Out at Night. Susan Smith Arnout

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СКАЧАТЬ woman in the chair wearing shorts, a tank top, and headphones the size of Egg McMuffins. Her eyes were closed and her mouth had dropped slightly open. She was sleeping.

      “You’re back early. I wasn’t expecting you until Monday. Where’s your sidekick?” Jeanne put down her needle and reached for a new color. The beginning of a unicorn glistened on the client’s left calf.

      “Hey, buddy.” Grace bent to Helix and scratched him behind his ears and he licked her face and woofed. “You sent Mac down there. To find us.”

      Jeanne sorted colors, held up one to the light, put it down. “The light in here is for shit. Turn on the lamp, okay?”

      Grace clicked on a standing lamp and positioned the light. Jeanne’s hair was a startling shade of red. Age had wrinkled the rose tattoo on her arm so that it looked wilted, the petals convoluted.

      “You gave me directions to the beach you said you went to.”

      “As a precautionary measure, Jeanne. Not so Mac could fly down there.”

      Jeanne looked at her sharply. “You are talking about Mac McGuire, the hero in this deal, right?” She picked up a bottle of eggshell blue ink and squirted it into a cup.

      “Is Jeanne feeding you?” Grace rubbed Helix’s belly.

      He groaned and wriggled. He was a mongrel mix, black and white, with a fake leg that spasmed in the air like a Rockette executing a tricky high kick.

      Jeanne rolled the calf gently and held it steady as she positioned the needle, delicately stippling the skin. The woman flinched slightly and Jeanne swabbed the calf with an antiseptic pad. “What’s going on?”

      Grace swallowed, suddenly close to tears. “Why does something have to be going on?”

      Jeanne stared at her over her glasses and went back to work.

      “Can she hear us?”

      “She’s listening to the Dead full blast. I’d be surprised if she could hear anything after this.” She shrugged in the direction of a chair. “Sit.”

      Grace pulled a chair over from another workstation and positioned it so that she was facing Jeanne over the legs of the client. They were skinny legs—a kid’s—and Grace wondered if Jeanne had carded her before starting. The girl didn’t look old enough to be making a choice that lasted a lifetime, but then again, Grace knew age hadn’t protected her from doing things that cost. Were still costing.

      She clasped her hands between her knees. “Can you keep Helix until Tuesday?”

      Jeanne shot her a measured look, bent over the calf and inked in a shadow along the unicorn’s legs, so that the animal looked as if it were springing off the skin in a three-dimensional leap.

      “Did you hear me?”

      “I heard you.”

      Jeanne put down the needle and swabbed the skin. It was pink around the fresh needle marks. She tossed the pad into the trash.

      Grace blinked. “I’ll put him in a kennel.” She started to get up.

      “Sit. Sit.”

      Helix wagged his tail and sat.

      “Not you, you.”

      Grace sat.

      “Of course I’ll take him. What’s this about?”

      Grace felt tears leak onto her hands. Jeanne yanked a Kleenex from a box and Grace reached for it blindly and dabbed her eyes.

      “He wants to take her for Thanksgiving.”

      “He’s her father, Grace.”

      “Without me.”

      Jeanne looked at her steadily. “How close are you?”

      Grace licked a lip. Her mouth felt dry. She reached into her purse and took out a miniature bottle of bourbon and put it down on the worktable next to the bottles of ink and a glass container of doggie treats.

      “Honestly, on the plane? When the stewardess made the announcement that she’d appreciate correct change, I told myself I was helping her out, buying this.”

      Jeanne smiled briefly and reached for a new bottle of ink. “You didn’t drink it.”

      Grace inhaled, blew the breath out.

      “Take a meeting.”

      “Can’t.” She felt rubbed raw. She stole a glance at the small bottle of bourbon and wondered if she could get it back in her purse.

      Jeanne shot her a look and went back to work. Grace stared at the far wall. A crumbled set of terra-cotta pots lined a high shelf. Somehow Jeanne had managed to get tulips to bloom, and the bright yellow and orange and pink waxy petals bobbed on some invisible current as if they were watching a tennis match from the bleachers. Leaning against the wall under them was Jeanne’s cane, its thready topknot wearing a pink Barbie-sized baseball cap.

      “I need to drive to Riverside County. Examine a body in a morgue.”

      Jeanne looked at her a long moment. “It’s not Guatemala, Grace.”

      “I don’t know if I can remember that, when I see it.”

      “I could say it’s time you got over it, and you don’t want the bad guys to win by giving up a piece of who you are, but the truth is, we all give up pieces, every day, just to get by.”

      Jeanne reached for a new color, a soft red the shade of old blood.

      “I thought you couldn’t go back to work until they health-checked you.”

      “It’s not the crime lab. I have an uncle who works in Palm Springs for the FBI.”

      “Your uncle’s dead?”

      Grace made a small sound. “You’re busy. I shouldn’t even be talking to you. You’ll ink in an extra leg.”

      “I did that once. Told the client it was an Asian fertility symbol. I didn’t know you had an uncle in the FBI.”

      Grace lined up bottles of ink. The bottle of black was bigger than the rest and she lined the cap up neatly so that the caps were straight across. A tear splashed onto a bottle called pink ochre and she wiped it off.

      “He did something to my family that was pretty unforgivable.”

      “That changed the course of family history?”

      Grace dropped her hands. “I’m not joking, Jeanne. It was when my dad died, and things were bad. I haven’t talked to him in years, and the idea that I’m getting dragged into something that’s his, having to fix something that belongs to him—”

      “Honey, if you want me to give you hell, you’re going to have to give me more to go on.”

      Grace СКАЧАТЬ