From his mother’s description of Jerry Swallow as a traditionalist, Jack should have recognized him. A pretty woman wearing a nurse’s cap was tattooed on one of his biceps; it’s hard to be more of a traditionalist than that. The writing on Sailor Jerry’s shirt was in Japanese, as was the tattoo on his right forearm. “A Kazuo Oguri,” he told Jack proudly. So Jerry Swallow had come all the way from New Glasgow, Nova Scotia—not to mention that he’d made over a hundred phone calls.
“Old-timers keep in touch, Jackie.”
Jack thanked him for coming such a long way. “Life is a long way, young Mr. Burns,” Sailor Jerry said. “Nova Scotia isn’t all that far.”
Later in the evening, when Jack thought he’d introduced himself to everyone—the boarders’ choir keeping him company like his not-quite-virgin guards—he spotted a recognizable presence at the far end of the gym. Bob Dylan’s “Rainy Day Women # 12 & 35” was booming from the CD player when Jack edged his way toward the shy, stoned figure weaving to the music under the basketball net. His dreamy countenance, the gray wisp of whiskers on his chin—as if, even in his late forties or early fifties, his beard still hadn’t begun to grow—and something self-deprecating in his eyes, which were perpetually downcast, all reminded Jack of someone whose confidence in his own meager talent had never been high. (Not now, and not when he’d been Tattoo Theo’s young apprentice on the Zeedijk.)
“Not another broken heart,” Alice had told Robbie de Wit, when she’d said good-bye. “I’ve had enough of hearts, torn in two or otherwise.” Hence Robbie had settled for Alice’s signature on his right upper arm—the slightly faded Daughter Alice that Robbie revealed as Jack approached him.
“Still listening to der Zimmerman, Jackie?” Robbie said.
Bob’s refrain wailed around them.
But I would not feel so all alone,
Everybody must get stoned.
“Still listening to den Zimmerman, Robbie.”
“I’m really not in the same league with these guys,” Robbie de Wit told Jack, gesturing unsteadily toward the rest of the gym. “It didn’t work out for me in Amsterdam.”
“I’m sorry to hear that,” Jack told him.
“I’m in Rotterdam now. Got my own shop, but I’m still an apprentice—if you know what I mean. I’m doing okay,” he said, his head bobbing. The receding hairline had fooled Jack at first—as had the egg-shaped forehead and the deep crow’s-feet at the corners of Robbie’s pale, watery eyes.
“What happened in Amsterdam, Robbie? What happened to Mom? What made her leave?”
“Oh, Jackie—don’t go there. Let dying dogs die.” (Robbie meant “Let sleeping dogs lie,” but Jack understood him.)
“I remember the night she was a prostitute. At least she acted like one,” Jack said to him. “Saskia and Els looked after me. You brought Mom a little something to smoke, I think.”
“Don’t, Jackie,” Robbie said. “Let it go.”
“My dad didn’t go to Australia, did he?” Jack asked Robbie de Wit. “He was in Amsterdam the whole time, wasn’t he?”
“Your father had a following, Jackie. Your mom couldn’t help herself.”
“Help herself how?” Jack asked.
Robbie tripped forward, almost falling; he offered Jack the faded Daughter Alice on his upper right arm as if he were daring Jack to punch him on his mom’s tattoo. “I won’t betray her, Jack,” Robbie said. “Don’t ask me.”
“I apologize, Robbie.” Jack was ashamed of himself for being even a little aggressive with him.
Robbie put his hand on the back of Jack’s neck; bowing, off-balance, he touched his egg-shaped forehead to the tip of Jack’s nose. “Your mom loved you, Jackie. She just didn’t love anybody, not even you, like she loved William.”
The Old Girls, not counting Leslie Oastler, had gone home. The single ones—especially those Old Girls who were divorced, and proud of it—took some of the tattoo artists with them. Mr. Ramsey, bidding Jack his usual adieu—“Jack Burns!”—had taken a tattoo artist home with him, too. (Night-Shift Mike from Sailors’ Friend Tattoo in Norfolk, Virginia. Mike was indeed a friend of sailors!)
Even Miss Wong, at last in touch with the hurricane she was born in, danced up a storm—most memorably losing control of herself on the gym floor, jitterbugging with both Fronhofer brothers to “Stuck Inside of Mobile with the Memphis Blues Again.” (Miss Wong went home with the better-looking brother.)
Remarkably, the Malcolms stayed late—Mrs. Malcolm being unusually cheered by the presence of Marvin “Mekong Delta” Jones from Tuscaloosa, Alabama. Marvin had lost both legs, and part of his nose, in the Vietnam War; he’d parked his wheelchair alongside Mrs. Malcolm’s and had entertained both her and Mr. Malcolm with his hilarious stories, perhaps apocryphal, of trying to get laid when he was wheelchair-bound and had half a nose. (“Not everyone is sympathetic,” one story began; he had Wheelchair Jane in stitches.)
Miss Wurtz, who went home at a proper hour—needless to say, The Wurtz went home alone—brought the house down by singing along with Bob. Her renditions of “All I Really Want to Do” and “I’ll Be Your Baby Tonight” were haunting. Flattop Tom told Jack there was nobody like her in Cleveland; North Dakota Dan said there was no one like Miss Wurtz in Bismarck, either. (How, Jack wondered, had Edmonton been so blessed?)
The Oastler mansion was a motel that night, the motorcycles stationed like sentinels on the lawn—some of them lurking close to the house, as if they were intruders seeking access through a window.
Lucky Pierre passed out on the living-room couch, where he was covered by so many of the bikers’ leathers that no one knew where he was in the morning—that is, until Joe Ink sat on him.
Flipper Volkmann and Wolverine Wally had to be separated—that old Michigan matter again. They put Flipper to bed in Jack’s former bedroom and made the Wolverine spend the night in the kitchen, where the less-good-looking of the Fronhofer brothers watched over him—the one who hadn’t gone home with Miss Wong and the hurricane she carried inside her.
Bad Bill Letters and Slick Eddie Esposito slept head-to-toe on the dining-room table, where their conversation about Night-Shift Mike, the sailors’ friend, was overheard throughout the house. “You’d have to have your eyes in your asshole, Bill, to not know Night-Shift was a fag,” Slick Eddie said.
“Eddie, if you had your eyes in your asshole, you’d be the first to know Night-Shift was a fag,” Bad Bill told him.
“You’re an asshole, Bill,” Slick Eddie said.
“Of course I’m an asshole!” Bad Bill replied. “Tell me somethin’ I don’t know.” But Slick Eddie was fast asleep; he was already snoring. “Sweet dreams, assholes!” Bad Bill cried, as if he were addressing everyone in the house.
“Sweet dreams, assholes!” Badger Schultz and his wife, Little Chicken Wing, called from the laundry room, where they were sleeping on the floor on an antique quilt.
“Great party, huh?” Jack whispered to the Skretkowicz sister he was sleeping with in Emma’s bed.
“Yeah, your mom woulda loved it!” Ms. Skretkowicz said. She was, alas, the one who’d been married to Flattop Tom. She also had a fabulous octopus tattooed on her ass; it completely covered both cheeks. “Flattop Tom’s work,” she admitted a little sadly. “Not to take nothin’ away from the octopus.”