Geoff Nicholson - The City Under the Skin

All five boys straightened up, seemed to unfold simultaneously. They didn’t say anything, either to him or to one another, but something in them changed, so that they now looked regal and infinitely dangerous, and he could tell they had plans to do something terrible to him. One of them showed him a brief glimpse of a knife blade. He made an immediate break for it. He started to run more determinedly than he’d ever run before. Why was he so scared? Was it because they were black? Maybe. Certainly it was because they were so alien. He didn’t know what rules they’d play by if — when — they caught him.

They ran beautifully: even in his panic, looking back over his shoulder, he could see that. He felt himself to be a tangle of arms, legs, and lungs working at odds, but these guys were fluid, effortless, their spindly legs scarcely touching the ground. He didn’t think they were even trying very hard; they were just toying with him. They could have pounced whenever they wanted to, but they didn’t want to, not yet: for now they were just wearing him out, exhausting him for the fun of it. He kept going as long as he could. It wasn’t a bad effort, but he knew he was running out of juice. Sooner or later, one way or another, the chase would come to a certain end.

He needed to get off the street, find some protected space, a shop, a café, maybe even a bank, somewhere they wouldn’t follow and where they wouldn’t dare attack him even if they did. His eyes were watering with the cold and the exertion, and the street around him looked blurred and grubby, but if there was going to be salvation, it would have to be here. There was a row of small shops: a liquor store, a head shop, a place that sold old-fashioned stationery. He didn’t like the look of any of them, and careened past, and then he’d run out of all options but one. There was only one door, one store left. He had to go for it, whatever it was.

He dashed up to the glass front door, didn’t even look inside, opened it just enough to slide through, then slammed it shut behind him and leaned up against it, gulping for air. His mind was empty and he didn’t know what he’d walked into. He blinked about him. It was very bright and still in there, and his first thought was he might have come into a dentist’s office. There was a noise coming from the back of the room that sounded like a dentist’s drill, and there was definitely somebody laid out back there, a woman who seemed to be suffering.

However, the person doing the drilling didn’t look at all like a dentist. It was a woman with long black hair and tight jeans and bare arms, one of which had a sleeve of tattoos. She stopped what she was doing, looked up casually, and said, “What’s the matter, kid? Hellhound on your trail?” and that didn’t sound like the kind of thing a dentist would say. Then he noticed there were pictures all around the walls, bright colors and clear lines: skulls, hula girls, dice, hot rods, devils. He was in a tattooist’s studio.

“No,” he said seriously, between breaths, “not hellhounds,” and he looked out through the window and saw that the five tall, thin black kids had regrouped on the other side of the street and were now waiting, pacing up and down, displaying a chilly patience.

“Are those guys giving you trouble?” the tattooist said.

He wasn’t a squealer, but in this case he didn’t need to be. It was obvious what was going on. The tattooist said to the woman on the table, “Hold on there, babe,” rummaged in a metal cabinet, and produced — he could hardly believe it — a crossbow. It appeared ultramodern, with a frame of brushed metal, a telescopic sight, and a rifle stock. It was a terrifying thing even to look at: he liked that.

The tattooist went to the door, opened it, cocked the crossbow, inserted a stubby arrow, and fired it across the street. She didn’t seem to be aiming at anything in particular, and yet the arrow sliced a harsh, flat trajectory through the air, missing two of the boys by fractions of an inch, and lodging neatly, perfectly, in a telephone pole, making a sound like a bass string being thwacked. Alarmed and furious, the boys shouted something in an unrecognizable tongue and then sloped off, their composure and dignity re-forming around them as they went.

The tattooist shouted after them, “Fuck off, you little racists.”

Back in the tattoo studio, the kid was very, very impressed, and just a little confused. He’d needed help, and a woman had come to his aid. That was very weird. And why did it feel so good?

“Come on, kid. Come over here and watch an artist at work.”

Rose returned to her customer, to her tattooing. The woman on the table was lying prone with her arms bare and raised high above her head. There was a length of yellow silk draped across her breasts, though she didn’t seem much concerned with modesty. Her eyes were open, but they weren’t looking at anything. She was moaning quietly to herself, but the kid couldn’t tell if it was pain or something else.

“Is she all right?” he asked.

“Yeah. She’s fine,” said Rose. “She’s full of endorphins.”

“What’s that?”

“Chemicals. When you’re in a lot of pain, the body releases these things called endorphins. They make the pain feel good after a while. Got that?”

“I think so,” he said, though he wasn’t sure he had.

“This young lady is in the middle of an endorphin rush,” said Rose. “That’s because I’m tattooing her armpits. That hurts like fuck, doesn’t it, babe?”

“Oh yes,” said the woman on the table. “Oh yes.”

The kid peered into her left armpit, then the right. In the left, the tattoo was already complete, while the right was still a work in progress. When finished, the tattoos would be identical whirlpools of blue and purple foam, something both gothic and American Indian about them. They weren’t the woman’s only tattoos: she had swallows, poppies, butterflies, jungle creepers twining their way up her arms, a winged heart peeping out above the yellow silk, but the kid found himself transfixed by the armpit tattoos, the sheer weirdness of them. Why would she choose so much pain for a tattoo that so few would ever see?

“So come on,” said Rose, “what’s your story?”

While she continued with her work, the kid told her why he was there, about the “game” his mother made him play. Rose listened, and asked one or two questions, because at first she thought he might just be making it up, but the more it went on, the more sure she was that he was telling the truth.

“And your mother is doing this why?” she said.

“To make a man of me.”

“You poor little devil,” said Rose.

The tattooing went on for a long time, and although the kid could see it was a delicate, painstaking process, after a while the work itself wasn’t so fascinating to watch. The woman’s face, however, that was something else, something special. Within a frame of thick, tangled blond hair, her features were mobile and alive, alternating between certain pain and uncertain pleasure: lip-biting, tears in the eyes, a trembling mouth that was close to laughter but not close enough.

He stayed till the very end of the process, until Rose had finished and the woman was thoroughly inked and wiped down. She sat up and held a mirror to her armpits. He couldn’t tell if the tattooing was any good or not, but maybe that didn’t even matter. He was far more intrigued by how pleased the woman was, how happy Rose was with her own handiwork, how much it meant to them both.

“Can I have one?” he asked.

“What? A tattoo?” said Rose.

“Yeah.”

“No, you can’t.”

“Why not?”

“Because I don’t want to go to jail. Tattooing kids is still illegal in this city.”