"What I think," she said after a bit, "is you should make your peace with the Supreme Being, however you may conceive of it. Full church confession."
Jones gave a short, harsh laugh. "Oh, sure. Saint Dismas could really help me."
"You never know."
"I'm not of the faith. I don't belong."
"You do now. I'd say you definitely qualify as incurably informed. Let me see Keely's note again."
He gave it back to her, and she read it over as he worked his fingers up her neck to the base of her skull. " 'Dive, dive' could only mean-"
"I know what it means," she said. " 'Divide, the cap and green eggs over easy, to go. Bdee-bdee.' The 'bdee-bdee' is a nice touch, actually."
Jones laughed again. "Yah, sure is. Keely's the one who needs help, not me. That B amp;E shit. I told him someday he'd get caught. I told him. And I begged him to get help-"
"The same kind of help you got? Implants from some feelgood mill that doesn't give a shit as long as your insurance company comes across?" She shrugged away from him and went to a small laptop on a table in the corner of the tent. The intricate climbing ivy pattern displayed on the screen was rotating through a sequence of views from different angles. She danced her fingers over the keyboard. The ivy pattern grew several more leaves. She pressed another key; the screen partitioned itself into two halves, scooting the ivy over to the right. A menu appeared on the left.
"I'll see what anyone knows," she said, touching a line on the menu with her little finger. "Eat that note."
"I don't like to die with anything in my stomach."
She sighed but didn't answer. On the left half of the screen, the menu had been replaced by the legend, Dr. Fish's Answering Machine in large, plain block letters. One-handed, she typed the word tattoos on the screen.
U/I or d/I? came the response.
U/I, she typed, and after waiting a moment she pressed one more key. The partition line in the center of the screen disappeared as the design was uploaded and the two halves merged into one. The rotating ivy froze and then faded away.
The doctor thanks you for your patronage and reminds you to eat right, get plenty of rest, detox regularly, and consult your physician before beginning any exercise program.
She reached for a cigarette as the screen went blank. "Nobody knows a thing," she said. "I'll find the answering machine tomorrow and see if-"
There was a soft thump behind her. Jones had keeled over on the packed sand, dead. She groaned. "You shit. You actually did it, you piece of useless fucking trash. I should just dump you. I would dump you, but Keely would care. God knows why."
She turned back to the laptop and called up the stored copy of the skull-and-roses pattern Jones had been looking at earlier. Interesting how he'd been drawn to that one. It supported her theory that everyone had one special tattoo-at least one- applied or not. Of course, the way things were with him, he might simply have been drawn to the skull, but she had other designs that suggested death far more strongly than that one, and he'd barely noticed those.
Partitioning the screen again, she called up the E-mail menu and prepared to upload the skull-and-roses pattern. She added a short form letter:
Here is the latest design in your subscription to the Tattoo-of-the-Month Club. We ask that you pick it up at your earliest convenience, and that you consult your physician before skin integrity is compromised.
She pressed the upload key and waited. The screen blanked again except for a small square blinking in the lower right-hand corner. Minutes passed. She left the buffer open and went over to the case in the chair. He was passed out or asleep. She pulled him out of the chair and stretched him out near the entrance. In a little while the kids would show up looking for eat-money; she could pay them to drag him back to his usual spot under one of the piers. Then she hefted Jones into the chair and bared his left arm.
Maybe she ought to give him the skull-and-roses just to make him feel better, she thought, and then decided against it. If he was choosy, let him pay for the privilege. She remembered him when he'd gone from trying to crack video to just being a hanger-on, the type who basically helped you get toxed. The only difference between him and someone like Valjean, was Valjean had managed to stay detoxed long enough to put together a decent band. Or maybe she was just feeling pissy because she'd had the inclination to pick a vocation that required her to do it sober.
The laptop beeped discreetly, and she went back to it.
On my way. The words blinked twice and then vanished. She recalled the ivy pattern, sized it, and set it to print out. The small cube-shaped printer spat a narrow strip of paper at her. She took it to Jones and pressed it down on the inside of his forearm, smoothing it against his flesh with two fingers. A minute later she peeled the paper away and looked at the ivy design on the pale skin. Perfect offset. She picked up her needle.
The tent flap opened, and two kids came in. She knew the husky fifteen-year-old, but his skinny friend must have been a recent arrival. Didn't look a day over twelve. Getting old, she thought.
"Put him back where you got him," she said, pointing at the case on the ground. "And if you can't, remember where you end up sticking him so you can tell me exactly."
The big kid nodded.
"And then don't get lost," she went on. "I'll need you to load this one for a friend." She gestured slightly with Jones's arm.
The kid took a step forward and squinted at Jones dubiously. His friend crowded behind him, looking from her to Jones and back with large, frightened eyes. "Scan him flat," said the big kid.
"He was dead, he's just comatose now."
"Whack it for a mark." He pointed at the designs.
"You'll do it out of the kindness of your heart," she laughed. "We'll talk tattoos later. Much later."
He lifted his chin belligerently. "Hey, I'm packed. Whacked two yesterday."
"Honey, what I've forgotten about finding floating boards it'll take you the rest of your life to learn."
He looked over at the laptop covetously. The ivy design was rotating on the screen again. "Mark me?"
"It's spoken for."
His round face puckered sullenly. "N.g. to leave the cap off," he said. "Someone could crash the party."
"And someone who hacks me could find die doctor is in." She gestured at the case. "Just return my file for me and stick around, and then we'll discuss it. In English, please, I don't talk your squawk. I'm not going to stone you. I never have, have I?"
He pointed at Jones. "That's a stone." He and his friend each grabbed a leg and dragged the case out of the tent.
Kids, she thought, starting on the ivy. She had it mostly done by the time Rosa showed up.
2
The real stone-home bitch about night court was having to stay awake for it.
Sitting at the back of the well-populated courtroom, jammed between some fresh-face named Clarence or Claw and a null-and-void wearing a bail-jumper's Denver Boot, Gina tried to calculate her immediate prospects. Hit-and-run-probably fifty, since she'd only been an attendee, not a conspirator; a hundred if the judge got stoked by the time her turn rolled around. Possession of controlled substances would be another hundred. Public intoxication, disorderly conduct, failure to report a hit-and-run, trespassing, and resisting arrest-call it a hundred and fifty, red-eye special rate, possibly two hundred. The resisting charge was a stone-home joke, as far as she was concerned. She'd only run, she hadn't swung on anybody once she'd been caught. Like it wasn't natural to run like hell when a hyped-up battalion of cops came at you.