Page 92 of Make Me Sin (Bad Habit 2)
He lifts his arm and shows me a tattoo on the side of his ribs. Faith is being sure of what we hope for, and certain of what we do not see.
“Is that scripture?”
He nods. “Hebrews. You see the three scars, inside the F in faith?”
There’s a trio of almost identical puckered scars, lighter in color than the surrounding skin, inside the wide flourish of the first letter where the tattoo starts.
“I was shot three times that night. Never even had a chance to throw a punch. Some dirtbag with a Glock semiauto who was high on coke didn’t like it that I told him not to touch the girls. He left me flat on my back on the sidewalk, bleeding out. I was sure I was going to die.
“But I woke up in the hospital after surgery with some guy in a cardigan holding a Bible sitting in a chair next to my bed. I have no fucking idea where he came from, he was just there. When I looked at him, he said that line from scripture. I called him a name and threatened to rip off his head. He smiled at me and said he’d been told I was coming, and he was glad I was finally there. I thought he was a complete lunatic. Then his wife shows up, all Mrs. Ingalls in Little House on The Prairie—”
“You watched that show, too?” I find it impossible to imagine.
He says solemnly, “There’s a lot of waiting around in brothels, angel. You watch a lot of TV.”
“American TV?”
“You ever watch socialist TV?”
“No.”
“Neither did we. Watching paint dry would be time better spent. And even in the slums we had this thing called satellite.”
“Oh. Right.”
“Anyway, his wife. She’s as batshit as he is, at least that’s what I think. At first. I’m in the hospital for two weeks, recovering, and every day these two crazy fuckers show up with homemade muffins and brownies and a shit ton of talk about the Lord and his plans for me, and I’m convinced they’re trying to recruit me for a cult.”
I’m hooked. “So what happened?”
“So when I was well enough to leave the hospital, they asked me to come and live with them.”
“And did you?”
He snorts. “No. I went right back to my old life, working as a bouncer. But every fucking night at some point during my shift, this crazy pastor would show up, smiling like he’s got some freaky secret, talking about the Lord. I can’t tell you how many times I threatened to kick his ass just to get him to shut the fuck up.”
“But eventually you moved in with them.”
He nods, smiling faintly. “I think I did it just to get him off my back. Like, ‘Here I am, you got your wish, sucks to be you, motherfucker,’ but somehow . . . it worked out. They were actually just nice. I never woke up in the middle of the night with his dick up my ass like I was expecting.”
I can’t help it; I laugh. I drop my head to my knees and dissolve into laughter. A.J. laughs along with me.
“I know, right? Insane. Even more insane was how they encouraged me to play drums, take music lessons, join a band, read books . . . those people were ridiculously supportive. They only wanted the best for me. They were proud of me; they told everyone I was their son who’d been away on a mission.”
“And no one questioned your sudden appearance? This unknown sixteen-year-old son shows up out of the blue and it’s business as usual?”
He gives me a look. “You ever spend much time around really religious folks, Chloe?”
I shake my head. “My family’s Protestant. That’s about as non-religious as you can get without being atheist.”
“Yeah, well, it’s called faith for a reason. Total suspension of disbelief is pretty much the only requirement. Matthew’s congregation was small, but they were super-religious. In other words, they were all allergic to anything that resembled logic. He said I was their son, and it might as well have been carved on a stone tablet for all the questions those people didn’t ask. Plus my chromesthesia helped; they thought I was gifted, specially blessed by God. I got the feeling more than once that people were expecting me to walk on water, or turn a fish and a loaf of bread into Sunday brunch.
“Anyway, after I moved in with them, they set me up with all the right paperwork: birth certificate, Social Security card, everything. So Alexei Janic, fatherless bastard of a Russian whore, became Alex James, beloved son of an American pastor and his wife.”
“What about that whole not bearing false witness thing? How could a pastor not have a problem with lying?”
A.J. smiles. “Funny thing about the Bible; people glean from it what they need to hear. Maybe that’s its whole reason for existence. For Matthew and Marjorie, lying about who I was didn’t technically count because it didn’t hurt anyone, and because God Himself had told them to take care of me. The faith thing again. They basically got a holy hall pass.”
“Wow.” I stare again at the scripture tattoo. Then I look at all the other tattoos on his chest, abdomen, and arms, and feel overwhelmed by the weight of the stories that I sense behind them.
