I’m trembling a little bit as I lie back on the padded table next to Jacques’ station.
“Je vais commencer par une petite tache, donc si tu ne peux pas le supporter, on peut arrêter. D’accord?” It takes me a moment to figure out what he’s saying, but then it makes sense to me and I nod. I’m going to start with a little spot, then if you can’t handle it, we can stop. Alright?
I really like the way Jacques simplified my drawing. I’d been thinking about getting a tattoo of my own ever since I’d started examining his. I’d chosen a few flowers that represented what I wanted to embody: daffodils for new beginnings, pansies for thoughts and snowdrops for hope. Jacques hadn’t asked me what the meaning of the tattoo was; probably because he realized that it would be difficult for me to explain it in French. I hear the needle buzzing and take a deep breath.
I’m lying on my side, with the hem of my shirt rolled up over my bra. My heart is racing as Jacques approaches me with his machine, and I tense as I feel the needle against my skin, which is still tingling slightly from the antiseptic he’d prepared it with. It tickles and feels like sandpaper all at once as it drills into me. I don’t breathe for a few seconds, but then I begin to relax, and I actually start to like it.
“T’es bon? Ça va?” Are you okay?
I nod, and Jacques smiles. “De temps en temps, les filles trouvent qu’elles aiment la sensation de tatouage.” Sometimes, girls find that they like the feeling of tattooing.
I grin at that; it’s a bit sly.
“C’est bon, je pense,” I say. It’s okay, I think. Jacques wipes the area and keeps going, and I almost feel as though I’m melting into the table. Oddly, the longer Jacques works on my skin with the needle, going back and forth to the black ink he’s using to outline the design, the better I feel, more and more relaxed, warm all over, tingling from the roots of my hair to the tips of my toes.
It’s almost sexual, the feeling that’s riding through my nerves, and if we weren’t in the middle of the tattoo shop, with his coworkers working and chatting all around us, I might be tempted to ask him if we could go back to his place—at least for a few minutes—and let him have his way with me.
“Tu veux prendre une pause?”
I blink at the question. I have to work it through my hazy brain to make sense of it. Need to take a break?
“Non, non,” I reply. “Ça va!” No, no, I’m fine!
Jacques smiles. “T’es courageuse,” he tells me. You’re brave.
I grin at the compliment. I still feel so strangely good, and it finally occurs to me that it’s the endorphins from the constant buzzing of the needle in my skin.
“Il y a des hommes—très forts—qui auraient besoin d'une pause.” There are guys, strong ones, who would need a break.
I can’t help but smile wider.
“C’est pas trop mal,” I say with a shrug. It’s not too bad.
“J’ai presque fini.”
Jacques tells me he’s almost done. I take a deep breath and he collects more ink onto the needle and starts again. This part is over my ribs more directly, so this definitely hurts a little more, but I’m able to hold still, and after a few moments, I’m back in the humming, hazy headspace that I drifted into before.
Jacques’ boss comes to look over his shoulder and nods approvingly. “C’est beau, ça,” she says. That’s beautiful.
“Merci,” I say, thanking her as I take a little measure of pride in the design I came up with. I remember that my payment for this work is going to be five designs for their wall, so I ask what she’d like for me to come up with. “Ah—qu’est-ce que vous voulez comme un design?”
“N’importe quoi,” the woman says with a shrug. “Comme tu veux.” It doesn’t matter. Whatever you want.
She glances at Jacques, and I wonder if he’s told her that we’ve been having sex.
“Peut-être que j’aurai ton paiement avant que j’obtiens le sien.” Maybe I’ll get your payment before I get his, she says. She drifts off after that, but I can’t help but wonder what she’s talking about. What does Jacques owe her for?
“Qu’est-ce qu’elle veut dire?”
Jacques shrugs off my question when I ask him what she means.
“Elle et moi, nous avons parié sur quelque chose,” he says. We made a bet on something. “Mais elle n’a pas encore gagné.”
“Ah, oui,” I say, once I make sense of the last part: that—at least, according to Jacques—his boss hasn’t won the bet between them yet. When I ask him what the bet was over, Jacques waves his hand, claiming it’s no big deal and proceeds to wipe the area again, inspecting the outline of my tattoo.
“Un petit peu de plus,” he tells me. Just a little more.
I’ve almost forgotten the whole thing by the time he finishes and brings me a mirror to inspect his work. The skin along my ribs is reddened, and I can see the shiny fluid beading along the clear, black lines, but it’s all there: the simplified flower bouquet that Jacques and I designed together. And it looks amazing.
“Tu l’aimes?”
“Oui!” When he asks if I like it, I answer almost without thinking: I’m in love with the ink he’s drilled into my skin. Of course, for Jacques, it’s probably just another piece, but to me, it’s so much more: a reminder of what I want to be, that I can get past what Ethan did to me and learn to trust again. “C’est marveilleux,” I add. It’s marvelous.
“Je suis content que tu l’aimes, alors,” Jacques says, sitting back and putting his mirror away. “On doit le laisser soigner pendant une semaine, et puis nous pouvons ajouter de la couleur.” I translate mentally: he’s glad that I like the tattoo, and after letting it heal for a week, we can work on the color.
“Ah, bon—j’apporterais les dessins pour le mur,” I say, telling him I’ll bring the designs for the wall next time.
Jacques takes some kind of goop out of a container on his station and begins smearing it over my new tattoo; the skin is so sensitive, it makes me shiver to feel his slick-sticky fingers against me, and I feel myself getting turned on all over again.
“Eh! Jacques!” Someone comes into the shop calling out for the guy I can’t really call my boyfriend—we’re technically just friends with benefits, but with each day that we spend together, I feel like we’re starting to outgrow that label in some way. He sees me and raises an eyebrow. “Tu es l’Américaine?” You’re the American girl?
I look at Jacques. Has he been talking about me to his friends? “C’est qui?” Who’s this? I ask him.
Jacques looks a little embarrassed. “Un copain,” he says. A buddy.
I ask Jacques if he’s told this guy about me, and I’m not even sure if I’m using the right words, but I’m startled to be asked if I’m “the American girl.”
“Oui, un peu,” Jacques tells me. “Pas trop,” he adds, giving me a quick grin as he tells me a little, but not too much. He turns to his friend and introduces us, “Yann, je te présente Nora. Nora, ici mon ami Yann.” I hold out my hand and Yann shakes it, before pulling me just a bit closer and kissing me on the cheek.
He tells me he’s pleased to meet me, and then makes a remark about getting new ink, and I gesture to the tattoo that Jacques just finished. “Oui, c’est trop bon,” Yann says, telling me it’s really good, but I notice him looking a little more at the exposed part of my bra than the tattoo itself.
“Elle l’a conçue elle-même,” Jacques says. “Et aussi elle va concevoir deux pièces pour le mur.” Yann nods approvingly, and I smile. She designed it herself, and she’s going to be drawing five pieces for the wall, too.
“Tu vas aller au concert demain?” I frown in confusion at that as Jacques covers up my tattoo with a thin, plastic wrap and tapes it down.
“Le concert?” I look from Yann to Jacques. The concert?
“Notre groupe va jouer dans un bar demain,” he says. After a moment, I work out what he’s saying, and I’m a bit surprised. Our band is going to play at a bar tomorrow.
I knew that Jacques played guitar, but he hadn’t mentioned being in a band. “Tu es dans une—pardon, un—groupe?” You’re in a band?
“Les Quatres Pistoles,” Yann tells me.
The Four Pistols. It’s not necessarily the most original band name I’ve ever heard, but it could be worse. “Il y a deux autres dans le groupe?” Are there two others in the group?
“Deux de nos amis, Pascal et Sam,” Jacques replies. Two of our friends, Pascal and Sam. I’ve heard him mention these two before, but it seems strange that he wouldn’t have mentioned that he’s in a band with his friends, much less that they’re playing a show tomorrow night.
I don’t know why it would bother Jacques for me to go to the show, but obviously, he must have had a reason for not bringing it up. Regardless, I tell him I’d love to see them play tomorrow.
“D’accord,” Jacques says in agreement. Okay.
He pencils me in for another appointment next week. The tingling in my side, along my ribs, has deepened into a stinging itch, but I still feel the lingering warmth of the endorphins in my system. I kind of want to ask Jacques if he can take a break; my apartment isn’t that far from the tattoo shop.
“Tu veux aller prendre un verre?” Do you want to go get a drink? Jacques asks and then glances sideways at Yann.
It’s almost like he’s reading my mind. If I had it my way, we’d be going back to my place instead of to a brasserie, but spending time with Jacques is always fun, no matter what we do.
I nod in agreement. “Oui.”
“Je vous laisserai être seul,” Yann says, giving both of us a look and a grin as he says he’ll leave us alone, and tells Jacques he’ll see him tonight at practice.
“Oui,” Jacques agrees. I almost feel disappointed that he’ll be busy tonight, but I tell myself that I wasn’t supposed to get into any kind of relationships in the next several months, anyway. I’m supposed to be living the single life, getting over Ethan.
Yann leans in and kisses me on either cheek, and Jacques calls out to Julienne that he’ll be back in an hour.
He takes me to a little brasserie-tabac about a block away and orders us each a glass of wine, and I do my best not to move around too much and loosen the plastic wrap taped to my side underneath my blouse. I want to ask Jacques why he didn’t mention the show, or even his band, for that matter, but wonder if it would just complicate things, making it seem like I’m trying to hold him accountable for something I should really only expect from a boyfriend? I’ve only been in the country for a few weeks; I shouldn’t be developing any kind of serious feelings towards anyone.
Instead, we talk about what I’ve been up to, and Jacques laughingly points out that I’m becoming more and more French by the day: I don’t pause as much when I speak, and sometimes I don’t seem to be thinking about what I say at all.
“C’est beaucoup mieux comme ça,” he says. “Si tu fait des erreurs, il ne faut pas t’inquiéter aux eux.”
I have to admit that, just as he said, I speak better when I don’t worry about making mistakes. For the most part, even when I’m not sure that what I’m saying is correct, most of the people I speak to don’t seem to mind much; they seem to be able to understand the gist of what I’m saying. Of course, a good half of them that I run into seem to ask if I need someone who speaks English, looking a little worried that that might be the case.
But I’m getting better, if only by virtue of having to practice constantly.