Strange Woman Blues
Dec. 2nd, 2010 02:12 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lb_leeAuthor's Notes: Biff is one fucked up human being, but I still love writing him.
Strange Woman Blues
Somewhere in the stream of crappy apartments without air conditioning, Biff had developed the habit of cooking shirtless in the summer. It meant he got some interesting grease burns, but better that than heat stroke or not using the stove for four months of the year. Normally, he didn’t have guests, so it didn’t matter.
This time, though, the kid had shown up, and she was staring at his back with blatant fascination. He wasn’t sure she’d realized her eyes tended to dilate and refract light weird if something caught her attention; if she hadn’t, he wasn’t going to tell her.
He grunted questioningly and lobbed an onion at her. If she was going to stand here, she might as well help. She caught it automatically.
“Those are gorgeous,” she breathed.
“Huh? Oh, you mean—” he gestured vaguely at the ink on his back. Since the tattoos were out of his sight, he sometimes forgot they were there. He’d definitely forgotten that she hadn’t seen them.
“Well, yeah, I didn’t mean this thing you just tossed me. Aw, Biff, an edible bulb, you shouldn’t have, it’s not even my birthday…”
He rolled his eyes and pointed at the cutting board. “Chop it for me.” And when she lifted the knife and squinted at the onion doubtfully, he added hastily, “All the same size.”
“It’s kinda round, Biff…”
Oh, for Christ’s sake. He shoved her out of the way, took the knife, sliced the top of the onion off, skinned it in a couple quick motions, halved it, and cut up to the roots with four even strokes. Then, making sure she was paying attention, he cut a nice even semi-circle of diced onion.
“Can you do that?” He asked.
She beamed at him. “Maybe.”
Good enough. He handed her the knife back and left her to it. He didn’t trust her with an onion, but she was good with pointy objects.
Except she wasn’t keeping her eye on the knife. She was staring at his back again.
“How’d you get them?” She asked. “It must’ve cost you a lung.” She reached out a hand, as though to poke.
He smacked her wrist and turned back to the frying pan, scooping in butter for greasing. “Someone owed me a favor.”
She eyed his back again, turning her head aslant to show her doubt. “Must’ve been one heck of a favor...”
It had been one heck of a favor. Eighteen hours worth of favor, in fact, more of a debt. How he’d incurred the debt didn’t matter, because it’d been by accident.
Biff wasn’t interested in playing rescuer to dumb shits, after all. He was not that kind of person, hadn’t been for years. He’d just been pounding on some guy who owed him money, that was all, taking out what was owed him in blood and reputation instead of cash, and it wasn’t till it was all over and he was enjoying his victory cigarette that he saw the girl.
He wasn’t surprised he hadn’t noticed her; she was skinny, twiggy, hiding next to a Dumpster, refusing to look at him and shivering almost invisibly. He knew that stance. It was a victim’s stance, like a deer hoping that if it held very still, then the wolf would move on by.
He gave her a glance, just enough to show he was aware of her; she flinched. At that, he chortled, but otherwise, he kept smoking and going through his quarry’s pockets. No need to do anything more. After all, she didn’t owe him money, and either she was coming down from a bad trip or scared out of her mind. If she was an addict, she’d have nothing worth taking, and if she was terrified, he’d already accomplished everything he needed to. Besides, he wasn’t angry for the moment; he’d used all that on the other guy. For now, he was in good spirits.
But then she spoke to him.
“H-hey man,” she said, in an accent that was upper-class and trying hard not to be, “I--how’d you do that, man? I never seen anyone move like that.”
No, she hadn’t, and she never would again. Biff chose to ignore her and kept rifling through the guy’s jacket pockets. Damn. Guy hadn’t been lying; he really was flat broke, and that meant Biff was going to have to get his rent elsewhere.
“Thank you,” the twiggy girl said meekly.
That made him pause. Thank you? Why the hell would she say...?
Something clicked in his mind, and he felt cold dread. He swooped around (the girl recoiled) and now he looked at her, really looked at her. Shaking, terrified, yeah, he knew that, but now he saw the bruises on her arms, the torn sleeve of her shirt.
Oh no. No, no, no. He had not just saved some dumbass chick from a mugging, or a slaphappy boyfriend, or... the other things that happened to girls and fags when they were out after dark.
Biff cursed and threw down his cigarette. Because now she owed him something, and they both knew it. The moment he’d seen her, it’d been cemented. It was part of the unwritten rules of Vaygo.
“Nuh uh,” he said, holding up a hand to silence whatever she was going to say. “You owe me nothing, got it? Jack shit.”
She was standing up now on tottery legs, gripping the Dumpster for support. He saw the look on her face, the mix of fear and determination. “I can pay you.”
For a moment, Biff paused. He thought of his rent, already late. “You got money?”
She looked away.
Fuck, there went his chance at an easy way of getting rid of her. Fuck.
Vaygo was a city where it was dangerous practice to hold a debt of any size, especially to someone like Biff. They pulled you into quagmires that you may never escape from, even (especially) when the person owed favors claimed it was nothing. When someone in Vaygo became indebted to a disreputable stranger, they paid it as quickly as possible, if not in money, then in trade.
Biff had been around long enough to know what women usually used for trade. And sure enough, she reached for him and said, “Here, come with me, I got some stuff back at my place, I can pay you, okay man?” Her eyes were desperate.
Biff felt his skin grow cold and his stomach churn, but he followed her. He couldn’t think of any way to shed her without putting possible rumors out on the street that would ruin years of careful posturing.
She took him back to her grotty apartment, almost as bad as his, where mold crawled the walls and the pipes leaked, and sat on the unmade bed with her eyes down, shoulders hunched, not even a cursory attempt at enthusiasm. She left space on the sagging mattress for him.
Biff swallowed. He’d hoped to feel relieved that he apparently still looked like the sort of man you tried to pay off with sex, if you were a woman. But mostly, he felt sick.
For his reputation, he could do it once. Maybe. But the idea made his flesh crawl, turned something in his stomach to stone. It wasn’t her looks; he didn’t care about that. But someone like her should not be offering herself to someone like him. He was a sick joke being played on her. Her lack of enthusiasm just made it worse, some parody of things people did to each other and pretended meant something.
No, there was no way he could do it. Not even once. She’d know the moment he tried.
He turned away for a moment, trying to decide whether he could threaten her into staying quiet, and that’s when he saw the drawings on her walls. Ink, flash, tribal styles. He knew those; he’d seen them hanging in the windows of places like Black Demon and Arsenal. Tattoo designs.
A way out.
“You do shit like that?” He asked, trying not to sound too interested. “You put ink on people?”
She looked up and shrugged. “I’m finishing my apprenticeship at Red Stripes. It’s not much, but...” And he saw the desperate gleam in her eyes, how eager she was to have an alternative to fucking him, and he was relieved. “Why, you interested?”
Lots of people in Vaygo got tattooed. It was membership, gang affiliations, a complicated system of alliances and accomplishments and identification. Biff had never gotten one. Distinguishing markings were not only a downside in his profession but a violation of his lifestyle. He worked alone and lived alone and preferred it that way. As an illusionist, he could create any appearance he wanted, and shed it when he wanted. Why would he want something on his skin, someone else’s work, permanently?
But he asked, “How much of that,” another loose gesture at the flash, like he didn’t really care, “would you owe me?”
“Depends,” she said, and he saw the shrewd look of a haggler. “What do you want?”
“I’ll get back to you,” he said, and she let him leave.
When he got home to his apartment (a note was tacked to his door, reminding him about his overdue rent), he went to the mattress on the floor, flopped on it, and stared at the ceiling, thinking.
Biff was no artist. His vanish jobs were all business, none of that faggot artsy-fartsy crap. He had no gift with pencil, pen, or paint, and no interest in trying. However, he did have a knack at envisioning something in his mind and enforcing it on the world around him, so clear and detailed even security cams couldn’t beat him these days.
Biff didn’t think he minded living in a constant state of between—identities, faces, paychecks, crappy apartments. He was used to having no paperwork (except what the PIN had on him, fuck them all), no social circle, no family. He was okay with that life. He preferred anonymity and impermanence.
But maybe he wouldn’t mind having something permanent on his skin. Just to remind him that he existed every once in a while. It didn’t have to cause him occupational trouble. After all, he could vanish distinguishing markings as easily as adding them. Put it somewhere most people wouldn’t see, and it wouldn’t cramp his style one bit.
Hell, he could even use it to cover up something else.
Biff unsnapped the armband from his left forearm, flexed his fingers, and studied his wrist. His dark skin didn’t cover the mess he’d made of it with a kitchen knife at sixteen; he’d always scarred badly. Biff let his arm fall against his chest and shook his head with a sigh. Now there was something that he’d fucked up at the worst moment. He was lucky that armbands weren’t uncommon; those type of scars were instantly recognizable, and Biff preferred not to gain the reputation of someone too weak to handle life.
The tattoo chick would see them, though. She’d have to; Biff wasn’t sure what scar tissue did for tattooing, but it seemed like something that could fuck up a tattoo job if the person doing it wasn’t warned. And he’d rather she didn’t know that about him either.
Biff put the armband back on. Fuck it. The only thing of permanence about him anymore and it had to be that.
Lighting a stub of cigarette and inhaling, Biff thought for a moment. Then, staring at the ceiling, he started mapping designs and patterns on the drywall. Colors, styles, areas of skin. They swirled and slid through a veil of smoke, sinuous subconscious quicksilver patterns that, when the kid had forced them, had always struck him as amateurish and self-indulgent. So this was how it felt. Maybe this was how she felt, all the time. It was oddly peaceful.
He fell asleep knowing what he wanted, but he didn’t have the details set yet. If he was going to do this, he wanted it perfect.
He would have to do research.
...
Certain animals have adapted to urban living, much as the human race. Thus, despite the heat and the drought, Vaygo was home to a full assortment of vermin, which was lucky for Biff. He hadn’t liked the idea of having to sneak into a zoo. Crowds of small children bothered him, and he wanted some peace and quiet.
So Biff stood on the bridge over Highway 14 with a paper bag of popcorn and watched.
It was funny. He had a pretty good eye for detail—had to be, to be an illusionist of his caliber—and he spent a fair amount of his time simply watching things, memorizing the details: people’s features, the wood grain of doors, the patterns of money. But he’d never realized how much he saw without noticing. On first go, he’d thought that the tattoo he’d had in mind was simple and could be done half-assed. Now he found that there was a lot of detail and structure to it, and he was glad he’d chosen to do more watching. With an example right in front of him, he could see the angles, the underlying framework and the overlying patterns, the way one affected the other, and file it all away into his memory for future reference.
A shadow fell across Biff’s subject. Without looking up, he shoved the owner of the shadow away so as to get his light back. The owner—not a friend, Biff didn’t have those, but someone who occasionally played ball with him and tried to sell him crack—squinted at the vermin, then at Biff.
“The hell are you doing?” He asked.
Biff grunted, waving a hand as though trying to shoo off a gnat.
“You been staring at that pigeon for twenty minutes, man. Thought you didn’t do the hard stuff.”
“I ain’t on shit, now fuck off, it’s important.”
“Man, it’s a pigeon.”
“And you dead, you keep bothering me, now fuck off.”
Shaking his head and muttering to himself, Biff’s associate moved on. Biff didn’t look up; he kept watching the pigeon. He tossed it a puff of popcorn.
It wasn’t everything, but it was a start.
…
Biff had not set foot in a library since his school days, and even then, he hadn’t liked them. Libraries, he felt, mocked him. They were not places for kids to learn; they were places for dyslexics like him to feel stupid.
So he didn’t have a library card. He wasn’t even sure where the library was. But he dug up a yellow pages in a phone booth and looked it up, and did a bit of walking, and now here he was in a big marble building facing a shriveled old woman with tortoiseshell glasses. She was squinting at him with a mix of distrust and disgust like he was a monkey escaped from the zoo. A monkey who might possibly try to rob her.
He wouldn’t. Everyone knew libraries had jack all worth stealing.
“Uh…” Biff scratched the back of his neck. It’d been a very long time since he’d been in polite company, and remembering proper conduct was a little difficult. “I’m trying to find a book.”
“Yes?” The librarian prompted.
“About birds.”
He hated having to ask. He was a grown man, perfectly capable of finding a book. Even if printed words gave him a headache, surely he could see pictures.
But apparently not. He’d spent half an hour wandering aimlessly around the library, squinting blankly at stacks of books and shelves labeled with cryptic numbers and letters that made no sense to him whatsoever, even when he carefully differentiated Ps and Bs.
He’d tried using the catalog, but that had been even worse. Biff had never been adept with computers; the screens hurt his eyes, and trying to read on them only exacerbated it. He had managed to try a subject search, using the phrase ‘pictures of birds,’ but it came up zero. Biff had tried to figure out whether the problem was his spelling or his choice of words, failed, and finally given up before he punched the monitor.
His pride, already bruised, wouldn’t tolerate asking someone to spell check him, and so he’d decided to go straight to a librarian and get her to help him. At the time, it’d seemed less embarrassing.
Seeing the look she was giving him, he had been wrong.
“Yes, what about birds?” She asked, speaking very slowly as though he were stupid.
Biff felt the flush of humiliation in his jaw, clenched his fists, but he was determined, so he managed to say, “Just… any kind. I want pictures of ‘em.”
“Photos? Illustrations?”
“Photos.” He remembered some fragment of manners from his childhood, and gritted through his teeth, “Please.”
The librarian looked him over like he was a stain on her shoe, moved to her keyboard, did a rat-a-tat, and wrote down a series of jumbled numbers and letters, then handed it to him.
“There, those are some call numbers that might help you. If none of those work out, come back and I’ll see what I can do.”
Biff would eat his boots first, but he grunted something resembling acknowledgment and skulked off, feeling his cheeks and jaw flaming red.
Finding the call numbers was another trial. Biff’s mind had never learned to cooperate with writing, and mixing letters with numbers was a special kind of hell for his reading comprehension. Had the librarian written .69 or .bg or .bq? He couldn’t tell, and damned if he was going to ask her; he felt stupid enough already.
Eventually, after fifteen frustrating minutes of misreading the numbers and blundering through shelves, Biff stumbled on an Audubon guide—more through accident than design. By this point, Biff’s temper was on full burn and he was ready to punch the first person who looked at him funny, but he snatched the Audubon guide, an illustrated encyclopedia of the animal kingdom, and a book on tropical birds for good measure. Then he dumped himself in a table, propped his feet on one of the seats to prevent anyone else from sitting down, and glowered at anyone who made overtures as though to try.
He found the books less useful than pigeon watching had been, but he saw enough to make the required adjustments to his mental pictures. Once you understood the basic archetypal structure of something, he knew, you had practically all that you needed. The rest was details, learning how far the average could be stretched before it became something else entirely.
For instance, people. Generally, people were all built the same way, with the same quota of limbs, eyes, hair, and so forth. Race, age, disfigurements, and gender made for slight differences, but they were insignificant compared to the similarities, just slight changes to the general archetype. It had taken Biff a good long while to learn that, but once he had, he’d been able to cloak himself in the visage of any human being on the planet without looking viscerally wrong.
And as he’d suspected, birds were exactly the same way.
He shut the last book and smiled. Got it.
…
Three nights later, he lay shirtless on a bench in Red Stripes after hours while the girl loomed above him, wielding a needle. It was a little unnerving, but it helped to think of it as trade. He’d done her a service, even if by accident, and now she was doing him one. Afterward, they’d part ways and never see each other again.
A dusty record player turned in the corner, creaking out hymns that sounded like they’d been recorded a century ago. Ave Maria, sung in some terrifying cat-in-a-blender voice that made Biff grit his teeth.
“Play something else,” he said.
She raised an eyebrow as she adjusted a rubber band on the needle gun. “What’s the matter, worried about God’s judgment?”
He glared at her, but since she was the one with the needle gun in her hand, it didn’t work so well. “I don’t believe in that shit,” he said finally.
“Okay, okay, I’ll change it.”
Ave Maria shut off and half-century old blues started, which wasn’t much better, but Biff didn’t bitch. He didn’t want to make her think he was nervous.
It was going to hurt, of course. He was sure of that, and reasonably sure it wasn’t that bad; otherwise nobody would get inked. Biff had a pretty decent pain tolerance, so he was reasonably sure he wouldn’t make a fool of himself.
But still.
“This design you want, it’ll take a few sessions,” the girl said, pulling out little packets of ink. “You’ll have to come back.”
“Uh huh.” Biff eyed the needle gun suspiciously.
“These’re actually pretty popular. Never seen them like this, though. You do the design yourself?”
“Nah,” Biff lied. “Just found it somewhere.”
“Huh. Anyway, this’ll be a long haul, so it might get rough. Tell me if it gets too intense, okay? We can take a break.”
Biff gave her a disgusted look. “I can take pain.”
“Yeah, they all say that,” but she didn’t argue with him, and then, humiliatingly, she took out a razor and started shaving his back. Biff bit his tongue and tensed but otherwise ignored it. After this, he would never have to see her again, he reminded himself. She did this all the time; she wouldn’t remember him in a few days. He hadn’t been touched by a woman—by anyone—in years, but he could do this.
It was better than sex with her, he told himself. He just needed to push through this and stop being a fag about it and he’d be fine.
After a few minutes, she finished with that, and wiped his back down with something that smelled sterile. He flinched.
“Hey, it’s okay, this ain’t the needle, just antiseptic. Relax.”
Biff didn’t say anything. Fuck pain, this was hard.
He felt thin plastic press to his skin, putting down temporary lines for the tattoo for the girl to follow. This wasn’t much better than the wiping down or shaving; she pressed a hand to his back a few times for balance, and it took all of Biff’s concentration not to jump.
“Jeez, you’re tense. Relax, okay? No big deal. People do this all the time.”
The needle started to buzz. This time, Biff didn’t flinch when it touched his skin, though it took focus. He didn’t want to mess it up.
It did hurt. The anxiety faded, and Biff relaxed. Pain felt good. He understood pain. It reminded him of the way he felt sometimes in a fight, when everything was moving and everything made sense, when he knew that even if he didn’t win, he was in control. It reminded him of how it felt to hit and be hit and taste the air in your lungs and feel the blood in your veins.
It almost reminded him of a time when he was sixteen and in his mother’s kitchen, but he didn’t think about that. That was a long time ago.
It surprised him to think that anybody would find this unbearable. He found it oddly soothing. In his mind, the tattoo needle and the record player needle blurred together, until he almost felt the music scratching down his bones. A strange feeling, but not bad.
The only problem was that he couldn’t move without wrecking the girl’s work. He wanted a smoke for this.
…
Two weeks later, after the first part had healed, he came back, and she kept going. Now that he knew what it felt like, the touch didn’t bother him as much; he spent the hours in a pleasant endorphin haze that made him wonder why people made such a fuss about pain. It was like alcohol, only it sped you up instead of slowing you down. It was nice.
Even if she played shitty old gospel music again. This time, Biff didn’t bother trying to get her to knock it off. The music was scratchy and fuzzy enough he could almost pretend he didn’t know the verses.
Once, high on the rush of the needle, he slipped and found himself humming along. He knew the hymn well; its chorus still echoed in his dreams sometimes.
“Hey, so you were a church boy,” the girl said.
Biff went silent. The hymn carried on.
“I knew it,” she said. “The moment you walked in wanting angel wings on your back and bitching about the music, I knew you were raised in a church. All the thugs were, it seems, these days.”
Biff said nothing.
“Am I right?”
After a moment, Biff said coldly, “I don’t believe in that shit.”
“Uh huh. Lemme guess. Catholic.”
Biff clenched his jaw. His knuckles were white.
“No? Mormon? Pentecostal? Don’t tell me you were raised Jehovah’s Witness…”
“You gonna tattoo me or what?” He said.
After a moment, she said, “Okay, man, okay. Chill. I’ll tattoo you.”
Biff nodded. He kept a closer watch on his mouth after that.
As though in apology, she stopped playing gospel records and shifted to blues again permanently. Not much better, but at least Biff didn’t know the words to everything.
…
“So, what’re you cooking?”
Five minutes. She was distracted. “Stroganoff,” he replied, pointing at a bowl of chopped mushrooms on the table and snapping his fingers twice. The kid went to fetch it with rolling eyes but no complaint, looking over his shoulder while he added it in with the garlic and pepper.
“Is it edible?” She asked.
He gave her an affronted look.
“Right. Of course. I would never insult your cooking abilities.”
Then she went back to staring at his back.
Biff had never known M.D. to not be interested in whatever he was cooking; she could barely boil water, so making even the most basic of spaghetti sauces made her look at him as though he pissed gold and shat diamonds. The stroganoff should’ve had her full attention.
But it didn’t. He suspected the only reason she wasn’t poking him was because she liked touch about as much as he did. Then she looked up at him.
“Just how far, exactly, do those things go?” she asked awkwardly.
Biff raised an eyebrow at her, but she didn’t look away. She knew the question was a touchy one, but that had never stopped her from asking them before.
He knew M.D. wasn’t a boy. Therefore, she must be a girl, but that didn’t fit quite right. Women made him antsy. Men made him defensive. And yeah, M.D. did that too, but it was for what she did, not what she was. In his gut, she wasn’t a boy or a girl. She was just ‘the kid.’
He was a little surprised to realize he was okay with her seeing.
So he smiled sardonically and reached back to tug at the edge of his jeans with the thumb of his hand not engaged in stirring. He didn’t have far to go; the wings sheared off an inch below the denim, unfinished.
The kid snickered. It wasn’t mocking.
“Should’ve known you’d never strip for some tattoo artist,” she said. “He must’ve spent an hour getting you to take your shirt off.”
“It was a she. And yeah.”
...
On the third session, the artist reached his jeans, and she paused and put the needle gun away.
“Take your pants off,” she said.
It took a moment for Biff to shake off the endorphins enough to hear. “Enh?”
“I can’t tattoo through these.” And her hand was on the top edge of his jeans. Biff went rigid; she didn’t notice. “Come on, take them off.” The hand tugged.
Biff turned over. Apparently what was in his eyes and his muscles said all he needed to, because she immediately cringed back.
“Whoa, whoa, whoa,” she said, “hey man--”
“Don’t touch me,” he told her. His voice was quiet.
This time she didn’t say anything; she was just staring at him with the frozen deer look again. Like maybe, just maybe, if she did nothing, he would go on by. Her obvious fear made something buzz in his ears. He stood up from the table and began to advance, and that seemed to trigger the girl into action. She lurched up from her chair, backing towards the wall, her voice high-pitched and frightened.
“I didn’t mean to. It won’t happen again.”
“No,” he agreed, “it won’t.”
Her back hit the wall.
“Please,” she said, “please don’t.”
He placed one hand against the wall next to her, clenched the other. “Please don’t what?” he asked pleasantly. “I ain’t done nothing yet.”
Her eyes flickered from his face, to the hand by her head, to the fist at his side, to his face again. She swallowed.
“I’m sorry,” she said.
That made him pause. He frowned. “Huh?”
“I’m sorry,” she repeated. Her eyes were still all whites, but her voice grew stronger. “I shouldn’t have touched you. I should have told you what I was going to do, warned you. It wasn’t polite of me, man. I was wrong to do that, and I’m sorry.”
It took a few seconds for the words to sink in. Biff stayed frozen.
“You want me to finish the tattoo, right? Can’t have it half-finished, after all this. I can do that for you. I owe you, remember?”
Right. If he beat the shit out of her, he’d have to find someone else to finish the tattoo, walk around half-inked for however long it took to get the money together. Look like a pussy with no pain tolerance.
“If you’d rather do it another time, that’s okay. All I meant to say was, the design you want, it goes too low, you hearing me?”
Yes, he was.
“It goes under your pants, that’s all.” Her voice was calmer now, as though she explained this to clients every day, as though he wasn’t going to hurt her. “And you know, I can’t tattoo you there with the clothes in the way.”
Biff considered this for a few seconds.
“I don’t want it that far,” he finally said.
She didn’t manage to conceal her look of dismay. “Uh... you gave me a design for full wings, and the way you gave it to me, they’d go down to your legs. I can’t end the feathers where they are now, it’ll look...”
Biff pulled away from the wall and moved back towards the table. He made no move to undress, only pulled out a cigarette and lit up. The smoke helped clear his head.
“Um, you’re not supposed to...” She started.
He looked at her, and she stopped talking. He’d smoked around open wounds before, and it had yet to kill him. He wasn’t about to stop now for her. He needed this.
For the next few minutes, she let him be, and he turned the lighter through his fingers and let the nicotine do its work. The buzzing in his ears died down, and the walls of the room seemed to retract into their proper dimensions. His adrenaline was still a mess, but at least now he noticed it.
Finally, he felt up to talking again.
“You ain’t tattooing my ass,” He said, tucking his lighter back in his pocket.
The girl apparently saw the humanity come back on behind his eyes, and felt out of danger, because she said, “Well then, you’re going to have a shitty tattoo, man, hate to break it to you.”
Biff sighed smoke. He couldn’t snap at her wisecrack; after all, she was right. He’d designed the work in mind of it going all the way down, and had shoved thoughts of what that’d involve aside. He’d hoped that he’d just take it as it came, be a man about it, but now he knew that was not an option. He was not undressing for this woman and letting her touch him, and that was the end of it.
Which left him with the question of what to do with the tattoo.
“Look, do you want me to—”
He cut her off with a raised hand and continued smoking and thinking.
After a few minutes of consideration, he stubbed out the cigarette. “Shear ‘em.”
“What?”
“Go an inch or so under my pants. I won’t take them off. Then just cut ‘em off.”
She was staring at him now, obviously not comprehending. “Just... cut them off?”
“Yeah.” He sliced his hand through the air to demonstrate. “Like you was going to finish later.”
She blinked at him. “Like...?”
With a sigh of exasperation, Biff rolled his eyes, got off the table, and strode to the desk, where the design still lay. He reached into his armband, popped out a razor, and sliced off the bottom third of the paper. Then he held it up.
“Like this. Get it?”
He tossed the paper down, and the artist stood there for a moment in silence. Her expression held masked revulsion, like a chef asked to fry a rat. “Got it.”
He returned to the table again and undid his belt, shifting to pull his jeans lower on his hips. He was lucky; this pair was loose on him.
“Uh. I’ll get ink on your jeans.”
“Don’t care.”
“But--”
Very slowly now, as though she was feeble-minded: “I ain’t taking nothing off.”
She seemed to hear the shift in his voice and realize she was treading on thin ice again. She looked at him, swallowed, and nodded. “Okay, man,” she said. “You’re the boss. You keep them on.”
The jeans wouldn’t go any further, which was just as well. Having his belt undone when he was shirtless like this already made his skin itch.
That done, he turned back over on his stomach, slowly, watching her to make sure she didn’t surprise him. When she went to her chair again, moving carefully as though not to startle him, he took a deep breath and focused on the screechy blues still playing in the corner.
The girl changed her gloves for a sterile pair and picked up the needle gun again.
“It’s going to look like shit,” she warned him.
“Don’t care,” he told her.
She sighed, and the needle started buzzing again. This time, it took far more effort not to flinch when it touched him. And this time, the pain didn’t feel good. It just hurt. Biff fought the compulsion to turn over, to kick, to get out of this parlor, to get home and run his hands over his body until the sensation of the artist’s needle was gone.
It’d be over soon, he told himself. Nobody was going to see it anyway.
Biff got his wish. The wings were sheared.
When he returned home, he hastily stripped off his jeans. They were splattered with ink, which he suspected would never come out. He pitched them into the cardboard box he used as a laundry hamper, and went to find some athletic shorts. Normally, after a day like that, he would’ve gotten into a fight, but he didn’t want to risk wrecking the work on his back, which meant he’d have to settle for a game of basketball instead.
As he passed into the bathroom, he caught a look at himself in the mirror. The rust and cracks didn’t mar the image enough. His back was raw and red, covered with open wounds filled with ink. The back of his briefs was dotted with black.
For a moment, he stared at his reflection. Then he tore his briefs off, threw them into the garbage, and bolted into the shower. The hot water had been out for weeks, but he didn’t care. He cranked up the tap to full blast and let the icy water run over his skin until he didn’t feel her hands on him anymore, until his muscles stopped itching and his mind shifted back into a normal gear and his adrenaline went down. Until his hands stopped shaking.
It took a while.
...
“You’re done,” she said.
Biff got off the table for the last time, went to the full-length mirror on the wall, took her handheld mirror, and looked everything over. He’d dutifully checked over the work after each session, but he wanted to see the full thing.
The wings had proved too broad for even his back. They’d had to crest at his traps (which had hurt less than he’d planned on) and spread against his ribs (which had hurt more than he’d planned on), and their abrupt demarcation at his hips wasn’t visible as long as he was clothed. He flexed one shoulder blade, and the whole thing rippled.
As for the work itself, the girl had done what he’d wanted her to do. He saw the work she put into it; full-size wings in pointillism, every feather picked out in blue-black ink embedded under his scored skin until the end of his life. Permanent.
A lot of work, a lot of pain.
Biff didn’t see beauty in things, most of the time; he wasn’t much of a judge of aesthetics. But he could appreciate pain. Apprentice or not, this woman could ink. Though he never would’ve admitted it, he was pleased.
He was also relieved. He’d made it through. He hadn’t crapped out. He’d pushed through, and it’d been worth it. But he was never going to do this again.
“So,” the girl asked. “What do you think?”
He nodded. “Your debt’s paid.”
“Don’t recommend me to your friends,” she said. When he raised an eyebrow at her, she added, “I don’t want to explain why I cut a guy’s tattoo off half-finished.”
He shrugged and nodded and pulled on his shirt for the last time. In his opinion, there was nothing half about it. It was perfectly fine as it was.
“So. You gonna tell me your name?”
He shook his head.
“Mine’s—”
“Don’t tell me,” he said. He didn’t need to know.
And so he returned to the street, a lapsed Catholic with wings scratched into his back. He never spoke to her again, and though he caught glimpses of her again every once in a while, it was during those periods where he wore other people’s faces and aped other people’s voices.
He never knew her name, and he was fine with that.
…
“It’s funny,” M.D. said around a mouthful of stroganoff.
Biff grunted to indicate he was paying attention, but just barely. He didn’t look up; watching M.D. eat was a sport not meant for spectators.
“I mean, dang, Biff. Those are beautiful. I never would’ve guessed you had them.”
Biff shrugged.
She looked him over; Biff pretended to ignore her. (It never worked, but he felt obligated to try anyway.) Her pupils dilated. She swallowed her food, then smirked knowingly, showing flecks of stroganoff in her teeth.
“You designed them yourself, didn’t you?”
“Fuck no,” Biff said, with not quite enough boredom.
Her eyes went wide. “I knew it!” She cried, beating her fists on her thighs. “I knew you would’ve eaten your left kidney before you let anyone else design that kind of stuff and put it on you, I knew it!”
Biff rolled his eyes, crossed his arms, and let her have her moment. “Yeah, so? I’m a illusionist. It’s what I do, make stuff. You do it too, just shitty.”
“Hey, I’m doing the equivalent of vomiting colors, all right, not my fault I don’t have your mojo. It kills me, Biff, all that power and until now, I’ve never seen you do something… you know. Artistic with it.”
“Hey, I ain’t no fucking faggot artist, all right?”
“Yeesh, Biff, relax. I didn’t call you that, all right? Even if there is nothing wrong with it and you ought to get over that,” she added.
Biff grunted, but let it go.
She was the first person who’d seen the whole work, and she had more of that artsy stuff in her. So after a second, grudgingly, he asked her, “You think it looks all right?”
“What? The tattoo? I just told you it was gorgeous and beautiful, houseplant. Did you think I was complimenting your fashion sense?”
Biff rolled his eyes at her. “No, I meant ‘cause…” He gestured vaguely at the line of his jeans and made a severing motion.
“What, that? It looks fine. To be honest, I think it makes more sense for you.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah,” she smirked. “I mean, I’d have a lot of trouble buying you as a full-fledged angel. The fallen version, though…”
He tossed a fork at her and she dodged, laughing.
“Honestly, Biff,” she said, more gently this time, “it looks good. You did a good job.”
Biff nodded stiffly and grunted thanks. Then he shoved the pan of stroganoff towards her. “Here, eat more. You’re a fucking stick.”
She dug in and didn’t even make a wisecrack about him asking her approval. They had an understanding about these things.
Strange Woman Blues
Somewhere in the stream of crappy apartments without air conditioning, Biff had developed the habit of cooking shirtless in the summer. It meant he got some interesting grease burns, but better that than heat stroke or not using the stove for four months of the year. Normally, he didn’t have guests, so it didn’t matter.
This time, though, the kid had shown up, and she was staring at his back with blatant fascination. He wasn’t sure she’d realized her eyes tended to dilate and refract light weird if something caught her attention; if she hadn’t, he wasn’t going to tell her.
He grunted questioningly and lobbed an onion at her. If she was going to stand here, she might as well help. She caught it automatically.
“Those are gorgeous,” she breathed.
“Huh? Oh, you mean—” he gestured vaguely at the ink on his back. Since the tattoos were out of his sight, he sometimes forgot they were there. He’d definitely forgotten that she hadn’t seen them.
“Well, yeah, I didn’t mean this thing you just tossed me. Aw, Biff, an edible bulb, you shouldn’t have, it’s not even my birthday…”
He rolled his eyes and pointed at the cutting board. “Chop it for me.” And when she lifted the knife and squinted at the onion doubtfully, he added hastily, “All the same size.”
“It’s kinda round, Biff…”
Oh, for Christ’s sake. He shoved her out of the way, took the knife, sliced the top of the onion off, skinned it in a couple quick motions, halved it, and cut up to the roots with four even strokes. Then, making sure she was paying attention, he cut a nice even semi-circle of diced onion.
“Can you do that?” He asked.
She beamed at him. “Maybe.”
Good enough. He handed her the knife back and left her to it. He didn’t trust her with an onion, but she was good with pointy objects.
Except she wasn’t keeping her eye on the knife. She was staring at his back again.
“How’d you get them?” She asked. “It must’ve cost you a lung.” She reached out a hand, as though to poke.
He smacked her wrist and turned back to the frying pan, scooping in butter for greasing. “Someone owed me a favor.”
She eyed his back again, turning her head aslant to show her doubt. “Must’ve been one heck of a favor...”
It had been one heck of a favor. Eighteen hours worth of favor, in fact, more of a debt. How he’d incurred the debt didn’t matter, because it’d been by accident.
Biff wasn’t interested in playing rescuer to dumb shits, after all. He was not that kind of person, hadn’t been for years. He’d just been pounding on some guy who owed him money, that was all, taking out what was owed him in blood and reputation instead of cash, and it wasn’t till it was all over and he was enjoying his victory cigarette that he saw the girl.
He wasn’t surprised he hadn’t noticed her; she was skinny, twiggy, hiding next to a Dumpster, refusing to look at him and shivering almost invisibly. He knew that stance. It was a victim’s stance, like a deer hoping that if it held very still, then the wolf would move on by.
He gave her a glance, just enough to show he was aware of her; she flinched. At that, he chortled, but otherwise, he kept smoking and going through his quarry’s pockets. No need to do anything more. After all, she didn’t owe him money, and either she was coming down from a bad trip or scared out of her mind. If she was an addict, she’d have nothing worth taking, and if she was terrified, he’d already accomplished everything he needed to. Besides, he wasn’t angry for the moment; he’d used all that on the other guy. For now, he was in good spirits.
But then she spoke to him.
“H-hey man,” she said, in an accent that was upper-class and trying hard not to be, “I--how’d you do that, man? I never seen anyone move like that.”
No, she hadn’t, and she never would again. Biff chose to ignore her and kept rifling through the guy’s jacket pockets. Damn. Guy hadn’t been lying; he really was flat broke, and that meant Biff was going to have to get his rent elsewhere.
“Thank you,” the twiggy girl said meekly.
That made him pause. Thank you? Why the hell would she say...?
Something clicked in his mind, and he felt cold dread. He swooped around (the girl recoiled) and now he looked at her, really looked at her. Shaking, terrified, yeah, he knew that, but now he saw the bruises on her arms, the torn sleeve of her shirt.
Oh no. No, no, no. He had not just saved some dumbass chick from a mugging, or a slaphappy boyfriend, or... the other things that happened to girls and fags when they were out after dark.
Biff cursed and threw down his cigarette. Because now she owed him something, and they both knew it. The moment he’d seen her, it’d been cemented. It was part of the unwritten rules of Vaygo.
“Nuh uh,” he said, holding up a hand to silence whatever she was going to say. “You owe me nothing, got it? Jack shit.”
She was standing up now on tottery legs, gripping the Dumpster for support. He saw the look on her face, the mix of fear and determination. “I can pay you.”
For a moment, Biff paused. He thought of his rent, already late. “You got money?”
She looked away.
Fuck, there went his chance at an easy way of getting rid of her. Fuck.
Vaygo was a city where it was dangerous practice to hold a debt of any size, especially to someone like Biff. They pulled you into quagmires that you may never escape from, even (especially) when the person owed favors claimed it was nothing. When someone in Vaygo became indebted to a disreputable stranger, they paid it as quickly as possible, if not in money, then in trade.
Biff had been around long enough to know what women usually used for trade. And sure enough, she reached for him and said, “Here, come with me, I got some stuff back at my place, I can pay you, okay man?” Her eyes were desperate.
Biff felt his skin grow cold and his stomach churn, but he followed her. He couldn’t think of any way to shed her without putting possible rumors out on the street that would ruin years of careful posturing.
She took him back to her grotty apartment, almost as bad as his, where mold crawled the walls and the pipes leaked, and sat on the unmade bed with her eyes down, shoulders hunched, not even a cursory attempt at enthusiasm. She left space on the sagging mattress for him.
Biff swallowed. He’d hoped to feel relieved that he apparently still looked like the sort of man you tried to pay off with sex, if you were a woman. But mostly, he felt sick.
For his reputation, he could do it once. Maybe. But the idea made his flesh crawl, turned something in his stomach to stone. It wasn’t her looks; he didn’t care about that. But someone like her should not be offering herself to someone like him. He was a sick joke being played on her. Her lack of enthusiasm just made it worse, some parody of things people did to each other and pretended meant something.
No, there was no way he could do it. Not even once. She’d know the moment he tried.
He turned away for a moment, trying to decide whether he could threaten her into staying quiet, and that’s when he saw the drawings on her walls. Ink, flash, tribal styles. He knew those; he’d seen them hanging in the windows of places like Black Demon and Arsenal. Tattoo designs.
A way out.
“You do shit like that?” He asked, trying not to sound too interested. “You put ink on people?”
She looked up and shrugged. “I’m finishing my apprenticeship at Red Stripes. It’s not much, but...” And he saw the desperate gleam in her eyes, how eager she was to have an alternative to fucking him, and he was relieved. “Why, you interested?”
Lots of people in Vaygo got tattooed. It was membership, gang affiliations, a complicated system of alliances and accomplishments and identification. Biff had never gotten one. Distinguishing markings were not only a downside in his profession but a violation of his lifestyle. He worked alone and lived alone and preferred it that way. As an illusionist, he could create any appearance he wanted, and shed it when he wanted. Why would he want something on his skin, someone else’s work, permanently?
But he asked, “How much of that,” another loose gesture at the flash, like he didn’t really care, “would you owe me?”
“Depends,” she said, and he saw the shrewd look of a haggler. “What do you want?”
“I’ll get back to you,” he said, and she let him leave.
When he got home to his apartment (a note was tacked to his door, reminding him about his overdue rent), he went to the mattress on the floor, flopped on it, and stared at the ceiling, thinking.
Biff was no artist. His vanish jobs were all business, none of that faggot artsy-fartsy crap. He had no gift with pencil, pen, or paint, and no interest in trying. However, he did have a knack at envisioning something in his mind and enforcing it on the world around him, so clear and detailed even security cams couldn’t beat him these days.
Biff didn’t think he minded living in a constant state of between—identities, faces, paychecks, crappy apartments. He was used to having no paperwork (except what the PIN had on him, fuck them all), no social circle, no family. He was okay with that life. He preferred anonymity and impermanence.
But maybe he wouldn’t mind having something permanent on his skin. Just to remind him that he existed every once in a while. It didn’t have to cause him occupational trouble. After all, he could vanish distinguishing markings as easily as adding them. Put it somewhere most people wouldn’t see, and it wouldn’t cramp his style one bit.
Hell, he could even use it to cover up something else.
Biff unsnapped the armband from his left forearm, flexed his fingers, and studied his wrist. His dark skin didn’t cover the mess he’d made of it with a kitchen knife at sixteen; he’d always scarred badly. Biff let his arm fall against his chest and shook his head with a sigh. Now there was something that he’d fucked up at the worst moment. He was lucky that armbands weren’t uncommon; those type of scars were instantly recognizable, and Biff preferred not to gain the reputation of someone too weak to handle life.
The tattoo chick would see them, though. She’d have to; Biff wasn’t sure what scar tissue did for tattooing, but it seemed like something that could fuck up a tattoo job if the person doing it wasn’t warned. And he’d rather she didn’t know that about him either.
Biff put the armband back on. Fuck it. The only thing of permanence about him anymore and it had to be that.
Lighting a stub of cigarette and inhaling, Biff thought for a moment. Then, staring at the ceiling, he started mapping designs and patterns on the drywall. Colors, styles, areas of skin. They swirled and slid through a veil of smoke, sinuous subconscious quicksilver patterns that, when the kid had forced them, had always struck him as amateurish and self-indulgent. So this was how it felt. Maybe this was how she felt, all the time. It was oddly peaceful.
He fell asleep knowing what he wanted, but he didn’t have the details set yet. If he was going to do this, he wanted it perfect.
He would have to do research.
...
Certain animals have adapted to urban living, much as the human race. Thus, despite the heat and the drought, Vaygo was home to a full assortment of vermin, which was lucky for Biff. He hadn’t liked the idea of having to sneak into a zoo. Crowds of small children bothered him, and he wanted some peace and quiet.
So Biff stood on the bridge over Highway 14 with a paper bag of popcorn and watched.
It was funny. He had a pretty good eye for detail—had to be, to be an illusionist of his caliber—and he spent a fair amount of his time simply watching things, memorizing the details: people’s features, the wood grain of doors, the patterns of money. But he’d never realized how much he saw without noticing. On first go, he’d thought that the tattoo he’d had in mind was simple and could be done half-assed. Now he found that there was a lot of detail and structure to it, and he was glad he’d chosen to do more watching. With an example right in front of him, he could see the angles, the underlying framework and the overlying patterns, the way one affected the other, and file it all away into his memory for future reference.
A shadow fell across Biff’s subject. Without looking up, he shoved the owner of the shadow away so as to get his light back. The owner—not a friend, Biff didn’t have those, but someone who occasionally played ball with him and tried to sell him crack—squinted at the vermin, then at Biff.
“The hell are you doing?” He asked.
Biff grunted, waving a hand as though trying to shoo off a gnat.
“You been staring at that pigeon for twenty minutes, man. Thought you didn’t do the hard stuff.”
“I ain’t on shit, now fuck off, it’s important.”
“Man, it’s a pigeon.”
“And you dead, you keep bothering me, now fuck off.”
Shaking his head and muttering to himself, Biff’s associate moved on. Biff didn’t look up; he kept watching the pigeon. He tossed it a puff of popcorn.
It wasn’t everything, but it was a start.
…
Biff had not set foot in a library since his school days, and even then, he hadn’t liked them. Libraries, he felt, mocked him. They were not places for kids to learn; they were places for dyslexics like him to feel stupid.
So he didn’t have a library card. He wasn’t even sure where the library was. But he dug up a yellow pages in a phone booth and looked it up, and did a bit of walking, and now here he was in a big marble building facing a shriveled old woman with tortoiseshell glasses. She was squinting at him with a mix of distrust and disgust like he was a monkey escaped from the zoo. A monkey who might possibly try to rob her.
He wouldn’t. Everyone knew libraries had jack all worth stealing.
“Uh…” Biff scratched the back of his neck. It’d been a very long time since he’d been in polite company, and remembering proper conduct was a little difficult. “I’m trying to find a book.”
“Yes?” The librarian prompted.
“About birds.”
He hated having to ask. He was a grown man, perfectly capable of finding a book. Even if printed words gave him a headache, surely he could see pictures.
But apparently not. He’d spent half an hour wandering aimlessly around the library, squinting blankly at stacks of books and shelves labeled with cryptic numbers and letters that made no sense to him whatsoever, even when he carefully differentiated Ps and Bs.
He’d tried using the catalog, but that had been even worse. Biff had never been adept with computers; the screens hurt his eyes, and trying to read on them only exacerbated it. He had managed to try a subject search, using the phrase ‘pictures of birds,’ but it came up zero. Biff had tried to figure out whether the problem was his spelling or his choice of words, failed, and finally given up before he punched the monitor.
His pride, already bruised, wouldn’t tolerate asking someone to spell check him, and so he’d decided to go straight to a librarian and get her to help him. At the time, it’d seemed less embarrassing.
Seeing the look she was giving him, he had been wrong.
“Yes, what about birds?” She asked, speaking very slowly as though he were stupid.
Biff felt the flush of humiliation in his jaw, clenched his fists, but he was determined, so he managed to say, “Just… any kind. I want pictures of ‘em.”
“Photos? Illustrations?”
“Photos.” He remembered some fragment of manners from his childhood, and gritted through his teeth, “Please.”
The librarian looked him over like he was a stain on her shoe, moved to her keyboard, did a rat-a-tat, and wrote down a series of jumbled numbers and letters, then handed it to him.
“There, those are some call numbers that might help you. If none of those work out, come back and I’ll see what I can do.”
Biff would eat his boots first, but he grunted something resembling acknowledgment and skulked off, feeling his cheeks and jaw flaming red.
Finding the call numbers was another trial. Biff’s mind had never learned to cooperate with writing, and mixing letters with numbers was a special kind of hell for his reading comprehension. Had the librarian written .69 or .bg or .bq? He couldn’t tell, and damned if he was going to ask her; he felt stupid enough already.
Eventually, after fifteen frustrating minutes of misreading the numbers and blundering through shelves, Biff stumbled on an Audubon guide—more through accident than design. By this point, Biff’s temper was on full burn and he was ready to punch the first person who looked at him funny, but he snatched the Audubon guide, an illustrated encyclopedia of the animal kingdom, and a book on tropical birds for good measure. Then he dumped himself in a table, propped his feet on one of the seats to prevent anyone else from sitting down, and glowered at anyone who made overtures as though to try.
He found the books less useful than pigeon watching had been, but he saw enough to make the required adjustments to his mental pictures. Once you understood the basic archetypal structure of something, he knew, you had practically all that you needed. The rest was details, learning how far the average could be stretched before it became something else entirely.
For instance, people. Generally, people were all built the same way, with the same quota of limbs, eyes, hair, and so forth. Race, age, disfigurements, and gender made for slight differences, but they were insignificant compared to the similarities, just slight changes to the general archetype. It had taken Biff a good long while to learn that, but once he had, he’d been able to cloak himself in the visage of any human being on the planet without looking viscerally wrong.
And as he’d suspected, birds were exactly the same way.
He shut the last book and smiled. Got it.
…
Three nights later, he lay shirtless on a bench in Red Stripes after hours while the girl loomed above him, wielding a needle. It was a little unnerving, but it helped to think of it as trade. He’d done her a service, even if by accident, and now she was doing him one. Afterward, they’d part ways and never see each other again.
A dusty record player turned in the corner, creaking out hymns that sounded like they’d been recorded a century ago. Ave Maria, sung in some terrifying cat-in-a-blender voice that made Biff grit his teeth.
“Play something else,” he said.
She raised an eyebrow as she adjusted a rubber band on the needle gun. “What’s the matter, worried about God’s judgment?”
He glared at her, but since she was the one with the needle gun in her hand, it didn’t work so well. “I don’t believe in that shit,” he said finally.
“Okay, okay, I’ll change it.”
Ave Maria shut off and half-century old blues started, which wasn’t much better, but Biff didn’t bitch. He didn’t want to make her think he was nervous.
It was going to hurt, of course. He was sure of that, and reasonably sure it wasn’t that bad; otherwise nobody would get inked. Biff had a pretty decent pain tolerance, so he was reasonably sure he wouldn’t make a fool of himself.
But still.
“This design you want, it’ll take a few sessions,” the girl said, pulling out little packets of ink. “You’ll have to come back.”
“Uh huh.” Biff eyed the needle gun suspiciously.
“These’re actually pretty popular. Never seen them like this, though. You do the design yourself?”
“Nah,” Biff lied. “Just found it somewhere.”
“Huh. Anyway, this’ll be a long haul, so it might get rough. Tell me if it gets too intense, okay? We can take a break.”
Biff gave her a disgusted look. “I can take pain.”
“Yeah, they all say that,” but she didn’t argue with him, and then, humiliatingly, she took out a razor and started shaving his back. Biff bit his tongue and tensed but otherwise ignored it. After this, he would never have to see her again, he reminded himself. She did this all the time; she wouldn’t remember him in a few days. He hadn’t been touched by a woman—by anyone—in years, but he could do this.
It was better than sex with her, he told himself. He just needed to push through this and stop being a fag about it and he’d be fine.
After a few minutes, she finished with that, and wiped his back down with something that smelled sterile. He flinched.
“Hey, it’s okay, this ain’t the needle, just antiseptic. Relax.”
Biff didn’t say anything. Fuck pain, this was hard.
He felt thin plastic press to his skin, putting down temporary lines for the tattoo for the girl to follow. This wasn’t much better than the wiping down or shaving; she pressed a hand to his back a few times for balance, and it took all of Biff’s concentration not to jump.
“Jeez, you’re tense. Relax, okay? No big deal. People do this all the time.”
The needle started to buzz. This time, Biff didn’t flinch when it touched his skin, though it took focus. He didn’t want to mess it up.
It did hurt. The anxiety faded, and Biff relaxed. Pain felt good. He understood pain. It reminded him of the way he felt sometimes in a fight, when everything was moving and everything made sense, when he knew that even if he didn’t win, he was in control. It reminded him of how it felt to hit and be hit and taste the air in your lungs and feel the blood in your veins.
It almost reminded him of a time when he was sixteen and in his mother’s kitchen, but he didn’t think about that. That was a long time ago.
It surprised him to think that anybody would find this unbearable. He found it oddly soothing. In his mind, the tattoo needle and the record player needle blurred together, until he almost felt the music scratching down his bones. A strange feeling, but not bad.
The only problem was that he couldn’t move without wrecking the girl’s work. He wanted a smoke for this.
…
Two weeks later, after the first part had healed, he came back, and she kept going. Now that he knew what it felt like, the touch didn’t bother him as much; he spent the hours in a pleasant endorphin haze that made him wonder why people made such a fuss about pain. It was like alcohol, only it sped you up instead of slowing you down. It was nice.
Even if she played shitty old gospel music again. This time, Biff didn’t bother trying to get her to knock it off. The music was scratchy and fuzzy enough he could almost pretend he didn’t know the verses.
Once, high on the rush of the needle, he slipped and found himself humming along. He knew the hymn well; its chorus still echoed in his dreams sometimes.
“Hey, so you were a church boy,” the girl said.
Biff went silent. The hymn carried on.
“I knew it,” she said. “The moment you walked in wanting angel wings on your back and bitching about the music, I knew you were raised in a church. All the thugs were, it seems, these days.”
Biff said nothing.
“Am I right?”
After a moment, Biff said coldly, “I don’t believe in that shit.”
“Uh huh. Lemme guess. Catholic.”
Biff clenched his jaw. His knuckles were white.
“No? Mormon? Pentecostal? Don’t tell me you were raised Jehovah’s Witness…”
“You gonna tattoo me or what?” He said.
After a moment, she said, “Okay, man, okay. Chill. I’ll tattoo you.”
Biff nodded. He kept a closer watch on his mouth after that.
As though in apology, she stopped playing gospel records and shifted to blues again permanently. Not much better, but at least Biff didn’t know the words to everything.
…
“So, what’re you cooking?”
Five minutes. She was distracted. “Stroganoff,” he replied, pointing at a bowl of chopped mushrooms on the table and snapping his fingers twice. The kid went to fetch it with rolling eyes but no complaint, looking over his shoulder while he added it in with the garlic and pepper.
“Is it edible?” She asked.
He gave her an affronted look.
“Right. Of course. I would never insult your cooking abilities.”
Then she went back to staring at his back.
Biff had never known M.D. to not be interested in whatever he was cooking; she could barely boil water, so making even the most basic of spaghetti sauces made her look at him as though he pissed gold and shat diamonds. The stroganoff should’ve had her full attention.
But it didn’t. He suspected the only reason she wasn’t poking him was because she liked touch about as much as he did. Then she looked up at him.
“Just how far, exactly, do those things go?” she asked awkwardly.
Biff raised an eyebrow at her, but she didn’t look away. She knew the question was a touchy one, but that had never stopped her from asking them before.
He knew M.D. wasn’t a boy. Therefore, she must be a girl, but that didn’t fit quite right. Women made him antsy. Men made him defensive. And yeah, M.D. did that too, but it was for what she did, not what she was. In his gut, she wasn’t a boy or a girl. She was just ‘the kid.’
He was a little surprised to realize he was okay with her seeing.
So he smiled sardonically and reached back to tug at the edge of his jeans with the thumb of his hand not engaged in stirring. He didn’t have far to go; the wings sheared off an inch below the denim, unfinished.
The kid snickered. It wasn’t mocking.
“Should’ve known you’d never strip for some tattoo artist,” she said. “He must’ve spent an hour getting you to take your shirt off.”
“It was a she. And yeah.”
...
On the third session, the artist reached his jeans, and she paused and put the needle gun away.
“Take your pants off,” she said.
It took a moment for Biff to shake off the endorphins enough to hear. “Enh?”
“I can’t tattoo through these.” And her hand was on the top edge of his jeans. Biff went rigid; she didn’t notice. “Come on, take them off.” The hand tugged.
Biff turned over. Apparently what was in his eyes and his muscles said all he needed to, because she immediately cringed back.
“Whoa, whoa, whoa,” she said, “hey man--”
“Don’t touch me,” he told her. His voice was quiet.
This time she didn’t say anything; she was just staring at him with the frozen deer look again. Like maybe, just maybe, if she did nothing, he would go on by. Her obvious fear made something buzz in his ears. He stood up from the table and began to advance, and that seemed to trigger the girl into action. She lurched up from her chair, backing towards the wall, her voice high-pitched and frightened.
“I didn’t mean to. It won’t happen again.”
“No,” he agreed, “it won’t.”
Her back hit the wall.
“Please,” she said, “please don’t.”
He placed one hand against the wall next to her, clenched the other. “Please don’t what?” he asked pleasantly. “I ain’t done nothing yet.”
Her eyes flickered from his face, to the hand by her head, to the fist at his side, to his face again. She swallowed.
“I’m sorry,” she said.
That made him pause. He frowned. “Huh?”
“I’m sorry,” she repeated. Her eyes were still all whites, but her voice grew stronger. “I shouldn’t have touched you. I should have told you what I was going to do, warned you. It wasn’t polite of me, man. I was wrong to do that, and I’m sorry.”
It took a few seconds for the words to sink in. Biff stayed frozen.
“You want me to finish the tattoo, right? Can’t have it half-finished, after all this. I can do that for you. I owe you, remember?”
Right. If he beat the shit out of her, he’d have to find someone else to finish the tattoo, walk around half-inked for however long it took to get the money together. Look like a pussy with no pain tolerance.
“If you’d rather do it another time, that’s okay. All I meant to say was, the design you want, it goes too low, you hearing me?”
Yes, he was.
“It goes under your pants, that’s all.” Her voice was calmer now, as though she explained this to clients every day, as though he wasn’t going to hurt her. “And you know, I can’t tattoo you there with the clothes in the way.”
Biff considered this for a few seconds.
“I don’t want it that far,” he finally said.
She didn’t manage to conceal her look of dismay. “Uh... you gave me a design for full wings, and the way you gave it to me, they’d go down to your legs. I can’t end the feathers where they are now, it’ll look...”
Biff pulled away from the wall and moved back towards the table. He made no move to undress, only pulled out a cigarette and lit up. The smoke helped clear his head.
“Um, you’re not supposed to...” She started.
He looked at her, and she stopped talking. He’d smoked around open wounds before, and it had yet to kill him. He wasn’t about to stop now for her. He needed this.
For the next few minutes, she let him be, and he turned the lighter through his fingers and let the nicotine do its work. The buzzing in his ears died down, and the walls of the room seemed to retract into their proper dimensions. His adrenaline was still a mess, but at least now he noticed it.
Finally, he felt up to talking again.
“You ain’t tattooing my ass,” He said, tucking his lighter back in his pocket.
The girl apparently saw the humanity come back on behind his eyes, and felt out of danger, because she said, “Well then, you’re going to have a shitty tattoo, man, hate to break it to you.”
Biff sighed smoke. He couldn’t snap at her wisecrack; after all, she was right. He’d designed the work in mind of it going all the way down, and had shoved thoughts of what that’d involve aside. He’d hoped that he’d just take it as it came, be a man about it, but now he knew that was not an option. He was not undressing for this woman and letting her touch him, and that was the end of it.
Which left him with the question of what to do with the tattoo.
“Look, do you want me to—”
He cut her off with a raised hand and continued smoking and thinking.
After a few minutes of consideration, he stubbed out the cigarette. “Shear ‘em.”
“What?”
“Go an inch or so under my pants. I won’t take them off. Then just cut ‘em off.”
She was staring at him now, obviously not comprehending. “Just... cut them off?”
“Yeah.” He sliced his hand through the air to demonstrate. “Like you was going to finish later.”
She blinked at him. “Like...?”
With a sigh of exasperation, Biff rolled his eyes, got off the table, and strode to the desk, where the design still lay. He reached into his armband, popped out a razor, and sliced off the bottom third of the paper. Then he held it up.
“Like this. Get it?”
He tossed the paper down, and the artist stood there for a moment in silence. Her expression held masked revulsion, like a chef asked to fry a rat. “Got it.”
He returned to the table again and undid his belt, shifting to pull his jeans lower on his hips. He was lucky; this pair was loose on him.
“Uh. I’ll get ink on your jeans.”
“Don’t care.”
“But--”
Very slowly now, as though she was feeble-minded: “I ain’t taking nothing off.”
She seemed to hear the shift in his voice and realize she was treading on thin ice again. She looked at him, swallowed, and nodded. “Okay, man,” she said. “You’re the boss. You keep them on.”
The jeans wouldn’t go any further, which was just as well. Having his belt undone when he was shirtless like this already made his skin itch.
That done, he turned back over on his stomach, slowly, watching her to make sure she didn’t surprise him. When she went to her chair again, moving carefully as though not to startle him, he took a deep breath and focused on the screechy blues still playing in the corner.
The girl changed her gloves for a sterile pair and picked up the needle gun again.
“It’s going to look like shit,” she warned him.
“Don’t care,” he told her.
She sighed, and the needle started buzzing again. This time, it took far more effort not to flinch when it touched him. And this time, the pain didn’t feel good. It just hurt. Biff fought the compulsion to turn over, to kick, to get out of this parlor, to get home and run his hands over his body until the sensation of the artist’s needle was gone.
It’d be over soon, he told himself. Nobody was going to see it anyway.
Biff got his wish. The wings were sheared.
When he returned home, he hastily stripped off his jeans. They were splattered with ink, which he suspected would never come out. He pitched them into the cardboard box he used as a laundry hamper, and went to find some athletic shorts. Normally, after a day like that, he would’ve gotten into a fight, but he didn’t want to risk wrecking the work on his back, which meant he’d have to settle for a game of basketball instead.
As he passed into the bathroom, he caught a look at himself in the mirror. The rust and cracks didn’t mar the image enough. His back was raw and red, covered with open wounds filled with ink. The back of his briefs was dotted with black.
For a moment, he stared at his reflection. Then he tore his briefs off, threw them into the garbage, and bolted into the shower. The hot water had been out for weeks, but he didn’t care. He cranked up the tap to full blast and let the icy water run over his skin until he didn’t feel her hands on him anymore, until his muscles stopped itching and his mind shifted back into a normal gear and his adrenaline went down. Until his hands stopped shaking.
It took a while.
...
“You’re done,” she said.
Biff got off the table for the last time, went to the full-length mirror on the wall, took her handheld mirror, and looked everything over. He’d dutifully checked over the work after each session, but he wanted to see the full thing.
The wings had proved too broad for even his back. They’d had to crest at his traps (which had hurt less than he’d planned on) and spread against his ribs (which had hurt more than he’d planned on), and their abrupt demarcation at his hips wasn’t visible as long as he was clothed. He flexed one shoulder blade, and the whole thing rippled.
As for the work itself, the girl had done what he’d wanted her to do. He saw the work she put into it; full-size wings in pointillism, every feather picked out in blue-black ink embedded under his scored skin until the end of his life. Permanent.
A lot of work, a lot of pain.
Biff didn’t see beauty in things, most of the time; he wasn’t much of a judge of aesthetics. But he could appreciate pain. Apprentice or not, this woman could ink. Though he never would’ve admitted it, he was pleased.
He was also relieved. He’d made it through. He hadn’t crapped out. He’d pushed through, and it’d been worth it. But he was never going to do this again.
“So,” the girl asked. “What do you think?”
He nodded. “Your debt’s paid.”
“Don’t recommend me to your friends,” she said. When he raised an eyebrow at her, she added, “I don’t want to explain why I cut a guy’s tattoo off half-finished.”
He shrugged and nodded and pulled on his shirt for the last time. In his opinion, there was nothing half about it. It was perfectly fine as it was.
“So. You gonna tell me your name?”
He shook his head.
“Mine’s—”
“Don’t tell me,” he said. He didn’t need to know.
And so he returned to the street, a lapsed Catholic with wings scratched into his back. He never spoke to her again, and though he caught glimpses of her again every once in a while, it was during those periods where he wore other people’s faces and aped other people’s voices.
He never knew her name, and he was fine with that.
…
“It’s funny,” M.D. said around a mouthful of stroganoff.
Biff grunted to indicate he was paying attention, but just barely. He didn’t look up; watching M.D. eat was a sport not meant for spectators.
“I mean, dang, Biff. Those are beautiful. I never would’ve guessed you had them.”
Biff shrugged.
She looked him over; Biff pretended to ignore her. (It never worked, but he felt obligated to try anyway.) Her pupils dilated. She swallowed her food, then smirked knowingly, showing flecks of stroganoff in her teeth.
“You designed them yourself, didn’t you?”
“Fuck no,” Biff said, with not quite enough boredom.
Her eyes went wide. “I knew it!” She cried, beating her fists on her thighs. “I knew you would’ve eaten your left kidney before you let anyone else design that kind of stuff and put it on you, I knew it!”
Biff rolled his eyes, crossed his arms, and let her have her moment. “Yeah, so? I’m a illusionist. It’s what I do, make stuff. You do it too, just shitty.”
“Hey, I’m doing the equivalent of vomiting colors, all right, not my fault I don’t have your mojo. It kills me, Biff, all that power and until now, I’ve never seen you do something… you know. Artistic with it.”
“Hey, I ain’t no fucking faggot artist, all right?”
“Yeesh, Biff, relax. I didn’t call you that, all right? Even if there is nothing wrong with it and you ought to get over that,” she added.
Biff grunted, but let it go.
She was the first person who’d seen the whole work, and she had more of that artsy stuff in her. So after a second, grudgingly, he asked her, “You think it looks all right?”
“What? The tattoo? I just told you it was gorgeous and beautiful, houseplant. Did you think I was complimenting your fashion sense?”
Biff rolled his eyes at her. “No, I meant ‘cause…” He gestured vaguely at the line of his jeans and made a severing motion.
“What, that? It looks fine. To be honest, I think it makes more sense for you.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah,” she smirked. “I mean, I’d have a lot of trouble buying you as a full-fledged angel. The fallen version, though…”
He tossed a fork at her and she dodged, laughing.
“Honestly, Biff,” she said, more gently this time, “it looks good. You did a good job.”
Biff nodded stiffly and grunted thanks. Then he shoved the pan of stroganoff towards her. “Here, eat more. You’re a fucking stick.”
She dug in and didn’t even make a wisecrack about him asking her approval. They had an understanding about these things.
no subject
Date: 2014-04-22 07:21 am (UTC)The tattoo artist is another interesting character, in the way she started out in typical victim-mode but turns out to be a competent professional with a good read on people. I loved it when she apologized for being dismissive and disrespectful rather than because she was afraid of him (which she was, of course, for good reason). I loved the tattoo scene, too, and image of music being carved into Biff is one that will stay with me fora while.
no subject
Date: 2014-04-22 10:30 pm (UTC)Not gonna lie, Biff and M.D.'s interactions are among my favorite to write in Infinity Smashed. Biff in particular is a white hot mess of a man who I've used as an anti-role model for years, trying to figure out how some people become such assholes. He and M.D. are very messed-up people, and I really need to get Book One kicked off harder so you can find out how the two of them originally cross paths.
The tattoo artist is definitely a smart cookie, who is unfortunately very used to negotiating the abusive tendencies of the people around her. (Especially considering the circumstances in which Biff first met her.) She still sees herself as ducking a bullet for avoiding having to bang him.
--Rogan
no subject
Date: 2014-04-26 02:10 pm (UTC)Just about the only good thing to be said about Biff in his interactions with the tattoo artist is that he wasn't interested in banging her. I recall his being called a "lez" in Ten Years to Vanish, and it's funny in an unfunny kind of way how inaccurate that label is. It's weird how there's this expectation that trans people are automatically going to be heterosexual, like they're going to conform perfectly to gender norms in every way except being trans.
no subject
Date: 2014-04-26 11:01 pm (UTC)The main problem would be keeping down the wordcount; otherwise you get problems like the $45 story Homecoming (http://lb-lee.livejournal.com/574873.html), which is Biff finally returning home to his sister. (And as you've seen, some of the stories are really fucking long!) I hope to put together ebooks for much cheaper, but until I fill in some of the big gaps...
As for Biff calling himself a 'lez,' that's dating how, back when I was a kid in the south, I got called faggot and shemale, despite being (as far as they knew) a cis girl. At some times and places, it becomes less about who you're attracted to and how bad you fail at gender role. So Biff at this point in his life has absolutely no problem considering himself a fag and a lez at the same time. He lives in cognitive dissonance.
--Rogan