Ink Read online

  “No?”

  I drain my mojito in the silence that ensues.

  “I should go,” I say when I put the empty glass down.

  She nods, stands up.

  “It’s okay,” I say, “I can find my way out.”

  She moves toward the door with me anyway. “You know what I really think? I think you’re feeling guilty.”

  “Yeah, well, it’s not like Cassie would exactly groove on finding out I spent the evening with a woman like you.”

  She shakes her head and an irritated expression crosses her face. Then it softens a little. “No, you feel guilty because your struggle is real, and fundamental to who you are, but also incredibly privileged. You’re the only person at my peña tonight who’s considering self-deporting – and it’s because you don’t have to.”

  When I groan, she laughs. “Just drawing your attention to the irony of it.”

  “I’m an idiot. Sorry.”

  She waves the apology away. “I get it, you know. I’m operating on privilege too. It may be a number of notches down from yours but it’s every bit as unearned. I think the trick is to never forget it.”

  “Anyway, I think I must have a soft spot for idiots. Come back anytime,” she says as we get to the space between inner and outer entry doors. She’s my same height, so when she tips her chin up I know she intends to kiss my forehead in goodbye.

  But I don’t let her. It’s my mouth I pull her to.

  Kissing her is like adding orange to a painting: a reckless move that can ruin the most careful composition. And there’s nothing careful about what passes between us. It’s similar to what I feel on my land, an exchange so elemental I am able to sense the flow of blood in the veins deep beneath her skin.

  When we draw apart I can see the tiny golden bees again.

  “You see them,” she says, following my eyes.

  “I thought I was imagining them.”

  “Only if you’re imagining me.”

  “Am I?”

  The next kiss is hers.

  I can smell fox grapes and bur cucumber and honeysuckle – plants that separate sunny waste places from woodlands – and I envision the bees dancing between the vines before they home back to their hive.

  This time when we part, she moves her hands from my shoulders to my chest and edges me away. She doesn’t give me time to wonder whether there will be more between us, just clicks the door shut when I clear it.

  I walk to the park and sit there for hours.

  Later, I make so much noise I wake Cassie. Every window is flung open and I pretend to be on the pitcher’s mound. I was a fair baseball player in high school so my body remembers the movements. Each jar of paint sails through the open window in a beautiful, flattened curve and slowballs to the street below. The plastic jars break apart with a sucking splat, but there is real satisfaction to be had in the shattering of the glass ones.

  Cassie is standing just outside of the bedroom when I finally notice her. Her eyes follow the trails of cadmium orange, yellow ochre, and burnt sienna on the walls and floor leading to the window. Our largest soup pot is on the coffee table, overflowing with the ashy crumbs of burnt paper from my sketchbooks and strips of shredded canvas. Empty frames hang on the walls – not a single painting of mine remains.

  “What are you doing?”

  I run both hands through my hair, smearing it with bone black. I can’t do more than stand, still and mute. I have no answer.

  She busies herself closing windows and scooping up debris. A scrap of paint-stiffened canvas flutters on a leftover draft into her hand. When she turns it over we both see it is a piece of that mushroom painting from what seems so long ago. One of the little root people caught in the mycelium’s net.

  She tosses everything into the kitchen trashcan, except that scrap. I see her tuck that into the pocket of her bathrobe. Later, we turn to each other for com-fort, one of the few times since the miscarriage. I think she knows even then.

  The next morning before she wakes, I leave for Smithville.

  * * *

  Chato is the first to find me.

  He shows up in the middle of the night, when no rational person would be awake. But I’m not rational when I’m painting. And I’ve always known he’s not quite normal either.

  I see pity in his eyes when I open the door and he sees the cabin packed full of canvases, mostly blank, but a few so freshly painted the space reeks of linseed oil and mineral spirits. He thinks I’ve dropped off the deep end.

  “Hey, Boss,” he says. Old habits.

  He doesn’t say much. “Yes,” to my offer of coffee, then sits on the couch, holding his steaming mug.

  “What you doing up here by yourself, Boss?”

  “Call me Del. I’m no one’s boss any more.”

  “Ray would like it if you went back to work for him.”

  “He’s got you.”

  “I’m not like his son. Just a good worker.”

  “Even better. Less complicated.”

  He puts his coffee down, gets up to look at each of the paintings hanging on the walls. “What happened to you in the city?” he asks finally.

  “I don’t know. But this is the only place I can be,” I say.

  He looks back at the paintings. “I don’t think I’ll tell Ray how you’re living,” he says slowly. “He’ll worry, Boss.”

  I go back to mixing pigments.

  He comes to visit every week, always late at night. I look forward to it, even though we don’t talk much, just drink coffee and look at my growing stack of canvases.

  “Why do you come so late?” I ask him one night. “Not that I mind, but it must be weird for you to walk through the woods in the dark. Especially on nights when the coy-dog pack is out and howling.”

  “Nothing up here is going to hurt me, Boss.” Then, “I don’t get done with work until late.”

  I stop painting. “You’re not saying that to make me feel guilty, are you?”

  “No, Boss. You asked, I answered.”

  The next time he shows up, he brings Chema from the old crew with him, and a six-pack of beer. All three of us stand in front of a row of paintings.

  “Are all of these new?” Chema asks me.

  “Yes,” I say.

  “Ah,” Chema says, nodding. He glances at Chato. Out of the corner of my eye I see Chato nodding back. I wonder if it’s confirmation of the insanity verdict.

  “You want to get a pizza, Boss?” Chato asks. “The students are back so the pizza place is open late.”

  “Sure. My cell phone’s on the table, order whatever you want. And stop calling me boss.”

  “Nobody’s going to deliver a pizza here, Boss,” Chato says.

  So we go to the pizzeria in town.

  It continues like that.

  Bit by bit.

  The inks bringing me back to life.

  Abbie: If u cn rd ths

  1.

  I feel the tires spin, grab for a second, fail. The car slides down a quarter-mile broadside, gaining momentum. I don’t touch the wheel. If I weren’t a kickass driver, or used to Smithville winters, I would make the critical mistake just about now as the steering wheel dances by itself.

  I force my hands to be still. Soon enough I’ll be at the end of the secondary road where the municipal plows will have piled an edge of snow, salt and cinder to absorb the impact of out-of-control vehicles on the real road. As long as the highway guys haven’t banked the snow too high, this pile-of-shit SUV my mother gave me should be able to handle it.

  My love of this rough back way out of the trailer park isn’t the only thing that makes my mother cringe these days. But if you choose to work multiple shifts – including graveyard – you don’t get to complain about the route your kid takes to school in the morning.

  I hit the embankment with a soft whoosh and wait for the wheels to stop spinning before shifting the vehicle into low-four. When I clear the pile of grey-crusted snow I pat the dashboard. Not such a piece of
shit after all.

  I get to school fifteen minutes late. Mrs. Walker at the registration desk waves me through. In Ms. Addison’s trigonometry class, I slide into the seat behind John. He turns around to grin at me. Addison doesn’t even notice.

  “Nice that you finally joined us, Abs,” he says loudly.

  I hear a couple of snickers from Rose and her posse. I wallop John high on the arm. Addison keeps droning.

  John laughs a couple of times as I open the textbook, leafing through until I find the chapter Addison is pretending to cover.

  “What are we doing this weekend?” he asks as I settle on page 147.

  “Nothing. I’m grounded. My mom just got the insurance renewal on the car and she’s not letting me drive anywhere.”

  “You’re here.”

  “School, computer club, the inkatorium for community service, that’s it.”

  “Sucks.”

  “Sure does, doesn’t she?” Rose says from the seat beside John. Rose has liked him since the seventh grade and hated me for the same span of time.

  I pretend to crank up my middle finger.

  “Original.” Rose says. “I don’t know why you hang with trailer trash, John.”

  But Addison’s finally made her move. She’s standing in front of Rose before any of us notices and taps the book open on Rose’s desk.

  “How about you show us how this problem is done, Miss Cantinelli,” she says. “Whiteboard. Up front.”

  I know better than to think Addison’s protecting me. She wouldn’t care if Rose decided to pull my nails out in class. It’s the trailer trash comment that prompted a reaction. What kind of neighbor would she be if she let that one stand?

  Gotta love the reasons adults choose to act.

  “Saturday?” John whispers now.

  “If you want to do the inkatorium.”

  He smiles at me.

  I wish he weren’t so cute. Rose and her ilk wouldn’t hate me half as much if he looked like dog meat.

  “Chagas and leprosy and Hansen’s. Sounds like my kind of date, Abs. Pick me up when you go.”

  “Hansen’s is leprosy, you moron.”

  But I’m pleased. I haven’t lost him to the princesses yet.

  * * *

  The inkatorium is in a huge new brick building surrounded by really spectacular landscaping. The quality of the landscaping is what started the rumors that there would be celebrities housed here. And who knows, maybe there are some among the inks.

  “Money is so weird,” I say to John as I pull into the parking lot.

  John shrugs off his seat belt. “What do you mean?”

  “Well just that, remember when people thought Charlie Sheen would be coming here? Everyone was really excited. Even though he’s an ink.”

  “Famous ink,” he says.

  “Still….”

  “Still nothing. It’s fame that buys you a pass. Money’s just a useful convenience.”

  I click the remote to lock the car, and hurry after him. Near the door we slow to count the number of vans lined in front of the entry.

  “They must have gotten a shipment,” he says. “Your mom’s going to be swamped.”

  “Good. That way she won’t have time to worry about you being here.”

  He grins at me.

  “She thinks you’re a really bad influence,” I say.

  “Yeah, right. Like it isn’t you who’s always the instigator.”

  But nothing happens to you when we get caught. I don’t say it.

  It’s no use complaining that John’s family has enough money to buy him out of trouble and my mom doesn’t. That’s just the way the world is. Maybe John’s right about the fame being better than money bit, but having loads of the green stuff isn’t bad either.

  John swings the heavy glass entry door open, holds it for me. Valerie, behind a reception desk that’s like an air-traffic controller console only with video monitors, looks up and waves us forward.

  “Hey, Abs,” she says. “Glad you’re here. We’re overwhelmed this morning. Your mom could use another pair of hands.”

  I can’t help it, I make a face. “You’re not going to make us work with her, are you?”

  Valerie’s friendly expression disappears. “No. I’m going to make you work with her.” She scribbles out a pass, places it in a plastic sleeve with an alligator clip, and hands it to me. “She’s at check-ins.”

  I clip it on my shirt. The plastic sleeve has a bright purple “CS” of community service stamped onto it, visible from a hallway away.

  “Him I can’t use,” Valerie says, nodding at John without looking at him.

  “Come on, Val. You just said you need hands.”

  Valerie’s gaze dances between us. John puts on his best smile. Nobody can resist him when he wants to be charming. The aura of entitlement, my mother calls it. Hotness, I say.

  “Oh, all right,” Valerie huffs, scribbling a pass for him. It goes into a plastic sleeve with the baby blue “CC” – college credit – stamp. She hands it to him. “You can help Thaddeus on draws.”

  “And I better not hear that the two of you were socializing before your lunch break,” she yells as we head down the same hallway.

  Check-ins take place in the building’s largest room. It’s also the nicest. Like it’s not bad enough they’re locking up the inks in here, but they go ahead and deceive them into thinking the rest of the place is as sunny and open.

  The room is full of inks today, hands bound with polymer handcuffs. Great. So not even a shipment of voluntaries. The involuntaries are always much more problematic.

  My mom’s at the desk at the end, with two of her assistants. They’re all dressed in blue and green scrubs and paper surgical masks. When she looks up at me I see first relief, then anger chase through her eyes.

  “I’ve told you before. I don’t want you walking through this room without scrubs and a mask.”

  “You’ve also told me they’re almost never sick.”

  My mother’s eyes turn hard. “Just go get ready and then go to the tracking room. That’s where we’ll be working this morning.” She turns to one of the CNAs, “Bennett, I want you to work on registration and paperwork.” She shoves a scanner across the desk. “And let Renfro do the walk-throughs. I have a feeling we’re going to have a rough day.”

  I walk to scrubs storage and open one of the cupboards. I hate pink, but the volunteers all have to wear scrubs that color. The first time I saw John dressed in them I died laughing. Not that I didn’t still love him while I was laughing.

  He’s my best friend, the one who really hung with me during my parents’ divorce. He was even held back the same year I was – after I missed all that school from the family upheaval – so we’re both a year older than our classmates. Nobody quite gets us as we get us, and that’s a strong bond.

  Suited and gloved, I cross to the tracking room. The room is just big enough to hold two scary surgical chairs – one for adults, a smaller one for children – an autoclave, trays of instruments, and storage cabinets.

  “Abs, you can’t say stuff like that in front of the staff,” my mom says when she comes into the room. “Officially, everybody here is sick.”

  “Yeah, I know. Sorry.”

  “This morning’s batch is huge. I’m glad you’re here to help out.”

  I hate the gratitude I hear in her voice. Like I hate it when she tries to hug me. Let’s not pretend, is what I wish I could say to her. Let’s not pretend I’m here for any reason other than I’m a fuck-up.

  I turn around when I hear Renfro entering the room with the first ink. It’s a kid, dwarfed by Renfro’s blue-clad bulk.

  “After this, I think we should do the adults first,” my mom says to him. “The children aren’t going to give us any problems, and if it takes us until the afternoon to get them settled in, it won’t matter if we’re exhausted.”

  “Sure thing, Kim,” Renfro says as he prods the kid toward the smaller chair.

  Th
e first thing my mom does is uncuff the boy. “Do you speak English?”

  The kid, maybe seven or eight, nods, sticks his wrist out. It has a blue tat.

  Which figures, since most involuntaries are blues. They never remember that the minute an inkatorium van is called in, their rights plummet from citizen to non-alien.

  “Are your parents here?” my mother asks.

  “I don’t know,” the kid says. “I threw up at school, so they reported it and that’s where the van picked me up.”

  My mom nods, snaps on her latex gloves. “Okay. This is my daughter, Abbie. She’ll walk you through when we’re done here. Renfro’s a nice guy but he’s so big you can’t help being a little scared of him.”

  The surgical chair pitches the kid forward against padded chin and shoulder restraints that leave the neck clear. I squat down in front of the boy and hold both his hands. “My mom’s going to spray some stuff on your neck, which is going to feel really cold, but it doesn’t hurt at all.”

  “Then she’ll give you a shot, but it won’t hurt since she’s already sprayed your neck. Then, after a bit, when she cuts it, you’ll feel a little bit of pressure, like someone is poking you. But that won’t hurt either.”

  By the time I’ve finished saying it my mother’s done with the incision. I get up and grab a tracker pack from one of the cabinets, open it and hand the GPS unit to my mom without looking. The chip should slide easily into the incision.

  I go back to the boy as my mom inserts the chip, then puts a quick staple stitch in the numbed skin. The kid’s eyes are wide, but I don’t see any pain in them.

  “Hey, what’s your name?” I ask as my mom removes her gloves and pulls the mega-scanner-on-wheels toward him.

  “Pete Nguyen,” the boy says.

  I turn the boy’s wrist over so my mom can scan the tat. The floor scanners are the most reliable models but it still takes her several tries to get something onscreen and then to punch in the new GPS tracking number. Everyone with a tat gets a tracker here.

  “We’re done. Abs, walk him all the way through, would you? Even the draw.”

  “John’s there today, he’ll make sure Pete’s fine.”