He nodded as he flipped through the pages and checked out what I’d been working on.
“These are good,” he said. “You’re really improving.”
“Thank you,” I said.
“So, when are you going to finally let me give you your first tattoo?” he asked. “You’re kind of dragging down the image of the shop by not having one, you know. It would be like a vegan working in a slaughterhouse.”
“Well, that’s the thing. I don’t know what I want. Sometimes I come up with ideas, but I decide against them like a day later. I haven’t landed on anything I’m sure about having on me for the rest of my life.”
“It doesn’t necessarily have to be the rest of your life,” Gus said. “There are doctors who remove them.”
I laughed. “Oh, great. That’s very comforting. I don’t think that having a painful laser procedure as a follow-up option is exactly the best decision-making token.”
“You really should think about it. I’ve liked a lot of your ideas you’ve told me about. You would love having one of them on your skin,” he said.
“I’ll think about it,” I said. “But what I care about more is you teaching me how to actually do the tattoos myself. You’re slowing down on teaching me what I need to know.”
Gus laughed. “You sure do have that sass. I’m going to teach you. Don’t get yourself all worried about it.”
The stream of clients came in shortly after, and we were suddenly very busy. I helped in every way I could in addition to handling my tasks at the desk.
The end of the day came fast. As I was closing up, Gus’s last client of the day, a young man named Josh, came up to me. He hemmed and hawed for a couple of seconds, then asked me out. His eyes snapped over to Gus, who ignored him. I was about to tell him no when I forced myself to be honest with myself about what I was feeling.
I didn’t want to say yes because I didn’t know what was going on with Deacon. I shook my head, stopping myself from thinking that way. I didn’t have a chance with Deacon. I knew that. There was no point in not accepting a date because I was moony eyed over a guy. I agreed, and Josh grinned widely.
“Awesome,” he said. “How about Wednesday?”
I nodded. “Sounds good.”
7
DEACON
Monday was an absolute shitshow of epic proportions. Tuesday followed that up with an impressive example of how just when you think things can’t be worse, they find new, wildly inventive ways of being just that. When I went into work on Wednesday, I wasn’t really expecting things to get much better.
“What do you mean you don’t have the order?” I thundered into the phone.
“Mr. Rowe, you must understand. With the state of current distribution, we are running behind, and your order simply wasn’t large enough to put in as a priority,” the smarmy voice on the other end said. “I would like to remind you that we did offer you the chance to pay the premium for a priority ship, but you declined to do so.”
“Because you said six to eight weeks,” I said, cutting him off. “Six to eight weeks is standard. I even gave you extra time on top of that. But eight weeks was now four weeks ago. I have been what I put in the category of extremely fucking patient.”
“There is no need to use that kind of language, sir,” he said sternly.
“You know what?” I said and noticed Everett put his book down across from me. I had caught his attention when I dropped the f-bomb. Now I had him fully enraptured. “I think that what is going to happen is you are going to tell me the order has already shipped and that it will be here within the week. And if you don’t tell me that, then you will be refunding me my entire order, and you will be taking a new one to be shipped out immediately, and at a discount. That’s what I think is going to happen.”
“I cannot do that, sir,” the pipsqueak I only knew as Travis said.
“Then get me to someone who can because I am absolutely unwilling to deal with bullshit today.”
“One moment.” There was a click, followed by terrible muzak.
Disgusted, I hit the speaker button on the phone and let it drop to the table before leaning back in my chair. I squeezed my eyes shut for a moment and stretched. When I opened my eyes again, Everett was standing at the end of the table, his head slightly tilted to the side.
“They fucked up,” I said.
“I heard.” Everett took a sip of the soda in his hand. “You okay, man?”
“Just frustrated,” I grumbled. “Bad couple of days. You know.”
“I do,” Everett said. He was privy to all the crap I had been through the last couple days, dealing with bureaucracy and lawyers and suppliers. “You know you still have to call that permit guy back, right?”