Karen Olson: Pretty In Ink

He was gorgeous.

Eduardo nodded at me and gave me a small smile as he assessed my ink. Kyle led us backstage. Rather than going into the dressing room this time, he took us into a small office that housed a desk, a laptop computer, and a printer. Kyle grabbed a few sheets of paper out of the printer and handed them to me. I helped myself to a pencil that lay next to the laptop. It wasn’t very sharp, but it would have to do.

“Have a seat,” Kyle invited, and I sat in the straight-backed desk chair. He pulled out a folding chair from the corner for Eduardo. There weren’t any other chairs for him or Joel, who leaned against the doorframe, his hands in his pockets.

“So, can you tell me what the guy looked like?” I asked Eduardo, my pencil poised.

“He had a round face,” Eduardo started. “A short nose.”

I contemplated the paper. I’d done my share of portrait tattoos, and when I was at the University of the Arts in Philadelphia, I’d drawn more faces and figures than I could remember. But I always had a model to work from. Not someone’s memory, which could be skewed. Especially, as I could see, a memory that had been influenced by maybe one too many cocktails.

I sketched out a round face and a short nose.

“No, no,” Eduardo said, touching the base of the nose. “It was rounder here and thinner here.” He ran his finger along the line I’d drawn.

Maybe this wouldn’t be so bad. He seemed to really know. I did what he said, and he nodded. “Yes, yes, that’s good. The eyes were large, with short eyelashes.”

With his direction, I found myself filling out the sketch. As I thought about it a little more, I guess I shouldn’t have been so surprised that he’d take such close notice of a man’s looks. That’s what Chez Tango was really all about, after all.

I was glad no one could see my right foot pressing hard into the ground, sort of like a backseat driver who wants to put the brakes on. It was an odd habit I’d developed when I drew, as if I were using the tattoo-machine pedal. I’d gotten so used to drawing with the machine in my hand that a pencil sometimes felt funny.

I tried to remember how it felt the first time I drew a tattoo on my skin. I’d used a sewing needle wrapped tightly with black thread and ink from a ballpoint pen. I’d stuck my skin with tiny stabs, drawing blood, all the while creating a black heart that still adorned the inside of my left wrist. It was crude and took hours, but after the initial pricks, I hardly felt it at all. I was sixteen.

For two years I hid the heart from my parents under a bunch of bangle bracelets that jingled almost constantly. When my mother saw the heart for the first time, her heart almost stopped.

“No, no, no,” Eduardo said, bringing me out of my memory and pointing to the cheeks. “These are too large.”

I took a guess and shaded in some contour, and he nodded. “Yes, that’s what I meant.”

We were done.

I put my pencil down and surveyed the drawing, Joel and Kyle behind me, looking over my shoulder. Eduardo was nodding as if pleased with himself.

“You could do that for a living,” Kyle said.

“I do,” I said thoughtfully, wondering who this person was that I’d drawn. “Does he look familiar?” I asked, knowing that even from this I couldn’t say for sure whether it was the guy with the champagne or not. I really hadn’t seen his face.

Eduardo shook his head.

“But you met him,” I said.

“I don’t know him,” he retorted. “We were not properly introduced.”

Touché.

Kyle was looking over my shoulder and frowning.

“Do you know this guy?” I asked, standing up. It was getting late, and exhaustion was stretching through my body like a tight elastic band. Bitsy would open tomorrow, but I had a client coming in at noon. I glanced at my watch. At this rate, I wouldn’t get home until two.

Kyle picked up the drawing and studied it, leading us out of the office and into the dressing room. He still hadn’t said anything; I wondered whether he recognized the man in the picture.

Miranda Rites was in the dressing room. Or at least her alter ego, Stephan Price, was. He was folding up the pink sequined costume and putting it in his own duffel bag. Like Kyle and Trevor, Stephan was just as good-looking a man as Miranda was a woman, although Stephan was skinnier than his friends.

“You’re still here?” Stephan asked.

Kyle held up the drawing.

“See what Brett did?”

Stephan took it and studied it a second, then looked at me with questioning eyes. “Why did you draw a picture of Wesley?”

“Wesley?” I asked.

Stephan looked at Kyle. “It’s Wesley, isn’t it?”

Kyle took the drawing back and nodded. “Yes. It’s not exact-that’s why I wanted a second opinion-but it’s pretty close.”

“Who’s Wesley?” I asked again.

Kyle handed me back the sketch. “Wesley Lambert used to be in one of my shows. His drag name was Shanda Leer. But he dropped out of the circuit about a year ago, and no one’s seen him since.”

Obviously, someone had seen him since, and it was Eduardo.

“You said he was from a pawnshop,” I said to Eduardo, who was frowning. Eduardo, Kyle, Joel, and I had left Stephan in the dressing room and went back out into the front of the club.

“I thought that’s what he said.” He sighed. “But maybe he didn’t, come to think of it. He said Trevor had pawned something, and there was a mistake. But that was all.”

“Why did he stop doing your shows?” I asked Kyle.

Kyle sighed. “He fell in with the wrong crowd. Bunch of rednecks. He said something once about a lab or something out in the desert, and it sounded like they were making drugs. And then his new friends started hanging around the club. They creeped everyone out. But I couldn’t throw them out based on that, until they started harassing some of the girls. I told Wesley if he couldn’t keep them out, he needed to find another gig. So he left. It’s too bad, because he was great for the club. He’d wear a gigantic chandelier on his head while singing ‘Diamonds Are a Girl’s Best Friend.’ Everyone loved it.”

I would’ve paid to see that.

“But you don’t know where he went after that?”

“As far as I know, nowhere. He just disappeared. His friends, too.”

“Do you remember where Wesley lived?” I asked Kyle. “I could tell the police when I give them the drawing.” This was getting a little complicated, and I wondered whether I shouldn’t just give it to Tim instead of that nameless detective, who would undoubtedly have the same number of questions as Tim, but I could handle Tim more easily. Then again, if there was bad blood between Tim and that detective, as I suspected, that might not be a good idea.

I felt like I was between that rock and a hard place everyone talks about.

“I don’t remember,” Kyle said. “And I paid him in cash whenever he did a show.”

“What about a queen-of-hearts tattoo? Did he have one? On his inner forearm?” I looked first to Eduardo.

“He wore a long-sleeved T-shirt when I saw him.”

Kyle was shaking his head. “I don’t remember a tattoo.”

More rocks. More hard places.

I folded the paper up and stuck it in my bag, taking Joel’s arm. “We’ve got to go,” I said. “Thanks,” I said to Eduardo. “I won’t tell the police about you, and hopefully the drawing will be enough.”

Kyle and Eduardo hung back as Joel and I went back out into the night for the second time.

“Will you give that to Tim?” Joel asked.

“Yeah, probably. He can pass it along to whoever.”

When we got to our cars, Joel leaned over and gave me a peck on the cheek. “You did good,” he praised, like I was a puppy, but I knew he didn’t mean it like that.