"I used to be an artist," she said, filling the strange contraption with ink.
I nodded, flexing my forearm, wanting to get the whole thing over with. My butt was already falling asleep on the portable stool she'd taken off her Harley. My pits were soaked with sweat. I wanted to get the whole job over and done with before anyone saw us, unlikely as it was, here in the abandoned part of town.
"But now all I got left is this," she continued, gesturing at the motorcycle with the electric needle. The tattoo machine was wired to her cycle, plugged into an adapter in the cigarette lighter on its front panel. She flicked a switch, and the inker hummed to life. It was louder than I expected, sounding more like a dentist's drill than anything else. Resting her wrist on my arm, she lowered the mini-jackhammer to my skin. I winced, expecting pain, but it just tickled, kinda like when a bug crawls under your shirt.
After a few seconds, though, my eyes watered and I squirmed in my seat, beginning to regret the whole affair. Luckily, she resumed the conversation, taking my mind off the slow burn of the inker.
"This is gonna be worth a helluva lot more than what you're paying for it," she said, her tongue searching the corner of her beautiful mouth as she worked. "My work is rare these days. Ever since..." She lifted the needle off my arm. "Well, you're lucky, that's all. You got a cigarette?"
"Yeah." I dug one out of my breast pocket.
"Light it, would ya? My hands are full." She went back to work on my right arm as I lit the smoke with the other.
Without looking up, she opened her mouth and I slipped the cig between her lips. She drew in a lungful and slowly let it drift out her nostrils. "Thanks."
I didn't want to disrupt her, but I had to ask. "What did you mean when you said 'ever since'?"
"Oh, I guess I should tell you, shouldn't I?" It sounded more like a statement than a question. "I usually wait until afterwards, but what the hell." She looked up into my eyes, searching, as if she could see right through me.
"Like I said, I used to be an artist. Not a tattoo artist, but a painter, you know? I was pretty damned famous, as far as artists go. 'Joan Arkhamson' was a freaking brand name. I used to make a helluva lot of money. Got more than ten thousand for just one piece once."
I raised an eyebrow in disbelief.
"Oh, I don't expect you to believe me. You probably never heard of me before, but I swear, everything I'm tellin' ya is true."
"I believe you, Joan." I noticed that the needle no longer tickled, and I looked down at her work--the outline of a woman's figure could be seen, dotted by beads of blood and ink. She was right: this tattoo was going to be a classic. I could tell already, just by the outline. It was like nothing I'd ever seen before.
"Anyway, that didn't last very long." A stack of ash dropped from her cigarette. "Not because of me, though 'Cause of them." She paused again and blinked cigarette smoke out of her eyes. "Could you take this?"
I grabbed the butt out of her mouth and threw it to the curb. "Who?"
She ignored me. "Now I'm freelancin'. Not that I don't like it. Actually, I love it. But I work better with oils."
"What happened?"
"Oh, didn't tell ya, did I?" She giggled. "Guess I'm doin' it to myself now."
I had no idea what she meant.
"You see, I got a little loose with my work. Started doin' stuff I wanted to do. Nudes, and stuff like that. It sold, too. Then I really let loose and started drawing things the way I saw 'em, abstracts of politicians and celebrities. Some of it was sick, sure, but only if the subject itself was sick." She sighed. "I was paintin' reality, man, reality. Guess they couldn't deal with reality, though. They put an end to it real quick."
"Hey!"
She looked up at me, startled. "Huh?"
"Who the hell are you talking about?"
She avoided my eyes and went back to etching. "To tell you the truth, I really don't know. Some anti-porn group, or maybe some extremists from the Moral Majority, or ... hell, I don't know. Some crazies. I wouldn't doubt if it was the government itself! But whoever they were, they really got me. Well..." she giggled again. "They haven't caught me yet."
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