Black Hawk Tattoo

Chapter 1-4

Jake settled in his seat, hunching forward with his hands clasped tightly together between his thighs as the train started moving again. Eventually the click-boom-click of the train’s wheels speeding up along the track filled the subway car. It sounded a little bit like helicopter blades.

Jake swallowed and closed his eyes, groping for calm in the darkness behind his lids. He forced himself to take long, even breaths, despite how all he wanted to do was gulp air like someone drowning. His heart jackhammered behind his ribs, so fast he could hear the frantic shush shush of his own blood in his ears. “Help me, God,” he murmured. “I know I don’t have the right to ask, but please help me. Help me keep it together. Please help me.”

Saying the words out loud made it a little easier. “You’re okay,” he whispered to himself. “You’re okay. You’re almost home. Just think of something else.”

* * * *

Jake’s sister was smoking on her front porch when he came up the sidewalk, silhouetted by the lights blazing from inside the house. Jake could tell she was upset by the way she clutched the collar of her bathrobe around her neck and kept changing position, as if she couldn’t bear to stay still. It was too hot to be wearing the thick terrycloth, but Jake knew Alice didn’t want any of the neighbors seeing her in pajamas. Alice had never liked how she looked.

“Where have you been?” she demanded the instant he put his foot on the lowest porch step. Her breath carried the acidic smell of smoke, and Jake coughed and grimaced, suddenly angry for no reason he could name.

“Out,” Jake told her. He glanced at the cereal bowl she was using as an ashtray as he passed her, making sure all the finished cigarettes had been completely ground out. “I wish you wouldn’t f*****g smoke. Don’t you know how bad it is for you?” He yanked open the screen door and went inside before she could answer. He was met by a blast of air-conditioning, extremely welcome after he’d walked from the Main Street subway station.

Alice snorted out a nasty, disbelieving laugh behind him. “Seriously? You’re bitching me out about smoking, Jake? How much did you have to drink tonight?”

Jake gritted his teeth, ignoring her. He toed off his sneakers next to Molly’s purple Barbie shoes and went into the kitchen. The lights were on in every room of the ground floor and Jake reached for the dimmer switch automatically, lowering the brightness until it didn’t feel so much like it was stabbing into his eyes.

Alice followed him into the kitchen, still reeking of cigarettes. “And what the hell do you mean, ‘out’?” She was carrying the makeshift ashtray in one hand with the other stuffed deep into a pocket of her bathrobe. Thin tendrils of hair had slipped out of her ponytail, framing her face and softening her features. Alice didn’t do soft very well.

“Out,” Jake said again. He wiped his face on the shoulder of his T-shirt. “I’m going to take a shower.”

“It’s nearly midnight,” Alice said before he could leave. She slapped the cereal bowl down on the top of the stove as she glared at him. “I was worried about you. And you said you’d be back for dinner.” She untied the sash of her bathrobe then flapped the sides like wings to cool off.

“I forgot,” Jake said. “Sorry.” He turned away from her and opened the fridge, then pulled out a bottle of beer. He knew he should be feeling guiltier than he did, but he’d been carrying so much guilt around for so long, it was like he didn’t have room for more of it.

“Yeah, well, tell that to Molly,” Alice snapped. “She wanted you to read her a story tonight.”

“I forgot,” Jake said again. “I’ll apologize in the morning.” He kept his back turned to her while he rummaged in the counter drawers for the bottle opener, but he could feel her disapproval like a laser right through his spine.

“You’d better,” Alice said. “She’s already been disappointed by one man in her life. I don’t want my own brother to give her more proof that men can’t be trusted.”

“I said I’d apologize!” Jake slammed the drawer closed, making the cutlery rattle. “Where’s the damn bottle opener?”

“In the dish rack,” Alice said. “And why don’t you yell a little louder? I don’t think you’ve woken Molly up yet.”

Jake opened his mouth to really yell something at her, but bit it back with an effort. “Sorry,” he said again, feeling like the word was crawling out of his throat. He wiped more sweat off his forehead with his forearm, thinking about the subway platform; he had no reason to be this angry. Lord, please help me keep it together, he sent up as a silent prayer. He wanted to grasp the cross attached to his dog-tag chain, but he didn’t want Alice to see that. He lowered his voice, trying to sound calm. “Could you hand it to me, please?”

Alice stamped over to the dish rack, snatched out the opener, and wordlessly thrust it at him. She watched him silently as he opened the bottle, and Jake winced as he fumbled off the cap, knowing she could see the shaking in his hands.

“Did you eat anything?” she asked him.

“No,” Jake gritted out, since he knew there was no point in lying. “I wasn’t hungry.”

“You shouldn’t drink on an empty stomach,” Alice said.

“And you shouldn’t smoke.” Jake took a long swig of the beer.

Alice crossed her arms, which Jake knew meant he’d hit a nerve. For a moment he was viciously pleased about it. “Damn it, Jake! This isn’t about me and you know it!” She was glaring at him as if she expected him to answer, but her ferocious expression melted until she just looked tired and sad, far older than she should for thirty-five. “Are you okay?”

It wasn’t the words so much as the way she said it—like they were little kids again and their parents were screaming in the next room. And maybe it was the memory of that fear, with only the thin arms of his twelve-year-old sister to protect him, but suddenly the anger was gone and Jake was breathing hard and blinking back the tears he could feel pricking his eyes.

“I’m fine.” He looked away from her again, desperate for her not to see his face. He took another drink of his beer, nearly emptying it.

“You don’t look fine.” Alice’s voice was still gentle and worried, and Jake couldn’t stand it. “Did you…did something happen?”

“No,” Jake said, because I nearly lost it on the f*****g subway was the last thing he was ever going to tell her. “Nothing happened. I’m just tired.”

Alice’s expression darkened again, which was easier to take. “Fine. Not that I have any idea how you can be tired, since you sleep all the damn time.” She closed her eyes and rubbed her forehead. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t say things like that. I know what you’re going through right now. But I’m so f*****g scared for you, Jake!” She blinked, and Jake was horrified to see her eyes were red, like Alice was trying not to cry herself. “It’s like you’re there, but you’re not. And I want to help you, but I don’t know how and you won’t let me.” She swallowed and crossed her arms again. “Have you even looked at the list of counselors that I got for you?”

“I forgot,” Jake said. He finished the beer and put the bottle gently on the counter. He badly wanted another one, but it wasn’t worth the hassle of getting it with Alice standing right there. “I’ll look at it tomorrow. I promise.”

Alice snorted. “Sure you will. Just like you said you would last week, or the week before that.” She tugged the elastic off her ponytail and started scraping her hair back. She and Jake had almost the exact same coloring, with dark-brown hair and dark-brown eyes, except Alice had always complained it made her look mousy and dull. “Look. Forget it, okay? Just…just do whatever the f**k you want.” She pulled her hair through the elastic, then scowled and yanked it off again. “I’m going to bed. There’re leftovers in the fridge, if you want. And I made cookies. They’re in the jar next to the toaster.”

She stomped out of the kitchen, but turned around in the doorway. “I love you, okay?” The words sounded like a challenge. “You’re my little brother—I just want you to be happy again. You used to be happy.” She turned around and walked away. Jake could hear her footsteps on the stairs.

“Jesus Christ,” Jake whispered. His heart was pounding so hard suddenly that he could barely breathe, but he didn’t know why it was happening. “Stop it,” he said, panting. “Just stop it. You’re fine. You’re fine.” He forced himself to take deep breaths until he was in control enough to straighten. He was just grateful Alice hadn’t seen that, either.

He grabbed another beer out of the fridge and drank it as quickly as he could, then took both the empty bottles to the porch and put them in the recycling bin, so Alice wouldn’t see them in the morning and rag on him about it. He forced himself to pick up the cold cigarette she’d left on the porch rail—he couldn’t stand the f*****g things—then securely locked the door and turned the house alarm on. Then he went back into the kitchen and made sure the oven and all the burners on the stove had been turned off. After that, he put the last cigarette in the cereal bowl and put the bowl in the sink and ran the water until he’d filled it. You could never be too certain.

Then he turned off the lights and felt his way along the wall until he reached the door to the stairs.

Jake’s rooms were in the basement. It had been a small, separate two-room apartment the house’s previous owners had put in, but when Alice and Isaac had bought the place, they’d added a door so it could be accessed from inside. The first thing Jake had done when he’d basically moved in was to put on a second lock, to make sure no one came in while he was sleeping. He had bad nightmares sometimes and he knew he’d lash out if anyone touched him.

His watch said it was just past one A.M. when he got out of the shower, relishing the cool air on his wet skin. The basement was the only comfortable part of the house just then, though he knew from experience it’d be freezing down there in winter. Jake didn’t know if he was going to be staying with his sister that long, but these days it was hard for him to envision any kind of a future at all. He wasn’t a pilot anymore, and without that, he figured he wasn’t much use to anyone. Trying to make plans when every day was exactly the same was pointless anyhow.

Jake dried off, yanked on the sweatpants he slept in, then climbed into the small bed and turned out the light. There was only one window and it was high up in the wall to get the daylight at street level, so at night the tiny bedroom was as black as a cave until his eyes adjusted. The whole basement was. Molly had solemnly given Jake her very own flashlight, and he’d promised her he’d use it if he ever got scared of the dark.

But it wasn’t the darkness of the room that scared him. It was the darkness lurking behind his eyes. The two beers had helped, but not enough. He usually had a lot more than that before trying to sleep. It was always easier like that, anesthetized.

He hadn’t been able to do that tonight. He’d stayed sober to get the tattoo design right and he’d almost had a f*****g panic attack on the subway. And now he didn’t want to close his eyes and replace the ordinary darkness of the room for the blackness inside him.

Alice accused him of sleeping all the time, but that wasn’t true—Jake didn’t sleep much at all. It was just easier to during the day. In daylight, his dreams were different, maybe because there was no sunset first to remind him of the pain or the smoke or the smell of burning.

“Think of something else,” he said out loud. His hands made tight fists in the bedsheets and new sweat was beading sickly cold on his skin. “Just think of something else.”

Gabriel Navarro.

Jake let out a weak chuckle into the darkness. Yeah, that was perfect. Why not torture himself while he was already going nuts? Nothing like having X-rated thoughts about someone he’d hired to sketch out his failure and stamp it into his skin.

He’d been distracted by what they were doing at the time, but he’d been trained to notice details, and it was surprisingly easy to reform a picture of Gabriel in his mind: hair as dark as night and that looked so silky Jake would have loved to run his fingers through it. Gabriel’s eyes were darker than Jake’s, such a deep brown they were almost black. He had a short, well-trimmed beard that somehow only made him look innocent rather than mature. Jake wouldn’t have put him past twenty-one, especially with the surprising splash of freckles over his copper-hued skin.

Gabriel had a small, silver ring in each ear but Jake hadn’t been able to see any tattoos on him at all, which was really strange considering his profession. As far as Jake could tell, everyone who worked in a tattoo parlor had loads of tattoos and piercings, but Gabriel had nothing except the earrings. Maybe they were all hidden under his clothes.

But the craziest thing was that Gabriel wasn’t the kind of man Jake was usually attracted to, despite his hair and eyes. He was too boyish, for starters, and then there was that innocence. Gabriel was good-looking, sure, but Jake hadn’t been interested. Not until Gabriel started drawing.

It wasn’t that Gabriel had been transformed, or anything; it wasn’t that the intensity of his gaze or the quick, competent movements of his fingers had made him exceptional. But it was mesmerizing, all the same, to watch him turn words into a picture with a few strokes of a pencil, translating Jake’s halting description through the vector of his body. And it’d seemed like he’d known exactly what Jake had been thinking, as if Gabriel had reached into his mind and pulled it out. It’d been the vividness of the result that had made things so bad for Jake afterward.

No, watching Gabriel draw hadn’t made him exceptional, but it had made him something else, something Jake didn’t know how to describe but he knew he wanted to see again.

Jake rolled on his side, closed his eyes to the darkness, and let the images of the artist with eyes like a night sky finally lead him into sleep.