Timmy took the envelope from inside his jacket. “You do a lot of these?”
“I don’t know about a lot. I do some.”
Timmy did that math. If the kid did one installation a week, he’d clear thirty thousand in a single month. Probably he had a girlfriend spending it for him. Timmy had been the same way at his age, every dollar he earned spent—directly or indirectly—on getting laid.
“Enjoy,” he said, counting out the cash. For four thousand dollars, the kid should get plenty of tail.
“OLDER THAN CAVE PAINTING,” SAID CONNOR. “IT’S THE EARLIEST form of writing. I shit you not.”
Timmy was sitting in Connor’s chair, naked to the waist.
“Thirty-two hundred B.C. That’s the oldest known example.” Connor was famous for making asinine pronouncements about tattooing, its importance as an art form. He had personally done all Timmy’s ink but the first one, an eagle on his right biceps. He’d had the eagle since boot camp at Parris Island, which made it older than Connor.
“They found this dude in a bog in Denmark, the oldest known human. The skin was perfectly preserved. Sixty-one tats.”
Connor was not a critical thinker. His information came from old tattoo magazines he bought on eBay. There was so much ludicrousness packed into his stories that Timmy didn’t even bother.
A warm lick of blood trailed down his back.
“You need a break?” said Connor.
“Nah. I’m good,” Timmy said.
The current piece was an elaborate back tattoo, an ongoing project. Every few weeks Connor outlined a new section, or filled in what he’d outlined last time. It had begun with a massive Celtic cross centered over Timmy’s spine, its crossbar extending from shoulder to shoulder. Timmy had drawn the cross himself, on grid paper to get the scale right. He had a large back, and it took Connor three hours just to get the outline on his skin. Filling it in took longer. Timmy chose three colors: black, red, and green. He’d lost track of how much money he’d spent, the countless hours in Connor’s chair.
The cross, in the end, was not what he expected.
What’s the problem? said Connor. He had an artistic temperament, sensitive to criticism.
It looks kind of—Christian.
It’s a cross, Connor said.
The cross had been a problem from the beginning. First it looked too Christian. Then it looked too Celtic. Timmy feared turning into his father, whose flabby sentimentality about Ireland embarrassed him. If it was so fucking great over there, why did everyone leave?
After some discussion, he and Connor decided on a solution. The solution was more ink. Connor added a border around the cross, meant to resemble chain mail, then a leafy vine winding through the chain. Birds were added, thorny roses, a slithering snake. Timmy’s back looked better and better. Now Connor was filling in what was theoretically the final piece, a sliver of moon above the left shoulder blade.
The needle was very hot, digging into his flesh. His phone rang in his pocket.
Connor said, “You need to take that?”
With any other customer, he would have pitched a fit—more evidence, to Timmy, of his artistic temperament. Connor was so touchy about being interrupted that he’d hung a sign above the mirror: NO CELL PHONES PLEASE. He made an exception for Timmy, whose phone calls typically lasted less than a minute.
Timmy answered without looking, which was always a mistake.
“It’s February,” said his ex-wife. No hello, no how are you? They’d dispensed with the pleasantries long ago.
Connor gave him a quizzical look. Timmy held up a finger.
“Yeah, I know,” he said. “I can’t get down there right now.” Every few months he brought her a wad of cash, hand-delivered. Tess knew, had always known, what he did for a living. And yet she refused to understand that he couldn’t simply drop a check in the mail.