Hex

The door front opened, triggering the bell, and announced that drinking down at the pub would have to wait a while longer.

“Fuck,” the artist whispered in the empty back room. “I’ll be right there,” she shouted.

Rubbing her palms against her face to infuse herself with new energy, she thought of the worst possible tattoos that she might be asked to create, lifeless ones that drained her: something cute on a teen girl’s ankle, a tribal band for a frat boy, or a skull for one of the local chuds.

“Fuck,” she whispered again. A vision of a single ice cube melting away in her glass of bourbon filled her with both warmth and sadness; warmth from the escape from the boredom of her life and sadness because she knew that’s all she really had to look forward to most nights. She shook off the negative thoughts and made her way to the front of the shop. The heavy, dark curtain she pushed aside served as a demarcation between where she could relax and where she had to tolerate people.

The man stood patiently, with the look of someone in banking or finance: 50s, lean and fit, clean-cut, bland and conventional in his dress. He hadn’t been in for months, but his presence now meant that something exciting had happened. Inside, her mind leaped and whirred while her body felt a surge of warmth starting at her center and radiating out. For an instant, she thought how sweet her Jim Beam would taste later at the bar–but it could wait.

“Well, good to see you again. Let’s get to it,” she said with a face and voice that hid her enthusiasm. With a slight smile, she waved him over to the work chair. “Tell me about it.”

Removing his suit coat and dress shirt, he pulled up the left sleeve of his white undershirt, exposing a grid of hexagonal cells on his upper arm. Several of them were already filled with her previous efforts. The most recent addition, the deer head with Xs for eyes, stood out for its new colors. He sat in the chair and spoke in that deep, slow voice the artist had to admit, almost made her want to switch teams.

“This one was different from the others. He was ...,’ the man paused and looked out the shop’s front window to find the right words. “He was a disappointment as far as humans go.”

“Yeah? How so?”  She knew the question was pressing him, but her excitement made her impatient and curious. He returned his gaze from the window and looked at her directly.

“He was rude to our server when we went for lunch. I didn’t much like him even before that, but that did it for me. He’s like a cartoon of a man. We talked our business, and he went back to the construction site.”

A dozen questions filtered in her mind, but she knew from their past sessions that he would only tell her enough to inspire creativity, not to quench her curiosity.

“I knew he’d be alone there after the work crew left. Hell, he basically told me where to find him by himself. I did it and left him right where he could be found as soon as someone comes in again. That won’t be until tomorrow morning.”

“This was just a few hours ago?” the artist asked, leaning forward in her chair. “You’re saying he’s still lying there.”

“Yes. I haven’t heard anything in the news about it yet.”

“That’s fucking hot!” Still leaning forward, she shifted in her seat. “You know they’re gonna want to question you about it.” His lack of response was loud and reproaching enough to put her back into silence.

“What do you think so far?” the man asked after a quiet patch. “What do you see?”

“Well,” the artist started slowly, looking down at her tattoo gun as if that’s where the ideas came from, “we have a man, a cartoon of a man, lunch, construction site. What did he have for lunch? What kind of restaurant was it?”

The man gave a quick smile, possibly because he was amused by the oddness of the question or maybe because he was uncomfortable having to share a detail. “He had chicken and pasta in a garlic sauce. It was just some diner he said he goes to a lot. Nothing fancy.”

The artist leaned back in the chair and slumped her shoulders. She looked out of the same window the man had, hoping for similar inspiration. When it struck, she leaned forward.

“So,” she said and placed her hands on her knees. “I keep coming back to cartoon, chicken, and something from a construction site. I’m thinking a hammer. That has a nice, clear shape to it. That sound like the highlights to you?” she asked.

“Cartoon, chicken, hammer? Very interesting. Let’s go.”

She leaned forward and rolled up his sleeve a little farther, scrunching it as high up on the man’s left shoulder as she could, and exposing more of their previous creations. The field of connected hexagons covered the shoulder and much of the upper arm, twenty-four in all, each one and a half inches wide. Twelve of them were already filled in with previous art: the deer was for the “poacher who hunted without permission”. There was the Big Dipper with a purple and green wash of Northern Lights behind it. It was for the girl from Alaska that he met while up there on a work visit. He never gave a reason why, but he said she was a “disappointment.” The artist had a hundred questions for each of the twelve pieces, none of which would ever be answered.

The man didn’t wince when she put the tattoo gun to his skin. He never did.