King

  and King lightly tapped his foot to the Lynnyrd Skynnyrd song playing over the speakers.

  Not knowing how King would feel about me watching him work, I turned to leave, but he stopped me. “Pup, I need more paper towels.”

  I turned back around. The blonde’s eyes were on me immediately. The red head took out her ear buds, but King hadn’t looked up.

  “Me?” I asked, unsure if King was talking to me or if he called everyone Pup.

  “Yes, you. Unless I’m calling Jake pup now, and something tells me he wouldn’t like it all that much.”

  The man in the corner stared at me straight-faced with no readable emotion. The girl offered me a knowing look before putting her ear buds back in and closing her eyes.

  “On the counter,” King added impatiently.

  I looked over to the corner of the room and spied the roll of paper towels. I grabbed them and walked over to King, setting them on the small table next to him. I was about to walk back out of the room when he spoke again.

  “Stay,” he ordered. Unfolding a piece of towel, he sprayed the girl’s back with the liquid from a plastic water bottle and then wiped at the tattoo until he seemed satisfied. “I’m done here.” He wiped something from a jar onto her back then taped the edges of the plastic with gauze tape. King tapped on the girl’s shoulders and she again removed her ear buds. “You can take the plastic off tomorrow. Keep it clean.”

  “Always do,” she said.

  I hadn’t seen Jake stand up, but suddenly, he was next to the redhead, helping her up off the chair.

  “My feet always fall asleep when I’m getting tattooed,” she explained to me. She leaned forward onto the blonde man for a few moments until she was able to stand up on her own.

  I got a brief glimpse of the new ink on her back. It was a tree, a delicate yet bold orange tree at sunset. The leaves spelled out Georgia through the middle. The tattoo looked as if it were in motion, like oranges were falling from the branches.

  It was heart-breakingly beautiful.

  They both wore wedding bands, so I assumed Jake was her husband. When he saw me staring at her new art work, he reached behind her and released the clip that held up her shirt, rearranging it until she was covered.

  “What do I owe you, brother?” he asked King.

  “A favor,” King said. “Keep your phone on.”

  “Done.” Jake held his wife close as they made their way to the door.

  When they passed me, she turned to me. “Hi I’m Ab—”

  “We were just leaving,” her husband interrupted, looking down at her as if to remind her of something she’d forgotten.

  She nodded, and then flashed me a small smile before they left the room. I’d only been around them for ten minutes, but the guy seemed to be two different people. He sent out vibes of being anti-social and an asshole, but he looked at her like she was his most prized possession. But he didn’t own her. That much was obvious.

  She owned him.

  “Who was that?” I asked. I watched from the window as the couple climbed onto a shiny black motorcycle. Her husband helped her with her helmet before they rode off down the drive, disappearing under the trees.

  “If they wanted you to know, they would’ve told you.”

  “They’re in love.”

  “I sure as shit hope so. They’re married. Got a kid, too.”

  King took off his gloves and tossed them into a stainless steel bin beside his worktable. He stood and joined me at the window. I could feel the heat from his body radiating onto my back. He leaned over me, his cheek brushing up against my temple. I closed my eyes and tried not to allow his nearness to affect me.

  I’m stronger than this.

  “There are plenty of married people in the world, but it doesn’t mean all of them are in love. Not like that, anyway.”

  “No,” King agreed. “It doesn’t.” He stepped away, leaving nothing but cold air in his place. I let out a breath I didn’t know I was holding.

  “Do you want me to leave?” I asked, turning from the window. King was sitting on the couch with his phone in his hands.

  “No, I have a lot of people coming tonight. You can help me.”

  “You’re really talented,” I offered.

  “You don’t have to say that,” King said, tapping away at the screen.

  “I’m not trying to be nice. It’s true. Her tattoo was seriously amazing.”

  “Hhmpf,” he grunted, not looking up from his phone.

  “You know, it’s customary to say thank you when someone compliments you.”

  “Thanks for the heads up.”

  A car door slammed below, and two girls about my age giggled as they approached the door. The bell rang.

  “Bring them up,” he ordered.

  My job over the next several hours consisted of shuffling the music when King needed a change of pace, running downstairs to get him Red Bulls, and sitting around doing nothing. At one point, I stood up, told King that I was just taking up space, and that I should get out of his way. He glared at me and nodded back to the couch.

  “Why do you do this when you do…other things?” I asked him between clients while I was washing out paint containers in the small sink. “And why don’t you have a real shop instead of doing this out of your house?”

  “You ask a lot of fucking questions,” King pointed out.

  “Two.”

  “What?”

  “You said I ask a lot of questions. I only asked two.”

  King folded his arms over his chest, accentuating his toned biceps. “If you must know, I do this because I’ve always done it. Art was the only class I liked as a kid. And I do this in my house because the places around here that are any sort of decent are on the other side of the causeway, and the rent wouldn’t make the business worth having. Happy?”

  “So you do this because art was the only class you were good at in school?”

  “More fucking questions,” King sighed. “And you don’t listen. I did well in school. Very well, actually. I said art was the only class I liked, not the only class I was good at.”

  “Oh,” I said, feeling stupid that I’d jumped to that conclusion. “I’m sorry. I just thought…”

  “I’m a bad guy, pup, not a dumb guy.”

  “I didn’t say you were dumb.”

  “Look in that drawer over there.” He pointed at a tool box. I opened the drawer. In it was a framed degree from the University of South Florida. Under it was a gun.

  “Why do you keep this in here? Why don’t you hang it up?”

  “Because I earned the degree online.”

  “That’s not a big…”

  “While in prison,” King interrupted. “And I’m glad I did it. I like having it, but putting it on the wall would mean I was proud of it. My feelings are a lot more mixed than that. Besides, Grace says you should always have a drawer that reminds you that who you are and what you do aren’t always the same thing.”

  “Who’s Grace?”

  “You’ll find out.”

  “Well, why don’t you just start your own business?”

  King laughed.

  “What’s so funny?”

  “You are, pup.”

  “Why is that?”

  “Because you just asked me why I didn’t start my own business.”

  “And?”

  “And, it’s funny, because…” King gestured to the gun. His face went serious. “I did.”

  A knock at the door interrupted us. I quickly returned the frame to the drawer and shut it just as Preppy let in King’s next client.

  A woman, older than me, strutted through the door wearing a tight tube top and shorts so short the bottom of her ass cheeks hung out. She set herself up on the table like she owned the place, popping her gum as she explained to King, in detail, the Orchid tattoo she wanted on her left ass cheek.

  King told me what he needed set up, and I started gathering his supplies.

  “Who’s she?” the gir
l asked, casting me a sideways glare.

  “She’s none of your business.”

  “Can’t she step out? I’m really shy,” she whined, even as she pushed her shorts off in a suggestive manner. Leaving on her heels she crawled onto the table and stuck her thong-clad ass into the air.

  “No, she can’t,” King said. Grabbing a marker, he freehanded the outline of an orchid onto her butt.

  The girl made a pouting noise but didn’t push the issue. After an hour, she asked if I could go get her something to drink. King nodded to me, and I went downstairs to grab beers from the fridge.

  When I came back up, I paused at the door.

  “Come on, baby. You don’t remember me? You should. Your work is right here.” The girl turned around and sat up on her elbows, spreading her legs, she revealed tattooed butterfly wings on both sides of her inner thighs.

  “I remember the work. I don’t remember you,” King said stiffly. “Do you want me to finish this fucking tattoo or not?”

  “Yes, but I want your big cock first,” she cooed.

  “That’s not gonna fucking happen.”

  “Is it because of that ugly skinny bitch? She doesn’t even have any fucking tits!”

  There was a commotion, and before I could figure out what exactly was going on, King had thrown the girl’s shorts out into the hallway and was pushing her out the door by her elbow.

  “You can get that shit finished by someone else. We’re fucking done here.”

  She grabbed her shorts off the floor and stomped past me. “Fucking ugly bitch. Fucking asshole,” she muttered as she practically tripped in her rush to get to the stairs.

  King stood in the door way. “And if I hear you ever talk shit about her again, I’ll find you and take that butterfly tattoo back.”

  “Oh yeah?” she shouted, stopping on the landing. “How the fuck are you going to do that?”

  King was in the doorway one second and an inch from her face the next. “I’ll tell you how,” he seethed. “I’m going to find you, and then I’m going to take my time carving those fucking butterfly wings from that nasty pussy of yours with my knife. Sleep on that before you decide to open that good for nothing dick-sucker of yours again.”

  Her eyes went wide with fear. She couldn’t move fast enough as she rushed out of the house, slamming the door behind her. The gravel spun under the tires of her car as she sped down the driveway.

  “Clean up,” King ordered. He grabbed one of the beers from my arms as he passed me in the hallway and went back into his studio. I stood with my mouth open for a full minute before following him.

  “What the hell was that?” I asked, putting the rest of the drinks into the cooler by the door.

  “It was nothing. Clean up. We aren’t done yet.” King chugged the beer, crushed the can in his hands and tossed it into the trash bin.

  The clock above the door read three am.

  The next client was a man named Neil who King had being doing a full sleeve for before he went to prison. Neil had waited three years for King to be released so he could finish it. He said he just didn’t trust anyone else to do it right.

  I sat on the leather couch and watched King as he scrunched his face up in concentration. How could someone so talented also be so menacing?

  You already know how talented his hands are.

  I bit my lip and remembered the way his fingers felt inside me. My face flushed.

  “I can feel you staring at me,” King said, snapping me out of my daydream. Neil had a huge set of red headphones on with his eyes closed. He was either engrossed in the music or fast asleep.

  “I’m kind of bored,” I admitted, embarrassed I’d been caught staring.

  King stood and removed a glove. He opened another drawer on the toolbox and removed something, tossing it over to me. A sketchbook landed next to me on the couch, followed by a box of colored pencils.

  “Maybe, this will help you stop fucking fidgeting,” he said. “It always helped me.”

  Then, he turned up the volume on the iPod docking station before picking up his tattoo gun and diving back into his work.

  I opened the sketchbook, which wasn’t blank. The first few sketches were variations of the orange tree tattoo I’d seen King tattoo on the redhead earlier. Each one better than the next until I got to the one he used as a template for her tattoo.

  Several pages of stunning artwork later, a beautiful dragon, a skull made completely of flowers, and a pin-up girl dressed as a nurse, and I was finally at a blank page. Doodling, I quickly found, was a much better way to pass the time than wondering about the man who made my head spin, and other parts of me throb.

  I drew happy faces and stick figures at first. But then I started shading and one of the stick figures started to look like a person. I wasn’t actually drawing. It felt more like I could already see the completed design in my mind and was just filling in what was already on the page.

  When I finished, I was staring into the chestnut eyes from my dream. I looked up at King, who was still engrossed in his work. I quietly tore the page from the book and folded it up, shoving it deep between the cushions of the couch. Part of me was hiding it so I could come back to it later and maybe add to it. Another part of me wanted to keep this one thing that I knew was somehow connected to my past to myself.

  I then decided to sketch the bird I saw earlier flying over the water. I visualized it just as I had with the eyes I’d just drawn. Before I knew it, my pencil was flying over the page. I wasn’t just drawing. I was shading, smudging, and contouring.

  When I was done, it wasn’t exactly the bird I’d seen earlier, but a more exotic version of it. Dark. Fierce. Its feathers were ruffled wildly, and the snake dangling from his beak had it’s mouth open with it’s fangs exposed. I created smoke billowing out of the small nostrils on the bird’s beak, as if he could breathe fire. But then I decided that he looked too harsh, too intimidating, so I gave the bird a broken wing, and in the reflection of his eye, I drew the snake before he’d killed it, swallowing a mouse. The final product was both brilliant beauty and vulnerability. Tears formed in my eyes, and I wiped them away before they could spill onto my cheek.

  I can draw.

  Not only could I draw, but I could draw well. It came as naturally as breathing.

  The second thing connecting me to her.

  When I put the book down, I looked up, and King’s client was gone. King sat on his stool alone, watching me. “You were in the zone,” he said. “You looked so fucking cute sitting there concentrating.”

  I swallowed hard, “I…uuuhhh…got caught up.”

  His words took me by surprise. I visualized stalking over to him and climbing onto his lap. His big strong hands coming around my back and resting underneath my shirt on my bare skin. I thought about what it would be like to let him do more than what he’d done before.

  What would it be like if he used more than his fingers?

  I shuddered.

  “Bring it here,” King said, holding out his hand, snapping me out of my own imagination where I was naked and writhing underneath him.

  “No, you don’t want to see it. I was just messing around. I’ll just put it back in the drawer and clean up now.” I walked over to the sink with the book under my arm. King reached out and snatched it away from me, flipping the pages in search of my sketch.

  “Holy Go-go-Gadget arms,” I quipped. I’d clearly underestimated King’s reach.

  “How do you know that?” He asked.

  “What do you mean? How do I know what?” I asked.

  “The ‘Go-go gadget’ thing. That’s a reference to a cartoon. Have you ever even seen it?”

  “Um…I think so. It’s this guy who wears a trench coat and has a billion little gadgets all over the place that usually don’t work the way he wants them to.”

  “I know who it is. What I want to know is have you watched it since you lost your memory?”

  “No, I haven’t watched any TV until earlier
tonight when Preppy put on something called American Ninja Warrior.” I stepped back and leaned against the counter. “What are you trying to get at? I thought you believed me.”

  “That’s not it. I’m just trying to figure it out. Help me understand.” King leaned forward and rested his elbows on his knees. “If you haven’t watched it, then it’s something that carries over from before. How exactly does that work?”

  “I’m not really sure. When I was living in the group home, I saw a psychologist or a psychiatrist or one of those. He told me that memory loss works differently for everyone. For me, it wiped out all personal information. Names, faces, memories. But I can still walk and talk, so I retained all my functions. I also know facts. Like, I know who the president is, and I can sing to you the jingle for Harry’s House of Falafel’s commercial. I just don’t know HOW I know those things.”

  King nodded. I bit my lip.

  “You know, you’re the only person besides the psychologist guy who’s even asked me about it,” I added.

  King turned a page in the book and found my sketch. He studied it for several minutes. Time seemed to tick by slower and slower. I grew restless wondering what he thought of it. He was probably trying to figure out how to tell me it was complete crap. But then again I didn’t take him for someone who would go out of his way in order to avoid offending anyone.

  So, what the hell was he staring at for so long?

  And why the hell did I need his approval so badly?

  “Are you done for the night?” I asked, trying to draw his attention away from the sketch. If he hated it, I’d rather just not talk about it at all. He lifted his eyes from my sketch just long enough to give my body a slow once over, like he was looking at me for the very first time. His gaze ignited my skin as if he’d actually touched me.

  “Am I done?” he repeated my question. King ran the underside of his tongue across his bottom lip, leaving a sheen where he’d made it wet. “I’m not sure. I’m thinking I could just be getting started.”

  Holy Shit.

  The familiar redness burned its way up my neck and my ears grew hot.

  The clock read 4:45am, and although I should have been tired due to the time, I was more alert than ever. The caffeine and sugar from the four Red Bulls I’d drunk felt like it could keep me awake for days, but I needed to get away from King because I felt myself starting to forget all the reasons why letting him strip me down and have his way with me would be a bad idea.

  “What does that mean, exactly?”

  “It means that I’m done with clients. But it also means that I’m not done with you.” King grabbed my wrist and dragged me onto his lap, the very place I’d just fantasized about being.

  I gasped.

  The hard muscles of his thighs rippled under mine. His smell—a light mixture of soap and sweat—was intoxicating. He fisted a handful of my hair and yanked my head sideways, exposing my neck to him. He breathed me in, running his nose along my neck, followed by a long leisurely lick from my collarbone to the sensitive spot on the back of my ear. I moaned, and he chuckled. I could feel it vibrate through his body and into mine. “Oh, pup. How much fun this is going to be.”

  Just like that, he released my hair and pushed me off his lap. My shaky knees almost gave way, and I had to hold onto the counter to avoid falling forward onto the floor.

  “We’ve got one more,” King said.

  “I thought you just said no more clients tonight,” I said, breathlessly.