“I told you, we’re not dating. We’re just fuck buddies,” I tell Julienne as I’m cleaning up my station after working on the first client of the day.
“You owe me five-hundred,” she says, following me as I go to the back for more of the antiseptic spray.
“I do not,” I insist. It’s been about a week since Nora and I first hooked up, and we’d gotten together—at her place or mine—three more times since then. It definitely helps that we can see each other across the alley. I grin a bit to myself, remembering the last time we banged: I’d made one paper airplane after another and thrown them across the little alley into her apartment until she’d looked up and laughed; then, one thing led to another.
“You like her,” Julienne says. “You like her a lot.”
“She’s nice,” I say with a shrug. “And we like a lot of the same stuff on Netflix.”
Christophe decides to chime in. “Is she kinky?”
“Fuck you, Christophe!” Ever since word got out that I’d had sex with Nora, he’s been trying to get details, like whether she was open to being shared. I didn’t even have to ask her to know she wouldn’t like the idea of me just passing her off to another guy, and I didn’t like the idea either. We aren’t technically exclusively, but I don’t share my women and I’ll be damned if I start now.
“Be careful she doesn’t run afoul of Crazy Hélène,” Julienne says as she restocks the business cards up front by the register.
“Hélène isn’t going to be a problem,” I say. “She’s focused on Pascal right now.”
Hélène is one of the band’s fans, and to say she’s crazy is a bit of an understatement. She’s tried to convince each one of us in turn to start things up with her, but we all know better, even me. I wouldn’t touch her if she were the last chick on Earth.
“As soon as she sees you’re involved with someone, she’s going to be right on you again,” Julienne says.
“She’s got Pascal,” I insist. “Christophe, maybe you should join the band; play tambourine or some shit. That way she’ll fixate on you, and you can both get laid.”
Christophe snorts. “I’d rather put my dick in a bear trap than in that crazy bitch.”
“It wouldn’t be all that different,” Julienne points out. “I heard she poked holes in the condoms of the last dude she was with.”
“All the more reason not to get involved with her,” Christophe says. “If she does that kind of shit, then she’s liable to have some kind of disease.”
I shudder.
“Well, I’m not worried about her,” I say. “Besides, Nora isn’t even coming to the show tomorrow.”
“Why wouldn’t she?” Christophe asks, furrowing his brow.
“I don’t know. It didn’t really come up.”
“Oh, come on, you know you want her to be there,” Julienne says.
“It’s not like she’s my girlfriend, Boss,” I tell her.
“Think about it: after the show, she’ll be all hot and bothered from seeing you playing onstage, and then you can talk her into anything you want,” Christophe says.
I’m about to lay into him, but before I can, the chime for the door rings and I look up, expecting to see one of our next clients coming in; instead, it’s Nora. She’s in a pair of leggings and a long shirt, and for a second, all I can think about is how good it would be to peel those pants right off her.
“Hey! What brings you here?” I smile ear to ear.
Nora looks at Christophe and Julienne and then at me again.
“I—I think that I want to get a tattoo,” Nora says, stumbling a bit over the words. But after a week of watching French TV, talking in bed the times we’ve ended up sleeping together, and just being surrounded by it, her French is coming to her a lot faster.
“You do?” I lean against the counter, looking her up and down. There isn’t a part of this woman’s body I haven’t seen, and I start imagining tattoos in different places: along her hip, along her outer thigh, on her arm, on her back. “What do you want to get?”
“It’s probably ridiculous, but it’s something I sketched this morning.” Nora says, blushing. She takes a piece of paper out of her purse and unfolds it, laying it on the countertop. The design is actually pretty amazing: a bouquet of flowers, the lines fairly detailed and fine.
“No, it isn’t ridiculous,” I say, shaking my head. “Do you want color?”
“That would make it cost a lot more, wouldn’t it?” she catches her lip between her teeth.
“Maybe we could make a deal,” I say, ignoring Julienne snickering behind me.
“Come again?” Nora frowns in confusion and I have to remember that she isn’t that fluent, no matter how much more easily she’s speaking now.
“We could simplify the design a little bit. How does that sound?”
“What would it cost?” Nora licks her lips. “I received a bonus for something I wrote.”
“I could do it for…” I think quickly. I don’t want to charge her; I could just take a pay cut and give the cash to Julienne. “It’s a pretty detailed piece; let me run it by the manager here,” I tell Nora.
As soon as we’re in the back, with Nora’s design in my hands, Julienne grins at me. “That’s a five-hundred-euro piece and you know it, especially with colors,” she says.
“I know it is, but can we work out a deal?” I ask. “How about I just pay for your cut myself and call it a day.”
Julienne looks at the design for a long moment. “Wow, she is pretty talented,” she admits and then pauses for a moment, tapping her fingers on the desk. “Well, the shop could really use some fresh, new designs. Why don’t we ask her to draw five pieces for the wall; then you won’t have to worry about my cut,” she suggests. “But you’d better cough up the five-hundred euros you owe me for the bet we made.”
I roll my eyes at that. “I’ll pay you the five-hundred euros if and only if we start properly dating,” I tell her.
Julienne grins and shrugs that off, and I go back out to the counter where Nora’s waiting.
“Hey, so, I talked to Julienne, and she had a cool idea,” I tell Nora. “How’d you like to draw five pieces of flash for the wall in exchange for your work?”
She puzzles that one out for a moment. “You want my designs for the shop?” she gestures to the flash art on the wall. “Really?”
“For sure. We could really use some new pieces up there, and Julienne was really impressed by your work.”
“That’s amazing; thank you so much!” Nora looks down at her design, smiling as her fingertips trace the outline of the leaves and flowers.
“I’ll need to make it simpler, but I think we should be able to get it done in two sittings,” I say. “One for the line work, one for the color.”
Nora nods slowly. “When can we start?” She looks up at me and I think about my schedule. I’m a little slow today; I just have a few more appointments in the afternoon, so I could, actually, start her tonight, if I could get the design simplified a bit in time.
“Let me work on the design, and why don’t you come back to the shop in about three hours,” I say. “Oh! Where do you want it?”
Nora blushes and looks away and I think about what torture it would be to have to tattoo her somewhere intimate.
Nora lifts up her shirt and twists to the side slightly, exposing her ribcage and the bottom of her bra. “Would here be okay?” I swallow down the thick feeling in my throat at the sight of her pale skin, remembering the way she looked completely naked, curled up on her side, in my bed a few nights before.
“That would be perfect,” I tell her. “It is going to hurt a lot there, though.”
“I have...how do you say? A high—I can accept a lot of pain?”
“A high tolerance,” I correct her.
Nora nods, accepting this. She’s actually unlike the few Americans I’ve met in that she seems eager to learn new words, and when I correct her, she doesn’t seem to take offense.
“We’ll see,” I tell her, reminding myself not to get too excited at the prospect of tattooing the beautiful girl; at giving Nora her first ink.
From what I’ve seen in women who get tattoos, their reaction is one of two things: either they cry, shake and hate it the whole time, or they get incredibly into it, almost like they’re turned on. Let’s hope she’s the second kind, I think.
“So, five o’clock? I’ll work on this and have something to show you.”
Nora looks at me for a moment longer, and I think she might want to kiss me; I definitely want to kiss her, but then she starts to walk away from the counter.
“I’ll see you later!”
“Sounds great,” Nora smiles at me and steps out of the shop.
“You’re going to tattoo her?” Christophe pulls his chair over to my station as I sit down and start reworking the design to make it a little easier to ink into Nora’s skin. “You should wait until after hours, that way…”
“I am not going to risk the safety rating of this shop,” I tell Christophe, taking out a piece of paper, beginning to trace the outline of the design.
“Thank you, Jacques,” Julienne says. “Christophe, if I ever find out that you’re having sex with a client in this shop after hours, I will fire you so quickly, you won’t even know what hit you.”
I snicker and start working on the design, thinking about inking it onto Nora’s body that night. I imagine her laid out on my table, trembling just slightly as I start my machine. I imagine her breath catching in her throat as I go over the outline, taking my time, but not dragging it out too much.
God, I hope she likes being tattooed. I smile to myself, thinking that once I’m done with the outline, maybe we can go back to her place. Of course, she’ll have to keep it wrapped up, but if she’s turned on enough by the endorphins in her system from being tattooed, she’ll be ready to go as soon as we get through the door.
I decide to cancel one or two of my bookings for the day and reschedule, just to make sure I can get to work on Nora as soon as she arrives to check on my progress.