Her hands were like emollient even as her words seemed to pull open the corners of his old wounds. He sighed, moaned, he could not help it. The words she spoke and her touching him felt like two separate lovers working at his body. So long as he was in a position of checked propriety and ethical administration he was in no danger of abandoning restraint. But he knew he could not take her coming to him like this. It was too thrilling a concept, too powerful a stimulant. And if she kept speaking, he thought, if she used her words like a second intrigue, allied with that first contact of touch behind his fabric barriers, the battle would be lost and he may as well throw her down. All this time Cyril Parks had commended himself on his propriety and manners as she sat in her undergarments or without them, her small redcurrant nipples hardening when he coloured them into black pupils, dislocated from desire, so that their tips might have been scorched by the sun, not touched by a laden, motorized quill and a human hand.
She wasn’t watching his body now. Her eyes were closed and she was done talking. The tattoos seemed dead on her, stony, inanimate as mineral lode bound tight into the rock face. Looking down, he sensed the true arrival of a different weather system settling around her, the absence of disturbance. It had come without warning or forecast, as with everything else that was immediate and unforeseen about her, the eruption of rage, the hiss of defiance, laughter, that which she could turn her mind to, the turning of games and tables and opinions. There had been no indication from her that day as she arrived that she would soon deliver a response to his unassuming romantic notions. There had been no suggestion that she wanted to give him this gift. He sighed again as her fingertips swept along the waistband of his breeches. All the languages and conveyances she knew and this dialogue of touch might have been her most natural. He wanted to put his hands in her hair, or on her breasts, there was nothing separating him from that, but he kept them gripped tight on the dresser behind him. He might have said her name, he did not know. He might have made love to her and meant it, hunting out her preferences, slaughtering them with generosity, but that he was sure afterwards she would walk away, casually. Her hands were almost too light on him now as she moved them, making him tense and lock his muscles together so as not to convulse and jerk as new nerve endings sparked under her caress. He found he was biting down hard on his lip. Blood was tricking along his pelvic bone and he had the unmistakable sensation of becoming heavier, fuller, firmer. He knew if he drew Grace in towards him now, so that their skin met, her body would feel a fraction colder than his own, and the state of her would tell him her mood was made of vapour. It would be like touching a soft white effluent, like that quiet portion of the northern lights, the last, most obscurely hidden element of the atmospheric wonder, the humble white pulse of illumination almost lost behind the seeping blood of the sky. And his hands would move right through her. Like Aurora Borealis, he knew he just had to let her be, in all her loveliness, not knowing how much of herself she would disclose, how much she would come to him, until she was gone.
Then, as always, in the opposingly hemisphered life of Cyril Parks, with beauty arrived its disagreeable, diametric partner. Grace was stepping in towards him, perhaps to take the pearl of his ear into her mouth or to find his neck, when a fist began to pound savagely on the side of the booth.
— Hey! English asshole! Got a bone to pick with you. Hey! I know you’re in there, saw you go in.
Grace held very still for a moment, varnished with calm, as if having been lacquered and set midpoint in the arc of her kiss. Her shoulders were shining. The cursing and banging continued. Then she seemed to wake from the mood and the restive energy rushed back into her. She removed her hands and nodded.
— Yes. Yes. Go.
Cy’s eyes were unconvinced, and loyal to hers, telling her that there was nowhere he would rather be at that moment than absolutely right here with her.
— Go on, go. It’s all right.
After a moment of composure, the unpleasant redirection of his pleasant hardness with his back turned away from the woman who had encouraged it, Cy appeared from behind the piece of vibrating wood. His belly was still out, his white shirt billowing like a sail around the tattooed ship, and he was wearing an expression that informed the intruder he might have been about to discover the divine secrets of the universe before being interrupted. Outside was a man who had been holding his own vinous face in a pose of disgruntlement all afternoon. He was sauced, soused, drunk enough that he could not maintain a plumb line of balance. He pointed to his forearm.
— Not happy, buddy. Remember me? Not happy.
— I can see that. What are the chances of you coming back later this afternoon?
— Hah! It’s a mess, you did a shitty job. And I want my money back.
The man looked dishevelled, wired and exhausted at once, as if he had not left the Island since his visit to the booth four days ago. Coney Island was persuasive when it wanted to be, cajoling its weaker-willed visitors into enjoying its offerings longer than stamina and finances should feasibly permit. Until they were deprived of money and reason and sleep, and then they spoiled, and everything they had done sickened them and they would try to retrace their crimes in order to repair the damage. But this was one argument that Cyril Parks never ever lost. He could not afford to. He took hold of the arm in question and examined it, then pushed it away.
— No. You’ve picked it. You’ve picked the scab off it. I told you not to. I told you it would itch like crazy for a few days like a chicken pox but not to touch it. Did I not tell you that?
— I never touched it. You fucked it up in the beginning and I paid you good money too! Sign says freehand, that’s why I came, thought you’d be a pro.
— No. You picked that scab off, like a little kiddie because it was itchy and you couldn’t keep your fingers off it. I can see the spot where you did it. It’s patchy. That doesn’t happen unless it’s been messed with, right? The colour’s come out just as I said it would. I’ll fix it for you, but you’ll not get a penny back off me. Not a cent, y’hear me. That was quality work when you walked out my door. I should charge you for the time, but I won’t. Count yourself lucky. Now, can you come back later? I’m very busy.
The man had not come down to the booth to be placated or back down. He had come to transfer the responsibility of his rash and ruinous vacation at the fair to another party. He lingered. He wanted his say and to feel that he had won a little victory, salvaged something of himself. At that moment, Grace stepped out through the incomplete entrance of the booth, redressed and scowling faintly. Glad to have an audience for the drama, the man let fly a string of insults.
— You’re a lying English bastard. You’re not touching me again, no way. You did substandard work on me and now it’s fucked and it’ll always be fucked. You’ve probably messed up this poor lady too, goddamn bastard. You Coney freak — I knew not to come down to this wackplace for a tattoo.
There were occasions when Cy had to use his full height, standing up slowly, unfurling, and widening his eyes, to become the professional tough man of the business in order to settle disputes or knock the wind out of a conflict. This would have been exactly one of those times — the complainer was certainly about to get punchy, he wanted nothing less than to fight — and a brawl would have doubtless ensued had it not been for the knife that sliced the air an inch or so past the man’s nose, close enough that he felt its sharp metallic breath on his face, and it struck the boards of the booth with a dull sucking thud as the blade’s tip was swallowed by wood. The weapon’s blue hilt shone like ore in the summer light. A few pedestrians paused on the Walk to observe the scuffle, or to catch the act. Incredulously the rumpled man turned to look at Grace. Cy also turned to her in shock. She had her arms crossed over her chest, as if she had never so much as taken aim. But her face was transmogrified and looked suddenly old though, weathered and deeply lived in, like a caravan tinker widow’s, or as if it had come up like a grim fairytale from under the facade of a younger woman. Her eyebrows were raised high on her lined forehead in questioning and challenge.