Page 35 of Thin Lives

“What in the hell are you doing?” Tiny asked from the front.

“Nick’s,” Calisto said. “I’ll see you when you make it there.”

“Why?”

Answers, he thought.

He needed answers.

A bell jingled as Calisto pushed open the door to the tattoo shop. He wasn't entirely sure what he expected to find inside, but the clean atmosphere, leather seating and walls decorated with art was a good start. He didn’t exactly think a tattoo shop in mid-Manhattan would be filthy, but it was hard to say sometimes.

This place was clean and inviting.

A young couple sat on a leather loveseat, flipping through a book and chatting quietly to one another. Calisto passed them by to speak to the black-haired woman at the counter, her arms covered in sleeves of intricate and beautifully done tattoos.

“Hey, Calisto, right?” she asked when he approached.

How many times had he been here?

“Yeah,” Calisto said. “That’s me.”

“You here to see Nick? He just left for lunch.”

Shit.

“Nick was the guy who did this?” Calisto asked, lifting his arm up.

The girl’s brow furrowed. “I mean, yeah. He designed it. You came in for like two meetings beforehand to check out his sketches and approve them, and it took two sittings to finish it up. Your hand was the worst, so you came back for a second sitting.” She stared at him for a while longer and then asked, “Why are you looking at me like that?”

“Like what?”

“Like you don’t know what I’m talking about.”

Calisto swallowed back the lump in his throat. “Because I don’t.”

He quickly explained his accident, leaving out how he had been run off the road and shot at. At the word “amnesia”, the woman finally seemed to understand.

“That’s rough,” she said, softer than he expected. “So you must not remember anything about the tattoo, huh?”

“No,” he admitted. “But I want to know about it. I’m not a …”

“Tattoo kind of person,” she filled in, grinning. “You said that a couple of times when you first came in. That’s why Nick was so insistent you make sure you loved what he was going to put on you. He didn’t want you to regret it in a few years.”

Calisto glanced down at his arm, a sense of comfort passing through him as he looked over the rosary beads and the cross tattooed on his skin. “I don’t even remember it.”

“Yeah, I got that.”

“But I don’t regret it, either. So that says something.”

She nodded like she understood. “You were pretty stoked about it, from what I remember. But hey, if you’ve got some time, Nick will be back in like an hour or so. He’s got to do the newlyweds’ matching rings.”

Calisto checked his watch. “I don’t have that kind of time, actually. My … boss is waiting on me.”

“We can set up an appointment for your touch-ups on the cross,” she suggested.

“Let’s do that.”

Calisto could wait a little while longer to maybe get some answers.