Indelible

The landline rang in the back room of The Inkworks and Jack answered it. A lady with a nice voice asked if he was the owner.

"Jack Dextra, that's right. You can call me Jack, or Dextra, whichever you like."

"Jack Dextra, you WILL NOT give my daughter a TATTOO!" the formerly nice voice suddenly shouted in his ear. Jack jerked the phone away and let it drop to the floor, the plastic receiver twitching as the old-fashioned twisty-cord unwound.

You got used to these calls after a while. Well, either he would, or he wouldn't, or maybe he could cut them a deal on the removal later. Sighing, he retrieved the instrument.

"Sorry," he said. "Dropped something. What's your daughter's name?"

"Merci Anderson," the voice said. Crap. He had thought, with some justification, that the name had been made up. It was her. The Bird of Paradise.

"Doesn't ring a bell," Jack lied. "If she comes in, I'll tell her she needs to get counseling. Okay? Sure, I can call you too, Mrs. Anderson."

Jack hung up the phone and massaged his aching neck. The body of a snarling puma danced on his forearm.

It was a beautiful summer day in Berkeley but you never saw much of it back here in the dim, spotlit recesses of the skin-arts studio. Jack checked his schedule again and stepped squinting out into the storefront, nodding bashfully at Evelyn, "Notorious Eve," the counterperson, a black haired lesbian in a tank top, her pale bare shoulders adorned with orange flame. "Wish I'd done that," he mused out loud, for the hundredth time. Evelyn grinned back at him, secure in her sexual preference.

"Remember the girl with the Bird of Paradise?"

"Huh-uh. The flower? Or the avian species?"

"The bird," Jack sighed, "I'm going to take a smoke break. Want to come?" He had a fat one already rolled up in his car.

Evelyn considered, nibbling at the stainless-steel ring that ran through the corner of her lower lip. "You have a walk-in." Her purple-shaded eyes shifted to the left.

It was an older guy, sitting alone in one of the plastic chairs, leafing through a tattoo mag, looking at the tats on the tits. Another parent? Jack winced. "Can I help you, sir?"

"I was thinking of getting a tattoo?" Really?

"Would you like to have a look at our design collection? We have some really good fantasy scenes, a great selection of totem creatures, abstract tribal designs."

Most walk-ins either had some idea of what they wanted or else they didn't and this guy was no exception. "Hmm," he said, brushing his thin brown hair back. "Hmm, no, I don't think so."

Nah. No, what he really wanted was to have his wife's name put on. Jack gave him the lecture, thinking about the telephone call, thinking about the possibility that it was a setup, an Alameda county health guy or Channel 5.

"Frankly, sir, I think you should know, names are usually not a good idea. People change, and people change people. I mean, even at your age. Can I ask? Is it a relationship thing? Is that what's going on here?" Jack had done it himself, Alexandra's name in script woven invisibly, yet indelibly into the bamboo forest through which his puma strode.

"Okay," he said, "Let me introduce you to Evelyn here. Don't worry, she doesn't bite--much. She'll get your info and the medical stuff. I'll be back in a few minutes and we'll get started."

Part II--History

Everyone remembered their first time, plus besides that most people remembered their first tattoo, regardless of which end of it they were on, or how good it was.

Jack beeped open his Altima and slipped into the passenger side, reaching his left hand with precise doper memory for the joint and mini-lighter he'd left propped in the ashtray. He fitted the key into the ignition, let the window down.

For him, he thought once again, it had been the lead of a No. 2 pencil that he had lodged beneath the skin of Jane Hokansen's forearm in the sixth grade in a squabble over, of all things, sheet music in singing class. She had forgiven him, eventually, but for the next half dozen years he had viewed that tiny spot with a strange, proprietary awareness. Where was Jane today?

Jack exhaled and watched the puma on his arm hiss angrily through the swirling smoke. Who WAS No. 2? He had a vague memory of sharing a cell in juvenile hall with a kid named Nelson Avacedo. All things considered, Nelson was probably dead or still pushing drugs in L.A., which was where they'd both grown up.

And here he was after the same water under the bridge, stuck in Berkeley, still poking needles into people and dealing with his own bad habits. Hopefully that little cross he'd dotted into the web of Nelson's left hand had stood him in good grace.

The car jolted and shook and he leaned his head and hand back through the Altima's open window, handing off the joint. It was Steve, asking him if he had felt the earthquake. "What, just now?" Jack laughed. No, there had been a big one, 5.6, down on the Calaveras fault. Last night.

"Seems like between the earthquakes and the fires," Jack said. It did seem like there was always one or the other. Along with the droughts and pestilence, though he couldn't remember either of those happening for a while.

"Yeah," Steve said grimly, sucking in a grim toke, "remember the Oakland hills. I'm just hoping that this mortgage thing doesn't kill the economy. People will stop getting tattoos."

Steve was a skin-artist too, been around Berkeley forever, did some kinky stuff.

"Spoken like a real republican. Don't worry, I think paganism is finally here to stay," Jack said. "Hey, how many tattoos do you think you've done over the years? What was the most famous one you ever did?"

"Two or three thousand," Steve replied, counting on his fingers. "I guess it was Gavin Gruesome."

Jack choked on the thick smoke. "Don't make me think about it! Ha-ha. For me it was Barbara Wodehouse."

"The lady that wrote that book on dogs? I'm so jealous."

"AND her dogs. Four of them." They laughed again. In the haze of smoke and friendship it was easy to forget all the trouble he was going to get in over Merci Anderson, the girl with the Bird of Paradise. How much gas did he have in the Altima?

Part III, Rare Birds and Fish

"That old cat still here? Jack asked Evelyn, walking back into The Inkworks and a wide-eyed, where-the-fuck look, "In the back. You've got someone else in the other studio." It turned out that the name was Vince Anders, sort of an unusual one. "You don't have a daughter, do you?" Jack asked, making conversation. "Put your wife's name on your back? What is your wife's name?"

"Candice."

"Candace Anderson. Nice name. With two a's or three?" OK, I can do that. A hundred and a half. You know what they say in the trade: 'Takes about half an hour to do, a week to feel better, a lifetime to regret.' Just take off your shirt and set down there. A daughter, you said?"

Silver hair all over his back. "Jesus, man!" Jack joked, just needling the old cat now, "I should charge you extra for a barber fee."

"Actually, you know," Jack said, slapping a swath of shaving cream across the hirsute shoulderblades, "a lot of the old tattooists were barbers...are you sure I can't talk you into an indonesian tribal? The name "Candice" gives me the creeps. Plus your wife has lousy phone manners. Hey, you don't mind that I'm a little high while I do this?"

The old cat finally cracked a smile, reaching for a towel and his shirt, handing Jack his card and a hundred. "I'd be willing to offer you a more substantial bribe, $300, if you'll agree under no circumstances to give my daughter Merci a tattoo, but instead to call me on my cell."

"I get it." Jack said, pleased with the cash. "Sure. You'll be the first to know. You must have been having this conversation with a lot of different shops. But give that tribal some thought." He walked the parent to the front, closed the door softly but firmly behind him, turned to Evelyn. Evelyn was still hysterical, pointing at the curtained entry of the other studio. "It's her!"

"Nice work, thanks, Eve."

Jack paused just inside the door. The bird's pointed beak, its measuring dark eyes, golden plumage revealed it as a portrait of Merci herself. The bird peered cooly at him from the arc of Merci's naked shoulderblade.

The teenager lay face-down on the massage table, her not-bad skin showing good recovery from their earlier session. "I see you're already ready, already," Jack said.

"I couldn't wait. I've been thinking about this all week!" Merci's pink mouth smushed into an open shape as she turned her head to look at Jack. "What are we going to do this time, Jack?"

He examined an inside-out T-shirt, slightly tinged with ooze and antibiotic, sniffing it closely. "Does your mother do your laundry? She called and said she heard you were getting decorated here. I don't know, Merci. I thought you told me this was cool. How old are you, really?" She didn't look very old, really.

"I AM eighteen!" Merci wriggled upright, indignant. "I showed you my CDL. Mom called you?"

"How am I supposed to know? I thought the whole ID was fake. Last thing I need is statutory rape."

"No! I told you! I had this big fight with my parents and they wouldn't let me get a tattoo until I was eighteen. I've been...hanging."

There had been a big fight for Jack too. Thinking back, it couldn't have been the tattoo that had caused it, but within the month Jack had been on the street, returning only occasionally home on tense reunion terms, the puma indelibly crouched on his crossed arms.

"I know how it feels," he said, continuing on the thoughts he'd had in the car. Those had been a rough couple years. "Hopefully your folks will be a little more forgiving than mine."

"Just in case," he added, "If you need a place to stay or anything..."

So far Merci's exotic bird existed mostly as a sweep of color gradations that emerged subtly, without line from her natural gold skin tone, but you could really see it beginning to happen, clearly some kind of representational rubicon had been crossed. With an unexpected firmness he pressed her thin shoulders down to the padded bench, drew her arms to her sides.


Part IV, Media Attention

Jack's recurrent fear of the Channel 5 News had been borne out anew. He'd come in late to The Inkworks on Monday morning, only to find himself suddenly being interrogated by Janet Yee, well-known dragon-lady of East Bay community reporting. Janet, Jack was aware from having inscribed it, had a small black heart tattooed on her upper hip.

When they set off an Amber Alert on a guy, it was like one of those rotating cop car lights above your head. Per-vert! Per-vert! Those TV jackasses were all over him again, their white vans parked permanently across the street from The Inkworks.

Behind him, Evelyn was explaining to a couple of striped-shirt techies certain little-known aspects of first-amendment freedom. "That's right," she was saying, "If even a six or seven year old wanted a tattoo or like needed to get their nose-pierced, then they should be able to. It's screwed, man."

"I don't have a clue where Miss Anderson is," Jack told the reporter, "She was just a customer." How much gas did he have in the Altima? How come he hadn't seen this coming?

"Can we ask when the last time was that you saw the young lady?"

"I don't know, last week, I think." Merci had been promising to finally go back to Berkeley High, but Jack had left before seeing her get up. He submitted to another request for video of him pretending to ink in Evelyn's flames, trying to think. "Listen, though," he said, "I'm confused. I thought that Amber Alert thing is for little kids."

"Everyone up to the age of eighteen," Janet Yee agreed. "Apparently the girl wasn't quite that old."

"Sure she was. I made a copy of her CDL. You know I always do that."

Jack ducked past the studio curtain, stopping in front of the old filing cabinets and pulling out his phone. He called Merci's cell. "Did you know you've been kidnapped?" While he talked, he rifled through a drawer full of photocopies until he found it, about two weeks down. June 22, 1988. "Where are you?"

She was at the school, like she said, duh. "Don't go anywhere!" Jack barked harshly, "I'm coming to pick you up."

"Jack, you better ice your puck out of here. The DHS will be right behind these clowns." It was Evelyn, whispering, momentarily in the back while trying to keep the news crews at bay. "Leave this to me, I'll bask in my fifteen minutes of fame."

He handed her the photocopy, "Your chance to become even more Notorious," he agreed. "I gotta go anyway. Don't tell them I didn't do your flames. I'll go out through the alley. Pass this on to the TV lady for me, would you?"


Part V--In Loco Parentis

So that was no doubt how the document had gotten lost, but in any case, now that he'd proven he was in the clear, Jack felt better for a while. Berkeley High was only a few blocks away. He texted Merci that he was here, come on.

For some reason he realized that he had been afraid for Merci, like in a movie. This would be the part where like he'd wait for her and she wouldn't show and wouldn't show and then there'd be a series of scenes as he slowly realized how much more serious it could become. Ah Jesus, Jack, calm down! Jack jerked his knees against the underside of the Altima's dashboard in a spasm of sudden shame.

Merci came out of the door and walked to the open space. She was dressed in a loose foam green hoody, jeans, floppy sandals. Her hair was kind of golden brown, spilling out of the cowl, her babyface happy, seemingly unconcerned, despite what he'd told her on the phone.

He pulled himself up and got out, taking hold of her around the waist and giving her a big parking-lot kiss. "Hi, Merce. You gotta call your parents. I'm serious."

As he had etched the first feathery curve across Merci's shoulderblade, Jack's feelings had grown. Either it was this talent he had for screwed up situations, or else it was love. You never get involved with the people you do work on, but when it happens, it's always that way. She did look so damn young, and a lot of Jack's girlfriends had also been young chicks. After the past five, six years Jack thought it was sad how jaded it had all made him.

A lot of times the passion between the artist and his model gets screwed up.

"Mom? No, I told you, I'm fine. I moved out. How could you do that? Mom, I'm eighteen now, you can't tell me what to do any more." Merci listened, finally shrugging and handing Jack the phone, "She wants to talk to you, Jack, I don't know why."

"Mrs. Anderson?"

"Dextra, what you're doing is immoral and it's illegal. I want you to know that I've called the police."

"I don't think you understand, Mrs. Anderson. Merci's back in school. We've got a good place to stay. Everything is OK."

Merci's mother's voice was as sweet as the first time he had heard it, but the words were like boiled poison. "You're the one who doesn't understand--you are the subject of a statewide dragnet," she said, "We'll see how you feel about fifteen years in jail."

Part VI--When the going gets rough

"Let's see," Jack ordered Merci. The teen obediently turned over and lifted the hem of her hooded sweatshirt.

"I showed everyone. They all think it's so cool, Jack."

It was as though he needed to think it was still worth it himself. But as the bird's swirled indigo blue plumage slid out from beneath Merci's shirt he did. She was as good as the best work he'd ever done, her clear skin and young bone structure breathing life into the magic animal.

"Huh. Well, your mom doesn't." Jack raised Merci's phone and took a couple pics. "Shall we send them to her?"

Merci shrugged angrily. "Let me see! Ha!" She pressed the keys herself. "The bitch. This time I really am moving out. I told her she didn't have any rights over me. Anyway, she's not my real mom."

"Jack?" Because if there was any way that he could help her move her stuff?

"I don't know, Merce. God." Jack started the Altima as Merci curled her legs in the passenger seat, dropping her flip-flops from bare feet. A lot of times you could get in trouble, it was a lesson he should have learned by now.

The Andersons lived in the North Oakland, Rockridge area that Jack didn't know very well. "It's OK, the cars are gone," Merci whispered. He eased the Altima over a street bump and parked in front. "Can we just hurry this up?" Jack whined with tension. "How much are you going to take? We don't have room." He stood fidgeting on the doorstep, then whirled and ducked inside, as if avoiding a swinging blade, to help Merci ransack her upstairs bedroom, returning to the Altima with a bedspread full of possessions.

The last straw was the cat, a mangy, sand-colored one with only three legs. "No cats!" Jack laid down the law. "His name is Jack, Jack," Merci lied. Well, then, shit.

He was still complaining as they drove away. "No way will the landlord allow a cat in the place," which was probably not true since he'd hardly ever seen the guy in the six months since he'd moved in. "Uh-oh, what's going on here?" A pair of blue and white TV vans, their antenna and reporters deployed, blocked the street outside the apartment. Jack turned left, back onto Adeline.

"Wait here." Jack pulled over and strode past a row of slant-parked cars until he found one that had a license plate on the front. Old training. He had the plate off and on the back of his vehicle in a minute. He reached up on the dash and pried off the ugly Fastrak transponder, tossing it on the sidewalk. "Where's your phone?"

"Not my phone!" Merci's hand dived protectively into the pouch of her hoody. She looked so upset he had to let it go. "Just turn it off."

"What are we doing, Jack? What are we going to do?"

"When the going gets rough, the weird go camping," Jack quoted.


Part VII--Knowledge Aforethought

Jack said that they might have heard something on the radio about the Amber Alert. He said that he didn't really know what that was, he would have ignored it, since obviously he was with Merci, she was fine. They crossed the Bay Bridge without setting off any alarms, then went south from Frisco on 280. Santa Cruz, Jack thought, maybe Big Sur.

Except that with her cat they really couldn't go camping, not so much that they didn't have a tent or sleeping bag. Jack had all that stuff back at the apartment, anyway he could have bought most of it again in a sporting goods store someplace. But he gave in to the inevitable and stopped short in Pacific Grove, coasting down nearly to the tip of the Monterey peninsula before pulling up at the office of a cottage motel, the Sea Breeze.

The man at the desk was dealing with another guy and his wife and kids, who were all over the room chasing a drifting pink balloon. "Let's see..." the man said, clicking his computer screen while punching buttons on a piece of electronics that had been dredged from the shelf of the formica counter. "Something wrong. Have a seat. I'll be with you in a few minutes." He turned submissively back to the exasperated customer. "It's the promotion code. It won't let me change it."

Jack waved at Merci in the car to tell her to come in while rehearsing what he was going to say. My wife and I, Merci and I, just married, any vacancies?

"I can pay with cash," he finally said, after waiting even longer. The clerk turned back, more interested now that Merci had come through the swinging door. She was still dressed in the green hoody, her flip-flops snapping in irregular rhythm as she moved around the room helping the kids corral the balloon.

"It's our honeymoon," he added, a touch of urgency.

"Sure," the man said, pushing a pad of registration forms at Jack. "Fill one of these out. Can I see some ID. Write down your license plate here."

"Honey?" Jack tossed back over his shoulder. Merci turned, smiling at him. She came to the counter, pulling her battered CDL from her pouch and presenting it gravely to the clerk. Jack flipped his out too.

"You're lucky, we had a cancellation. After you've rested, the butterfly grove is right up the road," the guy said, pushing a plastic key card across the desk, "Take number fourteen. You can drive through there."

"Butterfly grove?" Merci inquired. He smiled at her, a nice smile but not a parental one, Jack detecting a touch of lech. He was bald, with a polite moustache, as old as Merci's dad at least.

"It's very romantic. Every year the flocks of monarch butterflies come to the Monterey peninsula on their migration to Mexico. Millions of them. There's a stand of eucalyptus that's protected. They mate for life."

"What's that?" Jack asked sarcastically, "Like four months?"

"Wow, how beautiful," Merci said, looking at a old-fashion color photo that was framed on the wall of the motel office. Thousands of orange-winged butterflies clung to a waterfall of dusky bluegreen eucalyptus. Behind her a door opened and a tall woman with gray-streaked black hair emerged, darting a look at Merci and Jack and the desk clerk, who turned out to be her husband, Carl.

"Is that a cat in your car?" she asked. Merci turned, with a guilty look.

"That's Linus," she countered, "Just three-quarters of one. He got his rear leg bit off by a dog a few years ago."

"That's right," Jack said. "Could we get a discount?"

It did really seem that he and Merce had been living on borrowed time. Even though officially they had been lying when they said they were just married, in a funny way Jack thought he might be doing a real thing as he set the cat carrier down and comically lifted Merci over the threshold of the rented room. She was heavy and warm, the fabric of her jeans scratchy against his arms, her head resting beneath his chin.

They had only made it those couple of times before, this was the first time without the urgency of just nailing her before someone else came in on them. Now Jack felt embarassed, partly because of the false pretenses, partly since he was still weird about the two of them, she being so young and all. The room faced west and the last lights of a pacific sunset splashed the room and the too young girl before him in vivid orange.

"What's on TV?" Jack joked, kissing her and taking the remote from Merci's warm hand as he lifted the soft green fabric of her hooded sweatshirt along her naked sides. "Don't you love me, Merci? I love you." Jack kissed her again, his tongue dancing through murmuring lips.

"I feel funny without my phone." Merce was strangely passive, where before she'd been the one that always needed it, but she lifted her arms obediently, her little nipples bobbing as her shirt came off. "It's just, you know, my messages. Someone might have texted me."

"Did you see the look on that old guy's face?" Merci asked. "He couldn't keep his eyes off me. What a perv!" Now she laid back on the bunched up pillows into a slice of orange light, soft bare tummy pulled tight, her legs open, still encased in tight blue-black jeans. "Do you think it could be my mom? I mean, I just hope mom doesn't do anything."

"What could she do?" Jack admitted later that at this point he'd already known. "That she hasn't already done." But, I mean, did that have anything to do with anything? Jack touched a kiss lower, beneath the girl's belly-button, unfastened her leather belt.