I was so caught up in my medical narrative that I didn’t see where we were until Tabby pulled up in front of Ellis’s house, hit the brakes hard making me groan as my ass moved an inch down the seat, and shut off the engine. Oh, I was going to kick her in her inflated butt cheek as hard as I could – if I could ever even lift my leg again.Ellis
I’d just finished up my last client of the day and was cleaning up the room I worked in when Mace walked in.
“Knock, knock.”
Throwing the handful of paper towels in the garbage, I stood up and stretched out my left arm, doing my best to get rid of the cramp in my shoulder. Let me just say – I was thirty-one, and whereas I knew I was that age, my shoulder acted like it was three times it some days. Few people could image how sore sitting hunched over as you tattooed made you, and if add in the vibrations up your arm from the tattoo machine, you had what I was going through right now. Seeing Mace standing with his shoulder on the wall just inside the door watching me, I raised an eyebrow. “You know, saying it isn’t exactly the same as doing it. If you’re going to knock when you come in,” I walked over to the door and rapped my knuckles on it, “you physically knock when you come in.”
My goal had been to make him laugh because Mace was what you might call complicated in terms of personality. He was a great guy and loyal as hell, but he was prone to withdrawing into himself, so when he tipped his head back and laughed, I had to stop myself from commenting on it. “Just stopped in to say that I saw the piece you did on that last guy’s shoulder; it was fucking awesome.”
It had been my best piece to date – a lion’s face that filled up the dude’s whole back. He’d wanted it as realistic as I could get it, and for the lion to be in black and white, and it’s eyes to be like they were in the photograph he’d brought with him. This tattoo meant a lot to the guy because he’d almost died two years ago in a motorcycle accident, and to celebrate his recovery and survival he’d decided to go on a safari tour in Africa. While he was there, he’d gone for a piss behind a tree, only to find himself face-to-face with a lion who was eating a gazelle. Long story short, rather than scream and run like most of us would have, he figured he’d faced death once and could do it again, so he’d taken a photo with his phone – dick still swinging in the wind – and now used it as a memory of strength and overcoming hurdles. The photo he’d taken was the one I’d just finished putting on his skin after doing the outline for it three weeks ago. We might get a lot of ones that we hated doing, ones where we were fixing shit like ‘No Regerts’, and ones we just knew they’d ‘regert’ having done, but there were an equal amount of meaningful ones that touched tattoo artists down to their souls, and those were my favorite ones. Getting feedback like this from Mace was a huge deal as well, and I was going to grab it with both hands. Well, I’d do it on the inside because man points and all. “Thanks, it was a great story that went with it, too,” I replied, shutting down my laptop and switching off the lights on the drawing desk. “You got plans tonight?”
Turning to face him, I watched as he looked uncomfortably at the clock. Something was going on with him, but anyone who knew Mace would tell you - he’d fill you in when he was ready, and not a second before it. “Not exactly, but I might head and see Ava.”
“Things ok with you guys?”
“Yeah, I’m just not sleeping well, is all. I’ll figure it out,” he muttered, giving me a wave and then walking away toward his office. Looking around the door frame, I watched as he closed his eyes slowly, and then shook whatever it was off. If he didn’t break and let it out soon, I’d go and see our friend Ren Townsend, and plan an intervention or something. There had been a couple of times when we were growing up that we’d done something like that, and we’d ended up tying him to a chair to get him to talk. Then again, we’d also all done it to each other, or planned it so that one of us sat on the person’s head, one on their back, and someone held their legs down to get them to spill. It was a helluva way to wake up, but it got the job done, that’s for sure. That said, regardless of how big we all were now, I don’t think we’d be able to hold Mace down if we went with that approach, so it would have to be the chair method we used on him if whatever was bothering him didn’t go away.