Sorry, Ella. I’m getting ahead of myself suggesting dinners and weekends away. Let’s start again. Will you join me for coffee? I promise it’ll be fun.
(Tonight, after you’ve retreated to the privacy of your bedroom, know that I’ll be nearby in Number 9 imagining those tapered fingers drawing circles between your wet thighs as you consider my invitation. And if my hunch is right and you find my invitation appealing, please withdraw those sweet-tasting fingers and write me your reply. Then, if you should find sleep eludes you, just take that note and tiptoe along our dim, quiet corridor and push it underneath my door—straight into my eager, wet fingers.)
I look forward to hearing back from you soon.
Stevie
P.S. A note under my door would be just fine.
NOTHING IF IT FADES
Nikki Adams
I dabbed the blood from his left shoulder blade, checked for gaps and light spots, then started switching out the three point for a single. “Gonna start the fines now. You doing all right, Dylan?”
“Uh-huh, I’m good.”
I cast a quick look around. Larry was in his groove, buzzing away on a walk-in I hadn’t seen before. The high school kid was somewhere up front, rearranging the flash, cleaning up or just plain goofing off. I leaned a little closer. “Sweetie, you look like you lost more weight. Sure you’re okay?”
Dylan shifted his head just enough for me to glimpse the curve of an eye. He swallowed. “I’m okay.” A slight pull came to the corner of his mouth. “They say I’ve still got some sand in the glass, so don’t you worry!” I kissed the gold and yellow koi that perpetually swam down his other shoulder, then turned back to my gun. “Are you hitting on me again?”
“Yea, right! You just keep dreaming, Bucko!”
“Tell me something, CJ? Have you joined the club yet?”
Everyone called me CJ—even the sign out front said so, leaving many to approach the door before realizing the nature of my little business. Some would wander in then later come back as customers. The first months in my two-story house and business had been slow, but word soon got around. Things picked up and I hired Larry, who, good in his own right, brought even more business. I was one of only a few female ink-slingers in the state who ran her own shop. Some said I was the best. That always struck me as kind of funny, since I thought I was just meticulous—perhaps obsessively so.
“Which club is that? You’re gonna have to be a little more specific.”
“The ‘More Than One Tat’ club,” Dylan said with a smile.
“The one I have is just fine.”
“Oh, come on! What kind of inker only has one tattoo?”
“My kind,” I answered. “I’m the artist, not the canvas.” I loaded the needle and buzzed off the excess.
“Uh-huh. So, when are you gonna let me see it?”
“Fuck you,” I said, pushing him forward a little. “How many times you gonna ask me that? Now get comfy, and quit moving.” He snickered. I started on the whiskers of his second koi—this one to be a wealth of dazzling blues to offset the other. I wondered if, perhaps, he were entrusting them to carry him downstream—that part of him they were able to move—to a pond somewhere beyond the fear that had become his life.
Joey, the high school kid on work release, popped his head in. “CJ? There’s someone out front who wants a tat. He’s asking for you.”
“Did you tell him I’m booked solid for two months?”
“Yea, but he seems kinda particular about it.”
I blinked a few times. “How you doing, Dylan? Can you hang?”
“I’m good either way.”
“I’ll be out in ten minutes.” Joey moved off and I went back to the design on Dylan’s shoulder, soon losing myself in the fine lines of the scales. Pause, dab, reload and resume—the gentle curves, one after another, upon another, over and over. During one such pause, I heard Dylan whisper back to me.
“Have you talked to Vi?”
My world shifted, insides trembling upon that solitary word.
Vi…
Violet.
“Shouldn’t be too difficult. Who would you like to do it?”
Her long black hair rested against her shoulders as she turned her head, green eyes looking first down the hall, then back to me. “I think I’d rather… I’d prefer your hands, if that’s all right with you? I’m sorry, I—I know it’s getting late, but I’d really like to do it now. I don’t want to chicken out again!”
She was a real looker; Larry’s eyes were almost popping out as I led her back to my station. “Lower back, right? How low would you like it?”
“Very,” she said in a whisper. Knowing what that meant, I cut Larry loose, promising to pay him for the extra hour and a half. “Damn,” he whispered, shaking his head and smiling as he walked past me. I locked the door and flipped the sign to CLOSED. She waited patiently as I made a copy of her drawing—a beautiful V in Edwardian script with some sort of flower on either side.
“Could you bring a little vine near the sides of the V, kind of curling around a little, with a violet on each end? Sorry I didn‘t draw mine very well.”
“That’s okay. Well, let’s see what I can find.” I pulled up some good pictures on my laptop. She watched as I worked it up on paper. “You know, I could fill in the V in light blue, and graduate the color through different shades of violet as I go down, finishing in the deepest?” I sketched it out in colored pastel pencils, blended some of them and showed her.
“Wow, that’s it! That’s perfect!”
“Are you sure?”
“Absolutely!”
I smiled back, worked up a final stencil and gave her the consent and care forms to sign.
“Why don’t you get comfortable, and try to relax,” I said. “I can change the chair into a table, if you prefer to lie down? Totally up to you.”
“I can sit. I mean, you know—kinda straddle the chair.”
“Okay. You’ll have to hike down the jeans a little.”
I sensed her green eyes following me to the copy machine, her sweet perfume teasing my senses. Shake it off, CJ, I told myself. She’s not like that, and besides, she’s a customer. She’s putting her trust in you, so knock it off. I went back with the working stencil and found her sitting in just her little top, panties and socks, jeans folded on the corner chair, sneakers beneath. I pulled my eyes away long enough to glance at the release and her driver’s license.
“Your name’s Violet? I suppose that helped when choosing the flower!”
“Yeah, I’m kinda stuck with it.”
I explained that I had to shave the area so that errant hairs, no matter how small, wouldn’t be pushed back into the skin.
“So, how low can you go with it? I’d like it to be totally hidden beneath my panty line, if you could?”
“I can go as low as you want. Just so you know, it’s gonna light you up. The lower you go, the more sensitive it gets.”
She nodded, stood up and started easing her panties down. Then, as a ballerina might, she drew a leg almost vertically out one side, then the other. Nothing—not a solitary hair around the soft crease that vanished between her legs. Violet tossed the panties atop her jeans, smiled slightly and straddled the chair. After lathering, shaving her lower back and patting her dry, I handed her a mirror and asked her to stand. I began to locate the stencil.