The Ram (13 page)

The woman stares straight ahead, oblivious to Riley standing to her side. She has long, blondish hair and a short torso. Her eyes are light, her lips thin. She’s a little underweight, the bones of her face sharp and pronounced. Riley takes notice of her unbuttoned top and smiles.

“These seats available?” he asks, donning his most cherubic grin.

She jumps in her seat, clears the vinyl cushion padding by a few inches. The woman’s face is a mask of surprise, her eyes open so wide that her irises are islands in a sea of white. He can see her swallow.

“Oh shit,” she exclaims before regaining her composure. The girl looks to the empty chairs at the table. She doesn’t say anything for a moment and Riley assumes she’s trying to think of a reason he can’t sit down.

“It’s just that my foot is hurt and I could really use a seat. I promise I won’t bother you. I’m just here for the show.”

He doesn’t wait for an answer and uses his crutches held together to help lower his body to the chair nearest the woman. She turns her crossed legs away from him, points them right to the hallway leading to the bathrooms, and shifts her body so less of her form is in the sliver of light cutting across the cocktail table.

Walker is chatting up one of the barmaids, his elbow propped on the bar. Riley watches him puff out his chest and laugh at everything the woman says. He doesn’t have drinks in front of him yet. Sev isn’t at the bar anymore. His trail of napkins sits alone on the dark walnut bar top.

“Is he bothering you?” A deep voice comes from behind Riley and he turns his body to see Sev looming over the woman. He’s wearing a striped t-shirt and the alternating lines of color make his chest seem even more massive.

“It’s okay,” the lady says and smiles at Sev, doing her best not to acknowledge Riley. “He just needs a place to sit and rest.”

“All right, enchantress.” He moves back to the bar and passes Riley, knocking his shoulder with his hip and looking down on him.

“Behave,” he commands.

Riley shows his teeth and flips the man off once his back is turned. He eyes up the woman but she keeps her head turned away from him.

“He’s right about you being an enchantress.”

The woman rubs at her temples with her thumbs. “I don’t think so. He’s a snake, that one.”

Riley tries out the name Sev the Snake in his head a few times and decides he likes it.

“I like you,” Riley mumbles to the woman. Whiskey always puts him in a place between affection and lust. He’s nearly a fifth in. If he can’t lock it down with Nell tonight, this woman might be a fair substitute. The shape of her breasts under her top reminds him of two pomelos heavy with juice. Suddenly, his tongue craves the taste of citrus.

The woman says nothing in response. But her lips betray her, turning up at the corners.

36 Peach

She wasn’t expecting company at her table. And when she saw him approach she hoped he was moving toward the men’s bathroom down the hallway behind her table. So when he spoke to her and asked to have a seat, she was mentally unprepared for the meeting. He smells rank to her, of some sort of pungent booze tainting each breath he expels. Yet there is an appeal to his bold character and his no-shits-given attitude to just hunker down in her space. She’d like those personality traits herself. In fact, they are some of the qualities she aims to cultivate during her personal renaissance.

There were many names she could use for the man with the crutches sitting next to her at the table. As she keeps her gaze on Nell dancing on the stage, she can see out of the corner of her eye as much as he tries to sneak glances at her cleavage, his real focus is on Nell as well. The stripper does a gliding leap onto the pole and spins down it like a winged seed off a maple tree.

There is only one name for the man at her table right now. Competitor.

“I really do like you,” he repeats and Peach sighs, picks up the glass of ice water in front of her. There’s another drink, a Long Island Iced Tea on the table in a tall, clear tumbler. She ordered it so she could tip the waitress. The ice in it has long since melted, the alcohol never touching her lips.

Then the other man comes to the table. He doesn’t have drinks in hand but his shirt is bright, even in the dim of the club, and he carries himself like his balls are made of gold and justifiably weighty. He tips his chin at Peach and speaks to the cripple.

“Who’s your friend?”

“I don’t know,” the seated, drunk man says and sticks out a hand to Peach. “I’m Riley.”

She returns his grasp briefly, extending her hand across her body but moving nothing else. “Nice to meet you.”

Riley makes a face at his friend and the man in the vivid pinkish red shirt chuckles. Peach takes a passing glance at his face and notes how orange he looks from his fake tan. He sits at the other empty chair and proceeds to chat with his friend, shouting loudly across the table, leaning his body in front of Peach’s view.

“Rye, you’re not in there tonight. Let’s move on. Plus the boyfriend’s here. Means you’ve got less than a zero chance.”

The man with the bum foot licks his lips and nods his head toward Peach. She can feel his attention on her though she doesn’t look directly at him.

“I’m getting a tattoo,” he exclaims to her and his friend.

“No way,” the man to her left says. “Since when?”

Riley moves his hair from his eyes and reaches over to the abandoned Long Island. He takes a swig and watches Peach for a reaction. She keeps a stony countenance.

“I’ve got an appointment. I scheduled it. For tonight.”

“Rye, you’re wasted and making shit up.”

He drinks more of the Long Island and touches Peach on the shoulder. She feels like she’s just touched an electrified piece of metal. The energy discharges into her body. A zippy shock zings through her, to her heart and then out her feet.

“Want to come with? To see me get a tattoo?”

He pulls back his hand and when he does, she shakes out her arm. It tingles but she stops herself from standing up and running. Her breath is shallow. Her heartbeat quickens. She wants nothing more than to flee.

“No, sorry,” she eventually speaks. “Can’t stand the sight of blood.”

“A girlie girl,” the friend says, never introducing himself to Peach. She can venture a guess at his name but the less she engages the better.

“Nah, I get it,” Riley quips. “You’re here for the dancers.” Then he yells across the table to his friend. “I’ve got to stop hitting on dykes.”

Peach openly laughs at this. If only he knew how outlandish it was for him to try and pick her up. He is clueless. She imagines him in the childhood parable about the little Dutch boy with his finger in the dyke, trying to hold back the power contained there. There is no way for him to succeed. His digit will snap under all that water’s energy.

The boys eventually gather up the gumption to stand, to escape the table and her cool attitude. They say nothing to Peach as they leave and she’s happy for it. On their way out the club, the man named Riley tries to give Nell money one last time. This time she doesn’t ignore him. Instead, she snatches the money from his fist and tosses it back out onto the tables ringed with clusters of lustful men. Peach watches Riley as this happens. She can see, from where she hides in the back of the lounge, how his body leans toward the stripper, his eyes narrow and he puts his hands to his sides, palms open.

Peach knows the man wants Nell more than ever now. Competitor. They leave the bar and a minute later, Peach stands and makes her way past the stage. She doesn’t hold out any cash for the stripper, but Nell whistles as Peach moves toward the entrance and Peach gives her a smile, wiggles her fingers at her.

Now Peach knows there will be no competition. Her cheeks give response, blushing deeply as she moves past the bouncer at the door. She hopes to find the two men in the parking lot as she exits the padded door. That boldness she so covets is blooming within and she wants them to see her strut out of the club, her eyes sparkling and her shoulders square. Those men might be enthralled to the passions contained by the walls of Blaze Lounge but Peach is not. She looks for them, sees them whooping like chimpanzees proud of their tool-making abilities as they slouch into a petite sports car. No matter if they cannot see her. She can see herself and knows what she must look like. Like the running, neon fire capping the building, like the glitter in Nell’s tiny shorts, like the poems flowing out Sev.

37 Riley

Riley and Walker are greeted by darkness. It’s nearly nine at night and the sign on the tattoo shop is no longer up-lit by white light. A man in baggy black jeans and a polo shirt buttoned up to his neck waits in the open doorway. He puffs a stream of white smoke into the air, ditches his joint and waves the men inside.

“You’re Riley?” the tattooist asks, points at Walker.

“The other guy,” Walker says. He helps Riley out of the car without his crutches because Riley is insistent on leaving them behind. Riley leans some of his weight on the shoulder of his friend though Walker has a few inches on him in height. He thinks they must look like they’re about to perform some sort of slapstick comedy one-off for the man in front of them. The tattooist digs a toothpick out of his pants pocket and picks at his teeth. When he moves, Riley can smell the marijuana on the man’s clothes.

“Nah, I don’t ink anyone drunk.”

“I have an appointment,” Riley objects. “And you’re high. But I still want you to give me a tattoo. You’re the best I’ve seen. And I’ve had a lot of time to do research on the internet.”

The man chews on the sliver of wood and steps aside to let the men in. “It’s only a maintenance smoke. See, I’m what people might call addicted. Now why you want me giving you a permanent knowing all that?”

Riley enters first with tender steps on his left heel, followed by Walker, his arms outstretched, moving behind Riley like he’s seeing the first uneasy steps of a toddler. The tattooist stays in the doorway, his back to a street light across the parking lot. His torso and head glow with a fuzzy white aura.

“I’m an addict, too,” Riley says and steadies himself at the front counter. An antiquated cash register is on the corner of a glass case containing metal barbs and rings of varying shapes and colors, ready to be plunged into holes in the head or the genitals.

“No doubt,” the tattooist says and shuts the door. “I could smell you before I could see you. I’m guessing you’re a whiskey drinker.”

“But I’m not an alcoholic. That’s not my addiction.”

Riley takes his wallet out and checks his money fold. “You accept credit?”

“It’s pussy, ain’t it?” the man hazards a guess at Riley’s addiction. Walker coughs and Riley leaves his wallet on the glass countertop.

“Do I need to sign papers or something?” He glances around the counter. His foot feels fabulous, but his head pounds, the shop dipping and heaving like the prow of a ship.

The tattooist walks behind the counter and produces a clipboard with a few papers on it. He clicks on a pen he pulls from the metal claw at the top of the particleboard.

“Just sign. Won’t do you no good to read it as liquored up as you are.”

Riley’s signature is a messy scrawl of a capital R followed by three loops. He signs all the papers and tosses the clipboard down on the counter. It knocks over a small display of rolling papers and lighters with casings covered in little green men and psychedelic whirls.

“Get him to my chair,” the man points to Walker and then motions to a spot a few feet away from the front counter. It’s an old barber’s chair; the arms are covered in foam and blue vinyl and there’s a silver footrest at the bottom of the seat worn smooth in places from the thousands of soles rubbed there over decades of use.

“I’m Roman,” the tattooist says. Riley gets into the chair without Walker’s help and watches the man snap on a pair of surgical gloves, just like the ER doctor pulled on when examining his crushed toes. “And I’ll be your tattooist this evening.”

Riley closes his eyes and imagines the man for a moment as a Roman soldier, a plume of red running down his metal helmet and a short sword with a pommel capped in an iron sphere at his waist. Has the soldier been ordered to kill or does he fight for his own reasons, perhaps at the behest of his own god? Like Mars or Zeus or another violence-loving taskmaster?

Roman stands with his hands in the air, like he’s about to walk into a delivery room and escort a baby into the world. He sucks at his tongue until Riley opens back up his eyes. “What and where?”

Lifting his pelvis, Riley pulls out a piece of paper from his pocket and hands it to Roman. The tattooist takes in the image and when Walker tries to peek at it over the man’s shoulder, Riley shouts at him to wait and see the final product. Walker plays nice and walks away, scrolls through old text messages on his phone.

“This it? You don’t need an artist for this. Someone else would have charged you less. Just like this? No color?”

Roman hands the paper back to Riley and snaps on a pair of black nitrile gloves. He fills an ink cup from a larger squeeze bottle of black, viscous liquid and retrieves needles from a small cabinet near the chair. He peels the wrapping off the slivers of metal and lays out his tools on a wheeled tray with a paper liner.

The sweet coat of whiskey in Riley’s throat makes him feel secure and contented. He used to hate the idea of tattoos but now he feels like he needs this particular image on his body. It’s part of his quest to reclaim his manhood. It’ll be something to show Nell. He supposes she’s the type of girl who likes body ink.

“No color. Well, not yet. And I want it on my foot.”

Roman looks down at the foot rest and takes in Riley’s bandaged left foot.

“I’m not inking over scabs, man. It better be your right foot.”

Riley brings his leg up and perches his heel on the edge of the blue vinyl seat. He finds the edge of the gauze bandaging and begins to unroll it from his ankle. Normally he would keep it in a tight bundle as he unwinds, but the alcohol causes him to be sloppy and unsteady. When he gets to the last of the cotton swaddling his toes, he lets the bandaging fall to the floor.