The Tattoo (15 page)

I pulled a book out from under the bar and acted like I was reading it. When she got there, she asked, “Hey, is Kilcha around?”

She smelled like rain and Ivory soap. I put the book down. “Kilcha? Who’s that?”

She crinkled her brow. “What do you mean, who’s that? She’s the short, angry little Korean woman who owns the place.”

That’s when I smelled the liquor on her breath. I looked at her eyes again and noticed that they were a bit glassy. I reached behind me and opened a bottle of Bud Lite. I put it in front of her. “On the house. What do you want with Mama-san?”

She took a sip from the beer, then smiled. “I need to talk to my mother.”

Hell, I never even knew Mama-san’s name until now, and I was shocked to find out that this girl was her daughter. She was at least five-six to Mama-san’s four-ten. I believed her, but I had to doubt her anyway. “There’s no way in hell you’re Mama-san’s kid. What’d she do, marry one of the two white basketball players in the NBA?”

This earned a laugh, but one that, to my disappointment, rang with more politeness than anything else. It wasn’t that funny. “Why?” she asked. “Do you look exactly like your mother?”

She lifted the bottle to her mouth. “Yeah, I do,” I said. “She was a gorgeous woman, don’t you agree?”

She quickly pulled the bottle out of her mouth. Foam rose in the dark bottle. The laugh forced a few drops of beer from her closed lips. One of the drops rolled down the side of her mouth. She caught it with her pointy tongue.“Yeah,” she said, “she must look all right. But I hope she doesn’t have that disgusting gold thing growing out of her neck, too. She’s risking suffocation, and a green neck among other things. I hope she got hers removed.”

I put my hand on my chest and dramatically bowed my head. She turned her head a few times, looking behind her. “Unfortunately, Mom’s dead,” I said, “but she left me books.”

I picked up the book which I was pretending to read and showed it to her. I looked at the title and cringed.“The Bartender’s Bible,” she said. “Interesting book to leave your child. Was Mom a bartendress?”

“No, unfortunately Dad was a drunk. Nothing more pitiful than seeing your father get blasted on drinks with little umbrellas in them.”

Claudia smiled. “Well, a lady as wise as to leave you something to keep your father happy sure must’ve told you bits of advice before she died. An amateur bartendress to boot? She must’ve told you stuff like, ‘reading in a dark strip bar is bad for your eyes,’ or ‘too much gold makes you look like a two-bit criminal.’”

That one hurt, so I felt like I had to bite back. “Well,” I said, “someone’s got to make money in the family, right? Some of us have to break the law to spoil our relatives with whatever their hearts desire.”

“You are quite an asshole,” she said.

“Are you coming on to me?”

She laughed. That’s when Mama-san approached the bar and grabbed her daughter’s arm. “What you doing here? I tol’ you never come here. Bad place bad.” She made an attempt to reach up and put her hand over her daughter’s eyes. “Craudia, you go outside right now. Pabo. You go now.” Mama-san gave me a dirty look as they both walked toward the exit.

I took a big gulp from Claudia’s beer before I threw it away. I was standing there thinking, I couldn’t believe Mama-san gave her daughter a name she couldn’t even pronounce. I was curious, so I walked and followed them outside.

When I got out there, Mama-san was telling Claudia, “Aigo. I tol’ you never come here. What you doing out dis late, anyway? You, you drink, yeah? Crazy girl! You drive, too?”

Claudia saw me come out of the thick, red velvet curtain, then looked back at her mother. “Ma,” she said, “my car got towed. I was at a bar a couple of blocks away. I need money to get my car out. I promise I’ll never come back here and I’ll pay you back.”

Mama-san opened her purse and pulled out a wad of money. “What you doing at bar?”

“Ma, I’m twenty-two years old. I was drinking with a couple of girlfriends from school.”

“You no drink too much. Here money. Catch cab. I go back work.”

Claudia bent down and hugged her mother. “Thank you, Mom.”

Mama-san responded with an “Ackk!” She said something in Korean, then walked back toward the velvet curtain and gave me another dirty look as she passed me.

Just as Claudia turned around, I spoke up. “Hey,” I said, “don’t catch a cab. I’ll take you. Where’s your car, Sand Island?”

She stopped and turned round. “Go back to work. I saw you busting your ass in there. The place would fold without you.”

I laughed. “Yeah, you saw me working in there all right. But seriously, let me take you. Mama-san won’t mind if I split early.”

She sighed. “Okay. On one condition. You take off that crazy gold chain.”

I nodded and took it off. I put it in my pocket and felt the heavy weight attempt to pull my pants down. I hoped the darkness covered the light ring around my naked neck. When I walked to my kick-ass Porsche, I was kind of ashamed of it. She seemed to be more of a Toyota Celica kind of girl. Not in a trashy way, but in that way that some people born into money are attracted to those that don’t have any. I opened the door for her.

We took off to Sand Island, which was about fifteen minutes away. We did some small talk on the way, exchanged names, told each other where we were from. She’d lived in town all her life. After I pulled into the impound lot, which was surrounded by tubular industrial buildings, I peered into the bad lighting. I wondered which car was hers. When I stopped, she quickly got out, not waiting for me to open the door. I followed her up to the attendant.

After the exchange was made, she turned to me. “Thanks for the ride. Don’t let me keep you from anything.”

I smiled. “Don’t worry, I’m free. Besides, I was planning to follow you home. Seeing that you’ve been drinking, I wouldn’t want you to get pulled over.”

“Are you my knight in shining armor?”

“No,” I said, “actually, I was hoping you’d be mine. I figure since you slayed that gold thing growing around my neck, you could protect me from all the other bad things stalking me.”

“Only one rescue a night. Tell you what, give me a call tomorrow.”

She pulled a pen and crumpled piece of paper out of her purse and wrote down her number. She handed it to me. “We’ll go do something in the afternoon if you wake up in time.”

After I secured it in my hand, I resisted the urge to pump victorious fist holes into the sky. Instead, I told her,“Listen, before I leave, I gotta see your ride. I just want to see if you’re some kind of hippie or something.”

She smiled. “Nope. In some ways, unfortunately, I am my mother’s daughter.”

She waved good-bye. I watched as she stuck her key into a crimson colored Lexus coupe. She peeled out and drove away.

I called her at about eleven the next day. She wanted to surf. We decided to meet at the Waikiki Natatorium. After I hung up, that nervous feeling crept into my body, that feeling of bliss mixed with fear. I laughed to myself, thinking, I was the one who was supposed to lure her to the beach so I could check out her body. Before I left, I strapped my longboard to the roof of my Porsche (this sight always looked ridiculous to me) and set out to Waikiki.

I had beat her there. When she arrived about five minutes later and got out of her car, I was hardly disappointed. She was in a smooth, thick-strapped, black bikini, her body was tanned and hard, probably from surfing. She had long, smooth legs, and cut abs. Her top revealed a small crease of cleavage high on her chest. Several small freckles decorated her below her neck. Her bare face was even more pretty in daylight. Her dark eyes and long, thin lips looked killer on her thin, tanned face. She had those smart, cocky eyes, the kind that always looked like they weren’t just looking, but analyzing, too. They were sure eyes. I couldn’t believe she was Mama-san’s daughter. To me, Mama-san always looked like she carried this giant invisible rock on her shoulders for years, like she could’ve been tall once, but the rock smashed her body closer to the ground. Claudia, on the other hand, seemed to carry no such burden. Her uncombed hair tangled in the wind as she reached to the roof of her Lexus and unstrapped her longboard.

When she met me at my car, she leaned her board against it and put her hands on her hips. She looked me over and jokingly, with eye-lashes fluttering, she asked, “Do you work out?” We laughed. I watched her stomach tighten with the laughter. She grabbed her board. I followed her to the water.

The waves were small, near non-existent that day. One to two feet, maybe. But as always, it was packed. About fifteen to twenty surfers drifted with the tide, mostly guys, and we all waited for the next small wave to come. I noticed others were occasionally checking out Claude, and at first it gave me a mixed feeling of pride and jealousy. However, after I thought about it and realized that she wasn’t mine, the pride boiled away, and the jealousy turned to rage. She didn’t seem like the type to dig caveman ways, so I turned to her and said, “Hey, let’s paddle more out.” She nodded and we paddled out closer to the horizon.

When we got far enough away from everybody, I stopped. “Shitty today,” I said.

She nodded in agreement. “Hey, Claudia,” I asked, “what do you do anyway? Do you have to work or something tonight?”

She had stopped and let the incoming tide drift her back to me, while I occasionally paddled in order to stay where I was. When she reached my side, she paddled to keep herself next to me. “Nope,” she said, “I don’t work. I go to school. Much to my mother’s disappointment, I’m here at U.H. getting an Art History degree. I think she was thinking Stanford or Berkeley or something. Thinking pre-medicine or pre-law or something. I’m turning out to be a big disappointment. I would say black sheep, if there were any other sheep to compare me to.”

“I hate to take sides, but what the hell can you do with an Art History degree anyway?”

She laughed.“You’re telling me. Nah, I don’t know, I guess I could work at a museum or something.”

“Work in a museum? I’ve seen the ladies that work in museums. They look one step away from becoming relics themselves.”

She laughed her polite, slightly sarcastic laugh and looked over to me. “When the hell have you ever been in a museum, scarface wannabe? What were you doing, looking for paintings to steal?”

I laughed. Then I thought about this conversation we were having, and the other conversation we had the night before. I realized that I’d been laughing like a jackass during the moments I was with her these last twelve hours, laughing more often than I’d ever laughed before. I also realized that Claude didn’t fear me. It seemed strange at the time. I figured just about everyone I knew had some reason or another to fear me, but she didn’t. She lacked caution. I mean, I knew she was making some attempts to be clever and charming, but she didn’t seem afraid to fail or insult. This girl didn’t give a fuck, but she didn’t give a fuck with grace. I looked up at the sun and squinted. I felt its harsh rays burn the white ring around my neck. I paddled a little closer to her. “Will you marry me?”

She laughed and splashed water on my hot face. I felt the cool ocean drip down to my mouth. I tasted the salt. “Hey, let me ask you something,” she said, “you told me last night you grew up in the country. Ka‘a‘awa, right? Why don’t you speak pidgin?”

I looked at her. “Why, sista? You get one problem wit’ da way I talk? No ack. Why, you one Korean-haole, how come you talk like one haole and not one Korean?”

She shook her head.“I can speak some Korean. Can’t write it, though. I guess I talk the way I do because I learned my English in the classroom. In kindergarten, I could barely speak English, so I had no friends. I learned how to talk from the teachers. So what about you?”

“My father was never into me speaking pidgin. My mom was an English teacher. I read some. Hey, don’t look so surprised. I guess you could say I went to kindergarten barely being able to speak pidgin, so I had no friends. I talked to books and they talked to me. After a while, when I learned how things worked, I got friends and picked up pidgin.”

She nodded. I looked toward the shore and noticed that the tide was pulling us further in toward the other surfers. I didn’t want to go in. Then I looked to the horizon wishing that I could see beyond it. I looked down in the water which surrounded me and noticed I had forgotten all about my shark phobia. I looked at Claude and saw her looking at the horizon. “Hey,” I asked, “what is it that makes you like the ocean?”