She looks at me for a second. Then she opens the door and holds out her hand. I give her my phone. She types, gives it back.
"Don't text me before noon," she says. "I'm not a person before noon."
"Noted."
I walk home. Three blocks in, I send it.
cookie campaign: day one. she said no but slower this time. your girl patti smith would be proud.
My phone buzzes three minutes later.
patti smith would have set the cookies on fire and walked in like she owned the place
I laugh on the sidewalk. Tupperware-less, still not on the roster. But closer than I was last time.
It’s the middle of the afternoon and the bar is closed and Teague isn’t there, obviously. But I stand on the sidewalk and look at the sign, the neon A that flickers even when it’s off, and I think about Patti Smith walking into CBGB with nothing but a voice and something to say.
I’ve got cookies and a speech that didn’t work and sneakers that know every block in this neighborhood. It’s not nothing. It’s not poetry over electric guitar. But it’s mine.
I turn around again and walk home. Mom asks how my day was. I tell her it was great.
Chapter Eight
Teague
Vanessa’s chair is the back one. Far corner, past the flash wall and the counter where the receptionist sits, through a doorway that separates the walk-in area from the private stations. The first time I sat here I was twenty-two and terrified and pretending I wasn’t, and Vanessa looked at my reference photos and said “these are shit but I know what you’re going for” and then spent six hours turning my half-formed ideas into lines I’d want on my body forever.
Three years later I don’t bring reference photos. I bring coffee and a playlist and I sit down and let her work.
“Hold still,” Vanessa says, for the fourth time in twenty minutes. She’s hunched over my left forearm, her needle running the outline of the koi’s tail. The buzz fills the room like a second pulse. “You’re twitching.”
“I’m not twitching.”
“Your tendons are twitching. Tell your tendons.”
I flatten my arm on the rest and focus on not moving. The forearm is tender. Not the worst spot, that honor belongs to the ribs where she did the geometric piece and I almost bit through my own lip, but tender enough that my body keeps trying to flinch and I keep telling it to stop.
Vanessa works in silence for a while. The shop playlist is on, somebody else’s, something ambient and electronic that I’d never listen to by choice but that works in here because the point of the music is to disappear behind the needle. Her station is clean, organized, everything in reach. Black gloves, ink caps lined up by color, paper towels folded in a stack. She’s meticulous. It used to annoy me. Now I understand it’s the reason every line she puts on me is exactly where it should be.
“How’s the bar?” she asks, not looking up.
“Fine. Same.”
“Carl still in Tampa?”
“Carl’s always in Tampa.”
“You closer on the number?”
“Getting there.”
Vanessa nods. She’s one of maybe three people who know about the contract. I don’t talk about it because talking about it makes it feel fragile, like saying it out loud will remind the universe to put an obstacle in front of it. But Vanessa knows because Vanessa was there the night Carl first mentioned selling, two years ago, when I was sitting in this chair getting the moth on my shoulder and he called to ask if I’d be interested in buying and I said yes before he finished the sentence.
“You eating?” she asks.
“I eat.”
Snorting, she shakes her head. "Sure you do."
