“How’s that?”
“Can you go lower?” I fought against the trembling of my fingertips and moved it down, then down again. She opened her legs slightly and I lowered it farther, the bottom tip of the V sitting just at the crack of her buttocks. “There,” she whispered. “Right there. Is that okay, or is it too low?”
I pulled on a pair of latex gloves and, taking into account the slight shaking of my hands, chose my heavier BSI Trident over the standard, lighter Sidekick. She put a leg on either side of the chair and leaned forward, moving her ass toward me. My eyes drank in her curvaceous cheeks, the taut little hole, the soft pink lips and the hint of her tight belly where it met the towel. I set a hand on her left cheek and drew closer.
She let out a gasp as the needle hit. I bit my lip, blinked a few times, then started the slow and methodical process of outlining the stencil. She made little noises every now and then, drawing breaths against the pain. The thin black lines rose up slightly as I moved, surrounded by a slight blush. After about fifteen minutes, I had finished the outline and all the black highlights on the left side. As I gently dabbed her with a cool washcloth, she let out a combined moan and sigh.
“I’m going to start the other side now, then fill in the colors on the flowers and tendrils. We’ll do the V last, okay?”
“Okay,” she answered, panting slightly. “Can I… can I ask you something?”
“Of course.”
She threw her black hair aside and looked over her shoulder. “What does ‘CJ’ stand for?”
I blinked a few times and leaned closer. “Carmen,” I said softly. “My name is Carmen Jansen.”
Her eyes traveled down the front of my shirt. “Beautiful,” she whispered, then met my gaze again. “That’s a beautiful name. Nice to meet you, Carmen.”
I swallowed against a lump that had taken hold within my throat, and fleetingly worried that my chin was quivering. “Nice to meet you, Violet.” She smiled and rested her head on the pillow.
After edging, highlighting and coloring both sides, I started outlining the V. Her gasps grew stronger. I moved the light closer and leaned in. As I went lower, following the letter to its bottom tip, I could smell her. She was wet. Her womanly sweetness moved into me, permeating me, making my senses tingle as they never had before. God, how I wanted her—to touch and taste her, know every inch of her soft skin. I wanted to hear her moan and scream. My mind flashed an image of her head thrown back, hands grabbing my hair and holding me against the aching delight of her clit. My breath came quicker, and I knew she could feel it landing upon her tender flesh.
Finishing the outline, I ripped open a sterile three-point needle. She watched over her shoulder, mouth slightly open as I mixed a variety of blue and purple shades in the dipping tray.
By the time I neared filling in the letter, her gasps had turned to moans. Violet’s face, pressed sideways against the pillow by the arching of her back, was covered with a scattering of hair and tiny beads of sweat. Her left hand was atop mine as I held her buttocks apart. Her right was tucked beneath her stomach. Two of her fingers were making frantic circles before disappearing. They emerged, slick and shiny, to race over her clit again and again.
Squirming upon my stool, I came twice just watching her.
“CJ?… CJ?”
I drew a breath. “What?”
“Sorry. Uhhh, it’s been almost half an hour,” Joey said. “That guy is still waiting.” I told Dylan we’d take a break and made my way to the front.
He seemed average enough, as if anyone in this world could be considered so, though nervous, the way squirrels are. Uncomfortable and twitchy. I apologized and asked what I could do for him. He flipped through a book of flash on the counter. He eventually pointed to a torn chest, ribs exposed through jagged, bleeding flesh.
“I was thinking about something like this?”
“Just like that, as it is, or do you want something similar? Can’t afford to be vague when it comes to a tattoo.” He stammered and shifted for a moment. I sent Joey in back to check on the autoclave and see if anyone wanted a bite to eat. “Okay. Tell me exactly what you’re looking for.”
He blinked a few times and lifted his T-shirt. Across his chest were four diagonal red lines, with a fifth slightly offset, which was thinner and shorter. They looked three-dimensional and I reached out to see how they had been drawn. He flinched slightly. Parts of the lines had scabbed over.
“Have you been picking at these? If you keep doing that, they’ll probably end up scarring.”
“I don’t want them as scars,” he said in a whisper. “I want them to bleed.”
While an apprentice inker, I quickly learned that people want what they want. You don’t ask them why; you just ask them if they’re sure. This guy was sure and, when I asked him a second time, he was certain again. I bit my lip and broke the unwritten rule.
“Tell me.”
After a couple of false starts, he began recounting how he and his girlfriend had gotten into an argument, some sort of big scream fest involving another girl. He didn’t go into specifics, though the dropping of his head and avoiding my eyes told me all there was to know. The argument got worse, he said, and she began to freak out. She cried and screamed and hit him—finally reaching the point where she gouged her fingers into his chest and raked him open. She ran from the house, squealing tires as she raced away. After twenty minutes and unable to think of anything else, he went after her.
When he came upon the scene, the rescue squad was using a pneumatic expander—trying to free her from the wreckage curled around a tree.
“Glass and metal everywhere and… I don’t expect you to understand,” he said. “I did that to her. I wasn’t driving, but I did it all the same. And this is all I have left. She’d still be in my arms if only I’d… I’ll pull the scabs off every day, if I have to. I just want you to help me to never forget. I’ll be left with nothing, if it fades.”
This guy would eat his own heart if he could yank it from his chest. I looked at his shirt, knowing what lay beneath, then back to him.
“I’m sorry, I can’t. No, what I mean is, I won’t.”
He stared at me, his face a blank.
“Sorry,” I said again, softly. “I’m afraid you’ll have to find someone else to do it.”
He stood there for a moment, then nodded. He rubbed his nose and, with eyes blank, shuffled out.
My gaze wandered down to the notebook before me. A chill lingered at the center of my spine as I drew the image from the plastic sleeve. It was in several crumpled pieces by the time it hit the bottom of the trash can.
When I got back to my station, Larry was putting the finishing touches on the walk-in and Dylan was leafing through a magazine. The smell of a cigarette lingered upon him.
“Are you kidding me? You haven’t even quit smoking?”
He smiled and shrugged, favoring the shoulder I’d been working on. “What can I tell you, CJ? Can’t help myself, I guess!”
“Turn around! Just turn around and assume the position!” He let out a little chuckle. Damn it, Dylan, I thought, reaching for a new pair of gloves.
After closing the shop, I went upstairs and popped a frozen dinner in the microwave. Twelve days had passed; twelve days since I had told her that I needed to be sure of myself. The only thing I was certain of was that I was little more than a shadow of who I’d been. I turned on the television, quietly beseeching it to numb me. I thought of that guy, wanting his cuts to be everlasting. Then memories of Vi flowed into my mind, as I knew they would.