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.
*
* *
When
Pratt comes home, he finds Bond washing the tattoo in the bathroom
mirror, rubbing balm over the swollen, shining picture. She catches
his eyes in the mirror and to her he has the same expression as a
schoolboy seeing a woman naked for the first time. His surprise and
arousal are clear, as is his complete confusion. Before she can
explain, he walks to the sink and washes his hands.
Taking
the tube of balm from Bond's hands, he says “Let me help,” and
covers the rest of her tattoo where her hands cannot reach, a smile
growing on his face. She leans her head on his chest and in a minute
they are both laughing loud at themselves, his arms around her, the
bathroom steaming from the hot tap water that Pratt left running.
“How
much did that cost?” Pratt asks, the laughter fading in to faint
echos on the bathroom tile. Bond tells him and he nods, not quite
frowning, but not far from it.
Bond
begins to apologize but Pratt cuts her off. “It's OK. You had to
do it. I know.”
She
takes his hand and leads him to the bedroom, pushing him down and
pulling off his clothes. As they tangle themselves in the sheets,
Bond feels concentrated and focused. For the first time in so long,
there is nothing on her mind except for him. Even when his eager
hands scratch at her back and rake across the edge of her shoulder,
her cry turns in to a laugh and she immediately forgives him.
Afterward, panting and satisfied, she feels delightfully exhausted.
She rolls over on her side and pulls his arm around her as she drifts
off to sleep. In the darkness, her shoulder smolders like the ember
of a fire left to burn out in the night.
*
* *
The
next morning, Pratt does something beautiful. He wakes Bond up early
and holds a ballpoint pen to her face. Groggy and confused, she does
not understand until he takes her arm and starts to draw on it. She
laughs herself awake as he draws stick figures, cartoon skulls, leaky
pirate ships and horizons that fall off the edge of the world.
“Whatever
you want, just ask me,” Pratt says.
They
shower together and as the ink runs off of Bond's arm to wash over
the both of them, Bond feels like she is losing something.
“Now
it's all gone,” she says, watching the dark water wash down the
sink.
“I
can do it again. Any time you want. Just let me know. Whatever you
want, I'll give it to you,” Pratt tells her, kissing her on the
lips.
There
in the shower, Bond wants to tell him that she does not want
something replaceable. Without the money or means to make her point,
she decides to let it wash down the drain. She kisses him back.
Pressing herself in to Pratt as close as she can, she still feels a
loneliness expanding inside of her, like a door previously locked
shut yawning open.
*
* *
Eastern
turns the page. The next drawing is a rough sketch of two dragons,
their faces snarling clumsily at each other, their tails tangled,
merging together at the bottom of the page. The dragons' wings curl
above their heads, framing the words “Fear is the heart of love”.
Vague framing lines and smudged finger and hand prints surround the
sketch. In one corner, a faint ring of red wine cuts across the
page.
“You
didn't draw this,” Eastern says.
“No.
Bond did.”
“Allow
me to explain,” says the voice from beyond the Locked Door. Reed
nods and motions to turn the page. In a flurry of bright colors, the
image explodes.
*
* *
Like
the tails of terrible dragons in love, days and nights intertwine
until they become one. While Pratt works downtown designing party
posters and event fliers for failing local bands, Bond spends her
days walking through the city, handing out a feeble one page resume,
hoping that the hiring managers and head bar tenders she speaks to
don't notice the desperation in her eyes. At home, eating cold
leftovers, she continuously checks her finances – a dwindling
checking account and a stagnant mutual fund that she tries not to
touch.
The
birdcage on her shoulder has long since stopped burning. Instead, a
new pain has settled in. Every time Bond catches a glimpse of it in
the mirror or runs her fingers over the subtly raised lines of ink,
she feels a deep sadness that she cannot add to it. Without
accompaniment, it almost seems like it was a mistake. Checking the
brightness of the computer screen again, the numbers still fail to
add up.
Some
days Pratt comes home to find Bond sitting in the empty second room
covered only in a bed sheet. At first Bond tries to plead her case
to Pratt, but after a few fruitless weeks, a heavy silence of words
already said falls over those nights. As spring warms to summer, the
city noise from the open windows covers the shuddering sound of
Bond's breathing and the whispered platitudes that Pratt offers.
Invariably,
the next morning, Pratt will wake Bond up with a collection of
colored markers and ask what she wants. With her head to one side,
she hold her arms out, wrists up, smiles sweetly and lies.
Sitting
in the shade of a cafe umbrella by the monument, ordering nothing
more than a coffee, Bond catches sight of Reed walking down the
opposite side of the street. Expecting nothing, she calls to him and
is pleasantly surprised when he changes course to join her. Asking
about her life, Reed invites a torrent of rants and complaints from
Bond. Midway through a rushing sentence, Reed raises his hand to
stop Bond and hails a cab.
“You
need a drink,” he tells her.
Unable
to stop herself, Bond continues her story in the cab, as unsure of
how clearly Reed is paying attention as she is unsure of who needs to
hear the words more. Reed smiles and nods.
On
the other side of the harbor, Reed ushers Bond into a dark slouch of
a bar. Reed calls the bar tender, a foreigner named Thames, and
introduces him as the owner. Over their first round, Reed and Thames
talk and laugh and tell tales while Bond sits quietly, feeling empty
after her rant.
Pouring
another round, Thames turns to Bond and begins to ask her about beer
and wine, her taste in music. Understanding the test, Bond answers
honestly even though she is terrified that her lack of knowledge will
disqualify her from salvation. Thames tells bond to come behind the
bar and begins to show her the layout. He takes her on a tour of the
two floor establishment and explains that he needs a bar tender for
the upstairs on the weekends. Bond says “yes” too fast and they
both laugh. Thames hands her a worn, dogeared cocktail book and
tells her to memorize the bookmarked items.
On
her way home, after another round on Reed, Bond spends the last of
her cash on a notebook and a box of pens. She overdrafts her
checking account buying a bottle of champagne which she opens as soon
as she is in the door of her apartment, not caring about the foam
that spills over her hands, nor bothering with a glass. When Pratt
comes home, she is sitting at the kitchen table with the bottle of
champagne copying and recopying cocktail recipes out of Thames' book.
She turns to him, her green eyes glowing and blurts out her news on
the way to kiss him hard on the lips.
The
following Thursday, Bond is thankful even to a God she left behind
with Eastern to have a job to go to. On that hazy afternoon, the
heat, the snarl of traffic and the crush of city life wakes her out
of the week and a half of numb sleeping, pacing and eating beans out
of a can while she waits. Finally, here are two days of the week
that Bond can join society and escape the horrors of daytime
television.
Those
few hours behind the bar make the difficult, penny-pinching life
after Eastern – every numb and nail-biting moment – worth it. At
the end of her first shift, when Thames hands her $175 tightly wadded
and shrugs saying that it was an OK night, Bond is grateful that he
turns his back quickly. It seems like all the money in the world.
A
few dollars, a few shifts more and the tattoo on her shoulder stops
bothering her. When she sees it, it seems to yield to her, letting
her know that yes, it is lonely, but in time, it will not be. No
longer is her empty skin a burden, but a yawning canvas inviting the
inevitable paint. The images in her head are an eventuality, not a
fantasy. On those nights that Bond sleeps alone, that thought folds
itself around her in comfort.
- Kid
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