“I don’t know.” I’m walking, faster and faster. “Just look around I guess. I’ll figure it out when I get there.”
I push back through the door. The girl who just had her nipple pierced is standing in front of the couch talking to her friend. “No, seriously,” she’s saying, she has her pointer finger looped inside the neckline of her clingy tank top and is holding it out away from her body. “It was just like a little pinch. I’m sure Mike’s bit it harder a billion times! You should do it. We’ll be nipple-twins!” She leans forward a little bit and her friend looks down her shirt. “Look how cute.”
Her friend leans and looks down her shirt. “Awww,” she says, in that voice people use when they’re looking at a baby or a bunny rabbit. “So cute!”
I walk up to the register. The dark-haired guy, Ron, is standing at the front counter. He’s leaning against it, reading a magazine called Terminal Ink. On the front cover is a picture of a girl covered in tattoos and wearing a black forties-style bathing suit. He is nodding at the magazine, like it’s suggesting something to him that he agrees with.
Behind him the curtain is opened ever so slightly. I need to get back there.
“I’m interested in a tattoo,” I blurt out.
He looks up. “Weren’t you just in here? Talking to Eden?”
“I was,” I say. “I was going to get one but I got scared.” I bite my bottom lip, an exaggerated expression of coy embarrassment. “Y’know, needles, ack!” I hold up my hands and wave them around. “But I really want one.” I’m making this up as I go along, but it seems right somehow.
“First one?” he asks. I nod. “You have a design in mind?”
“Um…nope.” I shrug. “I’ll just figure it out when I’m back there.”
Ron looks at me suspiciously.
“I’m crazy like that!” I say.
“We like crazy here,” he says and he starts to smile. “But, Crazy, here’s a question, are you eighteen?” He puts his hands on his hips. He’s flirting with me. Guys like him never flirt with me, they barely even see me.
“Oh, yeah,” I say. And then I roll my eyes although I’m not exactly sure what I mean by that.
“Do you have ID?”
My heart is pounding. I reach into my back pocket and take out Nina’s passport. Before I even have time to think about it, I’ve opened it up and slapped it onto the counter. Ron picks it up, looks at it, then back at me, then at the picture again. I try to make my most Nina-esque face, flirty and warm, and at the same time edgy and unconcerned. I think I end up looking cross-eyed, but it doesn’t even matter apparently, because Ron is nodding.
“Okay. Nina.” Ron nods. He hands me back her passport. “I liked your hair better the other way,” he says. He’s talking about Nina’s hair—in the picture it’s pink. I feel a rush of something like triumph.
“Me, too,” I say. A weird part of me is kind of enjoying this. “I had to dye it back to normal when I got my job.”
“Oh?” Ron asks. “What’s that?”
“I’m a bartender,” I say.
“Where?”
“Um…New York!” I’m digging myself deeper. I don’t even know why. Do bartenders in New York even need normal hair?”
“Cool,” Ron says. “My buddy owns a rock-and-roll bar there, on the Lower East Side. Lipsynch.”
“Oh of cooourse,” I say, nodding. “Lipsynch.”
I turn back and look at Sean who’s standing a few feet behind me. He winks, and the Nina in me winks right back.
Ron leads me behind the curtain. “Nina, meet Petra.” He motions to a girl with long black hair held off her face by a thick red headband.
“Petra, Nina.” Petra is skinny in a cigarettes-and-too-much-coffee kind of way. She’s wearing a paper-thin white tank top and a million heavy bracelets on each wrist. Both arms are covered in tattoos. We smile at each other.
“Petra’s the best,” Ron says. “We just stole her a month ago from the biggest tattoo shop in Nashville. She’ll help you pick something out.” He looks up at Petra. “Nina here is a virgin.” He turns toward me and smiles. And then he walks back out into the front.
“So.” Petra’s grinning. “First one, huh?”
“Yup.” I nod. “I just decided what the hell, y’know?”
“Oh, do I!” Her grin widens. “Five years ago I looked just like you and then one day I was bored and I’d just broken up with someone and was thinking about how I’m always either in love with someone or missing someone so I got this.” She taps the outline of a red heart on her bicep. There’s a dashed red line in the middle and underneath in tiny script letters is written your name goes here. “But be careful, they’re addictive!” She holds out her arms, which are covered in red and black.
And even though, to be honest, I am not entirely sure what I think about all this, I just say, “fuck yeah!” because it seems like something Nina would do.