by Olivia Grace
To look the part of a stationery store girl I wore a sweater over a collared shirt with a gold heart pendant emerging from the collar. I had bangs in my sandy blond hair and an open, if forgettable face. Overall, it was an image of absolute neutrality. This made people feel comfortable.
Many customers did not even see me when they walked into the store. They simply began touching every item on every shelf. I never blamed anyone for this. It’s exactly what I would do if I walked into an airy, beautifully-curated shop full of expertly-arranged paper, pens, notebooks, and sketch pads. I would even press my nose to the glass case housing the luxurious three-hundred dollar Montblanc fountain pens. I let all the customers browse unbothered, and when they left, most of them ultimately purchasing nothing, I rearranged everything fastidiously, so it would be perfect for the next customers. There was simply nothing else for me to do. The owner of the shop did the ordering, the inventory, the paperwork, the creative design. They even picked the music, a three-hour playlist of ambient songs that played twice each day. I had listened to it so many times I was now gaining the ability to discern each individual track, sounds that to an untrained ear would be completely, utterly indistinguishable from one another. Most of the time I sat behind the counter, listening to the customers’ banal conversations. Sometimes they would notice me with the smallest fright: oh! And settle down, realizing I was completely inoffensive in any way.
Sometimes I brought in a book to read behind the counter. Sometimes, I allowed myself to fantasize about various situations that could occur in the shop. For example, what would I do if I caught someone stealing? Store policy was to let the offender go unapprehended so as to avoid any potential violent confrontations; in my fantasy, I place a hand on the thief’s shoulder, and they startle, having been unaware of my approach from behind. Seeing the absolute steel in my gaze, the firm set of my mouth, they remove the notebook from where it’s been tucked inside their jacket and hand it to me, wordless. I let them go. Once outside, they turn around and we lock eyes through the window. I shake my head the tiniest amount. They shiver.
I had used my employee discount to buy a notebook. It was beautiful, lilac colored, the label in Japanese, the pages soft, smooth. I was afraid to write anything in it because it was too beautiful. I finally worked up the courage to write a list after practicing it many times on a separate piece of paper with a nice felt-tip pen.
Dishes
Water plants
Lymphatic massage?
Call Mother
Research parasite cleanse
Parasite cleanse? Someone said.
I jumped, having forgotten where I was. Manuel was leaning onto the checkout counter, reading my list.
Yes, I said. We all have worms inside of us. In our intestines.
Says who? he said, smiling.
You should look it up, I said.
Our conversations always went like this. I said something just off enough to be discomforting, Manuel tried to smooth things over, and I could not recover my composure in any articulate manner. I was especially embarrassed considering my new habit of falling asleep each night only after masturbating to the thought of Manuel fucking a person of indiscriminate sex. He came into the shop almost every day, wanting nothing, just bored of working at the low-traffic vintage shop a block down the street.
Maybe I will, he said. Although, maybe I’d just rather not know.
I smiled weakly, unsure how to reply. He continued talking, though I was too distracted by the workings of his mouth to follow what he was saying. The lips rosy, just bitten, with a small mole on the cupid’s bow. He held out an arm to show me his new tattoo; it was a gently-slanted M in red ink over the veins of his wrist.
For Mariela, he said. My mother.
She died? I said.
No, he paused, then laughed.
Oh, I said.
Everyday I walked to and from work imagining my own death by cancer. Somehow I knew that I would die this way. I imagined my muscles atrophying to my brittle bones, the hollows of my cheeks growing deeper, bruised. My family would huddle around me, no longer disappointed in me, only terrified of what it would mean when I was gone. I fought off nausea as I walked, pressing the scenes further; I envisioned the speeches people would make at my funeral, expressing admiration for a certain unknowability I always possessed, a deep mystery which had secretly intrigued friends and lovers. And how beautiful were the parts I did reveal? Glimpses into a rich inner world.
Anyway, Manuel said. Here.
He took my wrist in his hand and pushed up the sleeve of my sweater. Using the black felt-tip I’d left on the counter, he carefully drew a gently slanted M on the inside of my wrist. Realizing my posture was that of a gargoyle, I sat up straight, my face inflamed.
Now you have an M, he said.
For what? I said.
Manuel! he laughed.
Oh, I said. I desperately wanted to shrink down to the size of a marble. And slip into his shirt pocket with the American Spirits. And listen to the regular, healthy, life-affirming sound of his beating heart.
I wasn’t always like this. I had friends that I liked. I had normal relationships with coworkers, neighbors, and acquaintances. It was his unflappability that sent things sideways. His utter normalcy that both terrified and exhilarated me.
Alright, he said. See you.
Thanks, I said. For the tattoo.
He turned back and smiled, then walked out the door.
At the end of the day I closed everything down, locked up, and walked home. I pressed my thumb over the fake tattoo rhythmically. My need to envision Manuel in bizarre sexual situations was embarrassing and yet compulsive. I wondered what his actual sex life was like; he probably fucked very conventionally beautiful women whose legs were coated in a layer of downy fine blonde fur that added a certain gamine charm to their otherwise unshakable femininity. I thought of his long fingers encircling my wrist.
To avoid any risk of seeming too interested, I decided to wash the M off. I tried regular bar soap first, but the M didn’t budge. Dish soap was no help and neither was makeup remover. I scrubbed relentlessly, with a cloth, and a sponge, and my nails. I tried baking soda, rubbing alcohol, and vinegar. The M in Manuel’s hand remained there as bold as ever in black ink. M. The skin around it was raw.
I wore long sleeves the next day to cover it. Yet the M had a kind of pulse, an invisible vibration. I started to think of it fondly. Manuel did not come in, though I saw him pass by the front door with a girl at lunchtime, laughing, probably walking to the taco truck. I picked up the felt-tip and considered my options.
The night before I’d had a dream that all my teeth fell out and I kept them in a bowl on my entryway table like some deranged potpourri. So I decided to draw a tooth next to the M. Just to see. Then I added some Anne Sexton lines up and down my arm: I have no arms or legs. I’m all one skin like a fish.
I had never gotten any real tattoos because my mother found them demonic. When I was 10 or 11, I had taken a sewing needle and shoved it through the taut flap of skin above my belly button; I quickly placed a stud earring through the hole and pulled my shirt down over the burning wound. The shriek my mother let out when she saw the festering, infected piercing a few weeks later continued to reverberate in my consciousness year after year.
I spent the last hour of the day meticulously polishing the Montblanc case. I thought about putting the tip of my tongue very gently to the mole on Manuel’s cupid’s bow. I thought about the tension between those things I did so scrupulously and the things I did recklessly, immediately, thoughtlessly. I thought about my tattoos.
When I got home, I tore my shirt off and scrubbed at my arm. The ink there remained unyielding. I tried all my previous methods; I also scrubbed with an exfoliating cloth from the Korean spa. I looked it up: remove pen ink from skin. Soap and water should do, and if not, an oil-based cleanser. I had tried it all. I lay in bed naked stroking my tattoos, rubbed raw.
Tomorrow I will be discerning, I thought.
So I drew an orange, and a deck of cards, and a line from the top of my shoulder that wound around the arm, across my palm, to the tip of my left middle finger. When the shop was empty of customers, I lifted up my shirt and drew feathers bursting from my rib cage.
I got a text from the owner of the shop: What are you doing???
I’d forgotten about the cameras. Tattoos, I replied.
You’ll have to buy that pen.
Manuel came in with a giant jug of horchata from the taco truck. Here, he said. He brandished it to me. I drank the sugary water, delighted.
He noticed the line on the palm of my hand that ended at the tip of my middle finger. What’s that?
It’s something I’m testing out, I said.
What do you mean? he said.
I don’t know, I said.
Did you draw it? he asked.
Yes, I said.
Well, you should get it for real, he said, smiling. It’s cool.
It is real, I said.
He laughed. His blissful patience.
So I laughed too. Thanks for the horchata, I said.
No problem, he replied. I know you like it.
He went back to the vintage store. I was no longer looking the part of a stationery store girl, I realized. The tattoos had disturbed that. We were no longer vintage-store-guy and stationery-store-girl, because I had become something other.
I met my friend Sai for dinner. I told her I was researching what a parasite cleanse might entail; she was usually interested in these kinds of things. She listened somewhat inattentively. The server brought out all this tiny food and we both tried to disguise our disappointment. Oh… it’s cute, we murmured.
So, what’s up? I said.
What’s on your arms? she said.
I was perturbed that everyone wanted to know. Why couldn’t I have tattoos? Why couldn’t I be permanently marked? Why was it so strange that I should have a line that wound around my arm and across my palm and ended at the tip of my middle finger, and an orange, and a deck of cards, and a swathe of feathers bursting from my ribcage, and a tooth, and I have no arms or legs/ I’m all one skin like a fish, and an M encased in a halo of raw red skin?
They’re tattoos, I said.
She paused. That you’re testing out? she said.
Yeah, I said.
Sai was relieved. I like the orange, she said.
Of course, it was the least offensive of them all. She became more engaged in our parasite conversation. This was an interest we shared—emptying out what was inside. I often envisioned her guts as a pile of twisted rope, frayed and knotted in equal measure, inflamed from her frequent visits to the bathroom to gag and retch over the toilet bowl where maybe only one of five attempted purges was successful. It was strange neither of us ever acknowledged what we both knew. I knew, and she knew that I knew.
That night, I had a dream that I peeled up a corner of the line that ended on the tip of my middle finger. I kept peeling and peeling, pulling the line up from my skin. It produced a stinging tautness, like slowly removing a bandaid. As I moved up my arm, peeling the line, a thick layer of my skin came with it, revealing the muscle and vasculature underneath, hot and red. I woke with the droning ambient music of the stationery store playing in my mind—not really playing, but existing. My mother had told me I would regret it if I ever got a tattoo.
You’ll regret it, she’d said, with finality. The scar tissue on my belly button sometimes pulsed when I missed her, or when I was really nervous.
As days passed I added more and more. I kept the pen in my bag yet I had not purchased it as my boss had instructed; I wore clothes that covered everything. I worked at home, covering my legs, my feet, my torso, the parts of my ass and lower back I could reach, my chest, my breasts, my neck. I drew mazes and mandalas, I wrote lists, I created texture. They were meticulously specific, my tattoos. They were things I would not regret.
On the first warm day of Spring I went to work wearing a sleeveless shirt. The shop was busy that day, people wandering in from the streets to browse. They said hello as they entered. I sat at the counter and ignored them and filled in each millimeter of my finger skin.
Manuel came in around lunch when all the customers left to populate the various restaurants on the block. His step slowed.
What happened? he said.
What do you mean? I said.
Your arms…
Oh, yeah, I said, holding them up straight in front of me to view my abstracted skin. You should see the rest of me.
He laughed uneasily. You must be bored, huh?
It’s part of my cleanse, I told him.
Your parasite cleanse? he said. How’s that going?
It’s going well. I think I have almost everything out.
If he’d wanted to, I would’ve let him lift the corner of my shirt collar and peer inside. I would have let him into my intimate practice, to be an observer of my transfiguration; I would have let him add his own markings, if he’d wanted to.
But he didn’t. He went on talking about something inconsequential, his eyes avoiding mine, lingering maybe for too long on my poetry, or my labyrinths, or my companions.
I studied my hands. I ran my fingers across the opposite palm; they caught on something. The end of my long line was lifting.
Olivia Grace is a writer living in Los Angeles. Her work has been published in Spectra, Recenter Press, Cult. Magazine, and elsewhere. She has also self-published four chapbooks of poetry.