This is the sixth installment of the short story "Ink" by Steve Metcalf as it first appeared in the second Event collection "Iron Bay."
INK
Steve Metcalf
Chapter Five
Big Mo
He woke up with a headache from another planet. Jones wasn’t prone to migraines, but this headache was so aggressive that it actually woke him up two hours before his alarm. At five in the morning, he padded through the house to get to the kitchen.
He winced at every step.
A handful of aspirin and a bottle of water later and he was standing in the room, naked, rubbing his temples.
“Where’re my clothes?” he asked the kitchen, as if noticing for the first time.
He looked down at his naked chest and saw the beginnings of his first – and possibly most elaborate – tattoo. The Three Deaths. He gently touched it with the fingertips of his right hand, holding the remainder of the water bottle in his left. The skin was rough to the touch and slightly hot.
“Ow,” Jones said in reaction. Not only to the sensitive skin on his chest, but the four small cuts on the palm of his right hand. They weren’t bleeding right now, but there was dried blood caked all around his hand. The cuts were still fresh enough to be sore.
“Shit,” he said, looking at the palm as if it wasn’t even his own hand.
He cracked his neck back and forth, left and right, and waited for the aspirin to take hold. His phone alerted him to a text message – a little robot chattering energetic gibberish. He picked up his phone off the kitchen island and started walking back toward the bedroom.
“Great job last night,” he read out loud. “Come by the shop on Friday for the next application of your ink. K.”
Jones put the phone down on his dresser and slid on a pair of sweatpants. He reached for a t-shirt but decided against it. Even reaching with his left arm pulled the skin tight enough to hurt. He continued through the bedroom into the en suite bath. He gently washed his hands and watched the caked-on blood dissolve from his palm and disappear down the drain. Again, gently, he patted his hand dry, applied ointment and dressed the entire thing with gauze padding.
He went back to the kitchen and saw for the first time the little pile of products on the island. Along with his keys and wallet, he saw a few different bottles of creams and what looked to be a special washcloth. They were all tattoo products branded with 3rd Ave Ink.
“Nice,” he said, even a bit sarcastically. “I don’t even remember driving home.”
He was walking toward the fridge to grab a bottle of water when he froze in mid-step.
“What the fuck?”
He ran back through the dining room and down the hallway to his bedroom where he had put the phone down. His feet squeaked on the tile floor as he slid to a halt.
“Oh shit.”
He pulled up the phone screen once again and just stared at it for a full 30 seconds. He had gone to the tattoo shop on Saturday evening. It was now Monday morning.
“What the fuck happened to Sunday?”
* *
The first thing he did was call his boss and beg off sick. He didn’t have any meetings scheduled that couldn’t be moved. The next 10 things he did was try to get ahold of Kira. He called, texted and emailed her but received no response. The next thing he did was take a shower. As much of a shower, that is, as his chest would let him. The skin surrounding The Three Deaths was itchy and inflamed. He slathered on as much cream as he could and found a loose-fitting shirt. He dressed the wound on his palm again, silently mad that he wasted the first batch of medication and gauze in a pre-shower treatment.
The next thing he did was call Big Mo.
* *
Maurice "Big Mo" Lazenby came out from the back room of the deli, a dump truck of a man. No one was exactly sure how tall he was, but he had to duck to get through all but the most oversized doors. He was barrel chested and barrel stomached. With a bald head and a huge, bushy-black beard, Mo looked like he stepped out of a painting of a Wild West Era Mountain Man. His friends, half-jokingly, always said that in the event of a zombie apocalypse they would immediately seek out Big Mo because he looked like a man who could take care of himself.
They were right.
In fact, in deep, dark, secret parts of his subconscious, Big Mo wished that a zombie apocalypse would break out so he could have a full-on physical meltdown the likes of which he had never been able to. Killing a man with his bare hands wasn’t something on Mo’s to-do list, but snapping a zombie in half in a hypothetical post-apocalyptic world might be a nice test of his strength and ferocity.
He was drying his hands on a towel and tossed it on the stainless steel counter when he saw Jones.
“Look what the cat dragged in,” Mo said, smiling. He rubbed a big, black hand up over his shiny-smooth head and came out from behind the counter. “Sally, handle business for me.”
Sally, a blue-haired college student of mixed heritage – common enough to be stereotypical in the San Francisco Bay Area – nodded and went back to her task list.
After college, Mo had blended his business degree with his love of food, and opened a sandwich shop. Called “The Melter,” the deli was nestled right at the railroad track end of California Ave. It was high-rent and high-visibility and just busy enough to make Mo wealthy, but not a dick. He had named the place after his signature sandwich, but the menu had grown steadily over the years. Jones wasn’t entirely shocked that Spicy Ass hadn’t yet made it to the big board behind the counter. Probably, Jones was getting joshed.
Mo and Jones had been on the same intramural flag-football team in college and had remained friends ever since.
Jones stood up from the table he had claimed and fist-bumped his friend. There were no customers yet as the deli would not open for another 30 minutes. Jones had texted Mo that he needed to talk, and Mo had told Sally to keep an eye on the front door as she was going through the deli’s daily mise en place.
“So, what?” Mo said, sitting down. Jones did the same.
Jones pulled the tail of his shirt up to his neck, exposing the new tattoo.
“Wow, that’s,” Mo said and then paused, leaning forward. “That’s some ink. What the fuck’s wrong with your skin? Is that what you need? Some sort of cream or something?”
“Nah,” Jones said, lowering the shirt back in place. “Chick at the party? Asian chick? She’s a tattoo artist and I’m getting this done. Needs a couple more applications to finish it up.”
“She’s clearly very talented,” Mo said, leaning back in the chair, his knuckles almost scraping the checkerboard tile pattern of the floor. “Looks like you’re having some strange reaction, though.”
Jones nodded.
“But that’s not even the weird part.”
* *
"Did you fuck her?" Big Mo asked taking a huge bite of his Rueben. They had chatted while Mo went back behind the counter and made a couple sandwiches. Jones had explained the party, the ink, the painkillers, the bizarre dream, and waking up Monday morning with no recollection of Sunday. And the cut he suffered in his dream was now a reality. He held up his bandaged palm as if proving his own point during that part of the story.
Jones, shocked, shook his head.
"No," he said. "Maybe. Actually, I don't remember."
"Jesus Christ, Jones," Mo said, spraying a small section of their table with crumbs. "If you tell me that you got a chest tattoo to impress some Asian chick and you didn't even get your knob slobbed, I might have to punt you off a bridge."
“Always the gentleman,” Jones said and took a bite of his own sandwich.
Big Mo shrugged.
“Look, man,” he said. “I’m not sure what you want me to say. You’re not too concerned about your health or you would have called the doctor before calling your old pal Maurice. Do you want me to go talk to the chick? I’m here for you, man, I’m just not sure what you need from me.”
Jones shrugged in turn. He put the last corner of his meatloaf sandwich down on the thick paper plate.
“I’m not sure, man,” he said. “I guess I just needed to say all this out loud.”
There was a pause between the two men. Customers had started to come into the deli and the could-be-Asian-could-be-Latina Sally was handling everything beautifully. A third employee, a young man, had also come in right at the start of business. Mo looked over to make sure the shop was running smoothly. He turned back to Jones.
“I’m ya boy, dude, I always will be. It doesn’t sound like anything’s missing. You checked your credit cards? Your finances?” Jones nodded in response, so Mo continued. “Right. It’s possible that this chick just gave you some painkillers and you reacted poorly to them. She brought you home and let you sleep it off. For all we know, she’s the Good Samaritan here … just didn’t realize that you’d sleep all the way through Sunday.” He paused. “You’re supposed to meet her on Friday?”
Jones nodded.
“Would you like me to go with you? Make sure nothing funky happens?”
Jones shook his head.
“Nah,” he said. “Maybe I should call you after. Or something. I just don’t want to lose another day. Freaked me out, man.”
It was Big Mo’s turn to nod.
“I bet. Look. Maybe go light on the meds next time. And no drinking. Fuck knows what kind of interaction you sparked.”
“Yeah,” said Jones. “That’s a great point. I had some juice in me.”
“Well, there you go,” Mo said. “That might not answer all your questions, but it might shed some light on them.” He paused for a second, polished off the remaining finger of sandwich and washed it down with the rest of his Coke. “You know I was originally going to call this place Yerba Buena Cove, right?”
“Uh huh.”
“Do you know the significance of that name?”
“Nope.”
“It was the name of the shallow cove in San Francisco Bay. The one that was filled in and all those ships were intentionally sunk in … after the gold rush.”
“Oh, yeah,” Jones said. “I’ve read about that.”
“Well, the idea has always intrigued me. The idea of something new built upon something old. All of those buildings in the financial district with hundred-year-old ships anchoring their foundations. Love it.”
“So, why did you pick The Melter?”
Big Mo shrugged.
“Couldn’t get the naming rights,” he said. “Plus, it’s a great sammich. Three meats. Four melted cheeses. Signature lunch, right there.”
There was silence around the table. There was a chirp from the alarm system as the front door opened. Two more customers came in.
It was most likely the train stop. There was a commuter train that stopped 20 yards from the sandwich shop and people were always swinging past to grab lunch on the way in to the office.
Conversely, there were enough businesses within walking distance that the morning rush nearly always carried over until 1 or 2 in the afternoon. Just in time to start getting cleaned up and prepping for the early dinner crowd. Mo wiped his large hands down the apron that lay across his thighs. He knew his break time was over – even as the boss.
“That’s a great story, man. Thanks,” Jones said.
“Listen,” Mo said, standing to get ready to go back to work. “Sometimes there are things at work below the surface. Sometimes, there’s a foundation you just can’t see. Sometimes,” he reached across and grabbed his friend’s shoulder. “Sometimes, she’s just a piece of ass.”
Jones smiled.
“I’m not sure why I come to you for advice.”
Mo shrugged.
“It’s not like I encourage it,” he said, turning away. “Call me after you see her, yeah?”
“You got it,” Jones nodded.
* *
Bren had been at work for nearly three hours already and had twice stained her lab coat. Her nightmare the previous evening had so unsettled her that she was having trouble concentrating on work. She took an early lunch and, half way through, decided not to come back for the remainder of the day. Instead, she sat at a small table overlooking the beach and meditated.
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