“Good for me,” he says, amused.
On her way home from the ER, Shelby wonders if there was ever a year in which spring never came. She sits out on the fire escape to have her dinner, hot and sour soup and shrimp toast. A girl who is cold has only herself to blame. If you have burned a book, don’t complain that there is nothing to read. Shelby has on two sweaters, her raincoat, and a scarf looped around her throat. The weather is cloudy and miserable, but birds have built a nest on the fire escape. Shelby enjoys watching the nesting birds as she recovers. But one pale morning she wakes to find the nest has been abandoned. Some larger bird, perhaps a hawk that is said to circle the neighborhood, has torn it apart. A single blue egg has been left behind. She looks it up in her copy of Birds of America. Her birds would have been robins, another rarity in Manhattan.
This is the weekend when Ben Mink is getting married. Shelby was invited to La Scala restaurant in Huntington for the wedding dinner. Ben is nothing if not gracious, unless you cheat on him behind his back, then he calls you every name in the book and slams out the door so he can cry in the hallway and hold his broken heart in his hands, so damaged and ripped apart it’s clear he’s never coming back. Although Shelby never bothered to RSVP, she’s kept the invitation taped to her refrigerator. She’s torturing herself with it every time she gets something to eat. There is a photograph of Ben and his impossibly beautiful bride-to-be, Ana. Shelby has spent the past week obsessed by wicked thoughts. She is vindictive, even when she’s the guilty party. Perhaps it’s always true that when you wreck your own life you blame everyone else for your misfortune. She wants Ben’s wedding day to be ruined and has imagined dozens of possible scenarios, from lightning strikes to floods. Now her wish has come true. It’s April and it’s snowing. She feels a stab of joy when she wakes to see six inches of powdery white has fallen onto Tenth Avenue. No wonder the robins abandoned their nest. Perhaps Ben should do the same with his marriage. Now the wedding guests will have trouble on the Long Island Expressway. Their cars will skid and swerve, and those who do manage to arrive at the service on time will drag in wearing boots, the hems of their dresses soaking wet.
If she were to go to Ben’s wedding she would cut in during the first dance. She’d have on a long black skirt and hiking boots; she’d be so awkward and bitter no one present would imagine she was Ben’s old girlfriend, the one who dumped him and then regretted it ever after, the way she’s regretted everything in her life. It’s a good day to be alone. She’s horrible company, worse than usual. Even the dogs leave her be. Shelby tries not to think about centerpieces of roses and orchids and a red velvet wedding cake. Ben actually talked about those things to her on drunken evenings when he thought they’d be the couple to be marrying. He wanted to go to Mexico on a honeymoon. He had it all planned.
In the afternoon Shelby walks through the snow to East Third Street. On Ben Mink’s wedding day she finally goes inside the tattoo parlor to mark herself for her sins. She stomps fluffy snow off her boots. Three men are in mid-conversation, which stops dead when they see Shelby. Because of the weather they’re clearly surprised to have a customer, particularly someone like Shelby. She used to resemble a homeless person, someone who could snap, who might have a knife in her pocket. People often crossed the street when they saw her, bald head, torn red sweatshirt, but now, in her Burberry raincoat and new pair of boots, she may look too upscale for her surroundings. All the walls are covered with tattoo patterns, some intricate and tribal, others colorful and traditional. There’s low jazz playing on the radio. The men all have elaborate tattoos. One guy says something to his cohorts, then approaches Shelby. He’s dark and brooding, a large man with a demeanor that can be taken as threatening. He appraises Shelby in a way that makes her feel uncomfortable.
“Just looking?” he says with a scrim of sarcasm.
“I’d like a tattoo.” For some reason Shelby feels judged. Her hackles are up. “Isn’t that what you do?”
“I’ve seen you lurking around before, but you always disappeared.”
Shelby furrows her brow. “I don’t lurk.” Then she thinks of the time the door opened and she managed to avoid a shadowy figure. “Well, maybe sometimes,” she admits.
The artist has dark, liquid eyes, with an intense gaze that goes right through her. “Where do you want it?” he asks. When he sees that she’s puzzled, he grins. In his amused expression she sees the glimmer of another side of him. “The tattoo?”
Shelby has considered her choice for a very long time. “Over my heart.”