Page 15 of Ink

I started to retreat into myself. I shouldn’t have opened my stupid mouth. This shop was his baby. It was something he’d been working to perfect for years, right down to the system. I’d only been here a week, but even I could tell the immense pride and work he put into this place. I was nobody to come in and start throwing out ideas. I was on thin ice as it was.

The fact that I knew how badly I needed to keep this job–for my ma and my siblings–diminished my confidence. Or maybe that was a culmination of losing jobs, one right after the other.

“You got an idea? Spit it out,” Ink declared, and his voice was tinged with annoyance. “Don’t keep quiet when you have something to say.”

Bastard. Just when I was starting to think he was decent. It seemed like my mind and vagina weren’t on the same wavelength.

“I was going to say that I know an easier way to help with the system. In a way where it won’t mess up and double book clients. The calendar app is so easy to get wrong because it relies on the cloud and internet. If your internet goes down, as I suspect was the case with this mix-up, then it’ll just happen again.”

Ink looked at me differently then; not with anger or annoyance, but with something else that shone in his eyes.

Something that looked a lot like acceptance.

It was too early to tell, but I think I’d just impressed my boss.

“Show me,” he said.

Days had passed sincethe incident, which was what I was officially calling what had happened when I got fired and rehired. I’d fallen back into my routine. Payday had come and gone, and I’d put a good amount down to go buy myself some new shoes next payday.

Ink no longer stared at me like I was a useless addition to the shop. Sure, we weren’t buddy-buddy, but he wasn’t buddy-buddy with anyone. At least he was nicer, smirking at me occasionally when he found it in his icy cold heart to do so. I hated how that smirk made me feel. Like I wanted to preen every time I seemed to do something right in his eyes. Like I was looking for that asshole to praise me.

Newsflash, I wasn’t…

Was I?

No, no era eso.

I wasn’t sure I wanted to admit it, but I found I was rather enjoying the job. Even if his presence still gave me anxiety.

I was wiping down the surfaces in the shop with a rag and disinfectant when the front door opened. The entire place smelt of lemon and it made my nose twitch.

I set aside the rag and turned at the desk. Every cell in my body froze.

Something cautious, born from years of being a woman in a machista country, rose up inside me. Where men catcalled you even if you wore pajamas and a messy bun. Where men leaned out car windows to slap your ass only to peel off in a cloud of smoke and raucous laughter while you were left to deal with the violation.

We were always told not to wear skirts, to not provoke. There were scarier things than monsters that roamed the shadows of the streets.

So I knew. Immediately I knew that the men before me werenotnice people.

They weren’t Mexican, or even Latine for that matter, with their too light skin tone and burnt noses. I knew we came in all colors, the remnants of European blood flowing through our veins, but one could usually tell when someone wasn’t local or didn’t quite belong.

“Good evening,” the man in the front of the pack said. He took off his shades, revealing crisp, blue eyes. Like chips of ice. He smirked and spoke in an accent.

He was wearing a stuffy suit in the heat. I knew he had to be sweating buckets under there.

“Can I help you?” My tone was droll.

His eyes raked over me, making me uncomfortable, though I’d never show it on the outside. I took a breath, eyeing the bat Fer kept behind the desk on the floor.

At first, I’d thought that thing was a decoration, meant to be mounted on the walls alongside the instruments and artistic paraphernalia. When I’d asked about it, Fer just shook her head, hair bouncing against her rouged cheeks.

“People don’t fuck with Los Diablos,” she said. “But you can never be too careful.”

And there the bat stayed, a ghost of a companion behind the desk beside me.

It lay just within reach and out of sight from the people on the opposite side.

“Is your boss around, pretty thing?”

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