the threshold and tossed Mahasti’s Crocs at her feet. “Your shoes.”
“Thanks.”
He shut the security door behind him. The woman jerked in sympathy to the metallic scrape of the lock. An hour still lacked to dawn, but that didn’t concern the rooster that crowed outside, greeting the first trans-lucency of the indigo sky. Dawn would come soon, but for now all that light was good for was silhouetting the shark-tooth range of mountains that gave Needles its name
The man drew back beside the woman, against the counter. “What do you want?”
The baby, cool and soft, had fallen asleep on Mahasti’s warm breast. She gently disconnected him and tugged her shirt down. “I want you to change me. Change me forever. I want a tattoo.”
She told him to freehand whatever he liked. He studied her face while she gave him her left arm. Billy held the kid for insurance, grumbling about the delay. The mother went around hanging blankets over the windows and turning on all the lights. “What are you?” he asked.
“A ‘wetback fucking junkie,’” she mimicked, cruelly accurate. “Do you think if you talk to me you’ll build a connection, and it will keep you safe?”
He looked down at his tools, at the transfer paper on the book propped on his lap. “You don’t have much accent for a wetback.”
He glanced up at Billy and the baby, lips thin.
Mahasti held out her right hand. “Give me Alan, please. He needs to suckle.”
“Ma’am.” The woman pinned the last corner of a blanket and stepped back from the window. “Please. I’m his mother—”
Billy glared her still and silent, though even the force of his stare could not hush the sobs of her breath. He slid the baby into the crook of Mahasti’s arm, supporting its head until the transfer was complete.
“When I learned what would become your language—” Mahasti spoke to the man as if none of the drama had occurred “—it was across a crusader’s saddle. I was too young, and the child the bastard got on me killed me coming out.” She smiled, liver-dark lips drawn fine. “And when I was dead I rose up and I returned the favor, to both of them.”
He drew back from her needle teeth when she smiled. His hands shook badly enough that he lifted his pencil from the paper and pulled in a steadying breath. Without meeting her eyes, he went back to what he had been drawing once more.
At Mahasti’s other breast, the child suckled. The touch still warmed her.
“Somebody will notice when we don’t open,” the woman said. “Someone will know there’s something wrong.”
“Maybe,” Mahasti said. “In a week or two. You people never want to get involved in a goddamned thing. So shut up and let him fucking draw.”
He drew, and he showed her. A lotus, petals like a crown, petals embracing the form of a newborn child. “White,” he said. “Stained with pink at the heart.”
“White ink.” She held up her brown arm for inspection. “You can do that?”
He nodded.
If a child changed her once, maybe a child could change her again. She said, “You’ve got through the daylight to make me happy. When the sun goes down we’re moving on.”
He didn’t ask “and?” Neither did the mother.
As if they had anyway, Billy said, “And there’s two ways we can leave you when we go.”
“I’ll get clean needles,” said the man.
Billy paced while the man worked on Mahasti’s arm and the baby dozed off against her breast once more. Dimly, Mahasti heard the flutter of a heart. The woman finally sat down on the couch in the waiting area and pulled her knees up to her chest. The man kept wanting to talk. The dog barked forlornly in the yard.
After several conversational false starts, while the ink traced the arched outlines of petals across Mahasti’s skin and the at-first-insistently ringing phone went both unanswered and more frequently quiet, he said, “So if she was a kidnapped Persian princess, what were you?”
Billy skipped a bootheel off the floor and turned, folding his arms. “Maybe I was Billy the Kid.”
Mahasti snorted. “Billy the Kid wasn’t an Indian.”
“Yeah? You think anybody would have written it down if he was? What if I was an iron-fingered demon? I wouldn’t need you to get me invited in.”
With a cautious, sidelong glance at Mahasti, the man said, “What’s an iron-fingered demon?”
“If I were an iron-fingered demon, I could eat livers, cause consumption, get on with my life. Unlife. But no, you get to be a