smiled, and I couldn’t help smiling back.
“Congratulations on the shutout.”
“Thanks. Worst game?” His smile twisted ruefully, which still looked better on him than it had any right to. “Oh, God, there was this time in major juniors when I let in six goals in fourteen minutes…”
I flicked a look down at my arm as Callum began detailing all the ways he’d failed to keep the puck out of his net.
Already, River had transformed the hate on my arm to twisting lines of bark.
The black still showed through, but I could see the shape of the transformation to come.
He began sketching the crooked branches reaching up, and I gave my attention back to Callum.
Three and a half hours later, when the next client was running late, River pushed his chair back and flexed his fingers. “Let me wipe that down and then we’ll see how you like it.”
“Is it done?”
“Yep. Unless you want changes.” He cleaned my arm gently, then tossed away the wipes. “What do you think?”
I looked down, then into the mirror to get the full effect.
My arm bore a crooked, storm-blasted tree, broken on one side but green on the other, with branches reaching up and leafing out.
Knowing where the racist lightning bolts had been, I could trace their lines, but no one would recognize them now.
“Thank you,” I said and my voice cracked a little. “Love it.”
Callum, who’d dealt with customers at the front desk three times and spent the rest of the hours playing on his phone, came over to look. “Hell, yeah. River does great work.”
“Feel free to use me as a reference anytime,” I told River.
“Let me get a picture for my records, and then I’ll wrap it up for you.
” He took a couple of shots of my arm, then applied some kind of lotion and covered it with an adhesive dressing.
“This is second skin. It stays on for three days.” He pressed the clear wrap to my arm, then went through “start washing on day four” and “it will itch, don’t scratch” and “really, you can’t scratch” and “leave those scabs alone,” and the rest of aftercare.
As Callum and I headed out into the early evening, the cool air felt good on my face. Yet, despite its freshness, I wobbled, strangely woozy.
Callum grabbed my good arm. “Oops, you need some sugar. All those endorphins have to get energy from somewhere.”
I clutched him, my head spinning. “I feel really ridiculous. I got through the whole tattoo fine, and now I’m dizzy?”
“Low blood sugar, I tell you.”
“The last one didn’t do this.”
“Probably didn’t take half as long.”
“True.” I didn’t want to think too much about the dingy hole-in-the-wall parlor where I’d gone for it, or my paranoia afterward about whether the equipment had been clean.
My post-undercover physical had all been negative, so I’d laid that worry to rest. With River, I’d seen how meticulous he was about everything.
Callum guided me down the sidewalk and tugged open the passenger door of my truck. “Here we are. In you get.”
“I can drive.”
“Bullshit.” He tapped the glove compartment. “You got any candy stash in here?”
“Sadly, no.”
“Milkshake, then. I saw a Timmy’s a few blocks back. Get your ass in the truck.”
“Not as good as your ass.” I blinked when he laughed, realizing that I’d said that out loud. Maybe I did need sugar. I managed to get into my seat, the new tattoo a heated pull on my arm, and closed the door.
Callum swung in beside me and headed us off down the street.
He hadn’t been kidding, because a few blocks on, he pulled into the Tim Horton’s drive-through.
The menu board was long, and it’d been a while since I indulged in sugar, trying to keep a muscular physique for my role.
I stumbled out a request for a caramel-coffee something, and he ordered a box of chocolate Timbits.
When the food came, he set the donut holes box on the console between us and handed me my drink.
The first gulp gave me an icy head rush, as I realized I’d ordered an iced coffee with caramel, not hot, but after a moment, I felt my fuzzy-headedness improve. I drank again, slower, and sighed.
Callum put the truck in gear. “Better?”
“Yeah.”
“Good. You were kind of off. Although I didn’t mind knowing you liked my ass.”
I felt my face flush. “Forget I said that.”
“Never. I’ll treasure it. Even if I don’t have the true hockey ass. Goalies don’t do all the skating that the other players do.”
A little hint of sourness in his voice made me say, “I have zero complaints, believe me.”
“Oh. Well, thanks.” We drove in silence for a couple of minutes while I downed half my drink and opened the donuts, biting off half of one. The chocolate hit was awesome.
At the stoplight, Callum grabbed two of his own and stuffed them in his mouth together. When the light turned, and he’d chewed and swallowed, he asked, “Are you out to your department? You seem real open with strangers about being gay.”
“Well, you told me River was gay. I don’t randomly walk up to people and come out. But yeah, my department knows. I’ve done a couple of interviews. I had a boyfriend for a hot minute, until he got tired of my shift schedule.”
“What is your shift schedule?”
I sighed because that was about to fuck up my life again.
“We work four days on, four days off, rotating through five overlapping shifts. The rotation sucks, and if I’m on early morning or night rotations, then I’m basically crashed out for a couple of days afterward recovering.
” I pressed the heels of my hands to my skull, the tug of pain in my arm evidence that I could change my life, but it didn’t solve this problem.
“I had four weeks off, after all the overtime with the last assignment, but next week I start again. And I’m fucked, because I have Jos now, and no childcare backup. ”
“He’s twelve, right? Does he need childcare?”
“Not in the days or evenings so much. But I can’t leave a twelve-year-old home alone at night. I can’t head out of the house at ten in the evening or three in the morning and leave him sleeping there all night with no one around.”
“I guess.”
“I don’t see any answer. I can try to find paid childcare, but Jos will hate a babysitter, and overnight means an adult, not some teenager.
How can I find someone I trust and can afford in the span of the next week, before I’m on evenings?
I think I have to quit.” My stomach rolled at saying that out loud.
“Do you want to quit?” Callum asked.
“Not like this, suddenly, because I have to. But I definitely don’t want to do undercover ever again, and I didn’t love working as a patrol officer before that. I went in with ideals that got flattened along the way.”
“Then quit.”
“It’s not that simple. Krystal didn’t leave much cash, just the house.
Even with Jos’s dependent stipend, I’d have to find another job.
Or sell the house and move somewhere cheaper, and Jos loves his space.
And I’m still in the guardianship process with Jos.
They’re not going to be impressed if I’m unemployed. ”
“Those seem like pretty weak-ass reasons to do a job you hate.”
“I don’t hate it. We need cops and we really need people who do the job for the right reasons.
That last case took some of the nastiest motherfuckers on the planet off the streets.
” I gritted my teeth, refusing to remember details.
I had copies of my reports, and I would review them before I was called to testify, but I really wanted that shit out of my brain.
“Enforcing the law is important. I feel like I can still do some good.”
“How do other cops who are parents do it?”
“Spouses? Extended family?” It wasn’t something I’d ever thought about.
I hadn’t managed a long-term relationship, ever.
Kids had not been on the table, and as a gay man, I wasn’t at risk for an oops.
“Shifts really mean dumping some of the responsibility on other people. Part of the reason the divorce rate’s high for cops, I bet. ”
“You don’t have other relatives?”
“Not around here. Dad’s cousins are out east, and my grandparents died when I was small.”
We drove for a few minutes in silence, while I ate my stress in chocolate Timbits.
“Hey, save a couple for me,” Callum protested.
I picked one up and at the next light, shoved it at his mouth. He laughed and opened up, licking my fingers as I stuffed the donut in.
“Yuck.” I pretended revulsion, wiping my fingers on my jeans, but in fact, the touch of his tongue on my skin had flashed heat through me.
“You know,” he said indistinctly while chewing, “maybe we could help out for a bit.”
“We? Who?”
“Grandpa and me. We’re right next door. Jos could sleep over on the nights you’re out. Give you more time to make better plans.”
I stared at him. “You’d do that?”
“Sure. For a while. I’m travelling a lot for road trips, which sucks even more than shifts for spouses, by the way. But Grandpa likes Jos. I know he’d want to help. Thing is, I get up early for practice with this long-ass commute, and he heads out early to the store most mornings.”
“Jos’s school bus comes at eight. He’s old enough to be responsible for getting himself ready.” I didn’t want to put too much hope on this reprieve. “But you shouldn’t commit your grandpa to anything.”
“He’ll for sure want to help, once he knows you’re in a bind.” The smile that softened Callum’s features was accompanied by a headshake. “Grandpa’s the softest touch in the universe. In fact, I need to volunteer my time before he offers to do it all.”
“That’d be awesome.” I slumped in my seat. “God, you have no idea.” The thought of not having to solve this dilemma in a week was a weight off my back. “But are you sure? How long till your apartment’s fixed?”
“They say now at least a month. But I’m going to end the lease. I’ll stay with Grandpa for a while.” Something unhappy crossed his face, but he didn’t explain and I wouldn’t ask.
“Well, I won’t turn down a miracle.”
“Think Jos will be okay with it?”
“Versus going off to live with his Aunt Heidi? Absolutely.” I anticipated an argument about not needing a babysitter, but I already knew he liked Roy, and a couple of times when I couldn’t find him, he’d turned out to be next door talking to the old man.
Callum pulled the truck into my driveway and parked. I turned to him. “Want to come in for a minute and say hi to Jos, and we can see what he thinks?”
“You’re going to ask a twelve-year-old for his approval?”
I blinked. “Well, it’s his life too.”
Callum grinned, another one of those stunning smiles that made me want to laugh with delight. “I knew I liked you. Lead the way.”