“This session is over now, Pierce,” I hear Tina say. Her voice is calm, but there’s venom in it. “Please leave and come back tomorrow when you can control yourself. If you can’t control yourself, you’ll never be welcome here again.”
I watch as she sticks a plastic covering over his tattoo, adhesive on all sides to cover it.
“Don’t get this wet,” she says.
“I know the drill, Tina.”
“Really?” she says, eyes flashing anger. “Because just now it seemed you didn’t.”
“Hey,” he says. “I can’t fucking control my body. Your apprentice is hot. I like her.”
Despite myself, I feel a tightening in my belly. I don’t know exactly if it’s because I like hearing that, or because I hate him for saying that, for using that.
At this point, it doesn’t really matter.
“See you tomorrow,” he says, swaggering out of the shop.
I turn to Tina, and she just sighs, eyeing me.
“This going to be a problem?” she asks. “Because if it is, take a day tomorrow.”
I balk. “That wasn’t my fault!”
“Penelope.” She’s shorter than me, way smaller in frame than I am, and yet somehow I’m terrified of her. I shrink completely.
“In our line of work, we sometimes encounter troublesome clients. Perhaps, some might say, more often than in other lines of work.”
I nod.
“You have no idea how many men I’ve tattooed who became tumescent during the process.”
“Any who were naked?” I counter.
“Yes,” she says, nodding. “Very many. I’ve also tattooed women on their inner thighs, pubic region, even labia, who became very obviously aroused, too. This is an awkward setting for everybody involved. You can’t react the way you did, no matter how uncomfortable you find it. Now, I know it’s not the case with Pierce, but if you make a client uncomfortable for an involuntary reaction, then we may lose them as a customer. There is a certain level of trust and intimacy between artist and client, Penelope. You need to make them feel free from judgment.”
“He was doing it on purpose!”
“No,” she says, “He wasn’t. All that joking was just a cover for a reaction he couldn’t control. And that’s not the point. Look, I’m not trying to get you in trouble or lecture you, but you really can’t freak out like that. When nurses do prostate exams, men can get erections, even ejaculate. Some women are aroused when they see their gynecologist, and even achieve orgasm. Most of it is just a result of physical stimulation, paired with an intensely awkward situation. The brain processes things in strange ways, and stress can often be displaced into arousal.”
I bunch my brow. “How do you know this?”
“I read a book by a psychologist who became a tattoo artist. Plus, twenty years of industry experience. Anyway, if those doctors or nurses were to freak out in those situations—”
“I didn’t freak out.”
“You did,” she says. “You totally did. You shattered the ink vial.”
I look toward the metal tray, and there I see the tattoo machine sitting in a puddle of black ink.
“I’m sorry,” I say. “I’ll pay for that.”
“It’s fine,” Tina says, putting up a hand. “Listen, you and him got a history?”
“No!”
She eyes me hard, and I wilt.
“We kissed last night. I don’t know. I don’t like him at all. He’s just so… irritating.”
“Look, if he’s too close—”
“For a tattoo?” I blurt.
“For this tattoo, Penelope.”
I swallow. “If he can control himself tomorrow, I can do it.”
“Fine, but you’re not doing the shadowing. That was a mistake on my part.”
“Tina,” I say, holding my voice steady. “I can do the shadowing. I have the skills. You’ve seen the tattoos I administered to myself.”
“No. Tomorrow you’ll just be watching me. I’m sorry, but I can’t ethically allow you to do even a portion of the tattoo. That was wrong of me.”
“Tina—”
“He had us both going in there, Penelope. Played you like a fiddle, goaded you into doing the tattoo, and me into letting you. No, you can just watch.”
“Okay,” I say.
She pauses for a moment. It seems like she’s hesitating to say something. A moment later I find out what it is.
“Do you like him?”
I take my time. I wonder if I should react with false indignation. I decide to just be honest with her.
“I don’t know. I know that I dislike him.”