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Conor
I never got distracted while working on a tattoo. It was like a sort of trance I entered. The methodical rise and fall of the tattoo gun. The art coming to life beneath my fingertips. Wiping a rag across skin and revealing something new, a literal transformation before my eyes. It was some of the rare times when I didn’t have to be Conor Mac Haol, when I didn’t have to feel like I was living the wrong life; I could just disappear into the work. I could become no one, absolutely no one.
But then again, never had the sidewalk just outside the parlour’s big front window ever been quite so busy.
For not the first time that afternoon, Declan had to jab his finger at my chest to shake me back to the task at hand, me realising stupidly that the low drone in my ears was coming from the gun running in my suspended hand.
“Sorry,” I said again, bending back over his ribs on his left side. “What were you saying?”
It was a bad time to be distracted from my work. It wasn’t like we got enough clients into the shop to screw up a little bit one here or there. Besides, Declan was another one of those what someone on the outside of our relationship would call a “friend”. Add onto that the fact that this “friend”, despite falling about a head shy of me, somehow had packed on about twenty more pounds of muscle. I supposed it was common sense to keep the world’s number one MMA fighter as contented as possible. Even as I tried to focus once more on the scrawling cursive “G” design, I found my eyes trailing up toward the windows as a pair of college-aged girls passed by with Starbucks coffees and Gucci backpacks. How was I supposed to focus when suddenly the suburbs were invading?
Curious, I was leaning my head to try and spy more of them when a pain burst in my arm. I hissed in pain and rubbed at the spot where Declan had punched me. I gave him an incredulous look through watering eyes.
“You still weren’t listening,” he said with a disinterested shrug.
“I heard you,” I grumbled. “But I’m still not taking your money.”
This earned me somehow another punch to the arm. In exactly the same spot so it hurt even more than the first. Declan wasn’t the best for no reason.
“I said I heard you!”
I raised a threatening fist of my own. I didn’t have anywhere near the talent or the strength of Declan, but I trained with him at his own gym and I could get a hit or two in before he took me down. Or at least, I thought I stood a chance to.
“I know,” Declan said, grinning at me. “That was for being an asshole. I’m rolling in more money than I know what to do with. You might as well take some before my wife does.”
He laughed, but I saw that there was something lingering behind his eyes.
“Should I stop?” I asked, glancing down at the half finished initial of his new wife, Giselle, the international supermodel.
“I’m only kidding, you dickwad,” Declan said. “Things are great.”
I couldn’t claim to be particularly attuned to others’ emotions, but even I noticed how Declan avoided my eye as he said this, how he picked at the stitching at the edge of the leather tattoo chair, how he changed the subject the first chance he got.
“At least let me pay you for the cost of the tattoo,” he said. “I can’t take no for an answer on that.”
I tugged my attention away from a cab that had pulled up outside the shop, though it was more than difficult as four people piled out, checking their phones and pointing down the street. At this rate, Declan’s tattoo was going to take all fucking afternoon.
“Declan,” I said, “you know I can’t take your money. We’re friends.”
“Yeah, and as your friend, I want to help,” Declan said. “I mean, you clearly need it. Goddammit!”
“Sorry,” I mumbled, wiping away a bead of blood from his side. “Did that hurt?”
“You did that on purpose!” Declan shouted.
I gave him a level gaze.
“It’s a tattoo,” I said, waving the gun for him to see.
Declan narrowed his eyes at me in suspicion, but then settled back into position, shaking his head.
“You fucker,” he muttered and after a few quiet moments as I worked added, “Alright, how about this? How about you let me promote the shop? Eh? Perfect solution between friends!”
Despite sensing even more movement on the curb outside Dublin Ink, I remained focused on the tattoo. Declan, who had clearly expected a quick approval from me, flicked my forehead.
“Hey!” he said loudly.
I pushed back slightly on my stool and drew a hand over my hair.
