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smackenzieI haven't been paying attention to the passage of time, other than to mark appointments at my studio. And now that I know it's been a week since I saw Kay, and now that I remember his belief that something's coming, a storm he can taste on the back of his tongue, now I might be a little worried.
"Maybe he just left town," Maya suggests. "Does he have friends he could be visiting?"
"I doubt it," the girl - Alene - says.
"You don't know," the boy tells her. "Maybe he does. Or he went to see his grandpa."
"Grandpa's dead. C'mon, Ben, we've had this conversation. More than once. Where's he gonna go? How's he gonna get there?"
"Hitchhike," Maya says with finality. "City's not that big. If he's still here, he shouldn't be that hard to find." She walks through the studio towards the kitchen.
She's not entirely wrong, but I'd guess there are a lot of places someone could hide on the university campus, if they had a mind to. I never thought Kay had any connection to the U, but that doesn't mean he can't either talk his way or just sneak into some of the buildings.
"Did you look on campus?" I ask the twins. They have to be twins. They look and sound too alike not to be.
The girl raises an eyebrow at me. "What the fuck would he be doing on campus?"
"You said he was missing. There are probably a lot of places to hide, or to be hidden." I glance at the clock behind the front counter. "Your time's up. When my time frees up I'll go look for him, but I'm sure you know him better than I do, and if he just doesn't want to be found, I don't think any of us will find him."
"She's right," the boy - Ben - says to his sister. "Maybe he just wants to be alone. That's what the Queen of Hearts said."
Alene makes an annoyed noise. "Like she has the first fucking clue. Solitude would kill her dead in a day."
"Y'all can stay here and argue," I tell them, "but I've got things to do." I leave them to their mild bickering and go back to my station to clean as well and as fast as I can before my next client shows up.
Kay's friends leave at some point - I don't see them go and they don't bother to say goodbye to me, although I don't exactly blame them - and I concentrate on my work until the last client has left, the last wet paper towel has been thrown away, and the trash has been taken out and dumped in the trash barrel behind the house. It's been raccoon-proofed with both designer ingenuity and the odd spell. There's nothing like magically booby-trapping a trash barrel to scare away the critters.
"What are you going to do about your friend?" Maya asks me as I lock up.
"I don't know," I say. "I don't know enough about him to know where he might have gone."
"You probably know more than you think. How long have you been friends?"
"A year, maybe more."
"How did you become friends?"
"I don't know." And I don't. Sometimes it seems as if we've always known each other. I have other friends like that, people I met in art school or high school or when I was little - one of them a woman I really have always known, because we met in day care when we were three - but only one or two people I've met in the past few years. Sometimes it feels as if I've known Nila forever, but we were a couple for three years, and if you work at it, you can get to know someone pretty well in that time.
But if I think about it, I really don't know Kay nearly that well. I don't know where he's from, if he grew up here or moved here or just got on a Greyhound one day and got off when it came to the end of its route. I don't know where he lives. I don't know who he lives with, aside from a nameless, amorphous group of friends. I don't know if Alene and Ben are those friends, if they're housemates or not. Alene was angry with me that I wasn't rushing out of the studio to help her look for Kay, but she doesn't have to live with him to feel that strongly.
"Think about it," Maya goes on. "Not how you know each other, but what you know. What does he talk about, you know? You can always put up 'Missing' posters. There are sites for that online."
"He's not an Amber Alert."
"They're sites for missing adults or teenagers. They're missing persons ads, basically."
"I'd need a photo of him."
Maya gives me a flat stare. "What do you do for a living, Sparrow? Draw him!" Something seems to occur to her, and she snickers. "Pretend you're a sketch artist for the cops."
"I think I'll look around here first, thanks."
"It could be nothing," she muses. "I mean, maybe he does just want to be alone. He vants to be alone." She does a reasonably good Greta Garbo impression, which makes me smile. "He'll show up. Are you worried?"
"I don't know. I usually see him at least a couple times a week."
"Well, if he was just sick, his friends would know."
"Oh, that wouldn't stop him. He showed up here with a cold and I put him right to bed upstairs. Rachael was still here, and after we left - I took him home with me - she stripped the bed and washed the sheets twice. You think I'm always after you to keep things clean and antiseptic? She was worse."
Maya laughs. "I find that hard to believe. If you want some help looking for this boy, let me know. I bet Jonathan can help too."
Jonathan is the boyfriend Maya moved from Texas with. He's getting his PhD in sociology, with an emphasis on modern Native American culture and the ways in which it deliberately does and doesn't intersect with modern non-Native American culture. He'll know better than Maya or I - or Kay's friends - if there's somewhere on the university campus where Kay could be.
I think about it the whole way home, where Kay might be, why he might be missing, why his friends might be so worried. I decide it doesn't matter why they're concerned, only that they are. I still don't know if I am too.
I tell Diego the whole story. He looks like he's paying attention, but who can tell for sure with cats? But at least he doesn't find someplace else in the house where he'd rather be.
"What do you think?" I ask him. "Should I be worried? Should I be looking?"
He doesn't say anything, just rubs his head against my hand.
"I have a free block of time tomorrow," I go on. "I'll try the record store."
That night I dream that I give Kay a job, so I can keep an eye on him and so he has something to do with his time. I put him in charge of keeping the studio clean and making appointments if people call. He spends a lot of time pushing a broom around the place, straightening the pillows and candles in the little meditation space - even though in the dream no one ever uses it - organizing the binders of flash designs, and Windexing the windows. An old man, a Korean War vet, comes in for a memorial tattoo and Kay spends a lot of time with him, sketching ideas and planning the tattoo. The studio gets messier and messier Kona brings in a surfboard and promises to teach Kay how to surf.
"Diego loves it," he tells me proudly, and that's when my alarm clock goes off and I wake up.
"That was weird," I say to myself. Diego climbs over my stomach, nibbles on my hair, and meows at me to feed him.
I have coffee, do my morning yoga, eat breakfast, take a shower, get dressed, go to work. There's paperwork to do, invoices to take care of, tax stuff to deal with. Kona comes in to open up, unaware that I've gotten there first, and I take a perverse thrill in scaring him when he walks into the office to run some different-sized copies of a design for one of his clients.
"Shit, Sparrow," he huffs, "don't scare me like that."
"Did I disturb your delicate constitution?" I ask, grinning. He sticks his tongue out at me. "It's so much easier to get this out of the way when there's no one else here." I tap the papers on the desk with a pencil. "It's quiet."
"No other tattoo artists making noise and ruining your concentration, huh?"
"Something like that."
In truth, it's never that loud in the studio, even when all three of us are here working on clients, even if all of those clients brought friends. It's a noise level I'm used to, but more importantly, it's a noise level I like. The late nights when it's just me and a single client are a nice balance to the more full hours.
My first client of the day does indeed bring a friend. The friend talks to both of us the entire time, except for a few minutes when I ask her to please be quiet for a second, or when the client wants to say something. I listen to them, but more to the tone and cadence of their voices and less to the actual words. If people cared what I thought of their conversations they wouldn't have them in front of me, but all the same, sometimes it feels like eavesdropping. And while I resisted a lot of what my mother wanted to teach me growing up, I did manage to escape the house with a good training in manners.
I spend my unoccupied free chunk of time that afternoon driving around town, trying to think of places Kay might have gone, and then going into them myself to see if he's been there. I don't have any luck, but if Alene was right and he's been missing a week, that can be a long time to remember one customer out of many, especially when the one customer looks like so many other college-age kids, and is pretty quiet and unassuming to boot.
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"Maybe he just left town," Maya suggests. "Does he have friends he could be visiting?"
"I doubt it," the girl - Alene - says.
"You don't know," the boy tells her. "Maybe he does. Or he went to see his grandpa."
"Grandpa's dead. C'mon, Ben, we've had this conversation. More than once. Where's he gonna go? How's he gonna get there?"
"Hitchhike," Maya says with finality. "City's not that big. If he's still here, he shouldn't be that hard to find." She walks through the studio towards the kitchen.
She's not entirely wrong, but I'd guess there are a lot of places someone could hide on the university campus, if they had a mind to. I never thought Kay had any connection to the U, but that doesn't mean he can't either talk his way or just sneak into some of the buildings.
"Did you look on campus?" I ask the twins. They have to be twins. They look and sound too alike not to be.
The girl raises an eyebrow at me. "What the fuck would he be doing on campus?"
"You said he was missing. There are probably a lot of places to hide, or to be hidden." I glance at the clock behind the front counter. "Your time's up. When my time frees up I'll go look for him, but I'm sure you know him better than I do, and if he just doesn't want to be found, I don't think any of us will find him."
"She's right," the boy - Ben - says to his sister. "Maybe he just wants to be alone. That's what the Queen of Hearts said."
Alene makes an annoyed noise. "Like she has the first fucking clue. Solitude would kill her dead in a day."
"Y'all can stay here and argue," I tell them, "but I've got things to do." I leave them to their mild bickering and go back to my station to clean as well and as fast as I can before my next client shows up.
Kay's friends leave at some point - I don't see them go and they don't bother to say goodbye to me, although I don't exactly blame them - and I concentrate on my work until the last client has left, the last wet paper towel has been thrown away, and the trash has been taken out and dumped in the trash barrel behind the house. It's been raccoon-proofed with both designer ingenuity and the odd spell. There's nothing like magically booby-trapping a trash barrel to scare away the critters.
"What are you going to do about your friend?" Maya asks me as I lock up.
"I don't know," I say. "I don't know enough about him to know where he might have gone."
"You probably know more than you think. How long have you been friends?"
"A year, maybe more."
"How did you become friends?"
"I don't know." And I don't. Sometimes it seems as if we've always known each other. I have other friends like that, people I met in art school or high school or when I was little - one of them a woman I really have always known, because we met in day care when we were three - but only one or two people I've met in the past few years. Sometimes it feels as if I've known Nila forever, but we were a couple for three years, and if you work at it, you can get to know someone pretty well in that time.
But if I think about it, I really don't know Kay nearly that well. I don't know where he's from, if he grew up here or moved here or just got on a Greyhound one day and got off when it came to the end of its route. I don't know where he lives. I don't know who he lives with, aside from a nameless, amorphous group of friends. I don't know if Alene and Ben are those friends, if they're housemates or not. Alene was angry with me that I wasn't rushing out of the studio to help her look for Kay, but she doesn't have to live with him to feel that strongly.
"Think about it," Maya goes on. "Not how you know each other, but what you know. What does he talk about, you know? You can always put up 'Missing' posters. There are sites for that online."
"He's not an Amber Alert."
"They're sites for missing adults or teenagers. They're missing persons ads, basically."
"I'd need a photo of him."
Maya gives me a flat stare. "What do you do for a living, Sparrow? Draw him!" Something seems to occur to her, and she snickers. "Pretend you're a sketch artist for the cops."
"I think I'll look around here first, thanks."
"It could be nothing," she muses. "I mean, maybe he does just want to be alone. He vants to be alone." She does a reasonably good Greta Garbo impression, which makes me smile. "He'll show up. Are you worried?"
"I don't know. I usually see him at least a couple times a week."
"Well, if he was just sick, his friends would know."
"Oh, that wouldn't stop him. He showed up here with a cold and I put him right to bed upstairs. Rachael was still here, and after we left - I took him home with me - she stripped the bed and washed the sheets twice. You think I'm always after you to keep things clean and antiseptic? She was worse."
Maya laughs. "I find that hard to believe. If you want some help looking for this boy, let me know. I bet Jonathan can help too."
Jonathan is the boyfriend Maya moved from Texas with. He's getting his PhD in sociology, with an emphasis on modern Native American culture and the ways in which it deliberately does and doesn't intersect with modern non-Native American culture. He'll know better than Maya or I - or Kay's friends - if there's somewhere on the university campus where Kay could be.
I think about it the whole way home, where Kay might be, why he might be missing, why his friends might be so worried. I decide it doesn't matter why they're concerned, only that they are. I still don't know if I am too.
I tell Diego the whole story. He looks like he's paying attention, but who can tell for sure with cats? But at least he doesn't find someplace else in the house where he'd rather be.
"What do you think?" I ask him. "Should I be worried? Should I be looking?"
He doesn't say anything, just rubs his head against my hand.
"I have a free block of time tomorrow," I go on. "I'll try the record store."
That night I dream that I give Kay a job, so I can keep an eye on him and so he has something to do with his time. I put him in charge of keeping the studio clean and making appointments if people call. He spends a lot of time pushing a broom around the place, straightening the pillows and candles in the little meditation space - even though in the dream no one ever uses it - organizing the binders of flash designs, and Windexing the windows. An old man, a Korean War vet, comes in for a memorial tattoo and Kay spends a lot of time with him, sketching ideas and planning the tattoo. The studio gets messier and messier Kona brings in a surfboard and promises to teach Kay how to surf.
"Diego loves it," he tells me proudly, and that's when my alarm clock goes off and I wake up.
"That was weird," I say to myself. Diego climbs over my stomach, nibbles on my hair, and meows at me to feed him.
I have coffee, do my morning yoga, eat breakfast, take a shower, get dressed, go to work. There's paperwork to do, invoices to take care of, tax stuff to deal with. Kona comes in to open up, unaware that I've gotten there first, and I take a perverse thrill in scaring him when he walks into the office to run some different-sized copies of a design for one of his clients.
"Shit, Sparrow," he huffs, "don't scare me like that."
"Did I disturb your delicate constitution?" I ask, grinning. He sticks his tongue out at me. "It's so much easier to get this out of the way when there's no one else here." I tap the papers on the desk with a pencil. "It's quiet."
"No other tattoo artists making noise and ruining your concentration, huh?"
"Something like that."
In truth, it's never that loud in the studio, even when all three of us are here working on clients, even if all of those clients brought friends. It's a noise level I'm used to, but more importantly, it's a noise level I like. The late nights when it's just me and a single client are a nice balance to the more full hours.
My first client of the day does indeed bring a friend. The friend talks to both of us the entire time, except for a few minutes when I ask her to please be quiet for a second, or when the client wants to say something. I listen to them, but more to the tone and cadence of their voices and less to the actual words. If people cared what I thought of their conversations they wouldn't have them in front of me, but all the same, sometimes it feels like eavesdropping. And while I resisted a lot of what my mother wanted to teach me growing up, I did manage to escape the house with a good training in manners.
I spend my unoccupied free chunk of time that afternoon driving around town, trying to think of places Kay might have gone, and then going into them myself to see if he's been there. I don't have any luck, but if Alene was right and he's been missing a week, that can be a long time to remember one customer out of many, especially when the one customer looks like so many other college-age kids, and is pretty quiet and unassuming to boot.
words: 1719
total words: 21,043
