The Rose Tattoo

Karly Moller

Her day was an agony of waiting for a chat with her manager that never happened. It was really the only reason she had come in to work that day. She was on a salary, it was a three-day holiday weekend, and she had things to do…

Finally, around three-thirty PM, he told her that the issue had been “resolved without consulting her.” She could have done laundry, shopped for flip-flops, or done anything other than hanging around on a Friday afternoon. Work without the work was just a bummer. It wasn’t that she enjoyed the accounting. She really did not despite being so capable. It was a means to an end of having enough for herself. Working with money for money always seemed to make sense.

There were days when she yearned to be new, entry-level, maybe doing something with her hands. Arranging flowers… personal shopping. Something with more personality or expression, but she could rely on those accounting skills.

Others relied on those accounting skills; they relied on her to be that reliable accountant. The feeling of accomplishment only lasts till the next round of paperwork, but there was an accomplishment in her personal savings and holdings.

Is that all that there is in life? No, certainly not, but there were days in her life that were nothing but numbers from morning until night. Chasing her home and late hours into bed, the weight of responsibility would make her restless. Restless for freedom, joy, and more lighthearted ways to spend her time.

She drove home and dropped her things in their usual spot. The cat was meowing for dinner, but her husband had warmed up some canned soup and made sandwiches. They had a whole Labor Day weekend planned, nothing was packed, and the food was for packing energy as well as a peace offering for having done nothing but chill out with video games until twenty minutes prior. He was always afraid that his laid-back ways would leave her fed up and flabbergasted at last, and the love would unravel.

The truth was that she forever valued his own ability to relax at will, the way she could never do without great effort. His moods of disaffected peace would soothe her nerves even if he would miss a credit payment or procrastinate on his to-do list.

“Cecillia, I made the kind of soup with the lentils in it? I remembered you saying that you liked it before. Is that alright?” Peter asked.

“I don’t even have to think about cooking tonight – that just became my favorite new meal. You, hun, were already my favorite. I can’t wait to get out of here, further away from that office. We should do something weird at the beach this year. Something different. Maybe go see some awful play, dance badly at a club, get drunk at a dive bar. Something foolish, even, or I am just going to tragically snap.”

Then it occurred to her to do something out of character, permanent, and ill-advised. She was going to get a tattoo… There were a few places at the beach and close by, therefore, there must be one in the bunch with a good reputation – she was feeling spontaneous, but didn’t really want an infection.

“Peter! I want to get a tattoo!”

“You? Really? What do you want to get?”

“Something sexy, but not slutty. I thought maybe a rose on a breast, but I think that’s too suggestive, and I could only show you. Maybe on my arm. The left, on top.”

“This is sudden. I’m shocked that you want to do something like this, but it might be really nice. I just want to make sure this isn’t so sudden that you regret it.”

“I need a serious experience right now. I don’t know. I need some kind of release, to express myself, something feminine and beautiful instead of fucking around with numbers all day. You know I love to be the one doing my job well, but I just can’t say I have any joy actually doing it day to day.”

“Honestly, it sounds better than dancing badly, drinking, and getting jealous that guys half our age are looking at you. I don’t really miss that stuff from our younger days anymore than some of the ‘friends’ we stopped seeing over the years. Maybe you need some art in your life.”

They ate, packed, packed the car, and started the two-hour drive. There had been light rain in the forecast, but as the days progressed, it changed into a prediction of spotty thunderstorms. Not too much to worry about besides possibly slowing down for heavy rain.

Cecilia fell asleep to the Tchaikovsky on the radio. Peter was an anxious driver and preferred classical music on long rides. She was gently awoken in the driveway of the cabin. Her awesome husband had already paid at the office and brought everything into the bedroom for both of them. The procrastinating on packing since earlier, about which he was so worried, never occurred to her.

Slipping out of her slumber into a smile, she followed him into the cabin, and they sat at the kitchen table. The table had a butcher’s block for a top and was well-worn. The cabin came with some basic pots and pans. Besides the table with its four chairs and a full-size bed there was no other furniture. It was just one room.

There was a bookshelf with some 19th- and 20th-century classics. Things like Mark Twain and Sylvia Plath. They were all pretty dusty and slightly misused and abused. The steady rain had Cecillia thinking they might resort to reading. Peter had sex in mind…

Then there was a knock at the door. “Hello, anybody renting here?” said Fred Hampton, whose classic Ford pick-up was overheating and spewing antifreeze in the street.

“Wow. I guess you must need some help, huh?” said Peter.

“I could really use a cell call to my mechanic for a tow, and I could give you some money for a ride back to my shop. It’s only about two miles. I get no signal on this side of the cliff.”

Cecilia unlocked her phone and handed it to Fred. He quickly made his phone call and arranged for a tow, but his mechanic would be as long as an hour and a half. Some more conversation revealed that he was, in fact, a tattoo artist at FReeFish, a popular tattoo parlour on the boardwalk.

Everybody was quite excited at the seeming synchronicity of their coming together when Cecillia had made her decision about the rose. He was available the rest of his night at work because he had to cancel the long session that he was on his way to as his car gave out. The plan was to drink the six-pack Peter and Cecillia had brought of hard apple cider and play some gin rummy. Fred kept cards in his glove compartment. Strange, but handy that night.

Peter and Cecillia got out their weather radio on a local public radio station airing classic blues. The rain picked up, and they inched the blues louder. Roughly half an hour into their game, they were having a lively conversation on modern dating and how they were all glad that they did not have to deal with it. Peter and Cecillia Front had been married twelve years and in love for twenty.

Fred, younger than both of them, married his junior high sweetheart in his senior year of high school and stayed home at the beach. He was always artistic, and his comic art drawings got him an internship at a good place.

The local radio personality broke into the broadcast to say that there were expected to be widespread thunderstorms with hail, and most of the counties around theirs, but not theirs, had tornado watches.

Cecillia found herself anxiously trying to arrange her unruly red and grey hair. Peter thought she seemed especially delicate and anxious. He himself had no personal fear of the bad weather. If anything really happened, it would be time to get worried and work it out. The fact was that usually these watches and warnings go by with only a few folks having too bad a time.

The rain got louder, and did turn into hail. The wind began to whine through the trees – occasionally raising to a wail. The hail fell with a stuttering rhythym that varied with the wind gusts.

The hour and a half came, went, and turned into two hours. The re was no sign of a tow truck. Fred triend to call and got no response. The plan changed from doing the tattoo that night, into the next afternoon. Peter and Cecillia planned to drive him straight home, but he insisted on making sure that his truck was taken care of first.

Peter, with sex still on his mind, was most esppecially annoyed. He felt it was his right, considering it was a vacation and a rainy day. He had prepared by bringing everything in, and then there is Fred for two hours now. The night was wasting away, and his energy was waning.

Cecillia felt bad, but ambivalent. She saw it as a bit more than childish that he could not turn his back on the truck. He acted as if the truck needed emotional support through it’s hard time and he had to stand by it. The truck had been fine the past two hours at the side of the road. That part of the camp grounds did not have much drive through traffic.

They were all raising their voices above the banging hail, and the tone of the room became aggressive. It was almost 8 p.m. “I can’t just leave it there without making sure he has my money before he puts that truck on his truck,” remarked Fred. He continued, “I want that man to have his money in his face before he puts his hands on my truck. That was my father’s truck and I restored every inch by hand myself.”

Cecillia responded, “I’m not sure if the better idea is to get you home ASAP, or just wait until the weather passes.”

Turning to Peter, “Maybe we should just figure out something else to pass time and let him wait on the tow a while longer. The driver may have come across trees in the street, downed electric lines. Maybe there were accidents on the highway. It seems dangerous to bring him anywhere in this hail.”

Peter said, “This is basically half of our vacation right here playing cards with this guy. We had other plans…”

“So did God, the atmosphere, and the weather. There really isn’t much we can do. We can continue our plans as late as we like, nobody needs to get up early in the morning.”

By this time the night was dark and the radio was interviewing locals about there experiences in the storm and there were many tales of trees on cars and roads, microburts making small buildings into debris, and hail damage. They promised it would all be over in 40 or so minutes, and that the storm was running out of steam as the two temperature fronts were evening out and smoothing over.

Soon after the hail subsided into some tame misting, Peter and Cecillia dutifully drove Fred home. Luckily he lived a bit closer than his shop even was to there cozy little cabin. The tow arrived as they were leaving, ultimately satisfying Fred.

The happy couple planned to see Fred the next morning, get the rose tattoo, and find a place to eat lunch. They curled up in bed, Peter finally had his sex, which everybody enjoyed, and they almost overslept.

The tattoo shop was shrouded in fog, like most of the boardwalk, even at half past 10. They asked about Fred, and they said that they had never heard of him. One customer told them he had been getting his ink in that shop ten years or more, and no Fred Hampton sounded familiar.

Peter and Cecillia went about their typical beach weekend ina distracted haze. It was just strange that someone would be so ficticious about themselves, as they were asking for help. It left things feeling off. They both did their rounds looking for all of their things, and found no evidence that anything was missing. They bickered about whether he was mentally ill or possibly on drugs. Cecillia concluded that he must have just been an unemployed loser passing the time and finding a compelling enough back story to fund his ride home.

Cecillia went back to that parlor the next day and did get the tattoo on her left arm of the rose. People at work gave her many compliments, it was a bit freeing and fun, and she felt a part of herself was fulfilled beyond just decoration.

However, as time went by the rose tattoo faded, and became a part of her arm. A part of her daily life and routine. As familiar as the scent of her favorite lotion.

Fred Hampton’s myseterious lies and weird but harmless misrepresentation always remained fresh and interesting. She fully expected that some day he would be frying eggs at a Denny’s for work as she happened to want eggs for luch, and she would finally get all of the details surrounding the fraud. At the very least she wished she new how he ever made out after they had dropped hime off.