Chapter Eight
Teague
Vanessa’s chair is the back one. Far corner, past the flash wall and the counter where the receptionist sits, through a doorway that separates the walk-in area from the private stations.
The first time I sat here I was twenty-two and terrified and pretending I wasn’t, and Vanessa looked at my reference photos and said “these are shit but I know what you’re going for” and then spent six hours turning my half-formed ideas into lines I’d want on my body forever.
Three years later I don’t bring reference photos. I bring coffee and a playlist and I sit down and let her work.
“Hold still,” Vanessa says, for the fourth time in twenty minutes. She’s hunched over my left forearm, her needle running the outline of the koi’s tail. The buzz fills the room like a second pulse. “You’re twitching.”
“I’m not twitching.”
“Your tendons are twitching. Tell your tendons.”
I flatten my arm on the rest and focus on not moving. The forearm is tender. Not the worst spot, that honor belongs to the ribs where she did the geometric piece and I almost bit through my own lip, but tender enough that my body keeps trying to flinch and I keep telling it to stop.
Vanessa works in silence for a while. The shop playlist is on, somebody else’s, something ambient and electronic that I’d never listen to by choice but that works in here because the point of the music is to disappear behind the needle.
Her station is clean, organized, everything in reach.
Black gloves, ink caps lined up by color, paper towels folded in a stack.
She’s meticulous. It used to annoy me. Now I understand it’s the reason every line she puts on me is exactly where it should be.
“How’s the bar?” she asks, not looking up.
“Fine. Same.”
“Carl still in Tampa?”
“Carl’s always in Tampa.”
“You closer on the number?”
“Getting there.”
Vanessa nods. She’s one of maybe three people who know about the contract.
I don’t talk about it because talking about it makes it feel fragile, like saying it out loud will remind the universe to put an obstacle in front of it.
But Vanessa knows because Vanessa was there the night Carl first mentioned selling, two years ago, when I was sitting in this chair getting the moth on my shoulder and he called to ask if I’d be interested in buying and I said yes before he finished the sentence.
“You eating?” she asks.
“I eat.”
Snorting, she shakes her head. "Sure you do."
She lifts the needle, wipes the line, checks her work.
The koi is coming together. Orange and red, scales rendered in tight detail, the tail curving around the inside of my forearm toward my wrist. It’s going to be beautiful.
Everything Vanessa does is beautiful, even when she’s being a pain in the ass about my diet.
“Seeing anyone?” she asks.
“No.”
“That was fast.”
“It’s a fast answer.”
“It’s a defensive answer.” She goes back to the outline. “I’m just asking. You’ve been in a weird mood.”
“I’m always in a weird mood. That’s my personality.”
“Your personality is guarded and deliberate. Weird is different.” She switches to a finer needle for the detail work on the scales. “Weird means something changed.”
Nothing changed. A girl started coming to the bar. A twenty-two-year-old with clean sneakers and a cookie campaign and a laugh that carries. That’s not a change.
“Nothing changed,” I say.
“Okay.” Vanessa says okay the way some people say bullshit, with the same number of syllables and none of the effort. She lets it go because Vanessa lets things go when she’s working. The needle is the priority. Everything else can wait.
My phone buzzes on the counter next to the ink caps. I don’t move because Vanessa’s needle is on my skin and moving is a sin in this chair. I glance sideways. Screen up. Message from Zoe.
just discovered bad brains. my neighbors hate me. worth it.
I look at the ceiling.
“You’re smiling,” Vanessa says.
“I’m grimacing. The needle hurts.”
“That’s not a grimace.” But she doesn’t push. She goes back to the koi and I go back to not moving and the text sits on my phone screen, glowing, until the display times out and goes dark.
Bad Brains. She found Bad Brains on her own.
I didn’t tell her about them. I told her about the Ramones and Patti Smith and the Clash and the lineage of punk from New York to London to D.C.
to California, and she went home and followed the thread to D.C.
and found Bad Brains, which means she’s not just listening to what I hand her. She’s digging.
“Can I take a break?” I ask.
“In ten minutes. I’m finishing this section.”
I wait ten minutes. Vanessa lifts the needle, wipes the area, wraps my arm in plastic. I pick up my phone.
I should not text her back. There’s no reason to text her back.
She’s a regular at the bar. I don’t text my regulars.
I don’t even have most of my regulars’ numbers.
She gave me hers and I saved it because not saving it would have been a deliberate act, a decision to delete, and that felt like more effort than just letting the contact sit in my phone like any other contact.
I text her back.
bad brains is sacred ground. if you play “banned in dc” loud enough the building should legally become a venue.
I put the phone down. Vanessa is cleaning her station, rearranging ink caps, doing the between-sections reset she does every time we take a break.
“Customer?” she asks.
“Sort of.”
“Sort of a customer?”
“She comes to the bar. She’s new.” I look at my arm under the plastic. The koi is half-finished, the scales shimmering under the wrap, red and orange fading into the outline where Vanessa hasn’t filled yet. “She’s young.”
“How young?”
“Twenty-two.”
Vanessa’s hands stop moving. She looks at me over the top of her glasses, which she wears for close work and which make her look like a librarian who could kill you.
“That’s young.”
“I know.”
“Is she—”
“She’s a customer. She comes to the bar. She likes punk.” I flex my fingers under the wrap. “That’s it.”
“Okay.” That word again, carrying everything she’s not saying. She snaps new gloves on. “Ready to go again?”
“Yep.”
I sit back in the chair. Vanessa unwraps my arm, cleans the area, starts the needle.
The buzz fills the room and I close my eyes and hold still and think about nothing, which is a skill I’ve developed in this chair over three years and dozens of sessions.
You learn to let the pain become background noise.
You learn to go somewhere else while your body stays present.
My phone buzzes again. I don’t look.
Vanessa works for another hour. The koi takes shape, scales filling in, the orange deepening into red along the curve of the body. It hurts and I hold still and the music plays and we don’t talk about the text or the customer or whatever weird mood Vanessa thinks she’s seeing.
When we’re done, she wraps my arm in fresh plastic and tapes it down and gives me the aftercare instructions I’ve heard a hundred times and always follow because Vanessa’s ink deserves respect.
“Two weeks for the last session,” she says. “I’ll finish the water detail and the background.”
“Works for me.”
“And Teague?”
“Yeah?”
“Whatever’s not happening with whoever’s not a thing?” She pulls off her gloves. “You look lighter than you did last time you were in my chair. I’m just saying.”
I pull my jacket off the hook. The leather settles on my shoulders and the patches face out and my arm throbs under the plastic in time with my pulse.
“It’s nothing,” I say.
“Sure.” Vanessa turns to clean her station. “Same time in two weeks.”
I walk out through the shop. The receptionist waves. The flash wall is covered in designs, hundreds of them, and I glance at them every time I walk through even though I’ve seen them all. Flowers, skulls, script, animals. Maybe I'll grab some flash designs once my current piece is done.
Outside, the sun is low and the street is warm and my arm hurts and my phone has a text I haven’t read. I pull it out.
also found this band called against me! and i can’t stop playing “don’t lose touch.” is that one of yours?
Against Me! is one of mine. “Don’t Lose Touch” is one of mine.
Laura Jane Grace singing about staying connected to who you are before the world tells you who to be.
I listened to that song on repeat for a month when I was twenty and trying to figure out what my life was supposed to look like, and it didn’t give me answers but it gave me the feeling that not having answers was acceptable.
This girl found that song in four days. She followed the thread from the Pretenders to the Clash to Bad Brains to Against Me! and landed on the exact track that matters most to me, and she doesn’t even know what she did.
I type back.
that one’s mine. good find.
I put my phone away. Start walking home. My arm throbs. The jacket sits heavy on my shoulders. The neon A of Anthem is visible two blocks ahead, dark right now, unlit, waiting for me to turn it on tonight.
Regular. That’s all this is. A regular who’s good for business and overtips and asks questions and found Bad Brains without being told and somehow, through whatever algorithm or instinct or luck guides a twenty-two-year-old through decades of punk history, landed on the one song that I have never once played at the bar because it’s too close to something I don’t share.
I walk home. I don’t text her again tonight.
But I don’t delete the conversation either.