the surroundings before seeing the dirty windows of a shop across the street. A neon sign glowed intact and alive high in the window, but the O had burnt out so that it read PEN. No other signs of life stirred therein, no vagabond soul came in or out. All remained unknown.
“I can’t,” Sarah blurted. “I can’t do this.”
“Yes, you can,” Mary propped. “Get a hold of yourself.”
“It’s been two months,” Sarah continued. “I can’t face him again – not now.”
“Exactly,” Mary encouraged. “It’s been two months and you still have no clue what you did wrong. Here’s your chance to find out, and you’ll get some revenge while you’re at it. Come on, Sarah – I should be studying for my Native Initiatives exam. Don’t bag on me now! This is your moment to be a heroine!”
“Crazy,” Sarah deemed. “This is crazy. But I guess I don’t have a choice.”
“No choice,” Mary said. “This is peer pressure and no mistake.”
“Ugh!” Sarah exclaimed.
And she crossed the street first, leaving Mary to hurry in her wake. Mary, the burgundy polish of her nails finding the top of her spandex mini skirt, hoisted it higher as she jaywalked behind her friend. Sarah, her courage fit to snap, was about to charge into the shop when Mary pulled her off to one side, her movements swift.
“Wait!” Mary said hurriedly. “Let’s spy on him first!”
“You and your games,” Sarah snorted, but she waited patiently as Mary unfolded the newspaper only to hide behind it as she proceeded to peek through the window. Sarah tried to copy her technique, but quickly gave up as soon as she realized what amateurs they truly were. Rolling her eyes before allowing them to fall to the headline, Sarah clucked her tongue. “How is Glasnost coming, anyway?”
“Shut up!” Mary hissed. “I’m trying to see in. There’s too much glare on the window!”
“Let’s just go in,” Sarah begged. “This is painful enough without prolonging it.”
To Sarah’s surprise, Mary obliged. “Okay then, but you better play along like we discussed before. Have the script down?”
“Yeah, yeah – I’ve got it down,” Sarah said, annoyed.
Tossing the newspaper into a nearby receptacle, Mary made for the door of the shop. Sarah followed closely behind, her dread entire. Just when she was about to push open the door, however, Mary swiped her sunglasses from her face before turning around to meet her friend’s gaze with naked eyes.
“Are we bad?” Mary asked.
“Oh not this,” Sarah said. “Not here.”
“I said,” Mary began again, “are we bad?”
Sarah sighed. “Yes.”
“How bad?” Mary pushed.
“We’re just bad, okay?” Sarah said.
Mary shook her head. “How bad, Sarah?”
“Fine!” Sarah exclaimed. “We’re really bad.”
“Sorry,” Mary said. “I didn’t hear you. How bad exactly?”
At last Sarah allowed herself a small smile. “Really, really bad.”
Mary returned her smile.
And then she turned around and pushed the shop door open. The space of the parlor’s interior was lit by the window that peered onto the street from inside, its wide frame yielding to the sun. Apart from what came in from outside, however, very little color permeated the room. The walls were depressingly bare and the furniture, pretentiously square and painfully bland, wasn’t helping the situation.
Sarah’s eyes were not finding distraction in the surrounding austerity. Rather, they were already fastened on the man that had just arisen from his own tattoo chair, his small eyes darting from nervous to defiant face. Sarah felt disconcerted, for despite her passionate months with him she could not tell whether surprise was among the emotions dripping from his pores as his features twisted from a sneer to a smile.
“Come to get my name removed?” Ray asked, a cold laugh filling his eyes.
Sarah felt a stutter coming. “Wuh, we –”
“Well, you can’t,” Ray remarked gleefully. “I don’t do removals!”
After witnessing Sarah’s unease on the periphery of her vision, Mary stepped forward. She was hardly going to play the game by his rules. “I see business is about as good as usual,” she commented, gazing at the empty seats scattered around a chipped coffee table. “Still writing in black ink?”
“It’s lunchtime,” Ray shot. “Nobody gets inked on their lunch break.”
Mary gestured to the plastic analog on the wall. “It’s two thirty.”
Glaring at her, Ray turned around and started fussing with his utensils table. Picking up his tattoo machine, he brushed off the table before retrieving some plastic wrappings and bandage clippings from the floor. He dropped them in a trashcan, neither meeting Sarah’s gaze nor responding to Mary’s words.
“How are you?” Sarah managed at last.
His gaze was poisonous. “Still recovering from the Carter administration. You?”
“Fine, I suppose,” Sarah lied.
“She’s not fine!” Mary trilled. “She wants to know why in God’s name you broke up with her! You never gave her a reason, you never talked it out. Here’s your chance. She’s right here, so get on with it!”
“You should have come alone,” Ray said to Sarah.
“Well she didn’t,” Mary said.
Ray’s grey eyes found their prey. “You never did help a conversation along, Mary.”
“It’s thanks to her we’re having one,” Sarah pointed out. “So don’t attack her, please.”
“I’m the one being attacked!” Ray exclaimed. “You two come in here and get all smart about the state of my business. As if you know! As if either of you have any idea of the kind of work and pain involved in owning a business – in being an entrepreneur! But no – both of you are determined to look for answers you won’t find.”
Sarah blinked. “Like what?”
“Like wanting to know why it ended,” Ray said harshly, twisting the searching word. “You try too hard, Sarah. You analyze anything and everything into nonexistence. Sometimes there is no answer. Sometimes life’s just a blank page. No report, no diagnosis, no nothing... But you’ll never grasp that! Not with the psych bullshit they’re pumping into you every day.”
“Ah!” Mary reveled. “So this is about her ambitions!”
Ray reclaimed his seat in the tattoo chair, the pale of his sharp features tinted with disgust. “What ambitions?” Ray asked. “All I see is somebody that happiness is determined to elude. You dishevel everything around you, Sarah. You eat it all with your mind until it’s gone. You tried doing that to me.”
“Nonsense,” Mary deemed. “This is nonsense.”
Sarah got to the point. “Ray, why did you break up with me?”
He stared at her for a moment before speaking, the muscles of his jaw cast into judgment. “Nothing lowers you more in someone’s eyes,” he began slowly, “then when you consciously go seeking their approval.”
“Well that’s just about the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard,” Mary remarked. “And Sarah never went looking for your approval, Ray. She disparaged you every day in our house. ‘Why date a dead-end loser?’ the girls would ask. She never did have an answer.”
“I slept with Susan,” Ray said.
Silence assaulted the room, more fluent than sound.
“What?” Sarah asked, stunned.
Mary’s pitying gaze found her.
“I slept with Susan,” Ray repeated. “We had sex.”
A sensation of complete surrealism was overtaking Sarah’s consciousness, first taking the time to clear out all feeling before filling it with unrestrained, surging hurt. The room seemed to spin in the reflection of her eyes. “But – but she’s one of my best friends!” Sarah exclaimed, the realization widening her eyes. “How could you?”
“How could she?” Ray countered. “That’s your real question.”
Sarah couldn’t deny it. He was right. She was already detached from him, th
e seeds of her love unplanted to be sewn anew at the dawn of a new spring. But Susan was a dear and close friend. Only that morning they had gone out for coffee and scones at a little cafe not far from the third metro stop.
“Enough of this,” Mary decided. “We came here for a reason. Didn’t we, Sarah?”
Sarah blinked her unseeing eyes. Her words came forth, albeit at a toneless and deathly whisper. “Yes we did.”
Ray, looking pleased with himself after his admittance of wrongdoing, slouched back in the tattoo chair, the poltergeist of a grin playing about his freshly relaxed features. His own response came forth a purr. “Oh yeah? Then out with it then, girls. Why did you come visit an old love from oh so afar?”
“I want a tattoo,” Sarah said. “I want one like Mary’s got. She’ll show it to you, Ray, and I want mine to look exactly like it. Though now I’m wondering whether I want you to do it after everything you’ve said and done. I guess I had my suspicions here and there, but to hear it is totally different.”
Surprise unfurled down Ray’s features like white sails billowing down a ship. Despite himself, he seemed momentarily speechless. He recovered himself quickly – not through words, but movement. Leaping from the chair, he hurriedly brushed it off with his hand before preparing his instruments.
“Thanks – uh – Sarah,” he said, his tone lame. “For your confidence in my work. If it helps at all, my relationship with Susan was completely meaningless. It was just about passion and passionate sex. Feeling that was so different to me at the time that I couldn’t even begin to stop myself.”
Mary cleared her throat. She said, “You need to stop talking.”
“And