style="font-size:15px;"> “So one morning you just decided to hide. Not get up, or not leave the room? I think everyone I know has felt that way at least once—”
“Not the same...not at all. For me, for us, the staying-in is a response to pressure, to expectations...when one cannot fulfill one’s destiny, it is better to retreat than to exist as a failure.”
“If that’s the case, then old Walker Ulger should be hiding under his futon in his apartment....I can’t think of anything worse than running around pretending to be a cop, down to wanting body armor to take up the slack from a bullet-proof vest he doesn’t even own.”
“Walker is not Japanese. And I doubt many expectations were placed upon him,” Masafumi said succinctly, while Harumi sat there, fingers resting on the long armature of her tattoo gun, mentally digesting what she’d just heard. Then, as she lowered the vibrating needles onto the waiting surface, she said, “To me, he’s a more likely candidate for being a hicky-whatever than you could be...you’re just a kid now, and you said you were locked away in your folks’ house for how long?”
“I did not say how long...it was enough time. I was at an age where my future should have been set, but...my doubts diluted my artistic destiny. My parents, my teachers, they were sure of what I was to be, but me...the uncertainty, the inexactitude of my calling, all of this served to render me unable to do anything more than simply be, in my room. It is difficult to explain further. The people at New Start, they advised me to change paths, seek other outlets for what minimal talents I possessed—”
“I’ve seen your work, ’Fumi...there isn’t much more that Ignazzy can teach you about inkslinging that you don’t already know. How long have you been working for him, two, three years? Your work is fine, just fine...in fact—” here her voice took on a different tone, less conciliatory, more eager, “—what you said a couple of days ago about the layered kimonos thing got me to thinking...what I have on me right now is sort of like a short kimono, no? but what if I add bands along each arm, and each leg, with a suggestion of the pattern of some more kimonos underneath? Y’know? With thick bands of black to delineate the difference between each ‘sleeve’...sort of like what that pretend-pig suggested, a quilting-type of thing.”
Masafumi felt emotionally, creatively, naked, sitting there on the tatimi mat next to Harumi....Ignazio had also suggested that he work on Harumi, and now, she herself was requesting that he ink her, a most personal, and even intimate request. As if his own wishes had been made flesh...but as he pictured her future bodily illumination, his mind echoed with another imagined transformation, that of a lowly play-badge-for-hire into something slightly more legally augmented. That the two creative works were so thoroughly linked in his consciousness somehow tainted the former while increasing the repugnance of the latter.
But she was expecting an answer...just as that slug-eared thug had been badgering him for the last few days, constantly requesting a specific date—and a suitable price—for his own transformation.
Realizing that to honor one request must inevitably mean fulfilling the other as well, Masafumi said slowly, “Would you be open to a form of...barter, as payment for my work? It is not the most pleasant option, but one which I think will turn out to be satisfying for you...in how you people say it, ‘the long run’?”
“By saying ‘not the most pleasant option’ do you mean unpleasant, as in...say, that Ulger freak?”
Nodding, Masafumi anticipated her refusal, but was pleasantly shocked when she said, “You can do anything you want to me in front of him, as long as it culminates in him getting off my back....”
* * * *
“So...you kids sure ole Iggy-nazzy won’t come back in here, spoil our inkslinging party?”
Outside the lowered shades of the tattoo parlor windows, the last rays of the setting sun cast narrow deep orange shafts of light on Harumi’s body as she stood still in the middle of the room, while Masafumi spotted the freshly inked narrow stencils around each of her upper arms just above the elbows, and encircled each of her thighs with a two-inch wide band of intricately patterned freehand flash. Once he was done rubbing the transfer paper against her skin, Masafumi stepped back to view his efforts, and make sure all the elements of each design had successfully spotted onto her skin. For his part, Ulger squirmed around in one of the tattooing chairs, eyes narrowed, upper lip curled back over his flat-bottomed, oyster white teeth, breath coming in short noisy hitches through his flaring nostrils. He had accepted Masafumi’s terms readily; if he was allowed to watch the “tattoo-boy” apply four around-the-limbs tattoos to Harumi, he would be given that elusive nano-yarn-sweater...if he never bothered Harumi again. And if he were to break his promise, and continue to harass her, the real police would get a call, reporting a non-official bearer of the otherwise restricted body armor nano-weave.
Luckily, Harumi’s limbs were thin, and the single-needle black outlining of her tattoos went quickly, if somewhat awkwardly (to allow him to tattoo the backs of her thighs and arms, she had to lie face down on the tattooing bed, resting on her already-inked limbs), and once the outsides of each new leaf, each new flower were inked, Masafumi switched to a seven-needle cluster, to create the background wash of color...given that his needles touched his previous finely incised inked lines with every pass, it was inevitable that Harumi’s eyes began to water, even as she defiantly refused to let out a sound, least she increase her audience’s pleasure at her discomfort. Masafumi could hear Ulger’s panting breaths over the drone of the tattoo gun, and when he was done laying down the pale greenish-white background (which rendered some of the single needle fineline a subtle shade of grey), he gave Harumi an I’m so sorry wince, as he put a three-needle tip onto his tattoo gun, and began inking in all of the deep green leaves.
Five more colors later, and countless swipes of his now-bloodied wipe cloth, Harumi’s limbs shone with brilliant, slightly-raised bands of color...the merest hints of a far more intricate design not quite fully seen “beneath” her previous tattoos. But her fleshy kimono was now layered, and as she gingerly walked toward the mirror on the back wall of the shop, ignoring Ulger’s wolf-whistles in her direction, Masafumi pictured her wearing a real kimono, over her tattoos...but one made of a transparent fabric, gauze, or perhaps even un-cut sheets of that nano-fabric those factories made in bulk. This was the answer to his imponderable quandary, that unbridgeable gap between the artistic vision and the material reality. A design that literally moved as the woman wearing it moved, even as she still maintained the formality of the now-outdated kimono’s restrictive T-shape....In his excitement, he almost forgot about Ulger sitting there, waiting for his “payment” that evening, so beautiful was Harumi, in all her inked glory. Only her pale shorts and narrow tube top marred the perfection of her fleshy garment, but didn’t Ignazio tell Masafumi that the people who attended those Tattoo and Body Art conventions often took the judging stage all but naked, to better show off their ink? If Harumi would allow him to create additional “layers” of kimono on her skin, could she not wear a transparent kimono when taking the stage?—
“I’m outta here...Masa, you’re the man...and Walker...what can I say? You ain’t,” Harumi hissed the last two words through a tightly puckered pair of red-shaded lips, then, after blowing a kiss to Masafumi, quitted the parlor, stepping raw and bandageless into the early evening street beyond. Sure that she would be able to tend to her own fresh tattoos, Masafumi slowly turned his attention to Ulger, who was busy fishing something out of his breast pocket...a syringe, filled with a pale clear liquid. Grinning and squinting at Masafumi, Ulger said, “I do guard duty for that pharmacy down the block...and I know they ain’t gonna miss this. Just like I know you ain’t gonna say squat about me using it, right?”
Realizing that whatever Ulger had stolen had to be an anesthetic, the one thing forbidden to anyone undergoing non-medically sanctioned body modifications, Masafjumi merely shook
