INK (2 of 15)

This is the second installment of the short story "Ink" by Steve Metcalf as it first appeared in the second Event collection "Iron Bay."

INK

Steve Metcalf

Chapter One

Now

If it was chilly outside, it was downright cold inside. While the middle of July in the San Francisco Bay Area is not typically known as a winter wonderland, a stiff ocean wind dramatically impacts the hilly countryside between Los Gatos and the Pacific. Especially after the sun goes down.

Jones didn’t normally get to appreciate the marine layer of fog that crept over the hilly ridge protecting the central peninsula from the cool water. With a wall of windows facing the Pacific – all open – it was hard to ignore.

He sipped his vodka and scanned the room.

Jones wore jeans and a suit coat. It was the uniform of his daily life as a compliance officer – one of a dozen – for a huge bank headquartered in the Bay Area. In most ways, he was forgettable. Middle-aged. Average height. Average weight. He kept his blonde hair close-cropped and his face clear of hair. His only distinguishing feature might have been his ice-blue eyes – shocking in their clarity and his ability to appear as if he was looking directly into your brain during a conversation. His co-workers were split down the middle. Half thought he was creepy, and half thought he was striking. The lines were divided, shockingly, along genders.

He was picking up on a smattering of idle chatter – a series of monologues masquerading as conversations. It was hard to get a head-count, but Jameison’s hilltop McMansion seemed fairly full. Directly across the room from him, sipping on what looked like a Bloody Mary, was a beautiful Asian woman. Thin. Well dressed. Right arm covered in tattoos. Still south of middle-age. He grinned.

Asian women.

His Kryptonite.

She was standing alone, gazing at a large framed canvas. A local artist, he thought. A landscape by someone local. Marsden? Martinson? He could remember Jameison bragging about acquiring it months ago.

The girl sipped her drink. He sipped his vodka.

“What the fuck, dude?”

Jones was pulled from his silent appreciation to the loudmouth five yards to his left. A guy arguing with Barry, the party’s bartender. The loudmouth was holding a clear glass with clear liquid in his right hand, shaking it at Barry.

“Sir?” Barry asked.

“This is cold,” the man said, putting the glass down on the small bar’s surface. “I ordered it straight up.”

Barry nodded and grinned thinly.

“You sure did, sir,” he said. “Straight up.”

“I want my Grey Goose served straight up. Straight from the fucking bottle. No fucking ice. No fucking mixer. Not fucking chilled.”

He slid the glass across the surface to make his point. Without missing a beat, Barry stopped the slide, picked up the glass and gently placed it on a cocktail napkin.

“Then,” he said. “Perhaps what you meant to say was neat. A drink served neat is served at room temperature straight from the bottle. A drink served up or straight up implies some preparation. Mixed. Chilled over ice. I think it originally derives from the storage position of the bottle, but I can’t remember for sure.” Barry smiled and paused. “Sir.”

“Just pour me a glass of vodka from the fucking bottle, okay?”

“You want it in an Old Fashioned?”

The loudmouth looked incredulous.

“The fuck do I care when the glass was made?”

Jones’s eyes were drawn back to the right. There was a refrigerator-sized man striding directly across the room. He had to stand 6 foot 5 and nearly tipped the scales at 300 pounds. Bald head. Bushy black beard. Being in the Bay Area, he could easily be a retired professional athlete. Football. Basketball. Hockey. He could even be a former Pac-12 nose tackle working at Google in Palo Alto. It was hard to say in the Bay.

Jones knew, however, that this man was not a professional athlete. It was Maurice Lazenby. Big Mo. And he owned a deli, The Melter, in Mt. View.

He towered over the loudmouth, completely ignored him and looked down at Barry.

“Maker’s. Rocks.” His voice rattled the little glass of vodka on the bar. The bear winked at Barry.

Barry smiled, grabbed a bottle from under the bar and looked at the loudmouth.

“See, Melvin? That’s how you order a drink.”

* *

“You’re drooling, dude,” Big Mo said. His glass of bourbon was completely engulfed by a huge right hand.

Jones, comically, reached up and wiped the invisible drool from the corner of his mouth with the back of his right hand.

“Thanks, man,” he said. “How’s business?”

Mo shrugged. He was wearing black slacks and a grey and red silk bowling shirt. The embroidery, obviously, was stitched to say “Big Mo.”

“Fine, fine,” he took a sip from the glass and rattled the ice a bit. “Thinking about adding a new sandwich to the menu. Hot sauce. Chili paste. Just a blazer. Called the Spicy Ass. Not sure if it’ll fly.”

“I ordered a spicy ass once in Vegas,” Jones said, draining his vodka and putting the empty glass on a marble-topped console table. “Had to pee sitting down for a week.”

Mo turned to look at his friend and then back to the Asian woman, who still hadn’t noticed her growing fan club.

“I have no idea what that even means.”

“Yeah,” Jones said. “Let’s just let that one slide.”

They were silent for a minute or so. The Asian woman was nursing her drink. She absently rubbed the ink of the sleeve tattoo on her right arm while staring at another of Jameison’s paintings.

“Remind me to bless you with my rant about string bets later,” Maurice said.

Jones nodded absently.

“She’s gorgeous, right?” Jones said. “I mean, I’m not just overly horny here, right?”

Mo shrugged.

“Sure. She’s a little thin for my tastes,” he said. “I like a little more bubble, you know, front and back. She’s cute. Got a way about her. Slender. Muscles. I can see that she’s making you a bit nervous.”

Jones just shook his head.

“I can’t take my eyes off her,” he said. “I gotta make a move.” He paused, took a step toward the small bar for a fresh drink. “Lunch next week?”

“You wanna try my spicy ass?” Mo smiled.

“I’ve had it. At the toga party. Junior year,” Jones shook his head. “Wasn’t impressed.”

“Hater.”

* *

“I’m Jones,” he said, sidling next to the Asian woman.

She turned her head to the right to look at him, and then back to the painting.

“Kira.”

Jones took a sip of his vodka, smiled at her right ear.

“Pleased to meet you, Kira. It’s a nice piece isn’t it?”

Kira continued to gaze at the painting.

“It’s not one of Michaelson’s best,” she said. “But I like the sky. This part right here.” She indicated the upper left corner of the painting with her half-empty Bloody Mary. “There’s almost a little swirl of color hiding behind the darkness. Like the sun is fighting through the haze.”

Jones nodded. He finished off his drink and smacked his lips almost imperceptibly.

“I like the tone shift in the colors,” he said. “If you look quickly from left to right, the sky warms up. You get a peek at the sun on the left, to be sure, but there’s a storm coming from that direction. Did you ever see his painting, Prayers The Devil Answered?”

At this, Kira, finally turned to look him full on in the face. Jones had pulled out his phone and was typing away on the screen.

“Hang on, I’ll get it.”

A look of shock briefly registered on her face and Jones heard a swift intake of air. He grinned a bit, misinterpreting her reaction. She looked back at the Michaelson painting and stared through it, eyes wide.

“Jones, huh?” she asked.

“Uh huh,” he said, still searching for an image on his phone. “You’ll never guess my first name and I’ll never tell you.”

She chuckled, drained her glass and took a deep breath.

“Here it is.”

Jones held out his phone to her, turned to landscape mode. There was another Michaelson painting. Jones pointed at it, leaning in close to Kira.

“Prayers The Devil Answered. See this part here, the slope of the hill? Now look at Lies God Told – that’s the name of this one on the wall.” He gently nudged the phone in her hand to raise it up to a position next to the hanging painting. “It’s the same hill in this one, continued on into this one. These paintings actually go side by side. One before the storm. One after the storm.”

“Wow,” she said. “That’s pretty cool.”

“And the fact they were painted about five years apart. And that Michaelson had already sold the first piece. There had to have been some sort of planning involved. You don’t get those two horizons to line up by memory. Or by accident.”

“Fate, maybe,” Kira said, putting her bloody glass down on a small table and turning away from it.

“Fate,” he said, nodding.

* *

They spent the next hour looking at Jameison’s various pieces of artwork. Chatting. Getting to know each other.

“You should come by the shop sometime,” she said, draining her second drink. “Get some ink.”

He had been admiring her sleeve of tattoos that ran up the length of her right arm from her wrist and disappeared behind her shirt at her shoulder blade.

“I’ve been wanting to get a tattoo,” Jones said. “I’ve been too afraid to pull the trigger. Fuck it. Do you work there on Saturday?”

She smiled.

“Sure. Why not?” She said. “I’m a resident artist. I’m at that location for another month or so and then I’m off. Big money. They gave me a private room and everything.”

“I’ll come by. It’s a date.”

“Come by. It’s not a date. And it’s time for me to leave. I need a shower before bed. Feel filthy.”

Jones smiled, thinking this might be an invitation for him to join her, but Kira slid on her coat and took another step toward the door without looking back. Seeing his chance fading away, he called out after her.

“Don’t let your fingers get too pruny,” he laughed.

She stopped and turned back to him, not smiling.

“Why not?” Kira asked. “It’s an evolutionary advantage. Your fingers and toes do that so you can get a better grip while underwater. Your body’s trying to protect itself. You can’t just ignore progress.”

And with that, she left. Jones, for his part, just stood in the foyer with his mouth agape.