Price of a Tattooed Soul

The force of the wind made the glass rattle in their frames, drawing Lydia Nicholls to her feet and to the windows to pull the blinds. Though it was mid-afternoon, the sky was nearly black and the sidewalk deserted, the impending storm driving even the most stalwart into safety. The forecasters were calling this one for the record books. Los Angeles was about to get shaken to its stylish boots by the rainstorm of the century. With a sigh, Lydia turned her back on the window and retreated to her worn, overstuffed couch, sinking into the corner as she pulled the crocheted afghan up around her legs again. Normally, her birthday was a day of taut anticipation, her morning spent trying to keep busy, her afternoon lost to frequent glances at the clock. She always took the day off, first from classes in college and then from whatever job she was working. This year, however, was likely to be different from every one she’d had since she turned eighteen. With this weather, there was no way someone would come knocking at her door at precisely four-eleven. It would be the first time in over a decade she didn’t receive her mysterious gift. Her book rested lightly on her lap, the words blurred and skipping before her eyes. It was a well-worn favorite, plucked blindly from her packed shelves, but now the nonsense about some girl chasing after some boy eluded her interest. She had wanted something escapist to pass the time, to try and not think about the fact that she was single and alone, turning thirty, and in a job that bored her to tears. But the encroaching storm had her on edge even more so, her curvy body skittish, her attention wandering without warning. More than once, she looked at the clock on the DVD player, and more than once, she looked back at her book, determined not to obsess about something that probably wasn’t going to happen anyway. Take a breath. Turn the page. Don’t look at the time. Turn the page back because she didn’t remember how the girl was suddenly in a mall instead of in her car. Breathe. In. Out. In again. Lydia glanced up without thought, eyes flickering to the red numbers just a few feet away. Four-ten. It’s not going to come. There’s no way anybody can deliver anything in this kind of weather. Whoever has been doing this can’t control Mother Nature, and I need to get ready to be disappointed. It’s only a stupid gift. It doesn’t even mean— A sharp knock at the door startled her into knocking her book to the floor. Lydia sat up and reached for the paperback, setting it on the coffee table without marking her page. Her hand was trembling. “God, get a grip,” she said to herself. The knock didn’t mean anything. It was probably just the i***t from upstairs thinking she was making too much noise again because she was breathing too loudly. She tried not to notice the time out of the corner of her eye as she headed for the door. Four-eleven. The DHL guy standing on the other side of the door was having difficulty remaining upright, even under the mild protection the eaves gave to her threshold. The wind buffeted against him, whipping his jacket around his slight paunch, and he’d obviously given up on wearing a hat of any sorts, the lightweight strands of his hair nearly standing on end from the force of the gales. Under his arm was a box she recognized on sight, a foot square, wrapped in plain brown paper. Half-hidden by his grip was the awkward printing of her name. Familiar. Enthralling. Her heart beat a little bit faster. “Package for Lydia Nicholls,” the delivery man said, his voice gruff. “That’s me.” She held out her hands to take it, surprised that the shaking had ceased for a moment, and set it down just inside the door while she signed off on his little Stylo pad. “Have a nice day,” he said. It was a conditioned response, but Lydia smiled anyway. “I will now.” She didn’t wait to watch him bow his head against the winds and make a run for his truck. Kicking the door shut with her heel, Lydia picked up the box and carried it back to the living room, forgetting all the fear and all the worry that had knotted her only minutes earlier. It had arrived. Somehow, some way, against every rule of logic or reason, it had come. Just as it had every year since her eighteenth birthday. This box, delivered at the exact moment she had been born. The sole motivator for taking the day off in order to meet the delivery instead of having to wait until she got home from work or class. And as always, without any clue to its sender. Kneeling on the floor, Lydia pushed the package to the edge of the coffee table before reaching around the couch. There sat the large plastic bin she’d removed from her closet that morning. Her heart was hammering as she pulled it out and lifted the lid, but its contents were as familiar to her as the box’s wrapping had been. It held the gifts from her last twelve birthdays, and it waited to hide away the gift from this one, though she was fairly certain she knew what it would be. Each year, the gift was the same. Each year, she went to sleep with a smile on her face, a haunting melody in her ear, and the same questions burning inside her heart. Who are they from? What do they mean? How do they always find me no matter where I am? And why would somebody go to the obvious care to put them together? Lydia doubted she’d find any of those answers this time. She was grateful the gift had arrived at all. It wouldn’t have felt like her birthday otherwise. The ringing of the telephone shattered the relative silence. Exasperated, she stretched to pick it up from the end table, tucking it into her shoulder. “Hello?” “Did it come?” The chirpy voice of her best friend was always too loud through the line, as though Noelle had the receiver pressed directly to her mouth. But the obvious excitement of her tone was hard to resist, especially with the gift within reach. “It came.” Lydia stroked the brown paper. “It just got here.” “In this weather? God, somebody must really like you to brave this storm. I’m so jealous.” She laughed. “Well, it’s not like it was delivered in person. Unless it’s been a DHL guy all this time, which, let me tell you, would be kind of disappointing.” “Have you opened it yet?” “No. I’m savoring the moment,” Lydia replied. “How’s everything there?” “Boring. Half the office took off early to beat the rain home. You picked a good day to have your birthday.” “Yes, because I had such a choice about when I’d be born.” Hearing Noelle complain about work made her even happier she was home. They worked together in the marketing department for a pharmaceutical company, writing copy for new medicines, both in advertising and packaging. It was tedious, mind-numbing, and a waste of her English degree, but it paid the bills and gave her time to dabble with the fun stuff on the side, the plays and the short stories and all the first chapters that sat unread on her hard drive. “So am I going to see you this weekend?” Noelle asked. “Wicked Three is playing at the Hive tomorrow night. I thought we’d go and be fangirls for the night.” A fresh gust of wind whistled past the window, drawing Lydia’s attention away for a moment. “Don’t count on it,” she said. “I think I’m going to stay in. Me, Ben, and Jerry. My favorite threesome ever.” “Now I know that’s not true. I’ve seen some of your stories. You like the escape as much as I do.” Noelle was the only person who had, at least since college, but Lydia didn’t need to indulge in those fantasies when she had her favorite yet to unwrap. “You have fun looking for Mr. Right Now,” she said. “I’m going to stick with the tried and true.” “You mean your birthday present.” She smiled. “Like I said. Tried and true. See you next week.” Disconnecting, Lydia set the phone aside as she pulled the gift closer. No more waiting. No more distractions. If Noelle tried calling back, she was going to ignore it. She slit the paper at the well-taped seams, allowing it to fall free without ripping. This was part of the annual ritual, as was setting the paper aside to fold and store away later. Though all that was written on it were her name and address, it seemed important to preserve every last part of the gift, whether she understood why or not. This was the way it had to be. Her heart lurched inside her chest when she pulled open the flaps and saw the carved wood peeking through the packing material. Swallowing against the tightness of her throat, Lydia reached in and cradled it in her hands before pulling it free of the Styrofoam. A loose piece of the popcorn stuck between the wood and the wind-up key at its back, and she plucked it free without tearing her eyes away from the small gift. It was a music box, obviously handmade. The light oak was burnished, but the slight crookedness of the hinges betrayed its rustic origins, as did the hole that was always drilled a shade too big for the key that wound it up. In the center of the lid, someone had carved out a tree looming over a small fire, and through its branches, Lydia thought she could even see the shape of a small half-moon. The detail was meticulous, made with painstaking care. She liked to imagine a man’s hands, stained and strong, holding the piece of wood with a light grip as he created his beautiful etchings. Turning over the box, Lydia smiled when she saw the other marker she knew it would bear—a coiled burn that looked very much like a brand. His signature, whoever he was. It was the same on all of them. In fact, with the exception of the new design on the lid, it was identical to the other twelve music boxes she had received over the years, and when she wound it up, it would play the same ethereal melody. She set it on the table, her fingers caressing the edges of the box before finding the nerve to open it. The faint squeak of the hinge was the only sound in the room as she lifted the lid, though the blood rushing in her ears came a close second. Her lashes dipped. Her heart thudded. There it was. To anybody else, it would probably be perceived as nothing. Just a piece of paper folded into a perfect square. Resting in the bottom of the music box, waiting for her to read its contents. To her, though, it was more—the single link she had to her mysterious gift-giver. It was as treasured as the boxes themselves. She plucked it free and realized her fingers were trembling again. The handwriting was the same, that awkward print all angles and long lines. Lydia had found it difficult to decipher the first year, but constant re-reading had made the second note much easier. This year’s was like the others only in the fact that it contained a single line of cryptic text, but she barely noticed it for the addition at the bottom of the soft paper. Her gaze flickered over it three times before she realized what it was. A signature. Delaney Michael Wessner. She read the note again, starting at the beginning, on the off-chance she’d mistaken it the first time, but the name was exactly the same. The only problem was, she didn’t know anybody named Delaney, and Wessner wasn’t ringing any bells either. There were a few Mikes and Michaels in her life, but none of them had been a presence in her life since she was a teenager. Why would a complete stranger have gone to all this trouble all these years? And why was he suddenly signing his gift? Her carefulness evaporated as she turned back to the packaging, digging through the Styrofoam in search of something else, some kind of clue, then dumping it out, white wedges scattering over the table and carpeting, in order to look more closely. Her fingernails scratched against the wooden surface, sifting through the contents, until finally, Lydia sat back on her heels, frowning as she stared at the mess she’d made. There was nothing else there. The gift was complete as it always had been. A music box with a single-line note inside. With a brush of her arm, Lydia swept the Styrofoam to the floor before turning back to the storage bin. She pulled out the other boxes, arranging them along the table in the order in which she’d gotten them, and opened each as she moved along. It wasn’t that there was something she was missing, she realized. For the first time, she began to think she finally had all the pieces. The notes came next, unfolded and placed in front of the box each came with, with the most recent, the thirteenth, resting at the end of the line. When she was done, there was a single row of text across the papers. Her skin went cold as she scanned the words. With the exception of this year’s, each was burned into her memory, poetry she’d used as a mantra more than once. It had never occurred to her to think of them as a set, though. Part of the game had always been trying to fathom their meaning, their nonsense only adding to the mystique of the unknown giver. Read like this, though, it was obvious they belonged together, thirteen lines of antiquated prose that spoke of hearts and fire and blood and life everlasting. It ended with the signing of his name. Delaney Michael Wessner. At least she’d been right about the gifts coming from a man. Had he written the poem, too? For what purpose? And why was he choosing to reveal himself now? Curiosity got the better of Lydia, and she picked up the latest present, turning it around in her hands in order to wind it up. The tinny melody started as soon as she released the key, sad and captivating and awakening memories of numerous dreams created from falling asleep to the same tune. She set the box back down in its place, looking again to the verse. This time, she read it aloud. Her lips barely moved, her murmurs entwining with the music as if words to a song. She took her time, savoring each syllable, but as each line was released, her body grew a little bit warmer, her breath a little bit faster, until it took effort to speak the last of the poem. Lydia couldn’t even hear the wind outside the windows above the sound of her pulse pounding inside her veins, and her skin felt like it was on fire as she leaned to read the final line. She stopped. Held her breath. If she’d expected something to happen, she would’ve been disappointed. Her gaze fell to the signature. Her world narrowed to those last three words. “Delaney Michael Wessner.” A clap of thunder shook the room, the world pitching beneath Lydia’s seat. She gripped the edge of the coffee table to keep from toppling over, wondering who in the cosmos thought it was funny to have an earthquake in the middle of a thunderstorm, but before the boxes on the table stopped jostling across the surface, a brilliant flash of lightning blinded her to her surroundings. By the time the world calmed again, the room was empty.