Part 2 (So Far)
Overcome
by the crushing desire to escape the clutter and wreck of another
wasted day, Bond asks Pratt to wake her up early on his way to work.
He nudges her awake on his way out of the shower, water dripping on
to her shoulder from his hair. She rubs the drops in to her skin and
pulls the sheets around her as she stands. Pratt leads the way into
the kitchen where the smell of breakfast cooking reminds Bond that
this is the way that things begin. She falls into a chair at the
kitchen table and smiles as she refuses a plate of bacon and eggs.
It is enough for her to be awake with the entire day in front of her,
marveling at the strange way that morning light is discernible from
that of the afternoon. She looks away from the small kitchen window
to Pratt. They lock eyes over their coffee mugs. For all the
tenderness of Pratt's smile, the messy comfort of his hair and the
stubble on his chin, all that Bond can see inside his eyes are closed
doors. He finishes his coffee, dumps the breakfast plates in the
sink, kisses Bond on the cheek and leaves.
Bond
listens for the door to close and then walks into the unused second
bedroom. She turns the blinds until the room is filled with the soft
mid-March morning light. She drops the sheet to her ankles and
crosses her arms in front of her breasts. She walks into the
bedroom, removes the full-length mirror from its hook and places it
against a wall in the empty room. There, naked in the prospect of
another day, she feels like the skin she sees in the mirror is not a
reflection of her, but rather a simple portrait of a blank canvass,
waiting to be filled in. It is a study of plainness; that smoothness
of clear skin she left behind with Eastern.
Now
image upon image floods through her head. She sees dancing skeletons
and vibrant flowers. She sees bold oceans and brilliant skies.
Tigers bare their teeth at her. She smiles to herself at them.
Vivid as they are, none of them seem real.
Finally
she remembers the looming darkness of the windows in Eastern's
office, looking out on nothing but a tangled wall of vegetation
separating them from a darker unknown. She sees herself in the rooms
of his house as a bird caged, always looking up and out at a world so
much larger than herself, forbidden to enter in to it for fear of
being swallowed by it. An image comes to her mind that finally feels
solid.
Looking
at her figure, its emptiness filled only by the pale freckles beneath
her eyes, a mole on her
ribcage
and the soft shadows where her limbs curve around themselves, she
knows how she will start her day. She wants her body to feel real,
without only her shadow to prove to the sun that it is.
She
showers and dresses hurriedly and steps out into the warm, damp
morning. Her feet, energetic, excited and over-caffeinated, carry
her towards the waterfront. Only blocks away from Pratt's apartment,
close to the harbor, sits a green-roofed tattoo parlor.
Bond
steps inside and breathes deep, taking in for the first time the
heady, anti-septic smell of soap and balm hiding raw skin and blood.
There is the subtle static of loud music turned down low and the
steady chatter of the needles in the background, like the voices of
old friends whispering secrets to each other behind drawn curtains.
Behind
the counter, a bearded man with his hands held in front of himself
watches her.
“I
need a tattoo,” she says.
“You're
in the right place. I'm Reed. Do you know what you want or have a
picture of anything you'd like?”
“I
just escaped from something. So I would like something to reflect
that.”
“How
about a bird in flight?”
“How
about an empty cage?”
“Interesting,”
Reed says, picking up a pencil and a piece of paper, “You're not
focused on the entrapped escaping, but rather the jail that is left
behind.” He starts to draw and does not see the blush on Bond's
face bring out the green of her eyes. She is silent, unsure of how
to voice her approval. He asks her where she wants it and she points
to her shoulder blade. He turns her around to measure a piece of
paper on her back.
“Sorry,”
he tells her, “I like to analyze people's tattoos too much
sometimes. Most people ignore me, but it bothers some.”
“I
don't mind at all,” Bond says, knowing for certain that she is in
the right place.
As
Reed draws the transfer sketch, Bond asks her questions, feeling
foolish in her excitement, like a schoolgirl again. Reed answers
patiently, if a little bored, the way that people get when they have
to explain the most basic aspects of a skill they've mastered.
“It's
OK if you're nervous,” Reed says, now sitting in his booth, pulling
on rubber gloves and removing the needles from their packaging.
“You're about to permanently alter your skin. If you weren't
nervous about that, I'd say you weren't thinking about it hard
enough.”
Bond
considers this, takes a deep breath and steels herself, determined
not to let herself down. She takes off her shirt, pulls her bra
strap down and sits with her back to Reed. As the needle vibrates to
life, she looks to her side to the mirror hanging on the wall of
Reed's booth, but she cannot see him fully. She only sees his hands
and the tattoo gun lowering towards her.
As
the tattoo gun chatters into Bond's skin, she tells him the
beginnings of her story, her words chopped up into quick phrases, the
pressure of the line work acting as punctuation.
“His
name is Eastern,” she says, her face twisting into the sneer
reserved for parents, teachers or lovers who do not understand.
Reed, concentrating, does not ask which he is.
“This
is the whole reason I finally left,” Bond says, nodding to where
Reed is busy with the bird cage, “and the first one I get is about
him. I think that's funny, I guess.”
As
Reed finishes and cleans her shoulder blade, Bond comforts herself
against the pain. The raw, burning feeling, she tells herself, means
that that part of her body, at least, is very real.