Counting Coup

The tattoo man's eyes didn't light up, exactly, but they certainly burned a little brighter under his craggy eyebrows. Matthew didn't notice, for after showing him the bicep in question his eyes crawled around the odd shop, taking in Harley parphenelia everywhere. A "Kiss me, I'm Irish" button sat atop a huge stump that looked like it was set into the floorboards.

"Want something celtic, do you?" said the skinny old coot. He scratched a stained Las Vegas t-shirt, and a flash of utterly hairless belly was revealed. All the folicles in his body seemed to focus on his eyebrows.

"Yep," Matthew said, still holding his sleeve up. The old guy smacked his arm. "Flex," he said.

Matthew flexed with an affected casualness, showing off the fruits of his furniture moving labor. He had bitched about it -- he had been told he would be strictly driving the truck in the job interview -- but at times like this he was glad for the extra workout.

The old man studied Matthew's thick tendrils of muscle, tilting his head slightly to see under his gigantic eyebrows. He nodded silently and walked away, looking behind the counter for something.

Matthew relaxed and looked around the store again. After seeing three women in three different pictures draped over three harleys he said in an informational tone, "Harley's fuckin suck, you know."

"Not everyone's got your fine taste in myth..." the old man muttered, unperturbed, leafing through pages of tattoo photos.

Matthew grimaced, annoyed by the dismissive comment. Come to think of it, why was he letting this greasy guy -- more used to Harley crap, regardless of what the sign in the window said -- inject him with ink?

"I need it to be authentic," he said insistantly.

A flicker of a smile crossed the old man's face. In response he slapped down the three-ring binder and rotated it around for the other to view.

"You'll notice they're not traditionally celtic," said the old man carefully. "They're from the time of the celts, though -- in fact, they're from an older and more powerful source."

Matthew barely heard him. His attention was on the book.

It could have all been one arm, so similar were the poses and the tattoo design. Matthew was pleased to notice that his arm was among the bigger, although not the biggest. He flipped through six, seven, eight pictures. The tattoos themselves were very similar -- obviously the old man's trademark -- a circular sun-like center, an intense black source, with winding tendrils twisting around the bumps and valleys of the arm's muscle, different for each person.

They were magnificent variations on a powerful theme, and Matthew's questions of authenticity were forgotten for a more important one.

"How much is this going to cost?" Matthew's eyes shifted slightly. He had made decent money this summer, but he still had a huge Visa bill to pay off...

"Nothing." The old man had walked over to the door, locked it, and flipped the sign to "closed."

Then he turned to the slightly stunned man. "I've got a show in Dallas at the end of the month. If you agree to let me use your photo -- a whole side profile, not just the arm -- then I'll do the work for free."

Matthew turned back to the book and considered asking how much it would cost otherwise. But who was he kidding? He didn't care about having his photo used. In fact, he kind of liked it. He hadn't looked better in his 24 years, why not share the wealth? He stifled a smirk and gave his best hesitant OK.

"All right," The old man pulled out a photocopied sheet from the back of one of the binders, gave it to him with a blunt pencil, "Read and sign it. I'll get us a beer." He walked into a back room,

There was a little kitchette there, with a fridge, a gas stove, and a tiny counter on which the old man set down two Labatts. He grabbed two glasses, calling over his shoulder, "So what're you doing this for anyway, kid?"

Matthew looked quickly towards the back room. There was no point getting into the real reason, especially when it sounded stupid even to him. "My grandfather was Irish," he called. It was true.

The old man had filled the two glasses. He pulled open a drawer and removed a plastic bag. From the bag, he worked out a single tiny leaf, holding it by its stem and through the bag. He swirled it in one of the glasses, in a pattern with figure eights and ending with a sharp triangle.

Shaking it off gently, he pulled the leaf back into the bag and placed it in the drawer. Re brought out the glasses and handed one to Matthew.

"Have a seat, kid," he said, nodding to a black barber's chair and thrusting the beer into his hand.

Kid, Matthew rankled, who's he calling kid? He swallowed half the beer before sitting down with a thump. He put his nightcrawler boots in the stirrup, one after the other, and turned his attention back to the beer. He watched the old man shuffle around, gathering his tools, occasionally shooting little glances his way.

Does he think I'm gonna take off? Matthew grumbled to himself. Not likely. He placed the empty glass on a nearby table, and as he straightened up, the white suds still clinging to the side of the glass captured his attention.

Sliding slowly, they reminded him of breakers on the ocean. They rose up and engulfed him totally, totally, totally.

###

It was the strangest missing period in Matthew's short life. He had had them before on a drunk, but never after a single beer. It was white, as well -- a whiteout rather than a blackout -- and there was another disturbing element. He couldn't shake the feeling that his mind was working to protect him by jamming the memory, that the memory would endanger his sanity.

But the old man's smirk as he came out of it, his arm numb and cold, was still enough to make him burn with shame. His snicker was more sincere than his claims that many people, especially the big guys like him, fainted when faced with the needle.

What made up for it was the tat itself. Somehow, despite his arm being slack, the same affect of the tendrils winding around his muscles had been achieved. Each time he flexed Matthew fancied he could feel it, not restraining exactly, but bolstering. It was a perfect black, and felt as natural as a birthmark, just now come to the surface. It was magnificent.

###

Matthew took off his tattered black sweater and the tattoo caught his eye. On a winter day like this one, he could forget it was there. Until bedtime. Then he would be pleased anew, by its beauty, until the memory of his cowardice swallowed him up.

He still hadn't won her.

He was stupid around her, even stupider than normal, and the tattoo had turned out not to be the easy route to her heart. Her job at the bookstore was the only access he had to her outside of the club, and now that the weather had turned bitterly cold, he couldn't figure out how to show off a tattoo only visible in his t-shirt. He walked past the store on his way home from work, catching a glimpse of her cropped black hair nodding in response to a question, the wee slip of her body curving into some incidental action.

He had half-imagined that he would walk into the store and that she would take over, admiring and questioning him. Kelly, his past girlfriend, had struck up a conversation on the basis of a plain baseball hat -- his half-understood desire was that the more complex and deep meaning of the tattoo would cause his bookstore girl to initiate a complex and deep relationship. At least something more than his brief fling with Kelly, which had ended on the basis of his starting to wear black.

He asserted his resilience by kicking off his singlehood by frequenting goth bars. Something -- what it was, he didn't know, or care to -- appealed to him. and eventually he considered himself part of the scene.

She was a part of the scene too. Her black lipstick and collar were gone during the day, her tattoos hidden as she shelved books and provided receipts, but she came, Friday after Friday, to the same club as he. That connection could only be strengthened through more similarities, he had half-reasoned, and so he had gotten the tattoo.

But now, as he lay back in bed, he wondered if he had gone too far. The black, ebony pure design, showed up against the white of his bedsheets like accusing type on a page.

As he drifted towards sleep, it seemed more than a reminder. It seemed like a pact. He made a half-resolution to do something, but it disappeared into the cracks of life.

###

The club was packed with people not wanting to touch one another. Some had carefully applied makeup; some, chains or small spikes that could easily catch on things.

In the summer months, it was a lot less tense. because the crowd would flow out onto the street. Today, though, there was only two or three tough guys out, and even they looked like they were soon to go in. One guy barked out plumes of ice smoke with his laughter.

Matthew had scored a nice spot, a little bit of ledge to lean against and watch the dancers as he pulled at his beer. The sound was loud enough to make smalltalk a chore, so he was able to ignore his buddy with impunity. Christian was an interesting guy, but his eccentricities wore on him, and he had worked all day with him already.

The raven-haired girl came in. As always, Matthew wondered whether to stare at her or affect nonchalance and did neither. She surveyed the crowd, then went over to meet a group of friends.

"Why don't you say hi to her?" Christian asked. Matthew had told him about his interest in the raven-haired girl, although not the whole story, obviously. He didn't see ever telling why he got the tattoo, except perhaps at the wedding.

"Go on, man, take your jacket off -- let her see those trees you have for arms -- and introduce yourself."

Matthew felt a pit open up in his stomach. Had it really come to this? I mean, he could do it, but he had wanted it to just happen. But it looked like he was going to have to go through with it. He put down his beer, took off his jacket, and picked up his beer again. Another season in this state of inaction was intolerable, anyway.

As he began to move through to crowds to where she stood, she was pulled by the hand onto the dancefloor by a heavily made-up girl in fishnet stockings.

Matthew re-routed to the bar, having to drink the last half of his beer much too fast. He ordered another one from an evil-looking bartender and returned to homebase.

"That was great," Christian said, "It was almost as if she sensed you were coming. Evasive action," he chirped, poking his bottle into his smirk.

The whole club was buffeted by lights that whipped around and around, the dancers moving as if on the deck of a tiny boat in a thunderstorm. The barbed wire on the wall and the high fences surrounding the dance floor made Matthew think of a white slave ship, although he had never remembered seeing any pictures of one.

I WANT TO FUCK YOU LIKE AN ANIMAL

"I never know what this means," Christian yelled. "Does it mean that he wants to fuck her as if she were an animal, or does he want to fuck her with an animalistic abandon?"

I WANT TO LICK YOU

Matthew wished Christian would shut up. He watched the raven-haired girl gyrate, her eyes closed and her head back, her black collar visible against her pale, pale skin.

I WANT TO SUCK YOU

Christian was a bit disgruntled for being ignored. "I hate this song. It's fucked up. Where's the subtlety?"

As he watched her lips part, it sounded just fine to Matthew. He trembled with the bass. Just fine.

###

"Harley's fuckin' suck, you know."

The words tumbled out of his mouth. Matthew and Christian were standing outside the club, facing a huge bear of a man. The three guys who had been there earlier had thinned out to two, and both of them stared at Matthew, wide-eyed. Christian's face had frozen into neutral.

"Oh really," the two words were like boulders, heavy and gravelly. He got up from where he was adjusting the engine and wiped his hands on his pants. He was a brutally built man, with a smashed up face and a helmet. "What would a dipshit like you know about it," punctuating the YOU with a poke in the chest.

Matthew responded to the poke as if it were an ON button, and hissed in his face: "I know your shitty mufflerless pieces of shit wake me up every fucking Friday and Saturday night, 'cause some fucking HICK like you gets a boner when he revs up his hog." He stared at the guy, who stood motionless, his expression inscrutible behind his moustache and mirror sunglasses.

"Now Nortons, there's a motorbike with some elegance. The fucking Americans couldn't built a decent machine --"

The biker, perhaps a fucking American, popped Matthew in the mouth with a heavy fist. Not expecting it, in fact practically addressing his opinions to the world at large, he reeled back against the wall of the building, holding his hand to his mouth.

When he took his hand away, it revealed a bloody grin.

Matthew pounced on the biker with a roar, saliva and blood trailing from his gaping mouth. To his credit, the big man's expression hardly flickered, but his slowness was rewarded with a clawed face, a kick in the balls and a wild punch that removed his sunglasses and his balance. He lay on the ground, looking up at Matthew with grey eyes.

Matthew was still grinning, his hands clenching, his hair waving as he bounced under the adrenalin sway. His arm was pulsing, throbbing, and he looked to make sure that he wasn't bleeding. His tattoo looked back at him.

A small crowd had gathered. "Ok, man, take it easy." It was Christian. Matthew spit blood and turned away from the biker. "He could get you on assault charges."

"Uh," the biker grunted, propping himself up on one arm. Matthew froze and then whipped around.

"When your better puts you down, fucker," he spat, "You stay down." With a vicious kick he removed the bikers only support. His head audibly hit the ground. He got one more kick in before Christian hauled him away.

They walked quickly down the sidewalk, Matthew laughing as he stumbled. A figure was waiting for the streetcar, and Christian moved Matthew away from her.

It was the raven-haired girl. Her lips were smiling.

"I like your tattoo."

###

She sat in Matthew's bed, staring out at the first rays of morning light through his tiny window. Her face was placid, but her eyes were deeply sad. They were the colour of deep forest bark with an occasional hint of light playing on them, shafts of lights through the trees.

Matthew was sprawled beside her, his hair tousled and his mouth slightly open. She looked down at him. He really looked quite angelic, the angry lines smoothed out. He wondered what he was like normally, not hopped up on adrenaline and made stupid by beer. She *presumed* it was the beer, anyhow.

Thinking about how little she knew about him made her depressed. She had done it again. She had told herself she wouldn't, but she had fallen into the old ways.

She got up, pulling the white sheet with her, prompting no response from Matthew. She stood in the small square of sunlight, letting the sun warm her goosebumpy breasts, her small twin moons. She slid her hand through her black hair and yawned. She rubbed her body one last time with the sheet and let it fall to the ground.

Her body, a lithe pixie frame, was covered with almost a dozen tattoos, each of them connected to another, if just by a thin, delicately drawn line. All of them were interwoven patches, tiny latticeworks that decorated her body with no apparent design. Matthew's tattoo looked comparatively small, although it was bigger than any of her individual patches, and they were as different as two tattoos could be. His was an unknown sea monster, or an exploding planet; hers were the roof of a shelter, or a grassweed salve for a wound.

With her foot, she separated her clothes from his and, when there were two little piles, she started to get dressed. She pulled on her velvet bodysuit and shortcoat. Her boots took a while as she cris-crossed the laces. Lastly, she picked up the leather collar, the small rings on it making small sounds.

He had told her to keep it on, when they pulled off their clothes last night. She had smiled and put it with the rest of her costume. He had asked her, then, to wear it, and she had shook her head. He pleaded then, and she had laughed in his face.

He threw her on the bed then, and tried to hurt her with his fucking. His face was a meltdown of lust and anger and anxiety. He didn't notice that his tattoo was shining darker than the darkness, so intent was he on his vicious feeding. But that was OK. She liked it when they got rough.

It made what happened later easier. Not easy, but easier. While he grunted over her, she thought of the powers she'd gain in the next ascendence. For the elders would not refuse her; not when she had stopped one of the romans before he had even achieved consciousness. She had been thinking about the joys of elemental creation when his voice broke her train of thought.

"Oh, Ellen," he had said as he came, using the name she had been using, and there was tenderness and sadness in his voice. She had to turn her head away as she reached up and separated the vertabrae between spinal cord and brain, a tiny crushing like the crushing of an insect. He collapsed on her, dead, and she had flipped him over.

She had fallen asleep for a few hours, then.

She slipped the collar around his neck. It would give the police an easy answer, if they wanted it. Then she touched his tattoo, her fingers sliding in a pattern that looked random until she ended with an inverted triangle. Then the black ink of the tattoo crawled up her fingers and slithered past the cuff of her shortcoat and out of sight. She didn't like the idea of roman fluid mixing with her blood, but it was the only way to prove that she had prevailed.

The elders were very exacting on the counting of coup.