© 2011 asotir.
This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 License.
5
THE WHEELS of an incoming train screamed to a halt.
The public loudspeakers announced the arrival in the concourse. Amber sat in one of the chairs. She wore one of her Aunt Amber’s dresses. She watched the few travelers come straggling in. They were nondescript and impoverished: immigrants, elderly, poor students. Only the men glanced her way; they gave her looks that made her face burn.
She leaned forward and rested her head on her knees. She scratched her shoulder.
The wheels of the train screamed out again. Tired, she got up to go back to her aunt’s apartment.
§
THE LAST red wound bled out of the sky. Through the open balcony door came the sounds of the ships’ horns from the harbor, the tugboats and steamers, along with the cries of seagulls. The sound of traffic from the street below never made it through the balcony door.
She stripped off the dress, hung it up, took off the underwear. It was all Aunt Amber’s things now, she never wore her own clothes anymore. She left the bedroom tying the wrapper around her. She turned on a lamp and glanced out the curtains over the balcony.
Next to the telephone was Sammo’s card. Her fingers touched it. They picked up the handset and dialed. Over the line she could hear the phone ring: once, twice – on the third ring she hung up and turned away.
The shower head streamed out water.
She lowered her face into the stream, letting it wash over her face and shoulders. She lathered soap and washed her face.
She stood in the shower and washed her arms, her shoulders, and below. The suds clotted on her skin, then the stream of water washed them away, and the last of the ink of the temporary transfer washed off.
But the drop of the ink on her shoulder, which she did not see, did not wash off. It seemed larger now under the thick streams of water; it looked like it had branched out in lines and started to follow the tracks of the design.
Idly, without a thought, she scratched at it, as though it itched.
§
SHE COULDN’T sleep so she went back to the station. She didn’t really know why she was doing what Sammo had told her to do. What he’d said made no sense anyway. But nothing made any sense now, did it?
She went to the station candy vending machine. The price of a candy bar was a dollar. She dug in her pocket. She had less than 40 cents.
‘And what a dinner it would have been,’ she said. She noticed she was even starting to sound like Aunt Amber now.
She walked away from the vending machine.
The squeal of wheels on tracks announced a new arrival. She sat in a chair. She watched the passengers entering as the loudspeakers blared the announcement. A few passengers were greeted. They filed up escalators.
She paced below the board announcing arrivals and departures.
She watched a pregnant woman leading a toddler buy tickets at the window.
She looked up at the station clock.
The clock read: 2:57 am.
She looked back down.
The clerk in the ticket window was watching her.
She turned away.
Wheels screamed on the tracks.
She glanced at the schedule board.
It listed Arrivals: TUCSON, 1:35; SAN DIEGO, 2:00; SALT LAKE CITY, 4:15.
The station clock read: 3:28 am.
The train wheels screeched in.
She started to walk toward the gate. She didn’t know why she got up for this one. There wasn’t any reason, really. Maybe she was just bored. That was what she told herself anyway.
The train, dark, slid into the berth.
She neared the gate.
The train stopped. It issued a last rumble and quieted.
She reached the gate and stood to one side. She scratched at her shoulder and looked around.
The loudspeakers were still. The train sat quiet. Desolate. Down its length were a few freight cars.
The door to one of the freight cars opened. A man was standing in the door. He had no bag. He was a big man, rough, battered by elements. His eyes were shadows.
He wore a seaman’s coat.
The man stepped down out of the car and crossed the platform, heading toward the gate.
She stepped out into the gate.
The man walked forward and looked ahead. He saw a woman stepping into the middle of the gate. She stood straight and looked straight at him.
The light from the exit sign fell on her face revealing Amber’s features.
The man stopped. It was as if he’d seen a ghost.
She said, ‘Hello.’
She was standing three feet in front of him.
The man in the seaman’s coat said, ‘You’re back.’
‘Do you know me?’
The man in the seaman’s coat said, ‘Don’t you remember?’
‘The tattoo artist said you’d help me.’
The man in the seaman’s coat shook his head. He started forward.
‘Tell me,’ she said.
He brushed past her.
‘Who are you?’
He went on walking.
‘At least tell me your name!’
He stopped. Looked back at her.
‘Garrety. Brother Garrety.’
‘That’s right,’ she said. ‘That was the name. Tell me what to do.’
The man in the seaman’s coat said, ‘Stay out of it.’
He walked on.
She stood in the gate watching him leave. The sound of his steps echoed in the empty concourse.
She was trying as hard as she could to figure him out but he was like Sammo, she couldn’t get a handle on him. At first, from the look on his face, she thought he might be like a lot of folks she’d known back home, the kind that come to Jesus after they’ve committed some horrible crime or other. But there was something else in this man, something doomed and vicious, and she was pretty sure that whatever it was that had brought him back here, it wasn’t Jesus.
§
HE WALKED the streets a long way and she followed him, cursing the wobbly high heels and feeling shoots of pain spark up from her ankles. But after a long time she forgot about all that because she started to recognize where they were.
The sign on the lamp post said: Sandspray Road. Garrety walked under the lamp and went on into darkness without stopping.
After a moment, she walked under the lamp.
She stood in the light watching.
Down the street, Garrety’s figure moved past a storefront and on into dark.
Amber left the lamp post.
Garrety was walking in front of the stores. He didn’t look at them. He looked straight ahead. His step was slow and measured. It was the kind of step she thought you’d see on death row.
She followed. Her pace varied. She slowed down to increase the distance so he wouldn’t hear her – then she thought she might lose him and she sped up. Every now and then she scratched at her shoulder. She didn’t think twice about it.
Garrety’s heavy, worn work shoes pounded the pavement.
His face displayed no emotion, only necessity.
He stopped.
She darted into a shop entranceway. She peeked out.
Garrety was standing in front of a store looking into the window. From her angle she couldn’t see what store it was.
Garrety’s face crumpled into an enormous bitterness. He bowed his head.
Then he walked on. His walk was slower now.
She stepped out of the doorway and moved down the street.
The shop fronts passed before her … the store came into view.
She stopped, staring at it.
It was the buyer’s shop, dallio’s. The mannequin in the window posed in the nightdress.
She glanced down the street.
At the corner the sign said, Elysium. The man’s bulky shape emerged into the light at the bottom of the steps, beyond the line of limousines.
She moved on into shadow, keeping him in view.
Garrety was standing at the pavement below the steps. He was looking up.
The sign over the door still said, Elysium. The Last Gasp. Someone stepped out of the doorway: it was the hostess.
She stopped short at the sight of Garrety, then pulled out a cigarette and leaned back and lit it.
Garrety walked up the steps.
He stood in front of the door. He looked at the hostess.
Amber was close enough to see her clearly and even hear what they said, although she was sure they couldn’t see her.
The hostess smoked and smiled her insolent smile. ‘Welcome back,’ she said.
Garrety said, ‘Is he in?’
‘Maybe. He’s not so easy to find… But I’m sure he’d see you.’
Garrety looked at her. He went in. The hostess smoked. All at once she looked down at her half-naked breasts, whose skin was smooth and showed no mark, as though she suddenly remembered something. And she laughed.
Amber stood half-hidden behind a lamp post with a broken dark bulb. The sound of the laugh made her blood run cold.
§
INSIDE THE CLUB, the music pulsed louder. Garrety ignored the waitresses, the dancers, the entertainers. He moved along the booths in a dark corner.
The last booth came up. There was a man sitting in it. He turned and looked over his shoulder and smiled.
It was Herr Doktor.
Herr Doktor gestured. Garrety squeezed onto the opposite banquette. There were a few shot glasses and a half empty bottle of schnapps.
Herr Doktor said, ‘It is a long time you have kept us in anticipation, Brother Garrety. Please now, have a drink to welcome you home.’
Garrety unbuttoned his coat. He didn’t touch the drink. Herr Doktor shrugged and drank his own.
‘I have been drinking myself. This fine old schnapps reminds me of home. I enjoy it. I have been acquainting my little friend with its pleasures. I find that he also enjoys it.’
Garrety took the glass and swallowed his drink.
Herr Doktor said, ‘You should not have stayed away so long. We all missed you. They missed you also.’
‘I was counting railroad ties.’
‘Oh? And what was the total, if I might ask?’
‘I’m not done yet.’
‘Oh yes, Brother Garrety. I think your days of counting railroad ties are over and done. I think you have reached your grand total.’
Herr Doktor poured him another drink and Garrety belted it back.
Garrety said, ‘I must have seen a hundred stations, big and little and abandoned. All across the high plains. I walked the tracks in all of them.’
‘And in the end you found that these tracks, all of them lead you back to here.’
Garrety stared at him. He unbuttoned his shirt. He pulled it open. On his chest, square over his heart, was a swollen tattoo. A round design in black lines. It looked like a beetle.
§
OUTSIDE THE CLUB, Amber hid in the shadow behind the lamp post. The hostess dropped her stub and ground it out next to all the other stubs. She looked around and went back inside.
The neon sign went out. Another one, smaller, buzzed on: closed. The music stopped.
Amber came out from behind the pole.
She walked along the front of the club. It was closed like a fortress. Either the people inside were staying put, or they were leaving through some back way. She looked aside.
Across the street was the tattoo parlor, Traxx. It was closed and dark.
She looked back behind her.
The street was empty of people, but the curbside was lined with the long black limousines standing waiting, as though the Presidents of thirty of the big corporations had come for a visit.
Down the street the shops appeared in their pools of light. It was all quiet except for a strange sound: the sound of a little girl singing. Amber couldn’t make out the words, only the voice.
Amber walked away from the club in the direction of the voice.
Behind her, the door to the club opened and a figure appeared in it, dark and heavy. It was a man but his face was dark in the shadow.
Slowly, heavily, he walked down the steps.
Steam poured out of the sewer grates.
Beyond the steam of one grate some light fell across the bottom of a brick wall. Drawn on the bricks was a round design in black lines; it looked like a beetle.
A woman’s feet in heels stopped by the grate.
She was tall and slim in her early 20’s. She had wheat-colored hair and sea-green eyes. She showed no sign of fear.
Amber looked ahead.
The mouth of the alley gaped before her, very dark. The girl’s voice was nearer now and Amber could make out the words she was singing:
Frère Jacques, frère Jacques,
Dormez-vous? Dormez-vous?
Amber descended into the alley. She moved slowly, as if in a dream, along the line of sleek black limousines whose smoked glass windows and windshields made it so she couldn’t tell if anybody was in them or not.
A man’s heavy work shoes stepped up by the grate. Stopped.
Amber disappeared deeper into the alley.
The shoes moved on.
The dark shape of a man sank into the alley.
The alley was littered with stacked crates, plastic bags full of rotting garbage, broken whiskey bottles. Her shoes cracked on the concrete pavement. A large rat scuttled out of the way.
Frère Jacques, frère Jacques,
Dormez-vous? Dormez-vous?
At the far end the alley opened onto another street. There were lights there. Some cars prowled across the far-off alley exit, moving right and left.
Amber moved on.
The man followed. His shoes crunched on the concrete. Crunch, crunch.
Amber stopped, looking around. She heard the sounds and froze. Crunch, crunch. She looked back.
The shape kept coming.
She turned and ran on. The little girl sang faster:
Frère Jacques, frère Jacques,
Dormez-vous? Dormez-vous?
At the far end the alley a car passed.
Amber ran faster.
She knocked on the windows of one of the parked limousines as she passed it. She pounded her fists on the windshield of the next limousine. There was no response. Maybe nobody was inside the limousines, or maybe the chauffeurs sat behind the wheel and stonily watched her being tracked and hunted down, but there was no way for her to tell: the windows of the limousines were all smoked and she couldn’t see what went on within them.
The man’s shoes moved faster. Crunch-crunch-crunch.
Amber ran awkwardly in heels. She staggered out of the alley—
—and she didn’t stop but she kept going straight ahead, right out into the street, into the traffic, and a bus was bearing down on her—
The bus hissed and screamed out its brakes—
—she staggered and fell, past the bus on the other side.
The bus stopped. The bus driver was screaming at her through the glass windshield but his words were lost behind the glass.
She moved around and hammered on the door. It opened. She grabbed the rail and climbed up.
The bus driver, whose name tag read, Lewton, glared at her.
‘Lady, what in hell you doing running in front of my bus like that for?’
She collapsed on the steps.
‘Just drive, drive, just shut the door, just drive…’
The bus door closed. The bus rumbled down the street.
A shape emerged from the alley, far behind. The man stepped forward. Light fell across his features. It was Brother Garrety. He watched the bus drive away.
§
THE BUS stopped at a corner and vomited her out.
She made it to her aunt’s apartment building. She marched across the street to the door and entered. It must have been almost dawn but the sky was blacker than ever.
She entered the apartment and left the door wide open behind her and went straight to the phone and picked it up and dialed. She heard the sound of the line ringing, then it beeped and a recoding said in a mechanical voice,
‘You have reached a voice box. Please leave your message and number and wait for a return call.’
‘Dimes, Dimes… It’s Amber. I’m at my aunt’s place. Call me back, Dimes … and hurry, please.’
She paced around the phone, waiting. She rubbed her temples. She flopped onto the old sofa and stripped off the high heeled shoes and rubbed her ankles and soles.
The phone rang and she pounced on it. As she talked she kicked the outer door shut and paced the room.
‘Dimes! Listen to me, Dimes. I’ve got it figured out. I know who murdered Aunt Amber – I know how it happened – one of them tried to do the same thing to me! Tonight!’
Dimes said, ‘What was his name?’
Even over the phone, Amber could tell the difference in his voice. It was Dimes, but he sounded worn out and hollowed out. She said, ‘I don’t know his name! I didn’t see his face! If I had I wouldn’t be talking to you now!’
Dimes said, ‘Where does he live?’
‘You think I know that either?’
Dimes said, ‘What did he do? Did he threaten you?’
‘No.’
Dimes said, ‘Did he have a gun? A knife?’
‘No! He chased me down the alley – the alley Aunt Amber was chased down—’
Dimes said, ‘Did anyone else see him?’
‘No, it was too late – wait, there was a little girl. She was in a nearby apartment. She was singing. Or maybe the drivers in the limousines, if they were in them.’
Dimes said, ‘They witnessed it?’
‘I don’t know, they may have, I didn’t actually see anybody. Why are you asking me all this? Why is your voice so strange? Why aren’t you listening?’
Dimes didn’t answer for a while. She listened on the line but only heard a hollow buzzing sound.
At last Dimes said, ‘Look, Miss. I’ll tell you what we’ve got. Here it is. Your aunt’s autopsy was approved. She died in an auto accident. Now, maybe she killed herself, maybe it was just an accident; but I talked to some of the guys in the coroner’s office and, officially – it was an accident, and nobody put anything about suicide on the report. It’s better for you that way. It’s better for the scandal. It’s better for the insurance.’
She shook her head. She looked out the balcony door at the night. ‘Why are you talking about suicide? Don’t you realize Aunt Amber was murdered?’
Dimes said, as though he hadn’t even heard her, ‘So that part of the case is closed. As to her body, we found it. That’s right. It got misplaced. Clerical error, no more, no less. Her body was sent by mistake to the funeral parlor instead of someone else. Number was misread. Anyway, it’s fixed now, except that the other woman’s family had ordered cremation. Sorry about that. We have your Aunt Amber’s ashes here at the Department. You can come pick them up during the day.’
She started to cry.
‘No…’ she whimpered.
Dimes said, ‘Everything is set, now. Everything is fixed, now. It’s over.’
‘Why won’t you listen to me? Why won’t you do anything?’
Dimes said, ‘Good-bye, Miss.’
The line clicked and went to dial tone. Amber stared at it. She sank onto the floor.
Amber said, ‘Why won’t you help me…?’
She huddled over. On her shoulder the spot of ink had grown and filled in more lines of the design.
§
A FEW LIGHTS were on in the Sheriff’s Department. Not many. The county had cut back on the salaries and laid a lot of people off and the graveyard duty was especially hard hit in San Pedro, where all the decent people locked themselves in after dark, and the authorities let the rich players and their bodyguards do whatever they wanted with those who dared go out.
The detective’s room was bleak. There were fluorescents in the ceiling but they were off; three of the many desk had lamps on, the rest of the room was dark. Dimes sat at his desk. A portable fan blurred on an empty desk nearby. Dimes mopped at his head with a linen handkerchief, and his hair stuck out because of it. He had a funny look on his face that went beyond his usual cynical weariness. It looked like he had a bad toothache or something else that gave him a constant pain.
Dimes sat and looked at the phone. The sweat gathered on his brow but he didn’t wipe it off. He watched the blades of the fan spinning around and around.
Behind a glass partition two detectives were at a desk, one sitting, the other leaning over it, arguing over a case folder spread on the desk. One called: ‘Hey, Blow Job, what do you think of this? Did this creep sell him the stuff or what?’
Dimes was staring down at his feet.
Across the floor by his shoes a cockroach scuttled.
Dimes said, ‘Bugs…’
The cockroach scuttled on. Dimes’ shoes didn’t budge.
‘Hey, Blow Job, are you going weird on us or something?’
One detective smacked the other with the folder, they laughed and walked into the lunch room.
Dimes’ right hand fell onto his knee and turned over. Across the back stretched a big black and red tattoo of a spider.
The spider’s legs reached down his knuckles. They flexed and Dimes’ fingers twitched in response, the way your leg will kick when the knee is tapped.
Dimes leaned back and with his left hand pulled a cigarette out of an ashtray and smoked.
The right hand pulled his gun from the holster on his belt.
Dimes said, ‘No…’ He shook his head. But his right hand did it anyway.
The right hand opened a drawer and pulled a bullet out. It placed the bullet on the desk beside the gun and opened the wheel of the gun.
Dimes turned his head.
Dimes said, ‘No, please…’
Far away he could see the other detectives through the door of the lunch room. They were drinking coffee and eating stale donuts.
On the desk the right hand slipped the bullet in a chamber and snapped the wheel shut. Dimes turned and looked at it.
The right hand took hold of the gun and raised it into Dimes’ face. The red and black spider flexed and the trigger finger twitched—
—and the hammer rose and fell and the wheel turned through the empty chambers: click-click-click-click—
Dimes screamed, ‘No!’
Bang! The detectives stared through the glass partition. They came round through the door and moved through the desks and lights and stopped at Dimes’ desk. They sat down.
One said, ‘Jesus Christ, Blow Job…’
The other took half a stale donut out of his mouth and placed it on the desk. A stream of blood ran past it.
§
MORE LIGHTS flickered on in the windows of the Sheriff’s Department. On the sidewalk below, a woman stood looking up at it. She had blonde hair. She turned and took a couple of steps closer to the building and lit a cigarette.
It was the hostess.
She sucked in a lungful and exhaled. She leaned back against the brick wall and waited and smoked.
A little thing, dark and red, slipped down the dingy cracks between the bricks. It reached to her shoulder and crawled onto her neck. She gave a little shiver of nasty delight and exhaled smoke in a long plume. The dark thing traced its way under the collar of her blouse down to the slope of her breast that showed cleavage. It was the shape of a red and black spider. When it settled onto her breast, the shape looked more like a tattoo.
The hostess stepped away from the building. She walked down the sidewalk a ways. She glanced back toward the County Building and she smiled her insolent smile.
‘Bye bye, lover.’
She walked off in the night.
§
ON TOP of the broken television, the ants crawled in the ant farm.
Amber stood over the drafting table. She was naked now. She had pulled off the tight damp sticky dress and underthings but she was too tired to bother with the wrapper and it was too hot anyway. She pulled the sheets of the drawings off the table, one by one. They fell to the floor.
She locked the outer door. There were three locks and a chain. She locked them all.
She detached the phone line from the phone.
She turned off the last lamp. She stood against the balcony door, looking back.
‘I’m sorry, Aunt Amber, I’m sorry. But there’s nothing more I can do for you now…’
She went into the bedroom. She fell onto the bed and was asleep at once…
She lay in bed sleeping, naked still. Sometime in the night she had twisted the sheet over her.
Something palely luminous shifted across the foot of the bed.
Amber turned her head, still sleeping.
The Woman in the Nightdress passed by the window. Behind her as she passed, a bottle fell off the windowsill and broke on the floor.
Amber slept on.
In the living room, the Woman in the Nightdress passed the balcony door. Two of the louvers tore to the floor. She passed the drafting table and sheets of paper scattered down. Behind her a lamp on the floor kicked over; the bulb popped.
In the bedroom Amber woke. She looked around. From the other room came sounds of things falling. She got up and put on the wrapper.
Amber entered the living room. It was a worse mess than the cops left it. A sharp smashing sound made her look up.
Beyond the kitchen door one sound followed another. Cabinets and drawers opening, cans spilling out.
Amber approached the kitchen door. The noises from behind come louder, faster, closer. She pushed against the door. She pushed harder. It gave.
The kitchen was opening its guts. The cabinets all hung open, the drawers half out. Amber stepped in. Cans fell at her, pans and pots and boxes and dishes and flatware. She crouched, sheltering her face, half buried in the stuff.
It stopped. A shriek sounded from beyond. Amber freed herself. She waded to the far door.
She stepped out into the front hallway. A light was burning. It was the harsh donut fluorescent in the bathroom.
Amber stood in the bathroom door.
Something was draped across the sink. It was a strop like those that men used to hang from the wall to sharpen straight razors on.
Amber’s eyes widened.
The other bad memory came back to her. She remembered her father’s strop and his straight razor. The straight razor stroking up and down the strop.
Her father stopped stropping the blade and clicked it shut.
His hand unhooked the strop from the wall and snapped it.
His mouth worked and his voice said:
‘Didn’t I tell you now, Missy? Didn’t I just? You knowed it was coming. Now turn down and over and take your medicine like a good little girl…’
He raised the strop and started to whip it down.
Whack! The sound of the strop striking made Amber jump, even eight years later in Aunt Amber’s bathroom. Whack! Whack! She crawled into the bathtub, staring at the strop on the sink. She drew the shower curtain and huddled under the faucets, and she didn’t realize it, but the shoulder of the wrapper had pulled down. And the ink on her shoulder had filled in more of the beetle design, and it was almost filled in now, almost complete, almost ready.
§
THE SIGN on the lamppost read: Sandspray Road. Amber walked into the light and paused there. She wore another one of her aunt’s wicked dresses, short and low cut in front and back. It was thin like a slip and cool against the heat but in it she felt almost like she was walking the streets naked.
She lingered by the lamppost. She wasn’t sure what to do.
A man’s voice called her. ‘Hey, there.’
She said, ‘Who is it?’
‘Don’t be afraid. I don’t mean you anything.’
He stepped out from the darkness. His red hair shone in the light. He bounced a small rubber ball.
It was the morgue attendant.
She said, ‘What do you want?’
The morgue attendant said, ‘I want to help you. I’ve been watching them. I know what’s been going on.’
‘What do you know?’
‘Shhhh. Can’t tell you that here. This place isn’t safe. But I’ll tell you later, ’cause you’re cute.’
Amber didn’t believe him for a second. ‘Why don’t you tell it to Detective Dimes?’
‘Oh, him.’
‘One of the other detectives, then.’
The morgue attendant said, ‘Listen, they’re all just a bunch of – They don’t know what I know. The didn’t see what I saw. Your boyfriend, for example. Your boyfriend what gives tattoos.’
She said, ‘He’s not my boyfriend.’
‘No, no. Of course not.’
‘What do you know about him?’
‘Well, I guess if he’s not your boyfriend you don’t want to hear much about him, do you? I guess not. No, sir.’
A sound out of the dark startled him.
The morgue attendant said, ‘This place isn’t safe. I’ll tell you later. Damn, you’re cute!’
He snuck off into the dark.
Amber said, ‘Wait – come back—’
He was gone. Amber looked around – there was another sound – it was like the scrape of a shoe on pavement. She went out of the light.
She walked down past the shops. Every now and then she looked back and stopped but there was no one and no sound.
She reached dallio’s dress shop. She glanced at the window display. She stopped.
The window display hadn’t changed. Everything was the same. But the mannequin was gone.
§
OUTSIDE the Elysium, the hostess stepped out and went to light a cigarette when she noticed someone was there.
The morgue attendant looked up at her. Then he bounced his ball.
The hostess lit her cigarette.
She said, ‘Get lost.’
‘I know what you’re about.’
‘What am I about?’
‘I know all about it. Don’t think I don’t. I saw you. I saw those others. In the morgue. I saw all of it.’
‘Did you now?’
‘All of it. You people think you’re pretty smart, don’t you? You’re not. I’m just as good as you! You think you can just do things like that in my morgue? Uh-uh.’
He was so worked-up he forgot to bounce his ball.
The hostess leaned back by the door. She smoked and watched him. She smiled her insolent smile.
‘What’s your name?’
‘My name? My name is Bob.’
‘Come inside, Bob.’
‘Inside? With you?’
‘You want to see her, don’t you? You want to see what we did with her, don’t you?’
The morgue attendant leaned forward, definitely intrigued. ‘You got her? Inside there?’
‘She’s waiting for you.’
The morgue attendant bounced his ball.
The hostess smiled. She went to the doorway. She looked back over her nude shoulder.
The morgue attendant started up the steps. He followed the hostess into the club.
§
AMBER stood half hidden in the entrance to the alley. She peeped out around the corner.
Down the street she saw the morgue attendant follow the hostess into the Elysium. Both were swallowed up into the dark mouth of the club.
She stepped out from the alley. From somewhere high up and far away came the voice of the little girl:
Frère Jacques, frère Jacques,
Dormez-vous? Dormez-vous?
Amber walked down the street.
She crossed to the sidewalk below the club. The little girl’s voice was faint. Amber watched the club. She looked down and away.
Across the street all was dark except for the lighted front of the tattoo parlor.
Amber started across the street. Her heels stepped resolutely across the cement. Her eyes were narrowed and her lips pursed.
The shop grew larger, and the sign: Traxx. She stepped in front of the shop window.
She stared into the shop. Her reflection palely looked back from the glass. Inside there was only the light in the window, lighting the sample designs, and the small lamp over the tattooing chair. She couldn’t see anyone in there.
She tried the door. It was locked.
Her thumb pressed the button.
The buzzer sounded in the empty shop. Through the window Amber peered in. Her palms pressed on the glass.
Amber turned away. Her back was to the window and she looked back across the street. Then she glanced back one last time over her shoulder into the shop and something caught her eye in her reflection in the glass, and it was her shoulder, and on her shoulder next to the thin strap of her dress was a mark, a tattoo, and it was round, and drawn in black lines, and it looked like a beetle, and all the lines were there.
It was the tattoo she had wanted and Sammo refused to give her. Only there it was on her shoulder.
Amber’s eyes were piercing and wide and stared at it in shock.
Something else clicked in her head. Aunt Amber would never get a tattoo… She hadn’t, either. She herself had wanted one, asked for one, begged for one – but she hadn’t gotten one.
But now she had one, just like Aunt Amber had.
And it was the same one.
Down the street across from the club all was dark except for the lighted front of the tattoo parlor. The figure of a woman ran away from it, and her heels echoed distantly in the street.
She ran and ran, heedless of danger.
Far behind her, the lighted front of the tattoo parlor gaped, empty except for the designs displayed in the window and the lighted sign, Traxx.
Inside, a hand now gripped the arm of the tattooing chair. The wrist was strapped down. The arm above the wrist was rigid. Every vein stood out. The sleeve was folded back and the arm was held rigidly in place and beads of sweat shone on it and above it, somewhat out of the light, stared down the stricken face of the morgue attendant.
The bald man swung the needle into place.
He attached the container of special ink.
The morgue attendant stared at it. He knew.
The bald man checked the needle.
The hostess circled the bald man and the tattooing chair. She was smoking, and lightly caressing her breast, where the red and black spider tattoo twitched in delighted response. Her voice was bright.
‘Give him a big one. Give him a beautiful one. Give him one that will live for a long, long time.’
The bald man started the needle. It began to purr.
The morgue attendant stared at it. His head shook.
The hostess walked over to the outer door. She paused with her hand on the knob and looked back.
The bald man was bending over the shining stiff outstretched arm.
The morgue attendant said, ‘No… Please…’
The hostess said, ‘And make it hurt.’
She opened the door.
The bald man took hold of the arm.
The hostess stepped out onto the sidewalk. A sound came out of the shop behind her, like a groan grinding into a scream.
The hostess shut the door on the sound. She stood on the sidewalk looking back in through the window. She lit another cigarette. She smiled.
She walked across the street, back into Elysium.
