by Cheryl Snell
I liked working at Vivid Ink — I met my husband there. I was his apprentice and he not only showed me the ropes but let me practice on him. Ralph made everyone pronounce his name “Rafe” but otherwise was down to earth and salt of the earth. I trusted him and it wasn’t long before we were drawing hearts and lovebirds on one another. It became our tradition and how we marked our special days.
“Most couples just go out to dinner on their anniversary,” observed one customer, impatiently waiting his turn while I worked on Ralph. I expected Ralph to say something sharp, but he just sat there, his blood trickling with my ink. After that, I decided to check out the other tattoo parlors in town.
“It’s called researching the competition,” I told Ralph the day I came back sporting a yellow buttercup on my hip. Buttercup was Ralph’s nickname for me. He didn’t know they were poisonous. After a while, I didn’t even pretend it was “research.” I liked picking out my own images alone, to remind me of my own important events.
I had the rose drawn around my navel when I found out I was pregnant, and wings on my shoulder when the baby died, the semi-colon when I tried to join him, the snake when my husband cheated on me the first time. Looking in the mirror, my skin was like the Sunday comics version of my life.
For our tenth anniversary, Ralph asked me if we should give each other a new tattoo, the way we used to. I shook my head. “I’m pretty rusty, so let’s do it separately. That way it’ll be a surprise for each of us.”
“Show me yours and I’ll show you mine,” Ralph said that night. Pulling my shirt off, I turned my back to him, and an enormous eye stared out at him, thickly lashed.
“What’s this supposed to mean?”
“It’s ‘supposed’ to be about trust.”
“Looks more like that stalker song everyone thinks is about love. The one they play at weddings.”
I shoved my shirt back on and started to walk out of the room, sure now that my latest suspicions were justified.
“Wait! Don’t you want to see mine?” He pushed up his sleeve and the yellow color caught my eye. A buttercup? I wanted to see the flower with my pet name on his arm long ago, but not anymore. I squinted at the design, poked my finger at the yellow petals circling a black center.
“Wrong! It’s all wrong!” I could feel the snake on my neck begin to pulse. “Your tattooist doesn’t know a Black-eyed Susan from a freaking buttercup?”
“Not my fault. A rose is a rose is a rose, Buttercup,” he said, rolling his sleeve down again.
“Don’t you dare call me that again, Rafe, at least until you get that weed lasered off.”
I watched from the window as he started off for the parlor, grinding every buttercup in the yard under his heel. Strange they should smell so good when they’re crushed.
Cheryl Snell’s books include several poetry collections and the novels of her Bombay Trilogy. Her latest title is a series called Intricate Things in their Fringed Peripheries. Most recently her writing has appeared in Gone Lawn, Ilanot Review, Cafe Irreal, Pure Slush, Literary Yard, and New World Writing.
