The landline phone rang in the back room of The Inkworks and Jack grabbed it down from the wall. A lady with a nice voice, a faintly British accent asked if she was speaking with the owner.
"Jack Dextra, that's right. You can call me Jack, or Dextra, whichever you want."
"Well, Mr. Dextra, I WILL NOT permit you to disfigure my daughter's body," the formerly pleasant voice suddenly shouted in his ear. Jack jerked the phone away from his ear and let it drop to the floor, the plastic receiver twitching as the old-fashioned twisty-cord unwound. You got used to these calls after a while. Well, either he would, or he wouldn't, or maybe he could cut them a deal on the removal later. Sighing, he retrieved the instrument.
"Sorry," he said. "Dropped something. What's the girl's name?"
"Merci Anderson," the voice said, "This is Alexandria Anderson, with the Alameda County District Attorney, her mother. Crap. Merci. It was her, Merci's mom. The DA's office? Talk about your crows coming home to roost in a hurry.
"If you have any interest in remaining in business, you will not make the mistake of providing your services to Mer...my daughter."
"Nope, name doesn't ring a bell," Jack lied quickly. "If anyone like that comes in, I'll tell her she needs to get counseling. Okay? No, I sure won't. Sure, I can call you too, Mrs. Anderson."
Later when he talked about it, Jack said regretted this moment, the first of a couple of of tense phone exchanges with the mother. Maybe if things had happened some other way. Jack hung up the phone carefully and massaged the ache in his neck. The rust-red image of a heart pierced by a thick-shafted arrow throbbed against the pale skin of his forearm.
It was a beautiful summer day in Berkeley but you never saw much of it back here in the dim, spotlit recesses of the skin-arts studio. Jack checked his schedule again, there was only one appointment that mattered, and stepped squinting out into the storefront, nodding bashfully at Evelyn, the counterperson, a dark haired lesbian in a tank top, her pale bare shoulders adorned with orange flame. "Wish I'd done that," he mused out loud, for the hundredth time. Evelyn grinned back at him, secure in her sexual preference.
"Remember the girl with the butterfly?"
"Huh-uh. The little pinkie one? Or that great black goth one with fangs?"
"The pink one," Jack sighed, "I'm going to take a smoke break. Want to come?" He had a fat one already rolled up in his car.
Evelyn considered, nibbling at the stainless-steel ring that ran through the corner of her lower lip. "You have a walk-in." Her purple-shaded eyes shifted to the left.
It was an old cat, sitting alone in one of the plastic chairs, leafing through a tattoo mag, looking at the tats on the tits. Another parent? Jack winced. "Can I help you, sir?"
"I was thinking of getting a tattoo?" Oh really? Jack squinted down at the man with distaste, old enough to be someone Jack's own dad knew, except Dad was still down in LA as far as Jack was aware. Maybe some cornrows to fill in the grotty bald patch on his head or a teddy-bear on his butt. Normally Jack enjoyed sizing the clients up, figuring out the perfect piece for their personalities, but he wasn't getting a good vibe here. Plus he really needed to get high right now.
"Would you like to have a look at our design collection? We have some really good fantasy scenes, a great selection of totem creatures, abstract tribal designs. Just your style."
Most walk-ins either had some idea of what they wanted or else they didn't and this old so-and-so was no exception. "Hmm," he said slowly, as if considering, brushing his thin silver hair back. "Hmm, no, I don't think so."
Nah. No, what he really wanted was to have his wife's name put on. Alexandria, a nice long one. Jack gave him the lecture, thinking immediately about the telephone call, thinking about the possibility that it was a setup, a county health guy or Channel 5.
"Frankly, sir, I think you should know, names are usually not a good idea. People change, and people change people. I mean, even at your advanced age. Can I ask? Is it a relationship thing? Is that what's going on here?" Almost unconsciously Jack touched a finger to the corner of his left eye, to where two ink tears cried always. "Permanent is one thing, you know, indelible is another."
"Okay," he said, "Let me introduce you to Evelyn here. Don't worry, she doesn't bite--much. She'll get your info and the medical stuff. I'll be back in a few minutes and we'll get started."
Part II--History
Everyone remembered their first time, plus besides that most people remembered their first tattoo, regardless of which end of it they were on, or how good it was. For Merci it had been that first butterfly, a silly pink thing that she had pulled almost at random from the pattern book, with curlicued antennae. For Merci, it was all about location. Lower, lower. And touch.
It was Jack's own fault for letting her get beneath his skin. Didn't he still have stuff going on with at least a couple nice ladies at this point? He sighed. It just didn't make sense.
"I was thinking...HERE." She had said with a nervous giggle, pressing the waistband of her cutoff bluejeans down to expose green, red and white panties, a creamy belly from which a tiny bush of blond hairs magically emerged, "a BUTTERFLY!" Jack smiled cynically at the memory of that first session. When was it he had started to care?
"Normally they don't hurt much," he had explained even more earnestly than usual. The young girl seemed to vibrate between terror and elation, strangely keyed up, focused completely on him. Jack had no problem producing the proper reverence for the situation. "But this is a sensitive spot," he said, touching her for the first time. "Feel this?" He swabbed alcohol on a cloth and whisked it across her skin, ran a plastic razor over it twice to remove a light layer of blonde peach fuzz. Merci had a lovely, vulnerable smile, a firm and golden bump. "No, really, worse than that. Much worse."
Jack sighed again and beeped open his Jeep. He slipped into the passenger side, reaching his left hand with precise doper recollection for the joint and mini-lighter he'd left propped in the ashtray. He fitted the key into the ignition, let the window down.
For him, he thought once again, it had all begun with the lead of a No. 2 pencil that lodged beneath the skin of Jane Hokansen's forearm in the sixth grade in a squabble over, of all things, sheet music in singing class. Jane had forgiven him, eventually, but for the next half dozen years he had viewed that tiny spot with a strange, proprietary awareness. Where was Jane today?
Jack exhaled and watched the heart inscribed on his arm waver behind the swirling smoke. Who WAS No. 2? He had a vague memory of sharing a cell in juvenile hall with a kid named Nelson Avacedo. All things considered, Nelson was probably dead or still pushing drugs in L.A., which was where they'd both grown up.
And here he was after the same couple years had passed under the bridge, stuck in Berkeley, still poking needles into people and getting things mixed up. Hopefully that little cross he'd dotted into the web of Nelson's left hand had stood him in good grace.
The car jolted and shook and he leaned his head and hand back through the Jeep's open window, handing off the joint. It was Steve, asking him if he had felt the earthquake. "What, just now?" Jack laughed. No, there had been a big one, 5.6, down on the Calaveras fault. Last night.
"Seems like between the earthquakes and the fires," Jack said. It did seem like there was always one or the other. Along with the droughts and pestilence, which also came along with some regularity.
"Yeah," Steve said grimly, sucking in a grim toke, "remember the Oakland hills, Dextra. I'm just hoping that this mortgage thing doesn't kill the economy. People will stop getting tattoos."
Steve was Jack's landlord, a skin-artist too, been around Berkeley forever, did some kinky stuff.
"You're not going to start on the history lesson again are you?" Jack kidded his older friend. "Don't worry, I think paganism is finally here to stay," Jack said. "That's the least of my worries. I got another parent situation."
"Just as long as they're not underage or you're not dickinem," Steve opined profanely, leering at Jack through the smoke. "Ha! Both, right?" Jack sat glumly, not answering at first. Fuckhead.
"She's eighteen. I just like her too much. Hey, how many tattoos do you think you've done over the years? What was the most famous one you ever did?"
"Two or three thousand," Steve replied, counting on his fingers. "I guess it was Gavin Gruesome."
Jack choked on the thick smoke. "Don't make me think about it! Ha-ha. For me it was Barbara Wodehouse."
"The lady that wrote that book on dogs? I'm so jealous."
"AND her dogs. Four of them." They laughed again. In the haze of smoke and friendship it was easy to forget all the trouble he was going to get in over Merci Anderson. How much gas did he have in the Jeep?
Part III, Rare Birds and Fish
"That old fuck still here? Jack asked Evelyn, walking back into The Inkworks and encountering her wide-eyed, where-the-hell look, "In the back. You've got someone else in the other studio." Jack scanned the info sheet. It turned out that the name was Vince Anders, sort of an unusual fake name, you had to like it. Jack went on in. "You don't have a daughter, do you?" Jack asked, making a little pointed conversation. "Put your wife's name on your back? What is your wife's name again?"
"Alexandria."
"Alexandra Anderson. Nice name. With one x or three?" OK, I can do that. A hundred and a half. You know what they say in the trade: 'Takes about half an hour to do, a week to feel better, a lifetime to regret.' Just take off your shirt and set down there. A daughter, you said?"
Silver hair all over his back. "Jesus, man!" Jack joked, really needling the old fuck now, "I should charge you extra for a barber fee. I can't work in this jungle."
"Actually, you know," Jack said, slapping a swath of shaving cream across the hirsute shoulderblades, "a lot of the old tattooists were barbers...are you sure I can't talk you into an indonesian tribal? The name "Alexandria" gives me the creeps. Is she like a librarian or something? Plus your wife has lousy phone manners. Hey, you don't mind that I'm a little high while I do this?"
The old fuck finally cracked, scowling and reaching for a towel and his shirt, handing Jack his card and a crisp Benjamin Franklin. "You're a piece of work, aren't you. Whatever. I'll be willing to offer you a more substantial bribe, $300, if you'll agree under no circumstances to give my daughter Merci a tattoo, but instead to call me on my cell."
"I get it." Jack said. Well, at that point it was about the same money as his daughter Merci had already paid him. But he was pleased with the cash anyhow. "Sure. You'll be the first to know. You must have been having this conversation with a lot of different shops. Must have set you back a little bit. But give that tribal some thought." He walked the parent to the front, closed the door softly but firmly behind him, turned to Evelyn. Evelyn was still hysterical, pointing at the curtained entry of the other studio. "It's her!"
"Nice work, thanks, Eve."
Jack paused just inside the door. The teenager had already taken off her clothes, sitting with crossed ankles on the padded table. The stippled wings of a swallow swooped low across the swell of the girl's left breast. Its small beak was open as if singing and in its single golden eye a portrait of Merci herself was revealed, Jack's contribution.
"Look, he's after my nipple!" Merci said proudly. She pushed herself toward the swiveled view mirror to get a better view. "That's so cool!"
"I'll be the judge of that. Let me see, baby..." Jack squeezed her soft breast in his hand, placed a healing kiss on the inflamed skin. Good recovery from their earlier session. It could have been so much simpler if the two of them weren't already so deep in love or lust or whatever it was.
"He's singing," Jack said, taking the nipple for himself one last time. Merci giggled with delight at Jack's wet lips.
"I couldn't wait to come back. I've been thinking about this all week!" Merci's pink mouth smushed into a sexy open expression as she turned her head to look coyly at Jack. "What are we going to do this time, Jack?" From the beginning, it had been crazy the way the buzz of the needles turned her on.
He examined her inside-out T-shirt, slightly tinged with ooze and antibiotic, sniffing it closely before breaking the subject.
Jack told everybody later that he had tried to just be blunt, even though even then he was already in love with her, putting things off just made everyone sad. "Nothing," he said, "It's over. Does your mother do your laundry? She called and said she heard you were getting decorated here. I don't know, Merci. I thought you told me this was cool. How old are you, really?" She didn't look that old, really.
"I AM eighteen!" Merci wriggled upright, indignant. "I showed you my CDL. Mom called you?"
"How am I supposed to know? Maybe I just assumed the whole ID thing was a fake. The last thing I need is statutory rape. You didn't tell me your mom worked for the District Attorneys."
"No! I told you! She's a TV actress. She'll say anything. I had this big fight with my parents and they wouldn't let me get a tattoo until I was eighteen. Mom said she'd sue anyone that gave me a tattoo before I was old enough. I've been...hanging out, waiting."
When you thought about it, a lot of Jack's girlfriends had been young, a couple of them also questionable in terms of judgment. There had been a big family fight for Jack too. Thinking back, it couldn't have been the tattoo that had caused it, but within the month Jack had been on the street, sleeping with this person and that person, returning only occasionally home on tense reunion terms, the broken heart indelibly etched on his forearm, the twin teardrops leaking from his eye.
"I know how it feels," he had told her a couple of times. It could really hurt when your own parents turned on you, didn't trust you, followed you around. Those had been a rough couple years. "Hopefully your folks will be a little more forgiving than mine."
"Just in case," he had added, "If you need a place to stay or anything..." Thnking back, this had to be the biggest mistake he'd made. He must have really wanted to believe in her.
"Jack?" She was asking now, and the way she was asking, it was clear there was no way to say no. Hadn't he said howl when you need help?
"Plus your dad was just into the shop too. He offered me 300 bucks to turn you over, put you back in the spanking machine. I oughta just take it. Come out of it ahead for once."
"He did WHAT? No way. Dad said it was my body, my decision to make. I can't believe it. SHE must have made him do it."
She shook her head. "Sure, call him up, take the money. Might as well. I am SO out of there. How could they be such liars?"
"Jack?"
But even then, wasn't he technically just one friend helping another one move? Jack started the Jeep a few minutes later as Merci curled her legs in the passenger seat, dropping her flip-flops from bare feet. A lot of times you could get in trouble even when you were technically right. Like he said, it was a lesson he should have learned by now.
The Andersons lived in the North Oakland, Rockridge area that Jack didn't know very well. "It's OK, the cars are gone," Merci whispered. He eased the Jeep over a street bump and parked in front. "Can we just hurry this up?" Jack whined with tension. "How much are you going to take? We don't have room." He stood fidgeting on the doorstep, then whirled and ducked inside, as if avoiding a swinging blade, to help Merci ransack her upstairs bedroom, returning to the Jeep with a bedspread full of possessions.
In one kind of logic it made sense to get out of sight rather than stand out in the Anderson's front yard, otherwise it would take her forever to get her stuff, there was more chance that they'd get caught. Inside it was quiet and creaky, someone else's home. Merci turned to Jack, her eyes widening as she saw him, a small nod. Inside the house she became a little kid again, tripping up the stairs to the bedrooms while Jack scuttled from shadow to shadow behind.
The last straw was the cat, a mangy, sand-colored one with only three legs. "No cats!" Jack laid down the law. "His name is Jack, Jack," Merci lied. Well, then, shit.
He was still complaining as they drove away. "No way will the landlord allow a cat in the place," which was probably not true since at this point Jack was still renting a place from Steve, the older tattooist had a couple of rentals in the Oakland triangle where the BART tracks came out of the ground.
"Uh-oh, what's going on here?" A pair of blue and white TV vans, their antenna and reporters deployed, blocked the street outside his apartment just a dozen blocks away. Jack backed the Jeep up to the corner, turned right, onto Adeline, trying to think. This didn't look good.
It was like chess, Jack thought feverishly. Sometimes against a stronger player, when you had made a few mistakes, you should never just quit and tip your king. Jack hated when people did that. Go down in flames. He pictured a tat of a WWII jet fighter hit by a missile, the wounded jap still blasting away on the machine guns of the burning plane against the rising sun. "Let's go back to the shop, then," he said to Merci, "We can stash your stuff there temporarily."
Merci started to say something but stopped as her phone suddenly put out an ominous quartet of notes, dum-di-dum-dum. It was Mom. Merci stroked a pink finger over the oPhone's black surface. The screen began to pulse with dark yellow light.
"Shit." Merci said, looking startled, "She actually did it."
This is an AMBER ALERT a crisp voice emitted from the phone. Be on the lookout for 17 year old Merci Anderson, missing, feared abducted from her Oakland home...suspect or suspects thought driving late model blue sports utility vehicle... This has been an AMBER ALERT
Merci poked her middle finger rudely at the app to shut it up, poked the oPhone again to call up Mom.
"Mom. I am NOT missing. ..... Why don't YOU act rationally for a change. ..... What do you mean STOCKholm? ..... Oh, forget it. I told you, I'm moving out. This time it's for good."
"What do you mean, you'll STOP me? ..... You don't have any RIGHT to stop me. ..... Mom, I'll get an inJUNCtion."
"She wants to talk to you. I don't know why," Merci said, handing the oPhone to Jack.
"Mrs. Anderson?"
"Dextra, what you're doing is immoral and it's illegal. I want you to know that I've called the police."
"I don't think you understand, Mrs. Anderson. Merci's going back to school. She has a good place to stay. Everything is OK."
Merci's mother's voice was as sweet as boiled poison. "You're the one who doesn't understand--you are now the subject of a statewide dragnet," she said, "We'll see how you feel about fifteen years in jail."
"Wait here," Jack told Merci, hanging up and handing the oPhone back to her. Later they kept playing that phone call over and over, trying to say that Jack had been made aware at that point. Well, if he hadn't been aware by then, Jack told himself later, he sure should have been when he saw another pair of TV vans parked on the sidewalk at the Inkworks, on Telegraph. But aware of what? At the time he felt everything they were doing was justified, felt so justifiably mad at the mother for mousetrapping him that he just didn't care. A lot of times Jack's own mom could do that to you too.
Jack had developed a recurrent dislike of the Channel 5 News that coincided with being on it a lot lately. Sure enough, standing outside the Inkworks storefront was Janet Yee, well-known dragon-lady of East Bay community reporting. Janet, Jack was aware from having inscribed it after their first interview, had a small black heart tattooed on her upper hip. Just because you didn't really like a person that much didn't mean you couldn't do business with them, kind of what Jack called his "LA yankee" attitude. Jack shambled up the sidewalk past producers and cameramen and brushed by the diminutive mini-skirted reporter. "Hey," he said, feigning sudden recognition, utter innocence, "Hey, how are you? Hows that certain spot doing? What's going on?
When they set off an Amber Alert on a guy, it was like one of those rotating cop car lights above your head. Per-vert! Per-vert! The only thing missing was the actual authorities. As usual, the media had gotten an early jump.
"Mis-ter Dex-tra!" Janet Yee proclaimed carnivorously. She motioned to her sound guy for a microphone and closed the gap. "You've been identified as a 'person of interest' in the Merci Anderson case. Do you have any comment for Channel 5? Have you seen the missing girl?"
Behind him, Evelyn was explaining to a couple of striped-shirt techies certain little-known aspects of first-amendment freedom. "That's right," she was saying, "If even a six or seven year old wanted a tattoo or like needed to get their nose-pierced, then they should be able to. It's screwed, man." Jack had to smile.
"I don't have a clue where Miss Anderson is," he said. "She was just one of my clients. As you know, skin arts have become quite popular in recent years--and," with a nod of his head toward Evelyn, "not only with the counterculture. This has become mainstream." Jack turned toward the cameraman. "Be sure and put in that anybody that wants one can come into the Inkworks here (2347 Telegraph in Berkeley)--and we'll do them right."
"Can we ask when the last time was that you saw the young lady?"
"I don't know, last week, I think."
"Listen, though," he said, breaking character for just a second, "I'm confused. I thought that Amber Alert thing is for little kids."
"Everyone up to the age of eighteen," Janet Yee agreed. "Apparently the girl wasn't quite that old.
"Sure she was. I made a copy of her CDL. You guys know I always do that. Wait a second, I'll prove it to you."
Jack ducked past the studio curtain, stopping in front of the old filing cabinets and picking up the phone. He called Merci's cell. "Did you know you've been kidnapped?" While he talked, he rifled through a drawer full of photocopies until he found it, about three weeks down. June 22, 1988. "Where are you?" she asked, "What's going on?"
"Nothing we can't handle," Jack told her, though even then he was beginning to have some doubts. "Stay in the jeep. I'll be there in a minute."
"Jack, you better get out of here. The cops will be right behind these clowns." It was Evelyn, whispering hoarsely. "Leave this to me, I'll bask in my fifteen minutes of fame."
He handed her the photocopy, grabbed his out-call kit. "Your chance to become even more Notorious, Eve," he agreed. "I need to rip and run anyway. Don't tell them I didn't do your flames. I'll go out through the alley. Pass this on to the TV lady for me, would you?"
Jack sawtoothed through the blocks back to the Jeep, coming out from behind the waterfall tangle of a willow branch that swept across the Berkeley sidewalk. He had to laugh. Merci was sitting in the SUV with the center mirror canted down, the thick fabric of her green hoody raised up to expose her bare breast.
"Let's see," Jack said. The teen obediently turned.
"I showed everyone at school. They all think it's so cool, Jack. When are we going to be able to finish him?"
"Well, your mom obviously doesn't think it's cool. Could be a while." Jack raised Merci's oPhone and took a couple of pics. "Shall we send them to her?"
Merci shrugged angrily at the reminder of her mother's betrayal . "Let me see! Ha!" She pressed the keys herself. "That bitch. This time I really am moving out. I told her she didn't have any rights over me. Anyway, she's not my real mom."
Who would have thought that those two photos from the oPhone could end up being considered as a ransom demand, right at the same minute when Jack was actually trying to back out of it all.
"Listen, Merce, this is way more fucked up than I thought. We better just drive over to Berkeley High and unload your stuff. You can call her again from there, say you're sorry and shit. Me, I think I better leave town for a while. Those reporters were all over me back there."
"Where will you go?"
"When the going gets rough, the weird go camping," Jack quoted, "I'll be in the Sierra by supper. John Muir trail maybe."
"That sounds so great," Merci said yearningly. She shivered. "I wish I could go with you."
So that was how close it had been. They had actually gotten to the parking lot at Berkeley High, started unloading Merci's things before they both suddenly realized it was all a waste of time.
"Pry that thing off," Jack instructed Merci, making the decision for them. He pointed to the ugly plastic FasTrak transponder that was stuck to the dashboard of the Jeep. "Wait here." He got out and strode past a row of slant-parked cars until he found one that had a license plate on the front. Old training. He had the plate off of it and on the back of his vehicle in a minute. The essentials of going rogue.
"Now. Where's your phone?"
"Not my phone!" Merci's hand dived protectively into the pouch of her hoody. She looked so upset he had to let it go. "Just turn it off, then. They can tell where we are."
Jack admitted later that he might have heard something on the Jeep's radio about the Amber Alert. He told them that he didn't really know what that was, he would have ignored it, since obviously he was with Merci, she was fine.
One of the things Jack liked to do was take the Jeep out and head for the hills, and he'd gotten around Northern Cal quite a bit. But hardly ever to the coast, only once to Monterey. Maybe Merci understood what they were doing when they did it, Jack eventually came to realize that he'd had the destination in mind even before they started, though it was vague at that point, Big Sur, maybe. They passed through the single remaining CASH ONLY lane at the Bay Bridge.
"That's where that guy drove his truck over the edge," Jack told Merci. "Caltrans had changed the road, and he just kept on going on the old path. Died."
"That's too bad," Merci said without feeling. "Fuck, Jack, you're not getting moody on me again, are you? It's not like the guy meant to waste himself. It just happened." She lit a joint and lifted it to Jack's lips, blew hot breath into his ear. Jack wondered if he would now be facing charges of smoking with a minor too. Merci was fun when she was high.
"Jack?" Merci said. "I was thinking we should take that road that goes along the ocean, Highway 1? Maybe there's some campgrounds down there." Jack paused.
Except that with her stupid cat they really couldn't go camping, not so much that they didn't have a tent or sleeping bag. Jack had all that stuff back at the apartment, anyway he could have bought most of it again in a sporting goods store someplace. He had a thousand bucks tucked in his out-call kit.
Santa Cruz? Jack pondered. "Want to hole up in a motel instead?"
"Cool. That way we can finish my birdie," Merci agreed. "I decided his name is Stanley."
Jack smiled despite himself. Girls. But it was perfect how Merci's simple tattoos summed up her personality. A butterfly, a bird, each an inch more intimate than the usual placements, the two life-symbols easily hidden but hungry to be revealed. These choices always spoke strong words for a person, it was one of the things that had moved Jack from the very beginning. "Stanley's after your bod, babe. Me too."
"Wow, where'd you get all the old CDs," Merci marveled. She pulled out the last thing he would have wanted her to play, a record by Jack's former group JackKnifeBigRig that had some really raunchy lyrics. The lead-off track, Wannagetchu. "Ha ha," Merci laughed, repeating the words. "Suck me, squeeze me, fuck me, please me!" Her face contorted with exaggerated passion.
Jack's hands curled around the Jeep's steering wheel, his face burning. The throbbing heart on his forearm leaked another drop of crimson. Hopefully he'd be able to show her he could get a little deeper than that. That stupid band was history.
This was why he was already in love and said so, turning down the rock and roll. "I think I'd do anything for you, Merci."
"I love you too," she said back. "I'll do anything you want. Jack, do you ever have any fantasies about us?"
It takes a lot longer going down the coast, they listened to all four of the good CDs while they talked. He even told her about Evelyn, "Eve" she had become after she had gone lesbian and gotten her flames done somewhere else, by somebody else. "I still don't know why I put up with her," Jack jokingly told Merci. "Talk about no company loyalty!"
"It's good that you're still friends," Merci said doubtfully. Most lesbians were either after you or your boyfriend, she said. Too neurotic.
"You're right about that," Jack shrugged, unhappy after all to be going through it all again.
Finally she got around to talking about her two moms, Jack listening intently as he drove through Moss Landing and continued south. He'd heard a lot of it before, of course.
"She had to know I was with boys already. She's such a control freak. She's always talking about 'consequences'".
"I've noticed."
Merci's real mom had died off young, when she was seven, leaving only Merci and her dad. Dad seemed like he might have been sort of a cool guy before age turned him into a sour dipshit, he worked for one of the cell phone companies like google, Merci had done to school in one of those Scandinavian countries up until high school, when they'd moved back to Berkeley. It was fine, she told Jack, everyone spoke English and stuff.
She hadn't seen it coming, who could? One minute Dad had said he was going to start dating, the next he was sleeping with the bitch. From the very beginning it had been hard for Merci. "She acts all normal and stuff...but she's not, she's always just a big actress. She doesn't mean anything."
"You said she was a TV actress? What's she in?" A bunch of reality TV shit, Merci said angrily. "They're always trying to get me together with her producer and shit. They think I'm like their pet teenager. They're always trying to make me tell them what Generation Y thinks about shit."
"Huh. That's twisted." At the time Jack had no clue what Merci was talking about.
"My family was a lot different. I'm not saying it didn't have its good points sometimes. My mom was the other way around, do anything you want, just stay out of trouble, Jackie, it was my old man who was the ball-buster." It felt good to be able to tell someone at last. Later Jack admitted that it had a lot to do with their decision to run.
"Mom is going to be so pissed at me," Merci said suddenly, her nerve evaporating. And yet there was nothing to do about it except keep driving.
But he gave in to the inevitable and stopped short in Pacific Grove, coasting down nearly to the tip of the Monterey peninsula before pulling up at the office of a cottage motel, the Sea Breeze.
The man at the desk was dealing with another guy and his wife and kids, who were all over the room chasing a drifting pink balloon. "Let's see..." the man said, clicking his computer screen while punching buttons on a piece of electronics that had been dredged from the shelf of the formica counter. "Something wrong. Have a seat. I'll be with you in a few minutes." He turned submissively back to the exasperated customer. "It's the promotion code. It won't let me change it."
Jack waved at Merci in the car to tell her to come in while rehearsing what he was going to say. My wife and I, Merci and I, just married, any vacancies?
"I can pay with cash," he finally said, after waiting even longer. The clerk turned back, more interested now that Merci had come through the swinging door. She was still dressed in the green hoody, her flip-flops snapping in irregular rhythm as she moved around the room helping the kids corral the balloon.
"We're newlyweds," he added, a touch of urgency.
"Sure," the man said, pushing a pad of registration forms at Jack. "Fill one of these out. Can I see some ID. Write down your license plate here."
"Honey?" Jack tossed back over his shoulder. Merci turned, smiling at the endearment. She came to the counter, pulling her battered CDL from her pouch and presenting it gravely to the clerk. Jack flipped his out too.
"I guess you just got married, that's why your last names are different," the clerk fussed. "You're lucky, we had a cancellation. After you've rested, the butterfly grove is right up the road," the guy said, pushing a plastic key card across the desk, "Take number fourteen. You can drive through there."
"Butterfly grove?" Merci inquired. The man beamed at her, to Jack's eyes with just a little too much interest. The guy was losing his hair already, with a polite moustache, must have been in his thirties or forties somewhere.
"Hi, I'm Lucky," he introduced himself. "No, really, that's my name. My wife Yolanda and I run this motel. Welcome."
"It's very romantic. Every year the flocks of monarch butterflies come to the Monterey peninsula on their migration to Mexico. Millions of them. There's a stand of eucalyptus that's protected. They mate for life."
"What's that?" Jack asked, scoffing, "Like four months? He's right, honey, you're going to have to get a new license now that you've changed your name."
"Wow, how beautiful," Merci said, looking at a old-fashion color photo that was framed on the wall of the motel office. Thousands of orange-winged butterflies clung to a waterfall of dusky bluegreen eucalyptus. Behind her a door opened and a tall woman with gray-streaked black hair emerged, darting a look at Merci and Jack. She was wearing tan shorts and a turquoise top that was tied off to reveal a deep cleavage, a small tattoo. It turned out this was Yolanda.
"Is that a cat in your car?" she asked in a throaty smoker's voice. Merci shrunk back with a guilty look.
"That's Linus," she countered, "Just three-quarters of one. He got his rear leg bit off by a dog a few years ago."
"That's right," Jack cracked. "Could we get a discount?"
His eye went immediately to the ornate faded blue lettering that ran across the older lady's chest: ICUR12. "One what?" he asked jokingly. "A tit man?" It seemed like every time Jack was nervous he would just get sarcastic.
"Another inkskin. Nice tattoos, man." She turned again to Merci. "I thought he might like some water, there are a couple of bowls of cat food around the corner."
Even though officially they had been lying when they said they were just married, in a funny way Jack felt something real was happening as he set the cat carrier down and comically lifted Merci over the threshold of the rented room. She was heavy and warm, the fabric of her jeans scratchy against his arms, her blond head resting beneath his chin.
"That's funny that they think we're MARRIED! Wow, we could be having like a honeymoon here," Merci said, wriggling seductively in his arms and offering him a wet open-mouth kiss. "I don't think I want to change my name though. Mom never did."
Jack's heart swelled with sudden happiness. It did really seem that before this he and Merce had been living in a fantasy world, now things were finally beginning to make sense. There just hadn't been enough time to talk about it all. This was almost the first time they'd been together without the urgency of just doing it before someone else came in on them, a friend or a roommate.
The room faced west and the last lights of a pacific sunset splashed the room and the young girl with vivid orange light. "Did you see the look on that old guy's face?" Merci asked, stretching out in his arms. "He like couldn't keep his eyes off me. Jack? Do you think I'm pretty?"
"I feel funny without my phone." she said a moment later. She had seemed quieter, where before she'd always been the one that needed to show you something, usually something on her oPhone. "Can't I just check my messages? Someone might have texted me." She twisted around and retrieved the oPhone from her bag. "Look, it's beeping."
"Didn't I tell you to turn that thing off?" Jack said sharply.
"I did," Merci said. "I did turn it off. That's just because, you know, I have messages..."
"...Jack, do you think it could be my mom again? I mean, I just hope mom doesn't do anything."
"What could she do?" Jack admitted later that at this point he'd already known they were in trouble. "That she hasn't already done." But, I mean, what did that have to do with anything?
The embarrassment he'd felt because of the false pretenses was gone. They'd probably thought, "Oh here's some old guy with a girl that's too young for him, why doesn't he grow up himself." But the truth was, if anyone was being exploited in the relationship it was Jack.
"What's on TV?" Jack joked, taking the oPhone from Merci's warm hand and replacing it with the television remote control. He lifted the soft green fabric of her hooded sweatshirt along her naked sides. "Do you love me, Merci? I love you." Jack kissed her, his tongue dancing through murmuring lips.
"Jack?" Did he think they could work on her birdie a little bit? He nodded and got out the kit, pulling the blinds and turning up the heat in the cottage to the maximum, plugging in. Merci pushed her pants down, shrugged out of her green hoody, stood before him in her colored panties, blushing with excitement.
"Lean back in my lap now," Jack ordered gruffly, already inspired. "Hug this pillow and push it up for me." He'd learned with titties it was easier to work upside down, though that got into the whole thing of the eye of the beholder, whether they wanted to look inward or out to another person.
"Ready?" It was a small rust-red brush bird, a thrush or robin, its neck stretched to pluck a succulent berry. Jack checked his colors and began to edge in the rest of its wing.
Like sex or shooting up drugs, that entry, that acceptance. Merci stirred beneath the buzz of the needle, doing her best to stay still as the tiny pricks infused her soft skin. Jack had loved the physicality of pushing ink into flesh from the beginning, by now experience had provided a creamy confidence that guided his steady hand. Merci gulped back a small sob, tears beginning to leak down across her chest.
"You okay?" Maybe it was a masochistic thing, Jack had met girls like Merci before, but he didn't think it was really the pain they liked, more like desire, a deep yearning to become. Plus it was rare to find someone that responded as strongly as Merce. Evelyn, maybe. Whatever it was, lust or love, it was an electric fluid Jack knew he needed. He finished the delicate shading and wiped off, applied a sterile pad.
"I was thinking what if you really were a kidnapper," Merci whispered, her eyes closed, twisting around, still encircled in his arms. She stayed quiet, but her breathing changed. "What would you do to me and stuff like that."
Jack was rock hard. Merci's fingers fumbled his knob, pretended to resist him.
"I was thinking what if we were really married," Jack countered. "I'd have the right to do anything I wanted. But you would like it."
"I would. I know!" Merci's legs spread shyly open, her warm puss rubbing against him.
Jack said he wanted to just stay in bed from that point on. But after a while his poor balls ached too much to make love any more, and Merci had turned the TV on for a dose of reality. Some trashy girl had slept with her sister's boyfriend Warren, seven times, and in between when her sister and this lucky guy Warren had been breaking up and getting together. The host was explaining to them what the deal was, how they had to respect each others space more, how did they think that Warren felt about it? Because Warren was right backstage. Jack couldn't stand it any more, he hated shows like that. He kissed Merci's blond forehead and levered himself out of the small space between the bed and the wall.
"Check it out, cooking with gas," Jack said, fiddling with the stove. "I should fix you one of my gourmet meals. I think Warren needs to get a clue." He peered through the crack in the drapes, checking for the imminent arrival of the Thought Police. There was nothing except two crows hopping in the grass of the motel yard. Jack pulled the drapes aside, the bright orange sunset now replaced by a deep blue green sky.
The girl had twisted the motel bedsheet between pink legs and pulled it up to her chin as she watched the TV drama unfold. "That'll be nice," she replied. "Could you close that, please?"
"Think I'll take a look around the place," he told Merci, smiling down at her. "I'll be back in a few minutes."
It was quiet in Pacific Grove, you had to give it that. Jack peered into the foggy gloom that had settled over the seaside town of Pacific Grove. Around the back of the cottage a short graveled parking lot bordered one of the main streets. Crusted moss covered the twisted oak trees, the power lines and telephone poles that lined the road. Somewhere distantly there was the sound of the ocean on a beach of ragged rocks. Somewhere nearby the sound of a million butterfly wings rustling nervously together. A crow cawed and he turned the other way, stepping carefully across a flagstone patio.
