Nicholson Baker - House of Holes

He froze. “You do?”

“Yes. Is that a problem?”

“No, of course not,” he said. But he was clearly lying. She could hear the unhappiness in his voice, and she could see it in his face.

“You’re disappointed,” she said. “Admit it.”

“It’s just that — I haven’t yet fully come to an understanding with tattoos. They tug at my eye, and I have to resist them. They distract me from the line.”

“Well, I have a bunch, in various places,” said Jessica. “Sometimes now I kind of wish I didn’t, but I do.”

“Do you really want them gone?” Bosco asked eagerly. “I know a way. You go to this tattoo-remover man, Hax. He has a suite at the House of Holes. He removes them completely, no ghostly traces.”

“He must charge a lot of money.”

“It won’t cost you a thing.”

He handed Jessica a card with a hole punched in it. “Tell Lila that you want to see Hax.”

The address was way out along the shore. Jessica drove there, and then she saw an exit she’d never seen before, Exit 23-O, that went into a tunnel. When she came out the landscape had changed slightly. Everything had a brighter look. There was a house with several side buildings and wings and a gravel road in front of it in a horseshoe shape. She rang the doorbell.

Zilka led her to an office and introduced her to Lila.

“I wish my tattoos were gone,” Jessica said.

“Why?” Lila asked.

“They’re not right for me now. I’m done with them. I hate them.”

“There is a way,” said Lila. “But it involves sex.”

“It always involves sex,” said Zilka.

“I knew it would, somehow,” said Jessica. “I suppose if that’s what it involves, that’s what it involves.”

Lila picked up the phone. “Krock? Where’s Hax? Can you ask him to come to my office?”

Hax looked a little like Bobby McFerrin, Jessica thought. He was tall and wore a white shirt. His shoulders weren’t enormously muscular, but wiry and graceful. There was something infinitely appealing about his shoulders.

“Show me the tattoos you do not want,” Hax said.

“Well, there are four.”

“I can remove them.”

He stood and held out his hand. “Come.” He took her to a massage room. “Undress.”

“All the way?”

“No, unless you have a tattoo under where your panties are.”

“I do.”

“Then take them off. Just common sense. I have to be able to see and touch your tattoos. Let me show you my body.” He pulled up his T-shirt. His coffee-colored chest had a bizarre overlay of blue and green patterns. “All these designs were tattooed onto women at one time. I lifted them, and now they’re on me. Such a sad thing that women tattoo themselves. It is a way of hiding.”

“You think?” said Jessica. “In my case I did the one on my back, and then I liked it, and it was like building a collection of something.”

“Yes. But it is collecting something that hides you. It is a way of not being naked while being naked. My job is to return you to your nakedness. Turn over and let me please see your pussy for a moment, if I may?”

She turned.

“Why do you have no hair on your pussy?”

“I don’t know,” she said. “I just don’t. It’s the fashion.”

“That, too, is a way of hiding. No hair means you are dressed in hairlessness. You are finding a way to be clothed when you aren’t clothed. Hair is your true nakedness. Do you want your true nakedness back?”

Jessica nodded. “Can you do that?”

He held out his hands. “These hands can do it. If we are lucky. You must make me feel your nakedness. If I feel it then your hair will grow and your tattoos will lift and come onto me. Try.”

He put his hands gently on her hips and looked at her face. “Feel naked now.” He circled his hands over her hipbones and then pressed his thumbs gently into her stomach. “Breath in and feel naked,” he said. As he pressed she saw his chest muscles jump. “I will do this one first,” he said.

He put both his hands over the flower on her breast. His touch was very light at first. “Feel,” he said. She began to feel an urgency coming from his hands. Her breast was glued to them. “You see how we are bonding.” Suddenly he flinched. “Oh,” he said, “here comes the pain of it.”

“The pain of the tattoo?”

“Yes, all of it is going in my arm at once.”

“I’m sorry.”

“It’s okay, it’s what happens. It’s lifting now. Wait, watch. Look in the air above your booby.”

He removed his hands and lifted them. Following his fingers was a faint flower shape in blue and green ink, with a red blossom. He scooped it out of the air carefully. “Where shall I wear this flower?” he said.

She found a place on him that was still mostly free of other tattoos. It was on his rib cage just under his left pectoral.

“Touch it,” he said.

She touched it. His skin was hot and very dry.

“Kiss it,” he said.

She kissed the skin. He smelled smoky. He closed his eyes then and held the captured tattoo to his skin. “Ouch,” he said. He drew his hand away. “Now it is on me, and your breast is naked. Look.”

She looked, and her breast was entirely free. There was no ghost of the tattoo, no hint except the faintest tiny outline of what had been there. She sighed and laughed a laugh of relief. “I feel free,” she said.

“Good,” he said.

“Now my back? My back is the one I really don’t want anymore. I hate it. Everybody has a butterfly.”

“Stand and turn and I will see,” he said.

She turned and he sighed with pleasure, lightly touching the base of her spine. His fingertips had a strange focused intensity. “Ah, no. This is not merely a tramp stamp. This one was done by a hostile tattooer of great skill. He put a potent fingerblock on it. This will be most difficult. I think we must help you grow back your pussy hair first. You can’t release such a tattoo with a bald cameltoe, it won’t work.”

“But that will take a week at least.”

“No, I can help. It will mean my kissing your pussybone and then cupping my hands over it and blowing softly on it.”

“Okay.”

“You must close your eyes and ask to be naked and hairy again.”

“Help me be naked and hairy, Hax.”

“I can’t hear you.”

“Help me be naked and hairy, Hax!”

Gently he directed her to sit on the edge of the table. He knelt between her legs and brushed his fingers in peacock-feather motions over her stomach. He looked up at her. “I will kiss your pussybone now, very lightly.”

“Okay.”

She felt the kiss as a burning ring that made all of her discouraged and thwarted hair follicles scream and come alive. And then quickly he stood and cupped his large hands over her entire sex place, one hand over the other. He pushed hard against her several times. “Open your legs a bit more,” he said. “Good. Now we wait. It will be very warm, almost hot.”

All around her pussy the follicles were quivering and trembling and sending up shoots of hair. She looked down and watched her brown bush fill his hand. He pressed her and shook his hand, saying, “That’s it. There it goes. Do you feel the tingling?”

“Sorry, I’m getting a little drippy,” she said.

“Good, you’re feeling naked again.” He began swaying and moving his hands over her bush. “Now hold your arms up, and I will give you lots and lots of luscious hair under your arms, too.”

“God, no!”

“Are you quite sure?”

“Very sure. No, thank you.”

“Okay. But let’s see.” He removed his hands. “Spread your pussy for me?”

She reached down and felt the thicket of her hair, the feeling that she remembered from when she first became a sexual person. She spread her lips and then scissored her fingers closed around her clit. “Ooooh,” she said.