Tattoos: A Novel Page 18

  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.

  I took the public bus to the hospital and hurried to the front door. Since it was still early, I used my security card to open the door. The lady at the front desk who looked unfamiliar, seemed too busy working on her computer to have noticed me. As I did every time I passed through the foyer, I paused to look at the decorations and thought about Marilee coming to the apartment for Christmas dinner. I was stoked that we were going to spend the holiday together, but also a bit worried. I’d been to her place, seen the opulence that was an everyday occurrence for her. I couldn’t help but feel embarrassed about the paltry digs Gran and I had.

  I never liked to think too far ahead into the future because you never knew how things could change, but imagining Marilee sitting at our tiny kitchen table in our closet sized apartment, didn’t leave me feeling warm and fuzzy inside. If I was being honest, there were so many miles between our lifestyles that I didn’t know how we’d make it work after she was out of the hospital. The limo alone had completely tapped me out, and had meant that I couldn’t buy Gran the bed she so desperately needed. It would be a cold day in hell before I could pony up enough cash to make a repeat performance.

  The third floor was quiet. Quite a few patients had finished their chemo runs and were home between cycles since it was just a week before Christmas. Marilee’s next cycle had been postponed until after the holidays. Not that it made much of a difference since according to her parents, she’d be bunking in the hospital anyway. It still made no sense to me that they were still being jerks about taking her home. But if I was being truthful, I selfishly wanted her to stay because I didn’t know how I would have made it through not seeing her for the holidays.

  I made my way to Marilee’s room. The door was still closed meaning doctors rounds hadn’t started yet so she was probably still asleep. I pushed the door open and spotted her curled up under her duvet. It always amazed me how tiny and child-like she appeared in the bed. I tiptoed to the side. Even her head was buried beneath the covers. Unlike me, who needed a constant supply of fresh air, Marilee loved to sleep with her head under the blankets. I started to pull the duvet away from her head, careful not to wake her up, when she sprang up and yelled boo.

  “Shit,” I hollered, staggering back. Marilee broke into boisterous laughter. Her cheeks went pink almost immediately.

  “The expression on your face was so worth setting my alarm for,” Marilee said between heaving breaths. Tears streamed down her face and she gripped her stomach with every giggle. I was on her in seconds. She collapsed into a ball, knowing what was coming next. Even so, I managed to find an unprotected area around her ribs. I worked my fingers into the spaces between her bones, a place I was well acquainted with and where I knew that she was super ticklish.

  “Jax, no, I can’t breathe,” Marilee said between laughs.

  Worried that I was going overboard, I stopped. That’s when she counterattacked. She slipped her hand into my jacket, dipped down into the area just below my armpit, a place where only she knew I was ticklish. Then I was gasping for breath between loud guffaws. I didn’t know when it went from a tickle fest to us kissing, but that’s exactly how the doctors found us. With Marilee straddling me, our lips locked in a kiss, one of her hands tucked into the waistband of my jeans. And with me, both my hands under the back of her t-shirt, caressing the bare skin of her lower back.

  We’d only realized that they were there when someone cleared their throat so loudly that it was impossible not to hear. Marilee when five shades of red. I think even I did the male form of blushing, whatever that was called.

  “I’ve got to get out of here,” I said, standing up. I smoothed out my leather jacket and ran a hand through my hair. I gave Marilee a chaste peck on the cheek, as if we hadn’t just been in the throes of too much fun, just minutes before. Marilee, still flushed, managed to look a little tousled even though she didn’t have a hair on her head. She nodded, cocking an eyebrow my way suggestively. I backed away from her. I didn’t trust myself not to start kissing her again, despite the fact that the room was filled with doctors and their students.

  “Bye Dr. McClaren,” I said, giving the team a wide birth. He shook his head. He didn’t bother hiding the amusement in his eyes.

  I was out of the hospital and on a bus back to the Strip twenty minutes later. In my opinion I hadn’t had near enough time with Marilee. There was no question that working on the list on one of the few days off I had was a sacrifice, but I hoped it was worth it. I tried to convince myself that she wanted me to spend time on the Peace Project, as much as I did.

  I got off the bus at my stop. I pulled out my list, crumpled from being repeatedly folded and unfolded, and was more than satisfied that I was already down to the last five people. I planned to make a new list as soon as the holidays were over.

  I knew money couldn’t buy dignity but I hoped it would come close.

  Joanna Kelso had been on the streets since she was ten. Unlike Max and Zeke who’d found each other, Joanna hadn’t had the luxury of friends, and from what I knew had been used by practically every person she’d bothered to trust. Now somewhere between twenty-five or twenty-six, she was close to finishing the last chapter of her life. No matter what I said or did, there would be no happy ending for Joanna. But I figured that if I could make the ending a little more comfortable for her, then that’s what I’d do.

  I walked to the area where I was pretty sure I’d find her. Tucked behind the dumpsters that sat in the back lot of a Italian restaurant, Joanna merely existed. Drawing in air and exhaling it, eating when she could, and going hungry when she couldn’t. I skirted the restaurant and was a little worried that she wasn’t there when I didn’t immediately see her. But when I saw the tip of a filthy shoe that was so battered I was surprised that it still held together, I knew I’d found her.

  Wedged in the space between the huge metal garbage cans that stank of
rotting food, old oil and even human waste, Joanna sat. Her eyes were closed, her mouth agape and for a moment I thought that I was too late, that she’d already left the land of the living.

  As if she sensed me, she flicked an eye open. Bloodshot and watery, one dazed eye peered at me. I was a little stunned that she was still alive.

  “Joanna?” I said, hoping I wouldn’t startle her. I was quite sure that she knew me, but she was so far gone that I didn’t know if she’d even remember.

  “Hey Jax, want a date?” she said, her words slurring. Her dark hair was matted in a clump on her head, her face was dirt smudged and skeletal. Even though I knew her age she looked double that. She wore a thin cotton shirt that had once been yellow, but now was a sickly shade of grey-brown. The black hoodie she wore over her t-shirt looked as if something had chewed out parts of it. Her black sweat pants looked much the same as the hoodie.

  I smiled and shook my head. “Not today Joanna,” I said. I reached my hand out to her.

  “I want to take you to a place that’s warmer than here, where someone will take care of you.”

  Joanna locked on me with her open eye and grinned. “Nobody takes care of me,” she said with a mirthless laugh. I hated to admit that up until this very moment, it had probably been true.

  “Today is different,” I said.

  I got hold of her hand, bony and covered in scabbed over sores. I tugged her forward. She was so light that it was as if I’d plucked a dandelion from a crack in the sidewalk. Joanna fell forward. I caught her in my arms. Her smell was pungent of unclean and dying. I did my best to ignore it, bundling her in the heavy sleeping bag that I’d bought for her. Too weak to protest or even ask questions, she went limp in my arms, like an empty paper sack. I was once again surprised that she hadn’t succumbed already to the unforgiving cold.

  With Joanna still in my arms, I walked to the front of the restaurant. People shot me disgusted glances; I ignored them. I was doing something that they weren’t, helping the helpless. It took longer than I wanted to flag down a taxi, and even when I did I had to promise the driver that I would pay him extra if he took the fare. He drove us to the address I gave him and I went good on my promise to pay him extra.