Grinning, he shook his head and walked over to the plastic-covered table. I had questions about this, which I asked ten minutes later when he was tattooing the new ink on my ribs. “Hey, how much plastic wrap do y’all get through?”
Not looking up from his work (thankfully), he muttered, “A lot.”
Ask a stupid question, get a stupid answer I guess.
“I have issues even putting a small piece of it over the top of a bowl. How do you manage to do it without it getting all twisty and clumpy?”
“Practice.”
And again.
“Ok, what about when you put it on a bowl or wrap up leftovers? Does it clump when you do it then?” When he didn’t answer, I moved onto the next question. “Do you wrap it all the way around the table?”
“Yup, it’s quicker.”
How could that be? Yeah cutting strips of the stuff would be time consuming, and it had a tendency to stick to itself, but wrapping the whole bed-table thing? “Hey, do they do an extra wide roll so it doesn’t take you as long?”
Sighing, he leaned back and stretched his neck out and glared at me. “No. Anything else?”
I shook my head when I couldn’t think of anymore, but before he could go back to his work, Jose asked, “Do you buy the huge catering packs of it, or do you have to use the same small rolls we get in the store?”
Lifting a hand, he pointed to the corner of the room, and we saw a stack of four large boxes of Saran Wrap, with another two in front of them. Hey, at least he saved money buying them in bulk. Not one more word was said as he worked the needle across my ribs, and I went into my ink Zen zone. Which was why when the buzzing of the machine stopped, I snapped my eyes open and looked up at the ceiling in confusion.
“That’s you done. I think he’ll like it!” he announced, wiping over the area with a piece of paper towel. “Have a look in the mirror.”
As I got up and did just that, Jose started laughing. “Have you ever seen those tattoos where the person got it wrong? Like no regerts?”
It had to be every tattoo artist’s nightmare, someone coming in with a fucked up tattoo they expected to get fixed. Something which Ellis confirmed himself. “Yeah, we get those in quite a lot. Chinese and Japanese symbols which don’t mean what they thought it did, words spelled wrongly, portraits that look like something from your worst nightmares, or even people getting dates wrong.”
As he said the last bit, my eyes flew down to the numbers now on my ribs for the rest of my life. I’d had Mom’s, Jose’s, and Olivia’s birthdays tattooed on me, and although the days and months were ok, I immediately worried that I’d gotten the years wrong.
“You got them right, Tab,” Jose snorted. “I wouldn’t have let you get it done if you hadn’t.”
Relieved, I leaned slightly to the side so I could see the full effect of what was written under it. It was too soon to get Dave’s birthday tattooed on me – I wasn’t that much of a tit to get that done right now – so, instead I’d had a verse of one of my favorite Aerosmith songs tattooed under the birthdays.
“I wonder why she went with the song Pink?” Jose chuckled.
“Not a clue,” Ellis replied, walking over and motioning for me to turn around so he could wrap it up. “What I do know is that the Sheriff is going to get a kick out of this, and so will you.”
I’d had the third verse of the song tattooed on me. Yes, the fact it was called Pink wasn’t a shock, but in the verse itself, it says about pink being their new lingo and also mentions kink – both of which were appropriate to our relationship. Not saying we were kinky, although I guess to a certain extent we might be considered that, but with what I’d said to Jarrod on the night when I’d been coerced into going on a date with Dave. Plus, pink was our new lingo. Every time he saw the color he thought of me, so I was giving him more things to think about…sexual things, which I guess was kind of kinky. See, it was totally us!
“Welp, there’s some irony that’s for sure. That’s you done, Miss. Newton,” he told me as he stuck the last bit of tape down. “I know you know the aftercare instructions after getting the big piece on your leg and all your other ones, but I’ll give you a sheet anyway,” he reeled off as he washed his hands and up his arms in the sink. He’d had paper towel covering that part of his arms, but you could never be too careful.