Page 9 of Dark Ink

Aurnia cleared her throat. “I think you should take a break and have a little chat with me.”

I sighed and ignored her. She’d go away.

She didn’t. She moved closer.

“It’s just…” Aurnia said in a softer voice, “it’s just this is a little concerning is all.”

The girl I was tattooing dismissed Aurnia with a wave.

“Oh, no, it’s grand,” she said, “my skin is pure sensitive, like. If anyone even touches me, I go all red. If anyone brushes their fingers against my skin, I go red. If anyone…” I felt the girl’s eyes on me even as I worked on her, “anyone at all kisses me, anywhere, anywhere they want to kiss me, I go red.”

I stopped my work long enough to point at the girl, give Aurnia a look, and say, “See? She’s grand. Not concerning at all.”

I swatted the girl’s hand away from my inner thigh and turned the gun back on. Aurnia, like a persistent fly, circled around so she was on the opposite side of the girl.

“Look,” she whispered, “I know you’re a bit out there sometime, but… someone keeps calling the Dublin Ink line for you. And Mason and Conor—”

“Mason and Conor can go mind their own fecking business,” I said to Aurnia’s face before smiling and bending once more over the girl’s arm.

My friends thought I was selling again. Getting dragged under again. Using the hard stuff again. The bags under my eyes. The strange phone calls I wouldn’t tell them were Liam. The obsessive drawing of a girl they couldn’t believe was real. I admit it didn’t look good. But I had more important things to focus on than their needling worry.

Aurnia’s fingertips on my shoulder were meant to be comforting, I know. I know. I know they were meant to be kind. Since coming into our lives, little A had become like a kid sister to me. I loved her. Cared for her. She was a part of our family. But I shrugged her off of me like her touch was fire ants.

“I just want to help,” she said.

“You want to help?” I asked, throwing down the tattoo gun. I felt bad that Aurnia and the girl both jumped in fright. I knew well enough what it was like to fear a man. But I hadn’t slept and I’d been tattooing for hours and I wasn’t exactly in complete control. I jammed my finger against the drawing and yelled at Aurnia, “If you want to help me, tell me who this girl is. That’s how you can help me. Tell me who she is. Tell me where I can find her. God, where can I just fucking find her?”

I grabbed at my hair and tugged as Aurnia’s wide eyes darted between the drawing of the girl, the half-tattooed face on the red arm, and me.

“I—I don’t know, I guess she kind of looks familiar. Maybe I’ve seen her around, but—Rian, why are you doing this?”

I calmed myself, picked back up the tattoo gun and went back to work.

“Kop on, Aurnia. It’s pretty obvious,” I said. “It’s the best way to find her. Nobody looks at lamp posts these days. The second you put up a poster some poser in a garage band smacks his flyer up over yours. And besides, lamp posts don’t move, you know?”

The girl I was tattooing craned her head around to look at me and said, “Wait, is that what I am to you? A lamp post?”

I pushed her head back around and said, “Yes.”

She shrugged and then looked back around after a second thought.

“How about you be a lamp post to me, Professor?”

All this time Aurnia just stared at me with those big deer eyes. I was about to reassure her that I was grand. No bother. This was all normal. At least normal for me. I wasn’t a mentaller, at least not more than usual. I wasn’t any more off my nut than usual. Before I could speak, a kid with a backwards baseball cap and an oversized Tipperary GAA jersey ducked his head under the canopy.

“Professor M, ‘bout ye?” Tipperary said, “Your sign doesn’t have an ‘s’, like.”

“What an astute artistic eye,” I said, deadpan, not bothering to give him a second look. “You’ll go far. I can tell.”

“He’s just doing the one tattoo, eejit,” the girl told him as she stretched to poke at the girl’s taped-down face.

Her movement made the gun jolt. I was about eat the head off her for ruining my work when Tipperary said, “You’re tattooing Eithne’s face?”

I dropped the gun. Looked across the table. I almost didn’t dare to speak.

“Rian, please—” Aurnia started, but I held up a finger to her.

“Repeat what you just said,” I told Tipperary.

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