The First and The Last

week 4: featuring teddy bears, limes, and tattoos

"Do you have limes?"

"I'm sorry?"

"Limes--do you have them?"

"At the bar, yes."

"Could you bring a small dish of them?  It helps with the digestion."

She goes to get the limes.  His request is bizarre, but she does her best to be gracious.  Who is she to  judge?

"I hope the menu doesn't turn your stomach against you--or us, for that matter.  Is there anything else I can do?"

"Oh, I'm sure this is more a trick of my own than the next infomercial get-thin-quick nutritional supplement," he says with an easy smile.  "Everything looks delicious.  Any recommendations?"

"For what goes well with a side dish of limes?" she asks.  

Easy teasing, easy laughter.  Everything about this encounter is strange but refreshing.  It's like it wasn't even work. 

“The citrus chicken salad is a great option, if you’re looking for something light,” she says.  “You can always go for an order of rolls if you need a little extra oomf.”

“Oomf--that must be some dense bread!”

“Well, the croissants are light and flaky,” she says with a shrug.  “The dinner rolls, though? I could eat five of those and be full for a week.”

He smiles--grins, really.  Maybe the bread will help the burn, when the citrus comes back up.  Or maybe it won’t hurt at all. 

“I’ll try the salad,” he says.  “And a croissant.”

She brings them to him, along with a dinner roll.  Just because.  He seems like a nice guy--not the nice guys who thought being a decent human being should earn them something, but the type of nice guy who just wanted good things for everybody.  He leaves her a generous tip, and she likes to think it’s because he’s just that kind of person.  The kind that tips well, regardless of if he gets extra free bread or not. 

 

He usually didn’t order salads at restaurants.  The lettuce was always soggy, the tomatoes were soft, and the dressing didn’t taste so great the first time, let alone the fourth or fifth.  But she had been funny, so he took her up on the suggestion.  Sometimes people gave him weird looks, when he asked for limes.  It was a weird thing to ask for.  His life was full of weird things, but he’d gotten used to it. 

“Are you ready?”

He looks up.  His mother has her hands on her hips.  The head of a stuffed teddy bear peeks out the top of her purse. 

He wants to say he isn’t nervous, but he would be lying and she would know. 

“It’s going to be okay.”

She says it because he wants to say he’s not nervous, and she doesn’t want him to feel like he has to lie.  He nods, because he hopes she’s right.  His hands are wrapped around each other between his knees, a shaking ball of nerves.  He looks down at his hands, and then back up at her, but doesn’t stand. 

“Will it take long?”

“We made an appointment, so we won’t have to deal with a wait time, remember?  Come on, we’re going to be late.”

He bites his lip, fidgets a moment more, and then gets up off the couch.  She puts an arm around his shoulders and gives him a squeeze--still easy for her to do since he hasn’t grown past five foot three--and ushers him out the door.  His mother towers over him in black studded wedges, transforming her from a five-eleven powerhouse to a six-three spire.  

When he first learned that lightning was attracted to height, he often feared she would be struck.  Now he knows better.  His mother commanded lightning, more often than not, and that was when he’d begun to fear for himself. 

“Do you have the limes?” he asks.

He thinks he can hear the screams from the parking lot, but maybe that’s just his imagination.  Somehow all the sounds he can come up with are more fitted to a dentist’s office than a tattoo parlor: the whine of a drill, the spit-suction tubes, the scalpel-sharp thing they use to dig gunk from between your teeth.  His mother pulls into a spot and turns off the engine.  The warning beep sends a jolt of fear through his gut.

“Ah, s**t,” his mother mutters, shoving the gear shift in to park.  “I always forget that part.  But no, I didn’t forget the limes.”

He nods, too busy trying to keep his breath steady to speak out loud.  The inside of the tattoo parlor reminds him of an art gallery in space.  Along the black walls are photographs of impressive body art, full of colors that seemed to scream through the lobby’s dim shadows and dazzle the eyes with their colors.  Other frames and canvasses showcase original artwork, either by employees or patrons.  He wonders if the weightless feeling had more to do with his nerves or the dark, and he reminds himself to breathe.  

His mother’s voice, stiletto sharp, calls him to attention.  He looks over his shoulder to see her waving him onward.  The receptionist is holding open a curtain, one he’s evidently supposed to pass through.  He looks between the receptionist--who looks more like a night club body guard--and his mother.  Admittedly, his mother would kick this giant’s a*s if her son was harmed in any way other than by her son’s own stupidity.  But he’s still nervous. 

“Here,” she says, handing him two limes and the stuffed bear.  “You’re going to be just fine.”

He nods again, still hoping she is right, and then follows the receptionist-bodyguard behind the curtain.

 

“Your mom let you get a tattoo?!”

She had brought the limes without him asking, along with a plate of dinner rolls for them to share.  He’d shown up just as she was about to take her lunch break, and although he’d in no way expected that she would ask him to keep her company, he was delighted to do so.  The blush spreading across the bridge of his nose wasn’t so welcomed, but he stammered through his embarrassment all the same.

“Well, it’s a little more complicated than that…”

“What"did you say you were going to spend the weekend with a friend and then sneak out behind her back?”

“Are you kissing me?  I wouldn’t dare!” he said.  “I kind of didn’t have a choice in the matter, though.”

“So what’d you say?” she asked, her grin sly.  “You were held at gunpoint and forced to get a tattoo of the ace of spades?”

“What?  Where did that come from?”

“You said you didn’t have a choice in the matter, and as far as my parents are concerned, they say you always have a choice.”  She shrugged.  “Most parents are like that, it seems, so I came up with the most intense situation I could, on the spot.  Give me more time and maybe I could do some justice.”

The laughter came easy, lightening the grease-heavy air.  She grinned at him, and he was certain that he’d found a best friend.  Or at least, he hoped so.  He shook his head and sipped from his milkshake--chocolate peanut butter, with fudge on top. 

“The ace of spades is an oddly specific card to choose,” he said.  “Why that one?”

“You’re avoiding the question,” she said, rolling her eyes.  “You still haven’t explained why you were forced to get a tattoo.”

“It’s...a thing, in my family.”

“A thing?”

“Yeah, a thing,” he shrugged.

“What type of thing?” she asked.  “A normal but hard to explain thing?  A secret government agency conspiracy type thing?  A weird but cool type of thing?”

“Maybe the first and last one.”

“Like the limes?”

“Yeah…like the limes,” he said, unable to help from smiling.  “I actually squeezed a lime in both hands while they did it.”

“Did it hurt?”

“Squeezing the limes?  Not at all.  The tattoo?”  He shrugged.  “Not as much as I expected it to.  Mostly I was nervous about""

“How it’s a thing?”

He nodded.  He liked her.  She was curious, smart, but she wasn’t nosy.  She was kind. 

“You know, when I first got a tattoo--or tried to get one--I gave the artist a black eye.”

“You did what?!”

“He didn’t tell me that the alcohol swab thing would be cold!”

“So you gave him a black eye?”

“I’m easily startled, sometimes.”

She shrugged--honest.  Unapologetic. 

“I held on to a teddy bear the whole time,” he said, smiling.  “And my mom gave me a hug afterwards, and said she was proud of me.”

“Because it’s a big thing, isn’t it?” she asked, tilting her head.  

His brow wrinkled.  He wasn’t sure how she seemed to get everything, but she did.  He nodded and then looked out the window, sipping at the last of his milkshake.  She finished her vanilla coke, and a belch escaped her.  She sighed, content. 

“You’re fun,” she said.  “I like you.”

“I think you’re pretty cool too.”

“Not just because I tried to get a tattoo and gave someone a black eye?”

“You come up with some pretty cool stories, off the top of your head,” he said, smiling. 

“It’s a thing,” she said, shrugging.

“A normal but hard to explain thing?  A secret government agency conspiracy type thing?  A weird but cool type of thing?”

“The first and the last,” she said, grinning.  “Maybe we have the second one in common.”

“Two out of three isn’t bad,” he said, shrugging.  “Enough to be friends?”

Something about the look on her face--surprised, but also something else.  He almost reached for her hand and squeezed it, but instead he settled for lifting his hand and giving her a little wave.  Not in the rude way, when people were trying to see if you were paying attention, but in a casual hello type of way.  At least, he hoped that’s how she took it.  Her smile was slow, easy.  Full of promises she’d die to keep.  Free of the secrets that haunted her sleep.

“Absolutely.”

Author's Note

feedback is greatly appreciated, as always! I played around with the verb tense in this one. still a very rough draft, but the story is up!

Reviews

[roarke]

my kind of atonal narrative. I like the eclectic story line, one thing though, I didn't quite catch the relationship between the opening scene and the conversation after the mother memory. It might be reader error though. Deep thoughts, memories and how they travel through consciousness are difficult to write in the manner they manifest themselves. But this was a great example, kept me reading because the quirky subject matter kept changing just right. Nice work.