Chapter 4
RIGGS
One week after I tattooed Damon’s knee, the swelling had gone down enough for him to come back into the shop and harass me into scheduling interviews to hire at least one new artist. I conceded only so that he would stop pestering me about it, but he’d left me a stack of portfolios that were all really good candidates.
The fact of the matter, though, was I hadn’t thought enough about rental terms to even have something to offer anyone yet, so I put it on my mental list of things to do and filed it away for the future.
Damon wasn’t hanging around so he wouldn’t even know I’d decided to save it for another day.
It was Monday, just after dinner, and though I hadn’t been terribly hungry, I was picking my way through a carton of fries when I caught sight of a man lingering on the sidewalk.
He was young, but dressed pretty smartly with pressed khaki’s and a white button-up.
The sleeves were rolled up, the top button undone, and he looked up with a tight frown at the hand-painted shop logo across my front window.
I didn’t know him, but I knew he definitely wasn’t my next appointment.
I didn’t imagine there was much fault for him to find with the name or the logo; I’d designed and painted them both myself.
Rather, someone else had started the drawing…
I’d only finished it, but all the ideas had been mine.
Ink and Ember, etched across the glass in a brushed bronze shade of brown and shadowed with black, the shop was the best parts of my life and that was the biggest reason I was hesitant to let anyone else be a part of it.
I turned my attention back to my fries, only looking up again when the bells on my front door jingled.
The man from outside was now inside, the same frown on his plush lips as before.
Wiping salt and fat on the front of my jeans, I stood up from my stool behind the counter and met him there.
He was considerably shorter than me, also plenty young.
“Hey. You looking to get a tattoo?” I asked him in greeting.
“I don’t have any,” he muttered.
“Neither did I once,” I said, scratching the back of my neck and shrugging my shoulders.
I had on a white V-neck and black jeans, but I knew the shirt was thin enough that if someone stared hard they’d be able to see the colored outlines of tattoos across my chest and not only my arms. My art also spanned the length and width of my back and covered most of my legs as well…
my ribs, my stomach, my throat. There wasn’t much skin left untouched on my body, and I liked it that way.
My statement earned me a flash of a smile, and I stepped back a little ways from the counter, not wanting to crowd him.
“I’m Riggs, by the way,” I said.
“Smith,” he said back to me, chin tucked against his chest.
I traced the bottom of my teeth with the tip of my tongue, appreciating the way Smith’s name felt against the roof of my mouth.
“Do you have any idea what you wanted to get today?” I asked. “Did you want to get anything today?”
“It’s kind of abstract.” His dark eyes flickered away from my face and down to the black leather-bound portfolio on the counter. It was already open from earlier when Damon had been flipping through it while I pretended to look at the books of the potential new artists he’d brought my way.
“I can do abstract.”
Smith turned a few pages and glanced down at his forearm. “Can you do it here?”
I watched him turn his forearm between us, watched the corded muscles bulge with each twist of his wrist, then impassively, I turned my attention back to his face.
“You’ll have to tell me what it is first.”
His cheeks turned a very breathtaking shade of pink. “Oh, right.”
He reached into his pocket and pulled out a cellphone, swiping across the screen before setting it on the counter and shoving it toward me. I leaned forward so I could see his screen, a picture of trees pasted against an imposing brick building. I cocked my head to the side, eyes narrowed.
“Explain,” I said.
A darker pink.
“Like, a movie almost… the trees then they kind of fade into the buildings and then on the other side, the buildings turn back into the trees again.”
It wasn’t anything like a movie, but Smith was quite possibly the most endearing potential client that had ever walked into my shop so I wasn’t going to correct him.
He was all nerves and jitters, but I had no idea what had him feeling out of sorts.
Was it the prospect of getting a tattoo or was it me?
“I can definitely do it,” I told him, holding out my hand.
He shuffled closer to his side of the counter and set his arm into my palm.
His skin was warmer than my hand, smoother, paler, unblemished.
Without much thought, I stroked my thumb across his wrist bone and inspected the offered canvas.
My fingers closed entirely around his wrist, and Smith drew in a sharp intake of breath.
“Not tonight, though,” I said. “I’ll draw something up for you, and you’ll need to come in the morning or early afternoon.”
“Can you do it all in one day?”
“Maybe.” I turned his arm once more before letting him go. “Yeah, I think we can get through it in one session.”
He held his own wrist, fingers wrapped securely around the place I’d just held him. “I work during the day, but I could maybe take some time off.”
I reached below the counter and pulled out my appointment book.
My schedule was another point of contention with my well-meaning best friend.
He never understood why I wouldn’t switch from paper to digital, but I was an artist. There was something to be said for paint and pencil in hand, paper beneath my fingers.
I appreciated the ease of contact that came from cell phones, but I honestly hated being constantly connected.
It was nice to disconnect and let go, even if that was a lesson I learned the hard way.
“I have an opening Friday in the morning, but after that I’m pretty booked through the end of the month.”
Smith peered down at my schedule like he was checking to see if I was lying or not.
“I’ll make Friday work,” he said. “What time?”
“Ten.”
He nodded and slid his cell phone back into his pocket.
“You’re eighteen, right?” I asked.
“Twenty-five,” he answered with a small flash of a smile. “So, no. But for all intents and purposes, yes.”
It was the most he’d said since he walked into the shop, and I did find the briefest curiosity around what he’d have to say once he got talking.
I’d find out soon enough, I wagered. Getting somebody into the tattoo chair was just like a therapist’s couch, but with a higher hourly rate.
There was something about the needle hitting the skin that split people open in more ways than one, and I didn’t mind being a stand-in talk doctor for most people.
But the push to chat once the needle started was the prime reason I hadn’t been tattooed in three years.
There was simultaneously too much and not enough to say.
“Alright,” I said. “I’ll put you down in the book. Here’s my card; can you text me that picture?”
“A card,” he murmured back, taking the black cardstock and flicking the edge before sliding it into his pocket.
“I like old things,” I told him.
That earned me a quick look from beneath the dark fan of his lashes, and as quick as his attention was on me, it was gone again, up to the ceiling, the window, the floors.
“This building is old,” he said. “What, like, thirty-nine?”
“Exactly. How could you tell?”
“The shape of it mostly,” he said, gesturing toward the window. “But it’s also my job.”
“What is your job?”
“Historical restoration.” He shoved his hands into his pockets next. “So, Friday at ten?”
I closed my portfolio, returned my schedule to its shelf beneath the counter.
“Friday at ten.”
“Thanks,” he said, and he was gone.
I’d barely made it back to my French fries when my phone buzzed with an incoming text from a 310 number and that weird trees and buildings picture Smith had shown me. Another message quickly followed.
Unknown
This is Smith
You probably knew that.
On account of the art.
Anyway.
And then my phone went quiet.
I grabbed two cold fries and shoved them into my mouth, chewing while I looked at the awkward cut and paste picture Smith had sent.
The trees were Ponderosa pines, and I wondered if northern California held any special significance for Smith or if he just liked the shape and the height of them.
Either was fine, really. I’d long ago given up on the idea that tattoos needed to mean important things.
Hell, I had a violin bow tattooed on the outside of my first finger so I could play the world’s smallest violin for Damon whenever he started to whine about life being hard.
There was no denying tattoos could be meaningful.
I rubbed the one across my ribs as a reminder of just how much, but they could be fun too.
They should be fun.
I finished off my fries and headed into the bathroom to wash my hands. My next appointment was due to arrive any minute, and I needed to get the stencil printed and my station set up. I busied myself with sanitizing and bagging everything and my client walked in ten minutes before her appointment.
“Hey, Athena.” I gave her a wave with my elbow.
She finished tying her long red hair up into a messy bun, a few tendrils hanging down in front of her ears, then waved back at me. She had on an oversized hoodie that undoubtedly belonged to one of her boyfriends, no makeup, and had a huge purse slung over her shoulder.
“Do you want to come on back?” I asked, dropping my ass down onto my black stool and wheeling out of the way.
Athena lifted the split counter and headed toward the chair, tossing her bag down onto the floor and climbing up.
She had on shorts, I realized, but the hoodie was so massive on her they were impossible to see when she stood, and anything being too big on Athena was a feat considering she was nearly six-feet tall in sneakers.
She shifted her weight onto her side so I could spray and shave her thigh, which was already plenty smooth in the first place.
Once ready, I had her hop up so I could place the stencil on the outside of her thigh.
She checked herself in the mirror and after a quick shrink and move, I poured out some ink and we were ready to get started.
When I pulled some more ink, Athena dug a bottle of water and some chocolate out of her bag, making herself comfortable again.
With her head against the back of the table, she let out a long breath and swallowed her candy bar.
I wiped some of the excess ink off the bottom of her tattoo and started in on a new line.
“So, what’s been going on?” I asked.
She waited until I finished the line to move and take a drink of water, and I waited until she had stilled to start my next line.
“Just more of the same,” she said. “But you’ll never guess what Grant and Wesley did last weekend.”
Grant and Wesley were her boyfriends, and they had been for nearly ten years.
“Tell me,” I said, smirking up at her and wiping down her thigh again.
She drummed her long purple fingernails against the very top of her thigh, and I glanced up at her hand to find a ring on her fourth finger that looked a lot like an engagement ring.
It was far from traditional, no gold and no diamonds, but the stones and the band sat on her finger with all the same importance and honor.
I dragged my stare up to her face, finding an uncharacteristic flush on her cheeks and a sly smile pulling at her lips.
“Well,” I said, refreshing the ink and leaning back over her leg, “you can’t just leave me hanging. You’re gonna be here for a while so you might as well me everything.”