Letter to My Daughter: A Novel - By George Bishop Page 0,45
world could go on: I didn’t want to. If this was life, I certainly didn’t want any more of it. I’d had enough. Like Tim said, what did it matter anyway? You could line us all up—the nun, the soldier, the schoolgirl, the murderer, the good and the bad: we all came to the same end. Why go on? Why even bother if it hurt so much?
Buses rumbled past in front of me, heavy silver tanks with destinations spelled out above their windshields: Lake Charles. New Orleans. I hate to say this, Liz, but I suddenly saw that relief was no more than a few steps away. It would be as easy as taking my next breath. One instant of shock, like jumping into a cold lake, and it’d all be over. Another bus passed trailing black clouds of diesel smoke: Biloxi. What would I miss? Nothing. Who would miss me? Nobody. I would be far, far away, released from all this regret, and whatever was there, even if it was nothing, could only be better than this miserable, ugly life I had now.
I stepped down toward the street and waited for the next bus, shivering in my coat as I readied myself. Could I do it? I believed that I could. The necessary thing, I saw, was to do it all at once and get it right. Another bus was coming, pulling out of the station at the end of the block. I measured the distance from the curb to the middle of the street. Three quick steps was all it would take, like running to the end of a diving board, and then the plunge. And then … what? Release. Quiet. Dark. I was conscious of my breath and of the muscles tensing in the back of my legs. I could feel the blood tingling in my fingers at the ends of my hands. Facing me on the opposite side of the road, like a backdrop to this last scene of my life, was a dilapidated row of shops. At the corner stood a barbershop. Next to that, a used bookstore. The last shop in the row was one I must’ve seen before but never quite registered. “Tattoo” the window said.
It wasn’t a matter of choosing, Elizabeth. How do I explain this? It was as if the act had been there all along, in my mind and in my body, only waiting for this moment to be realized. I see it now as one of the few truly inspired moments in my life, a kind of divine intervention that may have literally saved me. Something told me what I had to do, and I did it.
I waited until the bus passed and then hefted up my suitcase and walked directly across the street to the shop. There weren’t any lights on but the door was unlocked. A bell tied to the inside doorknob clinked tinnily when I entered.
The front room was dingy and small, with broken linoleum flooring and a few pieces of secondhand furniture. It smelled damp and unclean. Music played from behind a beaded curtain. “Be right there,” a voice called. On a low coffee table were scattered some magazines—Easyriders, Playboy, Rolling Stone. After a minute a man stepped through the hanging beads, putting on his eyeglasses like he’d just woken up.
He was big and scruffy with pale skin, an unkempt beard, and long reddish hair pulled back in a ponytail. He wore a green army shirt. He looked down at my suitcase. “Yeah?”
“You do tattoos?”
“I do.” His voice was lazy, matter of fact, but not coarse.
“Will you give me one?”
He drew his fingers through his beard, like he was combing it. “That depends. Have you got any money?”
“A little.”
“What do you want?”
“Can you do words?”
“Sure, I can do words.” A flicker of curiosity passed across his eyes when I told him what I wanted. “That’s it?”
“Yes.”
“Shouldn’t be a problem, then. When do you want to do this? Now?”
“Yes. Now.”
“Fine. You want to, ah—?” He indicated that I should follow him into the back room. As he held the bead curtain aside, he looked back at my suitcase. “You running away? Not that it’s any of my business.”
“No.”
“Good.”
He shooed a cat off an old hospital exam table, draped the table with a towel, and then went to wash his hands in a corner sink. I glanced around the room, my arms folded over my coat, still shivering a little. On the wall were an American flag