Page 111 of Beneath the Stain
“Trav’s gonna be pissed,” Blake said dubiously.
Kell looked at him, puzzled. “Why’s Trav gonna be pissed?”
Blake and Mackey met eyes and Mackey grimaced. “He can’t possibly be that—”
Kell wrinkled his nose. “Yeah, I know you’re banging each other, Mackey, I’m not that stupid. I ran into you both when you were pushing your dresser and music stand into his room, okay?”
Mackey suddenly grinned at him. “So what youreallywanna say is that Trav’s got no reason to be pissed one way or the other, right?”
Kell nodded, an “of course!” expression on his face. “Man, it’s not his fuckin’ skin. He’ll like the tat or not like it. He don’t own you.”
“Thankyou!” Mackey hissed. He appreciated the sentiment, but there, right where his happy trail would be if he hadn’t just gotten waxed—that there wassensitive.
Blake grunted and shook his head. “Okay, I’ll admit it. It’s been a while since I had a steady girl, but you know? People want a fuckin’ say. I mean, did you even tell him about this before he left?”
Mackey scowled and concentrated for a minute. He had, he figured, another hour, maybe two, to go. And he had to be honest in the middle of it.
“No,” he grunted after some deep breathing. “There was no discussion of the tat. In fact, the only discussion was about how I wasn’t gonna go do no fucking chemicals when he was gone for four days. This is day three. He’s meeting us in Oakland day after tomorrow. I figure I’ll get this fuckin’ thing on my stomach and surprise him.”
Kell laughed a little. “Surprise the fuck out of the fans too, huh?”
Mackey grinned. That was part of the reason he was doing it. Trav had gotten a late invitation for the band to play at one of those holiday festival sort of concerts for the week after Thanksgiving. The concert was in Oakland, and the band was high up on the rotation, so Trav figured they could practice some of their numbers for their tour. They tended not to do too many light effects, which was good because so far Mackey hated all their damned light engineers and loathed a good many of their crew. Yeah, he was pretty sure that was backlash from Tony, so he kept it to himself, but seriously. How hard was it to come up with a light effect that hadn’t been done to death? But it didn’t matter, because they had the people they had, and all he wanted to do was play the damned music.
And that was what they were doing. Two tracks from their breakout album,It’s Not Catching, and then six from the CD in postproduction,Goin’ Viral. Trying to pump up interest for their full-length tour, which Trav was planning to launch in February. According to Trav, it wasn’t that hard.It’s Not Catchinghad sold multiplatinum, which Mackey had always thought sounded really cool, even though he had no idea what it meant besides they had money now.
And Mackey finally had a head clear enough to know what he wanted to ink on his body.
“That’s a great tat,” Blake said, eyeing Mackey’s stomach appreciatively. “I think we should all get one.”
Mackey grimaced. “You already got a dragon there!” It was a nice piece too, with scales that practically glittered.
“Well, not the same place,” Blake laughed. “I got some room on my shoulder here, right?” Blake didn’t wax, and his chest hair was creeping up, but it looked sort of raw and cool, so Mackey didn’t criticize. Blake pulled the neck of his T-shirt down, and sure enough, he had room for the black-and-white version of the screaming monkey from their first album cover, bursting out of stylized, fractal pieces of a shattered mirror to fit. The band’s name was reflected in the pieces, and done in red and black, and it was haunting and fun at the same time.
“I ain’t got my stomach done yet,” Kell said ruminatively. “You know, I might not regret this one—that’d be nice.” Kell had gotten some godawful artwork inflicted on his body in the last year. Mackey’s favorite was the pinup girl on her stomach with two left feet dangling over her ass. The thing that killed Mackey was that the tattoo artist had made it up to Kell withanother free tattoo. That one was a Celtic knot that, swear to fucking Christ, was tangled. Mackey had been pretty high, but he vaguely remembered telling Kell in all seriousness that they could put out a hit on that guy and no one would ever know.
“So you guys want—” He winced, because apparently that close to the inside of his belly button was a mite bit sensitive. “—to get matching tattoos?” Wasn’tthatSweet Valley High?
“Yeah,” Blake said, nodding. He made deliberate eye contact with Mackey. “It’ll be a celebration, right? I mean, forty-five days out of rehab, right?”
Mackey nodded soberly back. He hadn’t wanted to say anything because he didn’t want the others to worry, but that had been what drove him out of the house, searching for a thing, a thing,anythingto do, to escape the restlessness, the craving for something in his head.
It had been hard watching Trav leave without him. They’d onlyjustmoved Mackey’s shit into his room, and although nobody had even acknowledged that they were doing the thing, Mackey had been somehow comforted by the idea that everybody knew they were doing the thing.
Waking up with Trav, even for a week, had been…. It had made his stomach jumpy. It was like, he’d be running or playing his guitar or even watching television when he was actuallytouching Trav, and it would hit him. He’d remember what it felt like to wake up next to Trav’s warm body, or the feel of Trav’s hand rubbing circles on his back or his stomach, which he did when they were both almost asleep.
It made him want to cry, but in a good way.
And then Trav just walked into the room one day when Mackey was practicing and said, “Mackey, can I get into the closet there? I need my suitcase.”
“Where in thefuckare you going?”
Trav laughed, probably because he didn’t hear the panic in Mackey’s voice, and said, “I’ve got to run to England the day after tomorrow—apparently one of your venues just got shut down. We need to find another place or cancel the gig—they need me there. This dogging each other over the phone bullshit isnothappening.”
Mackey’s heart was thundering practically too hard for him to hear his own voice. Not leaving. Not really. Business trip. Gerry had needed to take them. Happened all the fucking time. Trav had even gone to New York when Mackey was in rehab—Mackey just hadn’t really registered it because, well, rehab, when the whole world had been about Mackey and other people didn’t need to bother him with their relocation bullshit as long as they were available on the little glowing box.
“Yeah,” he said, being as natural as possible. “Whatever. Let me know when you’re going—I’ll take the car with you to the airport.”
Trav smiled, looking adorkably shy for such a hardass. “Yeah? You’d, uhm, see me off?”
