We stopped at a gas station, bought a roll of electrical tape and climbed the stairs of the hotel, eleven flights up with a door that would lock behind us. I pushed lumps of black electrical tape into the hole for the latch bolt, and then taped over it after it was stuffed so we could get back out.
On top of the hotel, we passed the vodka around, the sky as big and wide as I’d ever seen it. I stood a couple feet from the edge of the building, looking out at the city. You could see the cemetery, which in two years would flood from violent summer storms, freeing coffins from their graves. On the corner was the red Conoco and Burger King. Next to that was the strip mall with the liquor store where the clerk got murdered when they turned off all the street lamps due to budget cuts, and the Pentecostal church squeezed between it and Mary’s Bar.
Frankie was the first to go toward the edge. There was no railing or lip. It fell like a cliff, and Frankie stood there, looking over it, the wind pushing her dark hair all around her face. She laughed unsteadily, like there was no edge at all. Patrick and Matt sat with their legs hanging off, swinging back and forth. Maya grabbed a bag of chips from her purse and joined them.
Patrick passed the bottle of Burnett’s, first to Matt, then Maya and Frankie, and then Frankie reached back to me. I drank long, letting it strip the saliva out of my throat. Instead of walking to the edge, I wormed my way over, crawling like a slug. I was too buzzed to trust my balance. Wind rushed up, flying. They all sat there looking over the void and all I could do was crawl.
IF YOU DON’T LEAVE YOUR HOMETOWN HIGH SCHOOL, YOU’LL JUST GET BAD TATTOOS AND DO LOTS OF DRUGS
THE SECOND TIME I hung out with Matt and Frankie, the conversation turned to what tattoo I wanted. Matt grabbed some tracing paper and started sketching. Frankie looked up some pictures on the Internet. I already knew I wanted foxglove flowers. Matt and Frankie got to pick where the tattoo went.
Matt got his supplies ready as Frankie set up a chair in the middle of the living room. She kneeled in front of me, unlaced my shoes, and then looked up. She pulled off each of my shoes and reached her hands up to my hips. I stared at her. Her fingers found the button of my jeans and I placed my hand on hers to stop her. She didn’t seem afraid to make the first move. I wondered why I was.
“Where?” I asked.
“I’ll show you,” she said. Matt glanced over, setting out the different colors of ink.
I nodded my head at the living room window, the light, the green grass outside. Frankie got up and turned the blinds. When the direction of the light changed, I saw how the dust lay on every surface in a way I couldn’t see before. My mother’s house was like this. She hid all the things that made it look dirty but didn’t wipe counters or sweep floors. When the light came in, you could see all the spots Frankie had missed, all her mistakes. Then it got darker and the dust disappeared.
Frankie leaned over me again, her hair trailing down like a hand to my throat. She traced her finger along the zipper seam of my jeans. I thought about Jenny and wondered which tattoo Matt had given her, whether it had happened the same way. Frankie picked her finger up to unbutton my jeans, but before she did I moved my hands and unzipped them for her, pulling them off halfway and revealing my black lace underwear. I’d picked that pair intentionally. She laughed, either at my actions or taste in lingerie, and said to Matt, “You should do her inner thigh.” Salt from the table had somehow made its way onto the chair, the grit sticking to the bare skin on the backs of my thighs.
Matt kneeled in between my legs. I’d never had a one-night stand or slept with a stranger, much less two. Most people I’d slept with were in my proximity, like my manager at work, which felt safe because I knew him, but also because of the lack of emotional content. That was how I liked sex to be. Frankie stared from the couch. The plastic latex of Matt’s gloves crackled as he put the tattoo gun together and opened a fresh package of needles.
The new needles were a relief. Matt was a stranger to me; I was letting someone I did not know stick needles into my body. I imagined blood particles inside of old needles, dirty needles in dirty skin, needles in other girls or in old men who rode motorcycles who fucked girls like me who got tattoos in someone’s apartment. Needles being handled by a man who says “trust me” and so you do.
Matt’s foot depressed the pedal on the floor. There was a sudden, familiar sound, an angry rumble. He placed his cold hands on the inside of my knees and pushed my legs outward, parting my thighs. He watched me as I did this and I stared at his third-eye spot.
“Close your eyes,” he said.
I closed my eyes.
I liked doing what he told me to do. The pressure of his hands
