Andy Prescott always had a thing for redheads.
He was staring at one now. She had long legs and a sensuous smile. Her lips were red and her skirt was short. Her red hair was a wig, but she was still incredibly sexy. For a mannequin.
'Need a date for the prom, Andy?'
Andy hadn't noticed Reggie standing there. They were at the display window out front of Lucy in Disguise with Diamonds. Reggie chuckled and entered the store. He was a real funny guy for a white dude wearing black eyeliner and dreadlocks.
Andy had arrived back in SoCo on the little Huffy, checked for Max at Guero's only to learn that Oscar had sent him down to Ramon's, and found Floyd T. pushing his grocery cart from dumpster to dumpster searching for treasures in other people's trash. His responsibilities satisfied, he had then begun his quest for the perfect birthday present for his mother.
He had first tried Tesoro's Trading Company and then Maya Star and was walking the bike past Lucy in Disguise with Diamonds when the mannequin had caught his eye. He took one last look at her then continued down the sidewalk to Yard Dog. And there in the front window he spotted the perfect present for Jean Prescott: a white owl hand-carved from a small log. Yard art for her native Texas garden. She'd love it. He checked the price tag: $1,000.
He sighed and shook his head. He couldn't even afford a nice birthday present for his mother. Natalie was right: he needed ambition.
Andy walked down the street to Uncommon Objects. He searched the booths for a secondhand gift he could afford but found nothing special except an armadillo purse for $125-a real armadillo made into a purse. It was cool but creepy. Jean Prescott was a different sort of woman all right, but maybe not that different.
He gave up and went into the tattoo parlor to collect Max and his mail. His email. He couldn't afford a computer or Internet service either, so Ramon let Andy use his computer and maintain an email address on his Yahoo account.
The parlor reeked of antiseptic. Fortunately for his clients-hepatitis C was a constant concern in a tattoo shop-Ramon Cabrera was a clean freak; he wiped the entire place down a dozen times a day. It was as clean as a hospital and had the same look: bottles of alcohol and green germicidal soap, sterile gloves and gauze, the autoclave, a hazardous waste disposal box for used needles, vials of colored ink… well, maybe not the ink.
Andy walked around the front counter and found Max snoozing in the corner so he headed over to Ramon's computer on the back desk-but he stopped dead in his tracks. Lying face down on Ramon's padded table was a blonde girl clothed only in a black T-shirt and thong; her shorts lay on a chair. Her bare bottom was smooth, round, and glowing in the light of the bright fluorescent bulbs overhead. No doubt she was a UT coed getting a tattoo to assert her independence from her parents-at least until she needed more money.
'Tickets on the counter,' Ramon said without looking up.
Ramon was sitting next to the girl and leaning over and peering through his little reading glasses only a few inches away from her smooth skin. Jesus. First Britney at traffic court, then Suzie at Whole Foods, and now a bare butt at Ramon's. The pressure of daily life in Austin was almost unbearable.
Andy grabbed the two tickets, each with a $100 bill attached-the day just kept getting better-then stepped over for a closer look, careful not to breach Ramon's sterile field. Ramon wore a white muscle T-shirt and white latex gloves; he was inking in a 'Yellow Rose of Texas' tattoo on her left buttock, one of a matched set. The buttock, not the tattoo.
'Not polite to stare, dude,' Ramon said.
But he smiled when he said it. Ramon Cabrera was only six years older than Andy, but the hard life he had lived and the tattoos on his body had aged him. Ramon had practiced what he preached: his entire upper body was a mobile mural commemorating Austin and Mexico, Latino culture and the Catholic religion, the Aztec sun god and the Tejano goddess Serena. It was beautiful and weird at the same time.
Ramon Cabrera was an artist with a tattoo needle.
The thing sounded like a dentist's drill, which made Andy's skin crawl. With his left hand Ramon stretched the skin on the girl's bottom tight and with his right hand he moved the needle from spot to spot on the stenciled outline of the yellow rose in rhythm with the Latino music playing in the background. The tattoo machine drove the needle into her skin-actually through the epidermis and into the dermis, the second layer of skin-puncturing her bottom hundreds of times per minute and depositing a drop of insoluble ink upon each insertion.
It hurt like hell.
But the girl had iPod buds stuck in her ears and her eyes closed, oblivious to the pain and the world around her… including Andy admiring her butt. After a long, wonderful moment, he broke eye contact and sat in front of Ramon's computer. He logged onto his email account and checked his messages. He shook his head.
'All I get is spam promising to make my penis longer.'
'Don't waste your money,' Ramon said. 'None of that stuff works.'
Andy logged onto the Chronicle 's website and clicked 'Classifieds' then 'Personals' and then 'Lovers Lane.' He checked for responses to his ad. There were none. So he looked for new ads from 'women seeking men.' All were from women over forty hoping to find their Prince Charming (since the first two hadn't worked out) and live happily ever after. He wondered if it ever really worked. His mother said she had fallen in love with his father when she was a grad student at UT and saw him on stage at the Broken Spoke. It was love at first sight. They had married three months later and were still married thirty-five years later. Those kind of relationships weren't found in the personal ads. But Andy still looked.
'Man, you ain't gonna find a woman in those ads,' Ramon said. 'You gotta find a woman the old-fashioned way-in a bar.'
'Like that worked for you.'
Ramon had met his wife in a bar two years ago. She left him a year later for another man she had met in a bar. Which reminded Andy: he had promised Tres the phone number of a private investigator.
'Ramon, who's that PI you hired to tail your wife?'
'My ex — wife.'
'She was your wife when you hired the PI.'
'She was a cheating, no-good, two-peso…'
Andy was never sure what bothered Ramon more, that she was cheating on him with another man or that she was cheating on him with another tattoo artist. She had allowed her lover/artist to finish the mural that Ramon had begun on her body. Once he got started, Ramon could go on about his ex-wife like Andy's mother could about football.
'The PI's name?'
'Lorenzo Escobar, down Congress a few blocks.'
Andy logged off, took one final glance at the coed's bottom, and headed to the door.
'Wake up, Max.'
But he stopped short when Ramon said, 'Oh, dude was here looking for you. In a limo.'
Andy turned back.
'A limo? Down here? Looking for me? '
'What'd I say?'
'Who?'
'White dude. In a suit. Checked out my flash'-his standard tattoo designs displayed on a flip rack like art stores used for prints-'asked did I know where you were at. I said, 'I look like a secretary?' '
'These tickets his?'
'Didn't leave a ticket.'
'Who was he?'
Ramon wiped blood from the girl's butt then pointed the needle end of the tattoo machine at a newspaper on the counter.
'Him.'
Andy picked up the paper. On the front page was a photograph of three middle-aged white men wearing suits and a younger white woman: the mayor of Austin, the governor of Texas, a famous billionaire, and his beautiful blonde wife, all faces well known in Austin.
