Leave a Mark (2 page)

“
EARTH TO WREN
? Hello? Where’d you go?” Cherise asked, forking the last of her Dwyer’s hash browns into her mouth.

Wren Blanchard shook off the memory and wrinkled her nose at her best friend’s soft drink. “I was just wondering how you can drink a Coke at 9:30 in the morning.”

“It’s Diet Coke, bitch,” Cherise teased. “You know I hate coffee, but I need caffeine.” She pushed away her near-empty plate and swiped one of Wren’s bacon strips.

“Bitch, I was going to eat that.”

Cherise made a face. “No, you weren’t. You were going to put it in your little Curtis-the-Junkie to-go box.” She pointed to the Styrofoam container their server had just delivered. It held a slice of ham, a biscuit, and an order of hash browns, and Cherise was right; Wren would have added the leftover bacon.

“Well, Curtis needs it more than you, fatty.”

This attempt at guilting her friend earned her an eye roll. Cherise had the figure of a celery stalk. Why she bothered with Diet Coke, Wren would never understand. “Curtis needs to take care of himself as much as you take care of him. Then, maybe, he wouldn’t be living in the park.”

“Let me worry about Curtis,” Wren said, ending the discussion.

Cherise just shook her head. “C’mon. I’ve got to get to work.”

Leaving their tips on the table, Wren and Cherise walked out to their beach cruisers. They’d bought the matching set at Walmart two years ago, and every Thursday since then, they met at Dwyer’s Cafe for breakfast and rode their bikes to work. It didn’t matter that they no longer worked at the same place.

Wren tucked the to-go box into her bike’s wicker basket. Everything would slide backward in the container, but Curtis wouldn’t care. She could find him, she knew, on one of the benches at Parc Sans Souci — across from Agave, where she used to work and where Cherise still did.

They pedaled down Garfield before taking a right onto Polk Street. School buses were already parked behind the Lafayette Science Museum to their right, and mothers with strollers pushed their way into the Children’s Museum on their left.

“That’ll be you one day,” Cherise teased, jerking her head at a mother with a double-wide stroller.

Wren laughed.

“Yeah, right.”

They circled the park and stopped across from Agave. Abed, Wren’s old boss, sprayed off the sidewalk in front of the cantina restaurant, getting ready for the lunch crowd. He waved to them before eyeing Cherise and pointing to his watch.

“Bastard,” Cherise muttered as she locked up her bike. “It’s not even ten yet.”

Wren bent over to secure her cruiser to one of the circular bike racks. “He just likes to harass—” She gasped as a sharp twinge lit up her right side, but it disappeared as soon as she straightened up.

“What’s wrong?” Cherise asked, giving her a look of concern. Wren just shook her head.

“Maybe I shouldn’t jump on my bike right after eating my weight in pancakes.”

“You’ve only been doing it for two years,” her best friend said, grinning. “Don’t start slowing down on me now, loser. Come by tomorrow? I close.”

“I’ll be there. Hope the tips are big today.”

“Hope the skin is zit-free today,” Cherise said, making her laugh.

After a quick hug, Wren grabbed the takeout box and walked past the dormant fountains. She squinted against the morning sun and tried to distinguish Curtis among the bundles on the park benches. His duct-taped sneakers gave him away, and she headed his way.

“Good mornin’, Song Bird,” he said, his usual greeting. He sat up before she actually reached his bench, and Wren was glad that he was awake and alert. Still, his eyes were bloodshot, but that was typical.

“Morning, Curtis. I brought you some breakfast.”

“Then it must be Thursday. How’s your friend? What’s her name?”

“Cherise is doing fine, Curtis. In fact, she said to tell you hello.” This wasn’t exactly true, but Wren didn’t mention that her best friend scolded her again for buying the “Curtis-the-Junkie to-go box."

And she wasn’t going to stop, even though Curtis asked her for money almost every time. He’d started three years ago, the first night she’d come off-shift at Agave. He’d asked her for a few bucks and walked to her car on Polk. She’d refused him then. She always refused. But that didn’t mean she couldn’t give him something to eat and remind him that Acadiana Recovery Center was only four-blocks away — a straight shot right down Vermilion Street.

And Curtis had never been aggressive with his panhandling — unlike some of the other homeless people who lived downtown. In fact, for three years, Curtis had made sure that Wren safely reached her car every night.

That was worth a breakfast once a week. Especially now that she could afford it.

“How’s the job? Rocky still treatin’ you right?” Curtis asked, a glint in his eye.

“Rocky’s the best. And I stay pretty busy,” she said, knowing what was coming.

“Maybe you might see your way clear to givin’ ole Curtis a buck or two? So I can maybe have a lil’ somethin’ later on?”

Wren sighed. If she said it every time, maybe he’d listen once. “Bullshit, Curtis. You know I’m not doing that. In fact, you know exactly what I’ll say.”

He gave her a smile that didn’t meet his eyes. “Maybe I like hearing you say it every Thursday.”

Her heart tugged, but Wren knew that she couldn’t put much stock into his words. She’d grown up hearing the same thing from Laurie.

“Then I’ll say it again. There’s a free treatment center right down the street.” She pointed west, trying not to get angry. It didn’t help to get angry, but she never took her eyes off his. “In the time it would take you to eat this breakfast, you could walk down there and get some help. You could start living a different life today, Curtis.”

Curtis reached out his hands and took the box from her. “Thank you for the breakfast, Song Bird. Maybe I’ll see you next week.”

“
HOLD STILL, YOU
big baby, or I’ll mess up the ink.” Wren Blanchard yanked her liner machine away from Bear’s shoulder. She’d barely started on her touch-up of the chain outline when her two-hundred-fifty-pound client flinched.

“I am holding still,” Bear argued. “You’re the jumpy one.”

Wren swiveled around on her stool to glare at him. “John Allen Darcy, did you just call me jumpy?” Wren asked, her voice pitching low — as low as it could go on someone just over five feet tall. “I don’t care how big you are. I’ll take you down.”

Laughter rumbled through Studio Ink.

The biker at Wren’s station narrowed his eyes at her. His straw-colored eyebrows and beard seemed to bristle.

“I’m gonna pretend like you didn’t just call me by that name. It’s Bear, and you well know it.”

“That’s not what your credit card says,” Wren mumbled, repositioning her liner.

Two Fists and Brother, fellow members of the Acadiana Chapter of Bikers Against Child Abuse, laughed again. Wren took this as a sign that she’d won the pissing contest against the biker who was twice her age and almost three times her size.

Still, it wasn’t much of a win. Everyone knew Bear was a softy. That is, until it came to his membership in this particular group. Like all of the members of BACA, Bear could turn on the scary when a little kid needed him.

A lot of Wren’s clients were bikers, but her favorites were the ones who were members of BACA. The riders would station themselves at night around the homes of abused children or escort them to and from court to testify against their attackers. They were the closest things to superheroes Wren could imagine.

She respected them so much she’d tat the BACA symbol for free — touch-ups included. Wren started that little tradition after her apprenticeship ended six months ago, and she’d never regretted it. Instead of costing her money, it had gained her a solid base of loyal customers.

“Speaking of credit cards, what are you getting Ariel for your anniversary?” Two Fists asked.

Bear just beamed. “I’m taking her to Toledo Bend,” he boasted. Wren smiled, too. She’d worked on Mrs. Gayle Darcy — Ariel — more than once, and she loved the woman’s spunk just as much as she loved her ink choices. Under her clothes lived a mermaid’s world. Two mermaid sisters ran down the sides of her body. The one on the left had cascading blue hair adorned with scallop shells and sea anemones. The other wore tresses of gold and seemed to kneel against Ariel’s right thigh, her tail fin fanning over the woman’s ample hip. The colors and textures of each were nothing less than hypnotic. Working on Ariel was a tattooist’s dream.

Wren swapped out her black liner for the white shader. She rolled her right shoulder before diving in again. “How many years?”

“Twenty-five,” Bear gloated proudly, puffing his chest.

“Keep still!” Wren scolded.

The biker deflated. “Oops. Sorry.”

Twenty-five years. Wren couldn’t imagine it. That was as long as she’d been alive. Miller, her last boyfriend, hadn’t even made it three months before she’d kicked his ass to the curb. They’d gotten along just fine while she was apprenticing. Back then, she’d spend mornings at the studio watching Rocky and working on practice skins before waiting tables every night. Her free time had been pretty limited. But as soon as Rocky hired her and she quit serving, things had changed.

She wondered how long it had taken Miller to figure out that she made a lot more money in ink. Had he known before they hooked up? Or after she’d gone full-time?

He’d started coming over to her place more often — like every night. Miller would order pizza and then duck out onto her back stairs for a smoke when the delivery guy came. It seemed like she was always the one paying. And he was constantly making some comment about how the money he made hanging drywall wasn’t worth his time. When he’d suggested moving in with her a month after she went pro, Wren’d had enough.

She pulled her machine back and rolled her shoulder again. The clock by the door said it was only 6:15 p.m. She’d come in at noon and would stay until they closed at ten o’clock. She worked Thursdays through Sundays, and it was way too early to start feeling stiff, especially since she just switched to the heavier shader. But she couldn’t ignore the dull ache that now lengthened down her back. And that twinge in her side had returned. It was weird.

“What’s wrong, Wren? That gun’s not too big for you, is it?” Brother teased. Wren shot him a glare, but she didn’t have to say a word.

“You know better than that,” Rocky warned from the table beside hers. Her boss spoke without looking up from the wings he was giving Angel Delacroix. Angel was a local middle-weight boxer just starting out. The tattoo was a masterpiece they’d been working on every Thursday night for three weeks, and it wasn’t even half done. When the tattoo was finally finished, it would look like the pair of wings could flare open and lift Angel into the air. He hadn’t been in a fight since Rocky started on them, and Wren was sure the new ink would help the young boxer get noticed.

Rocky Perrodin was the best tattoo artist in Lafayette, and Wren had been lucky to apprentice with him. She was even luckier that he showed her obvious respect in front of their clients.

“I’m just teasing,” Brother defended. “That gun’s half the size she is.”

“Maybe,” Rocky muttered. “But she can hold a machine longer than most men I know, and her art could be in the frickin’ Louvre. Wren’s only the second artist I’ve hired right out of apprenticeship, and I did that so I wouldn’t have to compete against her.”

Wren bent down and pretended to check the machine’s coils so she could hide the blush that painted her face. When she stood up, the ache in her back seemed to stretch down into her thigh. It felt sort of like cramps, but it stayed just on her right side, and her period wasn’t due for another two weeks. Gritting her teeth against the discomfort, she got back to work.

Ten minutes later, the BACA logo was done. But as she set down her tools and peeled off her latex gloves, Wren saw that her hands shook. It felt like a giant vice clamped her in half. A sheen of sweat broke out on her lip.

And then pain — like a white-hot blade — pierced her in the gut.

Bear looked at her and frowned. “Darlin’, you’re as white as a ghost.”

His bushy eyebrows were the last things she saw before Wren Blanchard passed out.

LEE WAS BEGINNING
his second twenty-four-hour shift of the week when the attending doc in the ER called him down.

“I don’t think it’s appendicitis. No fever. No vomiting or diarrhea,” Dr. Leger said, pointing to the tiny heap on the bed in front of her. Upon a closer look, the heap turned into a girl curled in the fetal position. A girl with blue and black hair. “I’m thinking cyst rupture. She fainted at work and is presenting with acute abdominal pain with back and shoulder tenderness.”

Lee stepped closer and took the patient’s right hand. It was clammy to the touch, but his eye darted to the tattoo on the inside of her wrist, a flock of black birds taking wing. Beneath her blue bangs, her eyes screwed shut, her forehead etched with pain.

“I’m Dr. Hawthorne. Can you tell me your name?”