“Twenty-two.”
Vanessa’s hands stop moving. She looks at me over the top of her glasses, which she wears for close work and which make her look like a librarian who could kill you.
“That’s young.”
“I know.”
“Is she—”
“She’s a customer. She comes to the bar. She likes punk.” I flex my fingers under the wrap. “That’s it.”
“Okay.” That word again, carrying everything she’s not saying. She snaps new gloves on. “Ready to go again?”
“Yep.”
I sit back in the chair. Vanessa unwraps my arm, cleans the area, starts the needle. The buzz fills the room and I close my eyes and hold still and think about nothing, which is a skill I’ve developed in this chair over three years and dozens of sessions. You learn to let the pain become background noise. You learn to go somewhere else while your body stays present.
My phone buzzes again. I don’t look.
Vanessa works for another hour. The koi takes shape, scales filling in, the orange deepening into red along the curve of the body. It hurts and I hold still and the music plays and we don’t talk about the text or the customer or whatever weird mood Vanessa thinks she’s seeing.
When we’re done, she wraps my arm in fresh plastic and tapes it down and gives me the aftercare instructions I’ve heard a hundred times and always follow because Vanessa’s ink deserves respect.
“Two weeks for the last session,” she says. “I’ll finish the water detail and the background.”
“Works for me.”
“And Teague?”
“Yeah?”
“Whatever’s not happening with whoever’s not a thing?” She pulls off her gloves. “You look lighter than you did last time you were in my chair. I’m just saying.”
I pull my jacket off the hook. The leather settles on my shoulders and the patches face out and my arm throbs under the plastic in time with my pulse.
“It’s nothing,” I say.
“Sure.” Vanessa turns to clean her station. “Same time in two weeks.”
I walk out through the shop. The receptionist waves. The flash wall is covered in designs, hundreds of them, and I glance at them every time I walk through even though I’ve seen them all. Flowers, skulls, script, animals. Maybe I'll grab some flash designs once my current piece is done.
Outside, the sun is low and the street is warm and my arm hurts and my phone has a text I haven’t read. I pull it out.
also found this band called against me! and i can’t stop playing “don’t lose touch.” is that one of yours?
Against Me! is one of mine. “Don’t Lose Touch” is one of mine. Laura Jane Grace singing about staying connected to who you are before the world tells you who to be. I listened to that song on repeat for a month when I was twenty and trying to figure out what my life was supposed to look like, and it didn’t give me answers but it gave me the feeling that not having answers was acceptable.
This girl found that song in four days. She followed the thread from the Pretenders to the Clash to Bad Brains to Against Me! and landed on the exact track that matters most to me, and she doesn’t even know what she did.
I type back.
that one’s mine. good find.
I put my phone away. Start walking home. My arm throbs. The jacket sits heavy on my shoulders. The neon A of Anthem is visible two blocks ahead, dark right now, unlit, waiting for me to turn it on tonight.
Regular. That’s all this is. A regular who’s good for business and overtips and asks questions and found Bad Brains without being told and somehow, through whatever algorithm or instinct or luck guides a twenty-two-year-old through decades of punk history, landed on the one song that I have never once played at the bar because it’s too close to something I don’t share.
I walk home. I don’t text her again tonight.
