penance. a love story (The Böhme Series) (5 page)

She laughed. “No, no my dear, it's a pleasure for me to have you.” She gave my hand a quick pat, “but schatz, it pays ten an hour and I will need you to work twenty to thirty hours a week. Is that doable?”

I had calculated earlier what I needed to help with the bills. “Yes, Petra, that is very doable
,” I said as I smiled. “But if I am going to work here, you are going to have to tell me why you keep calling me schatz.”

“It is a German
term of endearment. No worries,” she said patting my hand once more.

I looked around the store and noticed that she had interesting section headings for books. One sign read Aliens, another read Chick Porn. It made me laugh that she didn’t use the typical genre titles.
“Your genre descriptions are priceless,” I said as I pointed at the Chick Porn section. “What are the locals’ thoughts on that?”

She laughed again, “Well, I don’t care. I used to find it amusing to watch the ladies go back there with their heads hanging low. EBooks these days make it easier for them to read without shame. So I take pleasure in seeing the ones who don’t care what others thin
k still come back here for more,” she said with a wag of her eyebrows.

“I like you, Petra
.” I smiled because I meant it. “You are a unique person.”

“I like you too, Hannah Anderson. Now, tell me, what brings you to our free-spirited city?”
she asked as she looked over her cup to take another sip of tea.

“What makes you think I’m new here?” I gave a shy smile.

“Well, you don’t have the look of a long-term city dweller. You came from the country, no?” She raised her single eyebrow at me again.

“Yes, you’re right. I
did. I moved here a week ago.”

S
he gave me a knowing smile as she set her cup and saucer on the counter. She wiggled in her chair as if to try to form her body to it. “I hope that moving here will help you get past the sadness in your eyes, Hannah,” she said with a sad expression herself.

I wanted to deny the sadness. I wanted to pretend that she misunderstood. But seeing her expression, I couldn’t. She could see I was trying to move forward and I felt accepted by her despite my sadness.

“I’m not sure if it will ever go away, Petra. But thank you,” I said, replacing the book in its spot, realizing I had continued to smell it as we spoke.

She smiled at me
. “It’s okay my dear. I smell them too,” she said as she looked toward her many shelves of books. “Shall I introduce you to my children?”

“Please
,” I said as I was eager to search the rows of shelves. Her reassuring smile gave as much peace as the books. She wasn’t going to pry into my issues. She could tell I needed to blend with these books and just exist.

Around four in the afternoon I finished my first day at the college and went straight to Sid’s shop. It was in the same building for forty years and he opened it in his twenties. He was a machine when it came to the number of tattoos he created in a week and his work was nothing less than exceptional.

I had been getting tattoos from him since I was sixteen and he finished my first the night my mother died. I
have known him for years as he lived in the neighborhood near my mother and me. A constant caregiver even when my mother was alive, he saw through her masks and wanted to be a rock for me in my childhood. He saw what she was capable of doing.

They dated a couple times and those two dates were enough for Sid. He may not have been able to see what she hid behind her mask, but he saw there was something there. He never asked. When I was a kid I resented that, but now I am thankful for it. By not answering his unspoken questions, my own masks
remained secure.

The best gift my mother gav
e me was in creating her will.
I appoint Sid Thompson as sole guardian of my son, Wynn Hawthorne
, were the most liberating words I had ever read. Though she was a real bitch in life, she had the foresight to make sure I went to someone good. I wished she gave me to him earlier.

I walked into his shop and heard the familiar and welcoming sound of his tattoo gun.

“I’ll be with you in a minute,” his hoarse voice from years of smoking yelled from the backroom where he worked. I wished he quit. He had told me once that he made it this far, what’s the point.

“Okay
,” I said as I took a seat and began flipping through an album of tattoos while I waited. Mine were absent from the book, despite the number he had done for me. He knew mine meant something to me and didn’t belong in a book for strangers to try to mimic.

“Is that you Wynn?” h
is loud voice bellowed.

“Yeah, it's me
,” I said as I scoffed at a tattoo of a sports team’s logo. To each his own, but I didn’t get it.

“Well, come back here. I’ve been telling this little lady how you keep my workload busy with your tattoos
.” Sid laughed one of his raspy laughs.

I rolled my eyes. Sid was always trying to set me up with women. He worried for me being alone. At times, I wonder
ed if he and Stinson were conspiring against me. But he’s as single as I am, so I never understood his concern. But he was nonetheless. He was always telling me of different girls that came through his shop. One time he asked me if I was gay, because he wanted me to be sure I accepted myself. I told him I wasn’t, but if I were, I would tell him first. He thanked me because he said he wanted to set me up with the right person.

He gives me this look sometimes where I can tell he is thinking of how my first sixteen years were. He worries that I will be alone forever, but he doesn't realize I am content to be alone and a random girl's affections are not going to change that. Depression must come with loneliness he said with his eyes set in a sad expression.
 

The sadness he felt for me was his perception. He didn’t understand this wasn’t a funk or depression that could be lightened by something fleeting. Years of anger and sorrow can't be erased by screwing a stranger.

I leaned back in the chair and locking my hands behind my head, leaned forward to rest my elbows on my knees. Uncomfortable was an understatement to describe what it was like knowing Sid was talking of me to a girl. I didn’t want to meet a girl, let alone meet her while she’s getting tattooed.

I took a deep breath and standing, I held my hands in tight fists. I dug my nails into my palms as the pain it caused helped me focus on talking and not running for the fucking exit.
Her cheap perfume drifted into the room before she peeked from behind the door
. I blinked as I entered the room to erase the thought.
Focus on Sid, not the girl
.
You are twenty-three years old she died years ago. You aren’t that little boy.

The girl’s abdomen was showing and Sid was putting a tattoo on her hip along the pant line. It was a cliché Chinese symbol lacking originality. I looked back up at Sid and focused on him, ignoring the memories that haunted me.

He turned sixty-six last month and he was a weathered man with a head full of slicked back hair that was gray from age. Tattoos traced up his arms and neck to stretched lobes. I grinned as he looked at me over his dark plastic frames. He wore glasses that looked as if they were from another time, as was the man himself. He held a quiet strength that was home for me.

“How've you been Wynn?” Sid asked.

I swallowed and continued digging my nails into my palms. Keeping my eyes focused on Sid, I pretended the quiet girl sitting there in the tattoo chair was a nonliving canvas. She wasn’t a human being that was listening to our conversation. “I’ve been good. I had my first classes today.”

The girl’s head shifted toward me. Out of my peripheral I saw dyed black hair. I flicked my eyes to her for a second. She wasn’t ugly, but she wasn’t interesting either. She wasn’t looking at my face, but my arms. I scratched at my forearms as if to distract her from examining such important parts of me.

“You weren’t kidding Sid, those are cool tats you’ve done,” the girl declared and I kept my eyes trained on Sid.

“Thanks,” h
e said nodding toward her. “She’s here getting her first tattoo.”

“It means sun. I thought it was perfect since I love the beach
,” the girl said.

I risked looking at her face and made sure to hide
 the disdain and annoyance the sound of her voice and the words she spoke brought. She smiled at me and winked.
She winked at me?
It was… odd.

Her wink and voice reminded me of the many girls I went to high school with and the many guys that dated them. I tried not to get involved in the teenage drama and I wondered why so many of them remained in a perpetual high school, content with running in the hamster wheel of adolescence, never to move forward. They learned from television and movies what life was to be and they mimicked their lives after them.

A few years ago those same people decided to have a reunion party. It had been two years since we graduated and I was twenty. I went after Sid’s incessant nagging. He learned of it because Blake made the dumbass mistake of bringing it up to me in front of him. Sid thought it sounded fun—going to a campsite to party with my
friends
from high school. They weren’t my friends.

I was an adult and didn’t have to listen to him, but I didn’t want Sid to worry for me. He was the one person in the world that I owed my sanity. He took me in without question and raised me as his own. I wanted him to be proud of me, so to make him happy, I went to that fucking party.
 

I didn’t drink then, so I imagined the fun to be had, hanging out with people I despised—but drunk. I tried to convince myself that it was a social experiment. I watched the herd and their following of each other. Gods forbid one went outside the norm and had an original thought and strayed from the path pushed upon them.

The girls were vipers waiting to attack. Black widows or praying mantises was a better description. I had found Blake talking to a small blonde haired girl that I didn’t recognize. We hadn’t graduated with her and she was different than them, but he was going to use her. It was his way. I liked Blake, but he was capable of so much more if he stopped trying to fit in so damn much.

He grabbed my hand in a fist as he always did and gave me the
bro hug
that so many guys do. I still wonder what movie the interaction first happened in to make it a common reaction to seeing your friend. It always made me uncomfortable.

He asked me that day when I was going to put weight on and gave me a rough shove. He looked at the girl after as if the shove impressed her. I didn’t stumble back when he did it and held my ground.

I ignored him and set my attention to the crowd around the fire. They were talking, but not talking.
Mindless chatter.
I thought of my new tattoo inside my arm. Salinger was right. People don’t care if you are speaking to awaken them to a truth they never thought possible. If it didn’t help them in the physical world, it was worthless and they didn’t notice. They float through life trapped in their own mind and others are a means to an end for them to get what they want.

Blake introduced the girl as Lilith and I nodded in her direction and didn’t listen as Blake told her my name. Blake wanted to have his own time with this girl, so I left him to it. She was fresh meat and the sharks waited on the sidelines in case Blake decided to drop the bait.

I sat near the fire and stayed at the party for another hour until a girl came over to talk to me. I remembered playing tag with her when we were in second grade. She was fast and always tagged me
it.
She smiled at me that night and asked to sit by me. I gave a slight nod and waved my hand. I was
it
again.

She asked me mindless questions on potential colleges, showing a false interest in my life. I had told her I didn’t understand the point because it’s filled with more people memorizing and repeating what they’re told. But in college, you get a degree that says you memorized and repeated enough to qualify you for a job. I told her I didn’t need the debt or the fucking experience.

She laughed and had told me I was depressing. I agreed, and she asked if it was because I needed to get laid. I still remember the smell of beer and peppermint as she whispered with seductive eyes, running her fingers across my Salinger tattoo, not noticing my disgust. But she noticed my disdain when I lifted her hand from my arm and flung it to her own lap.

Her eyes turned dark as she said one word through clenched teeth.
Fag
. That word and her reaction was enough to make me want to destroy, as if the rational conclusion to my not wanting to be with her must be because I preferred men. I hated these people. Their narcissistic closed minds made me ill.

As I was getting ready to leave, one of the former football players came up to me and yelled to everyone that I was gay. With a
defying grin, he had asked everyone if they made sure to watch their asses when we were in gym. Blake came over and shoved the guy away from me. He had this need to defend me and I never understood why.