I spin the drawing in my hands and look around the shop. It’s late and no one is waiting. I punch Paul in the shoulder and point to the drawing. Then I point to the inside of my own wrist. It’s the only place on my whole arm that’s not tatted up already. I have full sleeves because my brothers have been practicing on me since long before it was legal to do so.
“No,” Paul signs with first two fingers and his thumb, slapping them together. “You’ve lost your mind if you think I’m going to put that on you.”
He walks toward the front of the store and sits down beside Friday. He’s been trying to get in her pants since she started there. It’s too bad she has a girlfriend.
I get out my supplies. I’ve done more intricate tats on myself. I can do this one.
He stalks back to the back of the shop, where I’m setting up. “I’ll run it,” he says. “You’re going to do it anyway.”
I hold up one finger. One change?
What do you want to change? He looks down at the design and his brow arches as he takes in the shapes and the colors and the handcuffs and the guitar and the prickly thorns. And I wonder if he also sees her misery. That’s some heavy shit, he signs. He never speaks when it’s just me and him. I’m kind of glad. It’s like we speak the same language when we’re alone.
I nod, and I start prepping my arm with alcohol as he gloves up.
Emily
It has been two days since I punched that ass**le in the tattoo shop and my hand still hurts. I’ve been busking in the subway tunnel by Central Park, and it’s somewhat more difficult to play my guitar when my hand feels like it does. But this tunnel is one of my favorite spots, because the kids stop to listen to me. They like the music, and it makes them smile. Smiling is something left over from my old life. I don’t get to do it much, and I enjoy it even less. But I like it when the kids look up at me with all that innocence and they grin. There’s so much promise in their faces. It reminds me of how I used to be, way back when.
I’m considering singing today. I don’t do it every time I play. But I am seriously low on funds. The more attention I get, the more change I’ll get to take home with me. Home is a relative term. Home is wherever I find to sleep that night.
I’m sitting on the cold cement floor of the tunnel; back a ways from the rush of feet, with my guitar case open in front of me. In it, there are some quarters, and a little old lady stopped a few minutes ago and tossed in a fiver while I played Bridge Over Troubled Water. Old ladies usually like that one. They haven’t seen troubled waters.
I’m wearing my school girl outfit, because I get more attention from men when I wear it. It’s a short plaid skirt, and a black ribbed short sleeve top that fits me like a second skin. Ladies don’t seem to mind it. And men love it. I sure got a lot of attention from that ass**le two days ago. He was hot, I had to admit. He had shoulders broad enough to fill a doorway, and a head full of sandy blond curls. He towered over me when he stood up from behind that table, at least a head and shoulders taller than me. Tattoos filled up all the empty space that used to be his forearms, and it was kind of hot. He had lips painted on his left arm, and I wanted to ask him what those were. Were they to remember someone? A first kiss, maybe? Or did they mean something the way the tattoo I wanted did?
I dropped my tattoo design as I ran out of the shop, which pisses me off. I thought I had it clutched in my hand and when I’d stopped to take a breath, it was gone. I almost expected the ass**le to follow me. But he was still bleeding when I left him.
I shake out the pain in my hand again. A towheaded boy stops in front of me, his hand full of pennies. He is a regular, and his mother stopped to pray over me once, so I switch my song to Jesus Loves Me. Jesus doesn’t. If He did, He wouldn’t have made me like I am. He would have made me normal. The boy’s mother sings along with my tunes and the boy dips his face into her thigh, hugging it tightly as she sings. When the song is over, he drops his handful of pennies into my guitar case, the thud of each one hitting the felt quiet as a whisper.
I never say thank you or talk to the kids. I don’t talk to the adults unless they ask me something specific. I just play my music. Sometimes I sing, but I really don’t like to draw that much attention to myself. Except today, I need to draw attention to myself. I had saved up three hundred dollars, which would pay for a place to sleep and that tattoo I thought I needed, but someone stole it while I was asleep at the shelter last night. I’d made the mistake of falling asleep with it in my pocket, instead of tucking it in my bra. When I woke up, it was gone. I don’t know why they didn’t take my guitar. Probably because I was sleeping with it in my arms, clutched to me like a mother with her child.
I wish I’d gotten the tattoo yesterday. It was a useless expense, but it was my nineteenth birthday, and it’s been a long time since anyone has done anything for me. So, I was giving it to myself. And trying to free myself in the process. Who was I kidding? I’ll never be free.
This city is hard. It’s mean. It’s nothing like where I came from. But now it’s home. I like the noise of the city and the bustle of the people. I like the different ethnicities. I’d never seen so many skin colors, eye shapes, and body types as I did when I got here.
A girl reaches her chubby hand to touch my strings, and I smile and intercept her hand by taking it in mine, instead. Her hands are soft, and a little damp from where her first finger was shoved in her mouth just a minute ago. I toy with her fingers while I make an O with my mouth.