Ink (9 page)

“Nothing, really. She bumped into my arm a couple of times, and I told her to stop.”

“Don’t worry about it. The guy next to me did it, too. You sort of expect it to happen when the theater is this crowded. Come on, let’s get out of here,” she said as linked her hand in his and tugged him up out of his seat.

7

On their way out of theater, the hairs on the back of Jason’s neck rose.

Someone watching?

A quiet hush filled the lobby. An employee with heavily pierced ears swept crumbs and discarded candy wrappers from the floor with an almost vacant expression on her face. Another employee with even more piercings wiped the surface of the counter with long, lazy strokes. A teenage girl in a short skirt and heavy makeup waited by the door. Someone hummed, low and under their breath, but the odd tune trailed off before Jason could figure out which direction it came from. A plain-faced man in what appeared to be an expensive suit stood near a small doorway on the right side of the lobby. He watched them with an odd gleam in his eyes. Jason reached out and took Mitch’s hand.

You’re with a pretty girl, he’s just looking at her.

But he wasn’t. His eyes, pale and green, were on Jason, not Mitch. He took a step forward, and Jason slowed his pace.

The walk.

The man tipped his head in Jason’s direction, shifted his eyes to Mitch, then back to Jason and winked. Jason had seen him before but where? Like the name of someone met at a long-ago holiday party, the answer hovered out of reach; the more he tried to grab it, the further away it slid. The man’s face held nothing special in its features. Nothing. A wallpaper face—Shelley’s term for a person neither attractive nor ugly. In the case of the suited man, the term fit like a well-cut glove. He could be a schoolteacher or a Wall Street executive, although the suit pushed him closer to the latter category.

Mitch gave his hand a squeeze, and Jason pulled his eyes away from the man.

“They just opened a gelato place not too far away. Do you want to stop by and see if they’re still open?”

“It sounds like a plan to me,” Jason said, leading her out of the lobby. He paused to look back over his shoulder, but the man in the suit was gone.

8

When Jason’s alarm started its insistent chirp, he wanted to throw it across the room. Instead, he turned it off and rolled over to find the other side of the bed empty. He touched the still-warm sheet; Mitch hadn’t been awake long. The faint smell of fresh coffee made him smile.

After a quick shower, he headed downstairs. The scrape of a kitchen chair across the floor let him know Mitch heard him coming. He hummed under his breath and quickened his step, his head filled with thoughts of the soft skin above her hipbones and the way her back arched up when his lips—

“So who’s the blonde?”

Shit. Mitch wasn’t in the kitchen after all. He could smell Shelley’s perfume from across the room, a heavy cloud of musk and flowers.

“What are you doing here?”

“Who is the blonde?” She stood up and put her hands on her hips in her best
you will do what I want
stance. Her
are we going to fight about this when you know I will win
pose. She’d left him, moved her stuff, and now she stood in his kitchen asking questions she had no business asking, stinking up the room with perfume that tasted like poison in his mouth.

“Jason.”

He grabbed a mug from the cabinet and turned around to meet Shelley’s eyes. Her face, a stranger’s face that left him with a hollow sense of nothing inside, twisted into a grimace.

“Who is she?”

Jason poured coffee into his cup and smiled. “She’s none of your business.”

Her eyes narrowed. “Very funny. Were you seeing her before I told you about Nicole?”

“Shelley, I said it’s none of your business.”

Her eyes flashed with surprise, and her resolve slipped just a little. The smile on his face grew wider.

It’s almost funny.

“You had her here, in our house, in our bed?”

He couldn’t believe it. She and Nicole snuck around behind his back for who knew how long and she was pissed at him. It wasn’t because he’d been with another woman. It went deeper than that. Much deeper. She was angry because he was neither miserable nor pining for her.

It’s not almost funny at all. It’s pretty goddamn hysterical. She expected me to find me crying in the corner like a kid whose favorite toy fell apart.

“No offense, but you left this house. And since it was a gift to me from my grandmother, it’s my house, not yours. You left the marriage first, remember? You have no right to ask me anything about who I see or don’t see.”

Damn, that felt good.

Shelley glared at him, but the index finger on her right hand rubbed back and forth across her thumbnail. She only did that when nervous or afraid. She hid it well, but the little gesture gave it away. Nervous or afraid of him? No, Jason didn’t think so. The unexpected response? Most likely. She gathered her emotions back up, and the Shelley he knew best came back.

“So you fuck some little chicky and think it makes you more of a man?”

She always had a way with words, but this was a new low. Something had touched a nerve. No, not something, someone.

His smile stretched out even farther. “Maybe.”

She winced, a quick, tiny chip in the façade. He wanted her to be hurt by his words. All the times she ridiculed the things he expressed an interest in because she didn’t think them worthy. All the things she said and didn’t say. Every last look in her eye. He enjoyed the wince. He enjoyed the tiny break in her artificial sense of self.

“Well,” she said. “I only came by to pick up some things I left in the basement.”

Jason took a sip of coffee. “Did you get them already?”

“Yes, while you were in the shower.”

“Fine.” He held out his hand. “The key, please.”

Spots of color bloomed on her cheeks, but she dropped the keys on the table and left without another word, leaving behind silence and the stink of her perfume.

Brian had said she had his balls in a sling, but not anymore. His balls were firmly in his own hands now, and it felt better than good.

It felt fucking grand.

9

He called Mitch when he got to the office, but the call went straight to voice mail. As the hours passed with no reply he convinced himself Shelley’s appearance had chased her away and when she called him back that night, he hesitated, almost afraid to answer.

“I’m sorry,” he said, before she had a chance to speak. “I had no idea she would stop by like that. I completely forgot she still had a key.”

“That was your ex, right?”

“Yes, it was. I promise, it won’t happen again. I took the key back.”

Mitch sighed and his grip on the phone loosened.

“A little warning would have been nice. She scared the crap out of me when she came in,” she said. “And the worst part? She said nothing. She came in and stood there with her hands on her hips and just stared at me.”

Jason couldn’t help it. He laughed. “She did the same thing to me when I came downstairs.”

“I tried to say hello, but it didn’t work out so well. I wanted to come up and warn you she was there, but I wasn’t sure. I figured the best thing to do was leave. She reminds me a lot of my ex, unfortunately. They have the same glare. And that perfume she was wearing? Let me tell you, it stinks.”

“I know. Believe me, I know. I can still smell it in the kitchen even with the window open.”

A comfortable silence hung in the air, then they both spoke.

“I thought—”

“Do you like—”

“You go first,” Jason said.

“Okay. This might sound weird, but do you like carousels?”

“I did when I was a kid. I don’t think I’ve been on one since then. Why?”

“You know they have one at the Inner Harbor, right?”

“Yes?”

“Sometimes I go there and ride it. I know it’s a little weird, but it would be nice to have some company the next time. If you’re free, I was thinking maybe Saturday night. It’s supposed to be warm. We could ride the carousel and sit on a bench and people watch,” she said in a soft voice. “Maybe pick up some French fries.”

“Only if you like them with vinegar. Lots of vinegar.”

“Of course. How else could you possibly eat French fries? So, it’s a date then?”

Jason smiled so wide his face hurt. “Definitely.”

“How about if I pick you up around seven-thirty? I did ask you so I should drive.”

“Okay. Seven-thirty it is. But the fries are on me.”

“Deal.”

French fries, people watching, and a carousel ride. It would be an interesting date. The more he got to know Mitch, the more he liked her, even if she did believe in ghosts.

10

The tattoo started to peel the next morning. As he spread the ointment on his skin, thin flakes sloughed off, and the colors appeared even more vibrant and defined. He would not have believed a human hand capable of such precision if he hadn’t seen it himself.

Jason liked the tattoo a lot more than he thought he would, but even more than the ink itself, he liked the way it made him feel. Before his trip to Sailor’s shop, he never would have gotten the last word in with Shelley or asked someone like Mitch out on a date. And now? Everything and anything at all was possible.

He flexed his muscle and grinned at his reflection in the mirror. The griffin’s eyes caught and held the light, shimmering as if in agreement with his thoughts.

11

Jason, Brian and a few other guys from work were meeting at nine for what Shelley always called a beer and bullshit night, and on that, she was right. They drank, griped about work and Brian flirted with any woman who had the misfortune to sit nearby. Inevitably, someone would drink too much, and they’d send him home in a cab.

Brian had asked for Sailor’s contact information. Since the number didn’t show up on his phone, Jason figured he would just give him the card, but when he looked in his wallet, it was nowhere to be found.

He checked the trashcans in both the bedroom and the bathroom. No luck. The pockets of every pair of pants he’d worn since he got the tattoo were next. No luck there, either. When he went downstairs, he looked behind the sofa cushions and found plenty of crumbs and spare change, but no card. He checked the kitchen table, the kitchen counter, even the top of the microwave. Nothing.

He remembered putting the card in his wallet, but he didn’t remember taking it out. After he went through the contents of his wallet again, discovering an old picture of Shelley and an even older insurance card, both of which went into the trash, he gave up. No card.

His best guess? The card must have been on the kitchen table when Shelley came over for her things, and she tossed it out. He imagined the expression on Shelley’s face, wrinkled nose and all, when she picked it up, and the glint in her eyes when she decided it was unimportant to her, therefore unimportant to him. She probably smiled when she dropped it in the kitchen trashcan, then sprayed a little more perfume. ”
Here, have a little stink to remember me by
.”

After that, he threw it away when he took out the trash. Simple. He’d give Brian the address, and if he really wanted one of Sailor’s tattoos, he could stop by and talk to him there.

12

Mitch picked him up as planned on Saturday night, but she was quiet on the drive to the Inner Harbor. Jason didn’t want to pry so he held his tongue. Once they parked, bought fries and sat down on an empty bench she opened up.

“I’m sorry, I’ve had a rough day. My ex-boyfriend called me today,” she said. “His mom has lung cancer and it’s bad. They’ve given her six months at most.” She spoke the last few words in little more than a whisper, almost swallowed up by the noise of a half-dozen teenagers shouting nonsense to each other as they walked by. Beyond the wide brick walkway tracing the harbor's edge, sunlight danced on the water. Crowds of tourists and locals moved in and out of the two pavilions that held restaurants and retail shops. In between the two pavilions, more people had gathered to watch a street performer juggling a set of bowling pins while riding on a unicycle, and the sounds of laughter and clapping drifted through the air.
 

Jason reached over and squeezed her hand. “I’m sorry.”

“I think I’m going to go and visit her in a few weeks. Adam, my ex, is an ass, but she was always nice to me, so I feel like I should. I haven’t talked to her in a really long time. She lives in Colorado now, but when she used to live here, we talked a lot. After I broke up with Adam, it just got weird because he’d pump her for information about me and use her to relay messages to me, so I stopped calling. Eventually, she stopped calling me, too.” Mitch rested her head on his shoulder. “And now she’s dying, and I feel like shit.”