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Chapter Three
Elijah
“Says right here that three and a half inches are all a girl needs to reach an orgasm,” Waldo said randomly at the shop the next day. Waldo was his nickname. His real name was Walter, but everyone called him Waldo because he was a scrawny little shit and looked like the guy from the books. Just graduated high school a year ago, I believed.
I smirked and shook my head as I turned away from him and returned to the tattoo I was doing. Waldo reminded me of myself ten years ago. Gangly with long hair and god-awful tiny tattoos scattered all across his arm from practicing on himself. I had long since covered up all my shitty failures. He hadn’t reached that stage yet, or maybe he wouldn’t. He might stay a bony man all his life as well. I hadn’t but working out had been my choice.
“Where does it say that?” Wendy spoke without glancing up from the guy’s arm she was working on. She came from my other shop. I’d known her for years, and she’d been the only one that liked the idea of moving. Wendy knew it had been a risk, but her girlfriend had been excited about it as well. Six months in, and it hadn’t been a failure. Jim and Lance were my other two artists, but they were out grabbing lunch before Jim’s appointment arrived. Waldo wasn’t a tattooist yet, more like one in training. He sat around and watched everyone else. He was too inexperienced to ink someone, but eventually, we would let him. One day. The kid had potential, we all saw that six months ago when he stumbled in on the day we opened.
“On Facebook,” he answered.
Everyone laughed including me. “You should be in good shape then, kid,” I said as I swiveled around in my chair to get some more black ink.
“Fuck you, Elijah,” he spat, and even the customers laughed.
“How’s the new place?” Wendy asked me.
“A mess,” I told her. “Want to come set it up for me?”
“Fuck that. If Cheryl hadn’t been the one to fix our apartment, our stuff would still be in boxes.”
“So, you’re here for good?” the girl in my chair asked. I didn’t take my attention away from her thigh but she sounded excited.
“I’m originally from here,” I said, tattooing the outline of her flowers. Every girl wanted flowers, feathers, an infinity sign… You know, girly stuff. I thought of the little thief wondering how much of a demon worshipper she’d think I was if I had flowers on my arm instead of black and white images of monsters, crosses, and all-around creepy shit. Maybe I am a little morbid. I was a horror movie junkie and thought my drawings came from the crazy flicks I watched, but I knew that wasn’t true. All my creations came from my twisted mind.
Shit. Now the kid had me thinking that I might actually be some demon in human form… It explained so much.
“Do you have a girlfriend?” I didn’t bother to look up at the customer’s face. If I did, I might give her the illusion of being interested in whatever she was thinking.
“He’s single,” Wendy told her. “For a reason though. The guy’s an asshole.”
“I like assholes,” flower girl piped in. Did she really say that? Now I had to be even more adamant about not making eye contact. Luckily, she had a nice thigh and as cliché as flower tattoos were on a girl, it didn’t change the fact that they were beautiful. Even more when it was my design that stamped their skin.
Throughout the three-hour session with her, the girl was determined to have a go at me. Wendy had mentioned I was single on purpose. I finally glanced back up at her. Pretty. Dark eyes and hair, but most noticeably young, and I was a month shy of turning thirty—too old to deal with clingy. Besides, some men—even in this century—preferred to actually like the girl, have some sort of deep attraction to her to want to fuck her. I had one random hookup in my life and it was less than memorable. I had been horny—that happened sometimes—and she’d been available. Even my first time had been better than that, and Talia and me, at sixteen, hadn’t known what the fuck we were doing. Ninety-nine percent of the time, I only wanted sex when there was someone I could semi-like enough to put up with. I enjoyed fucking, but I liked my work more. Some days it was all about which one worked my nerves more—women or my job. Women were a headache, enough said. Besides, I wasn’t attracted to young chicks, so this one was shit out of luck.
“Waldo will get you up front,” I said, shutting her down as I slipped off the gloves and put on new ones to sterilize the entire area. I discarded everything—standard procedure—but our used needles and gloves couldn’t go in with our normal trash. I’d done this so many times that my body went through the motions without me even having to think about it. I never acknowledged the girl’s frown as she finally shuffled away from my chair. It took a good ten minutes before I finished cleaning up my workbench. I had just enough time to grab a bite to eat before my next appointment.
Another day in the life of Elijah Parker.
I got home around ten minutes after eight that night. The parlor closed at eight through the week, and nine o’clock on Fridays and Saturdays. Normally, I’d lift some weights when I got home, but I still had all my stuff to unpack.
“What the fuck?” I muttered as I pulled into my driveway. It was pitch black outside, middle of March and still cold as hell outside yet there were a few idle brats hanging out in my yard. They had to be from the apartments. They appeared to be young teens. One of them held a cigarette in his hand.
I slammed my door shut as I got out of the truck. “Mind telling me what the hell you guys are doing on my property?”
Smoking Kid asked, “You bought this place?”
“Yeah,” I told him. “Now get the fuck out of my yard before I make you.”
“I ain’t afraid of you,” one of them muttered, yet they were all scurrying off toward the apartments.
“You should be,” I hissed as I locked my truck.
One of them whistled and catcalled. I glanced back to see what they were going on about. The street lights illuminated the mom and the little girl as she held her hand, walking to her car.
“They’re doing it again,” the little girl said to her mom.
“Ignore them. They’re just kids,” her mom said with a sigh. “Let’s take you to Mamaw and Papaw’s. I’ll pick you up in the morning when I get off work.”
“Can you get me some gravy and biscuits on the way home?”
The mom frowned. “Mamaw will make you some.”
“Yay!” the little girl cheered as her mom buckled her up in the back and shut the door. I studied the mom from head to toe while she did that. Was she wearing white scrub pants? She was a lot tinier than I first realized. She was all belly. The mom took a minute to breathe and grab her back, then for some reason, her gaze fell on me. She flinched before finally saying, “What?”
I was staring. I’d been watching them this entire time. “What?” I echoed back. She shook her head and waddled over to the driver’s side, got in, and drove away.
Huh? So the mom worked after all. And night shift? Did that mean the dad wasn’t around? I thought of her expression after she had left… She was awfully young to be a mother of two. She looked younger than the girl I tattooed today.
Oh well. I didn’t care, I told myself as I walked inside.
