Authors: Denise Mathew
Suddenly all the worry and shame of having my life opened and in view, fell away. I wanted to know what every picture and tattoo meant. I wanted to know what the tiny green gecko with bright orange eyes and the white dove with its wings spread wide meant. I wanted to know why there was a sword at his wrist and an Eye of Horus on his elbow, but all my questions were lost when he turned his left arm over so the soft underside was facing up. A small gauze bandage was taped to a space just below the bend of his elbow.
“This is what I wanted to show you,” he said. “Everything that I did tonight was supposed to have led up to this. I’m sorry that it all went to hell before I had a chance to show you.”
Jax peeled the bandage off his arm. When he did, I realized that beneath it was a new tattoo. Only after he’d completely removed the gauze did I realize what the tattoo was of.
Me.
My eyes were closed, and my face was more peaceful than I’d ever imagined it could be. Only when a person was sleeping could they look like that, as if nothing in the world mattered. The tattoo was so life like that it seemed as if he’d had a picture of my face photocopied on his arm. The picture was one that had been taken after I’d lost all my hair. I couldn’t help but wish that the tattoo artist had inked in my hair, just like it once had been.
As if in response to my thoughts Jax said. “I know what you’re going to say, that you don’t have any hair. I get how important that is for you, but I wanted to preserve you like this. One day we’ll look back at this tattoo and remember how we met, and that even though it was the worst time in your life something good came out of it too.”
“Like the silver lining of a black cloud,” I whispered, staring down at the tattoo. “I can’t believe you did this,” was the most I could get out. How could I even begin to tell him how it felt to me, that he’d loved me enough that he’d had my face tattooed on his arm.
“You’re part of my story Marilee. Now and forever,” he said.
He put his arm over my shoulder and drew me closer until my head came to rest against his chest. I’d never felt safer and more loved than I did right then.
17. Jax
When the limousine pulled up along the curb outside my apartment building I almost laughed, knowing that it was probably the first and last time that a limousine would ever grace these streets. It was well after midnight and the few people who were still cruising the streets paused and watched the car. I was sure they were expecting a movie star or some tabloid celebrity to step out. When they caught sight of me they shook their heads as if I’d shattered their dreams. Even so, I played up the moment, putting an extra strut in my step like an amped up rock star who had it all figured out. Not the flat broke guy who lived in a crappy apartment on the Strip, who sang at a complete dive. For the moment after spending the whole night with Marilee, it wasn’t too hard to imagine that I had a different life, more money and a swag apartment with Gran, with Max and Zeke as neighbors.
Still high from being with Marilee, everything seemed possible like all the roadblocks and limitations that had always been there in my life had vanished. I could still smell her perfume on my clothes. I never wanted it to fade. I turned around and waved at the limousine driver as he pulled away. I was sure that the tip I’d given him, the last of the money I’d saved for Gran’s bed, was probably the worst he’d ever had. All the same he’d been gracious, and for that I was grateful.
I made my way to the apartment suddenly exhausted. There had been so many ups and downs in the evening that I felt like a yoyo on steroids. But thankfully in the end, Marilee had forgiven me for Emma being a complete bitch.
Gran was still up when I walked into the apartment, the aroma of Earl grey tea filled the air. I wanted to be wrong but I was almost one hundred percent sure that she was going to corner me to get my tea leaves read one more time. In the past few months I’d had my tarot cards read, tea leaves looked at, picked Runes and Gran had even thrown chicken bones on the table for divination. It didn’t seem that the trend was going to end anytime soon. As usual Gran was tight lipped about her reasons for putting me through the fortune tellers gambit, even though she’d let up a little after I’d confessed to her about Marilee.
As expected Gran, her hair covered in bobby pins, sat at the kitchen table. She was hunched over her cup, studying the tea leaves. I leaned over and kissed her cheek. She startled as if she hadn’t realized that I’d come in.
“Jackson,” she said, smiling up at me. Her eyes were weary and she smelled like smoke and incense. I shoved into the chair across from her.
“A bit late for tea leaves isn’t it Gran?” I said.
She looked up from her cup, attempting a casual grin, it was anything but. The apparent reprieve that I’d enjoyed the past few days appeared to be over. She seemed more on edge than even before. Not wanting to get stone walled on what was bothering her, I shifted to something that I considered safe territory.
“Did Zeke and Max make sure you got home all right?”
“If you call them acting like body guards and giving anyone who even looked my way the evil eye, getting me home all right, then yes they did a stupendous job of it.”
I chuckled, imagining Zeke and Max treating Gran like she was the crown jewels. There was no denying they loved her, sometimes I thought they worried about her more than I did. I nodded. Now that I was home I realized that not only had I ditched Gran when I’d gone after Marilee, but I’d bailed on the second set. I hoped I wasn’t in too much hot water.
“Were Zeke and Max ticked that I left them in a lurch?” I was on a rapid descent back to reality. I’d never bailed on my two best friends before. Even though I had a legit reason, I wouldn’t have blamed them for being pissed at me.
“They seemed fine to me. Max took the vocals for the second set, he’s not so bad you know. But I might have been the only one there that appreciated his Elvis songs.” She shot me a devilish grin. I burst into laughter. The image of Max doing Elvis tunes was more than amusing.
After I stopped laughing, I reached for Gran’s fingers, still curled around the handle of the tea cup.
“Thanks for coming tonight Gran. It wouldn’t have felt right if you hadn’t been there to watch Marilee, you know, while I was on stage.”
Gran cocked an eyebrow at me. “I can’t say that she really needed to be watched, she’s got a lot of steel in her. More I think than even you know…”
She twisted the tiny gold ball earring in her earlobe, a gesture that signaled she was trying hard to figure out what the tea leaves said.
I nodded. “Yeah, you’re probably right, she is pretty strong…”
“How did she like the tattoo?” Gran asked. Her eyes seemed to skewer me as if my answer might change the course of the future.
“She loved it,” I said, leaning back against the chair. I put my hands behind my head and closed my eyes.
“So I assume you’ve ironed everything out.”
“Yeah, all disasters averted, the world is still spinning on it’s axis and I’m no longer in the dog house with Marilee.”
“You should get to bed Jackson, you look like someone pulled you through a knot hole. You’re going to need all your strength for…” Her voice trailed off and my eyes snapped wide because she’d sounded a bit too ominous for my taste.
“What am I going to need my strength for?” I asked.
Gran’s face was impassive yet her eyes told a different story. She’d seen something and if I was a betting kind of guy, I’d have said it hadn’t been good.
She waved her hand dismissively. “Nothing, it’s just a figure of speech, Jackson, you worry too much.”
“Isn’t that, to put it in your words, the pot calling the kettle black. You’ve been like a cat on a hot griddle for the past month and I’ve tried to ignore it, but I know something is up, and I think it has something to do with me.” I leaned in closer, my arms resting on the edge of the table. Gran refused to meet my eyes. A sure sign that she was hiding something from me.
“It’s nothing just a few cards and leaves that tell a certain kind of story, but like you always say, fortune telling is like trying to catch water between your fingers, you can always manage to get a few drops to cling, but the rest drains away.” Gran’s words said one thing, but her eyes gave her away. She didn’t believe a word she’d just said.
“Since when do you quote what I say about divination, as being of any value?” I asked. I felt tension build in my back and travel up to my jaw. Whatever she was worried about was contagious. I didn’t know if that meant that there was really something to worry about or if I was just reacting to the way she’d been behaving.
Gran laid the tea cup in front of her. She reached for my hand. In one swift move she flipped it over and studied the lines in my palm. As well as all the other things she did to tell the future, Gran read palms. Originating in India, Chiromancy or palm reading was the way to tell the future, using the lines in your hands as a map of your life. In theory the lines were supposed to change according to your life.
I didn’t know if it was Gran’s way of getting off the hook, or if she really wanted to look at my palm, either way the move served to shut me up. Years ago Gran had read my palm and she’d seen something she hadn’t liked. After that time, she’d vowed never to look again. Obviously that promise didn’t matter to her anymore.
She adjusted her glasses. She used her crooked right index finger, the one that she’d broken years before and that had healed a little weird, to trace the lines on my palm. Gran always called that finger her witch finger, and insisted that it made her better at predicting the future.
Without warning, a pained expression flashed across her face. She clutched her chest like she was having a heart attack.
“Gran? Are you all right?” I asked. My mouth had gone popcorn dry. I was ready to reach for the phone and call 911.
“Fine, I’m fine,” she said.
She hissed out a breath and whatever color that had once been in her cheeks, disappeared. She shook her head, released my hand and got to her feet, wobbling a little. I was by her side in seconds, supporting her. She leaned hard on me as if it was too difficult to walk. I didn’t need a doctor to tell me she wasn’t okay. She’d seen something in my palm that had thrown her.
As I led her to her room I wanted to pretend that I didn’t care about what she’d seen, but I did. The last time Gran had acted like that in response to something she’d divined had been just before a very dark time in my life. Our lives. And no matter how much I’d grown in the years since, I knew that I couldn’t go back there. If I did I might not survive.
After I’d helped Gran to her room and she was tucked safely in bed, I made my way to the shower. I was still too hyped up to sleep and hoped hot water on my tensed up body might be just the trick to help me unwind. The last thing I could afford was to skimp on sleep since I had a lot of work to do on the Peace Project the next day.
I had planned to donate Fred’s saxophone to the club where he’d once played. As odd as it seemed, one of his former band mates now owned the same club. It was called Electric Blue. Of course the place didn’t look much like it once had. It was one of the few places on the Strip that had had a bit of a facelift. Electric Blue had been modernized into a dance club that even people from the proverbial other side of the tracks, frequented.
I wondered if Marilee had ever been there. The owner, an elderly African American man with snow white hair, and polished white teeth to match, had promised to have the sax mounted in a shadow box. He’d even pulled out a few pictures of what he’d called the good old days, of Fred and his band that had been called Smooth. Fresh faced and looking like he had the world at his finger tips, Fred bore no resemblance to the man who’d squatted under the bridge. It warmed me to see the old pictures. I knew that having Fred’s sax on display in the club wouldn’t bring him back, but it would at least be a snap shot of who he’d once been, and that had to be enough.
The shower served to relax me enough that I felt my eyelids grow heavy and soon drifted off into sleep. I didn’t know how long I’d been asleep when I awoke with a start. A feeling of absolute and utter dread draped me in icy fingers and sweat slicked my body. It wasn’t the first time I’d woken up like that, what Gran called my panic dreams, but it was the first time it had left me feeling like my guts were tied into tight knots. I glanced at my clock and realized it was 5:00 a.m. My alarm had been set for 6:00 a.m. so I reasoned there was no point in trying to go back to sleep, it just wasn’t in the cards for me.
I took another shower, pulled on a pair of jeans with the knees shredded from wear and a plain black t-shirt and moved to the kitchen. Oddly Gran’s door was still closed. Usually she was up and about by 5:00 a.m. every morning and it was already 5:45 a.m. I figured that she was probably beat from being out the night before, but made a mental note to call her later all the same.
Daylight was just breaking when I stepped out onto the street. The sun peeked through, pushing away the clouds that had brought about an inch of snow the night before. The white that covered everything, sparkled as if someone had sprinkled diamond dust over it.
As I walked to the bus stop I all but forgot Gran’s strange behavior. I had too many other things to worry about. It was a free day for me, meaning I didn’t have to work at the hospital or Vinyl. I didn’t even have a gig in the evening. That meant that I had a full day to spend on the Peace Project. A prospect that I was more than excited about. But before I started working on my list I had to say hi to Marilee. I’d never planned to see her everyday, but it had somehow worked out that way. Now it was a tradition that I couldn’t miss. Not seeing her would be like going without food and water for the full day.