Ink (12 page)

She gave his hand another squeeze. “I just wanted you to know I was thinking about you.”

When he stopped at a red light, he looked over. She’d kicked off her shoes and sat with her legs tucked up and her cheek resting on one knee. “You look tired.”

“You look tired, too.”

“Yeah, I haven’t been sleeping all that well. Just work stress,” he lied.

He’d not had a nightmare since Sunday night, but he’d woken up on Monday at 4:00 a.m., sure he’d heard a bird in his house, but after checking every room including the attic, he went back to sleep, convinced he’d been mistaken. Last night, he’d woken up with the distinct feeling of being watched, and even after he’d turned on all the lights, the sensation had remained. He’d ended up late again for work, but luckily his boss wasn’t there.

When he double-parked in front of Mitch’s house, she frowned. “Aren’t you going to park and come in?”

“Well, I didn’t want to be presumptuous.”

She laughed. “The perfect gentleman. Okay, then. Would you like to come in?”

“Yes.”

“See, it’s settled. No presumption necessary. You have to come in anyway, I have something for you, and it’s buried in my suitcase. On Monday, I took a couple of hours for myself, found this neat little shop and saw something that made me think of you.”

Once inside, she pawed through her suitcase and handed him a small, heavy object wrapped in brown paper. He unfolded the paper to find a stone griffin about five inches high, almost an exact replica of his tattoo.

“I thought it was perfect, so I had to buy it.”

“It is perfect. Thank you.”

“I missed you,” she said in a low whisper.

“I missed you, too.”

She smiled, took the griffin from his hand and put it on the coffee table, and when they kissed, all thoughts of griffins, ink or stone, vanished.

8

On Friday, when Jason got home from work, a flyer for a missing black-and-white cat named Percy hung on the light post next to his driveway. In his opinion, the name belonged to an English prep school student or a man who favored smoking jackets and cigars, not a fat tuxedo cat, but he hoped it came home soon, before the raccoon or something—or someone—worse found it.

The strange kid who lived across the street rode his bike in aimless circles in the middle of the street with a sullen expression on his face. When Jason got out of his car, the kid, maybe fourteen or fifteen, stopped the bike near the curb, staring in Jason’s direction with dark, dull eyes. Jason lifted one hand in greeting. The kid’s jaw moved, he blew a large, bright pink bubble, sucked the gum back in and rode off.

“Nice,” Jason said and went inside.

He’d invited Mitch over for Chinese food and a game of chess. Although he hadn’t played in years, when she told him she loved the game, he rummaged around in the attic until he found his old set, buried beneath a box of Shelley’s winter clothes.

Mitch arrived, carrying a bottle of wine, five minutes after the deliveryman, and
he’d
shown up thirty seconds after Jason finished shoving dishes into the dishwasher, gathering up dirty laundry and setting out candles on the coffee table.

While he unpacked the bag, she poured the wine; together they carried everything into the living room and curled up next to each other on the sofa.

She pointed toward the empty bookcase. “So what happened to all your books?”

“Take a guess.”

“I sort of figured.”

“Yeah, but they were mostly hers, anyway, not that she read much. She just liked having them around. Those are mine, though.” Jason waved his chopsticks at a small pile of paperbacks stacked on the corner of the coffee table, next to the stone griffin. “I picked them up last week. They just haven’t made it to the shelf yet.”

“We should go to the bookstore. I think you need more than four books. Those shelves look lonely.” She speared a chunk of sweet and sour chicken. “Maybe we should go tomorrow. Unless you have other plans?”

“Well, I do know this sexy blonde, and I was going to—”

A plastic-wrapped fortune cookie hit him square in the chest. “Sexy, huh?”

“Very,” he said.

She leaned over and pressed her lips, soft and sticky from the food, against his. When she broke the kiss, the corners of her mouth lifted. “I am going to kick your ass in chess.”

“You think so, huh?”

“Oh, I know so. My father taught me when I was eight.”

“I have you beat. My grandfather taught me when I was six. I beat him the first time when I was ten.”

“Lightweight. I beat my dad at nine. He was better at teaching than playing, but he never let me win. He said it was good for my character to learn how to lose. Not that I lost that much, but…”

After they finished the food and dumped the empty containers, Jason lit the candles and turned off the lamps, plunging the room into a golden glow that made Mitch’s hair shimmer.
 

“Kind of cheesy, I know,” he said.

She shrugged. “I don’t think so. I like it.”

She clapped her hands together when he pulled out the box containing the chess set.

“Wow,” she said, picking up one of the pieces. “These are all hand-carved, aren’t they?”

He nodded, placing the board on the table. “It belonged to my grandfather. My grandmother bought it for him when they were first married. He used to sit on the front porch and chain smoke while he explained strategies to me and my brothers, but I’m the only one who could beat him. He used to curse under his breath when I won, then my grandmother would come out and yell at him. He was like every movie version of the typical grumpy old man. He’d yell at the neighborhood kids for running across his lawn, grumble when it rained the day after he washed his car and gripe about whatever president served in office. All bark and no bite, though. A real softie at heart.”

Mitch set the piece down in its spot. “Like you. Oh, wait, before we play, we need to read our fortunes.” She unwrapped a cookie, cracked it open, and grinned. “‘
Man should be like turtle. Slow, steady, and with a thick shell
.’ I think this means it’s going to be a long game.”

Jason broke his in half. “‘
A man without dreams is a man without vision
.’” he read, and a chill raced down his spine. One of the candles sputtered out with a soft hiss, leaving behind a thin trail of curling smoke.

When he put the cookie aside, Mitch shook her head. “Nope, you have to eat it, otherwise you’ll have bad luck.”

He refilled their wine glasses, and they played chess in silence. A tiny crease between her brows appeared and disappeared as she contemplated each move. Flames from the candles reflected in her eyes, turning them into dark sapphire pools. Every so often, she’d shake her hair out of her eyes. Each time, Jason caught a hint of her shampoo—neither coconut nor the flowery sweet smell, but vanilla. Halfway through the match, Jason knew he’d lost the game, but they played on anyway. He liked watching her fingers touch the pieces with something close to reverence and the way she nibbled on her lower lip right before she lifted her hand away.

After several more moves, she looked up and smiled. “Do you want to keep playing?”

Without a word, he pulled her into his arms, tasting wine and fortune cookie when their lips met. His breath turned ragged and hungry as she traced long, lazy strokes up and down his back and gently tugged the back of his hair. He lifted off her shirt, ran his fingers across her collarbones, then down to her nipples, hard beneath the dark blue lace of her bra. When she pressed her lips against his neck, a shiver of anticipation raced up his spine. After he unhooked her bra, he bent his head down to her breasts, sliding his tongue around first one nipple, then the other.

She stiffened in his arms. “Shit, stop.” She pushed him away, grabbed her shirt and pulled it over her chest.

“What’s wrong?”

“I just saw someone looking in the window,” she said, breathing hard.

Jason stalked over to the front window, his hands clenched into fists. He’d shut the blinds, but two of the slats hung askew, leaving just enough room for someone to peek out. Or in. The neighbor boy’s bike sat on its side on the curb, one tire spinning in lazy circles, but there was no sign of the neighbor boy himself. Great. The psycho kid moonlit as a peeping Tom; wasn’t that behavior part of the serial killer’s handbook, too? Jason turned the rod to close the blinds and turned back to Mitch. “I’m sorry, I think it was the neighbor’s kid. I don’t know what the hell his problem is. Give me a second, okay?”

But by the time he opened the front door and stepped out onto the porch, the kid had fled, his bike disappearing into the shadows as he pedaled down the street.

9

“On three?”

“You know we’re going to get soaked.”

Mitch grinned. “But it’ll be fun, and we can dry off later.”

On the way to the bookstore, the light drizzle that started in the morning had turned into a full-fledged storm. They sat in the car, parked at the far end of the lot (the only available space Jason could find) with rain bouncing off the roof—a steady drone that swallowed up the ticking of the cooling engine. The streaks of water dripping down the windows coupled with the condensation on the inside made everything beyond the glass a blur of color and indeterminate shape.

“One.”

“We could just give it another five minutes,” Jason said.

“Two.”

“I should mention that I used to run track in school.”

“Oooh, so it’ll be a challenge then. Three!”

They opened their doors at the same time and sprinted across the lot, linking hands halfway. When they burst through the entrance with hair plastered to their heads and jeans soaked at the cuffs, a customer standing by the door shook his head. “You’re both crazy,” he said, but he wore a smile that reached all the way up to his eyes.

Mitch peeled off her jacket, pushed her hair back and shook the rain from her fingertips before she grabbed a shopping basket. “It was his idea,” she said over her shoulder as they passed the customer. “He’s the crazy one.”

Dodging bright-faced children and suburban housewives, they made their way through the aisles until they reached a section in the back. She stopped in front of one of the shelves, handed him the basket and rubbed her hands together. “Okay, where do we start?”

“I am at your mercy,” Jason said.

“Are you sure about that? Give me a half hour in this place, and I could empty your bank account.”

“I trust your judgment. Pick your favorites, and if I don’t like them, I’ll bring them over to your place, or you can read them when you’re at mine.”

She turned her face toward the shelf but not before he saw her smile.

“It’s a deal.” She tucked her hair behind her ears and ran her fingers across the spines. “Here, you have to read this one,” she said, holding out a paperback. “It gave me nightmares.”

The book had a black cat with glowing yellow eyes on the cover.

Come hang out in my neighborhood, and I bet that kid will wipe the snarl off your face.

Someone bumped into his hip, and he moved aside. When the bump came again, he turned with an admonition under his breath but stopped before it came out. An old man with a stooped back and a cane in one hand shuffled past, stopped to grab a book from the shelf, and sighed as it slipped out of his hand onto the floor. He leaned on his cane and started to reach down.

Jason bent down and picked it up, catching a glimpse of wrinkled cheeks, sagging jowls and wet, pale eyes before the old man took the book from his hand. The sleeve of his shirt slid up, revealing a tattoo of a snarling bear, oddly bright against his aged skin. Their fingertips touched, and Jason pulled his hand back fast, resisting the urge to wipe his hand on his pants to rid the loose, slippery feel of the man’s skin from his own.

“Thanks, sonny,” the old man said, with a voice as gnarled as his hands. “It is a rough thing, growing old. Enjoy your youth while you can.”

He gave Jason a wet, rheumy wink and shuffled out of the aisle, leaving behind a stale smell, a mix of cigarette smoke and something else, a sickly nursing home smell—a nursing home where all the patients had terminal illnesses, and the stink of their diseases leaked out of their pores. As he stepped out of sight, a raspy, singsong whisper emerged from his lips. “Had a girl and she sure was fine.”

It was, perhaps, a snippet from an old song, but his grizzled voice turned it obscene. The words trailed off into a hum as he limped out of sight, and Jason’s arms broke out in gooseflesh. Something about the song danced in the back of his head. He fought the urge to go after him and ask—

What? He’s just an old man who can barely walk.

Mitch wrinkled her nose and waved her hand in front of her face. “Poor thing,” she whispered, then pulled another book from the shelf. When she turned the cover in his direction, he put the old man out of his mind. “You’ve read this one, right?”

“No. I’ve heard of it, but I never had a chance to read it. You saw my entire, pathetic collection of books the other night.”