Page 12 of An Overdue Match
“Go right ahead.”
He ran a hand over the top of her head, noting that she’d already shaved the area.
He stepped back in front of her. “I’m going to get started, but tell me if you need a break or, well, if you need anything at all.” There wouldn’t be any needles involved. No pain to take a break from. But still. He wanted to put that out there just in case.
She eyed him behind squinted lids. “I promise you, I won’t break.”
He smiled at her softly. “No. I imagine you’re made of stronger stuff than that.”
“I’ve got to be, don’t I?” She repositioned herself in the chair. “Besides, I plan to walk into that first chemo treatment with my chin high and shoulders back. I’m not going to let cancer make me tuck my tail between my legs.”
Thus the reason behind the henna and not the needles and ink. Permanent tattoos left open wounds that needed time to heal and, quite frankly, a strong immune system to back it up. With Darla going in for chemo, her immune system was about to take a major hit.
Tai quickly cleaned and dried Darla’s head, then transferred the henna paste into the special plastic bags he’d purchased for the occasion. When he’d practiced, he’d felt a bit like a baker piping and decorating a cake. He had to squeeze the henna paste out of a cut coned edge, paying particular attention to the pressure he applied to the bag. How hard he squeezed correlated to the line weights he needed to make the design come out the way he planned. Less paste resulted in thinner lines. More paste meant thicker lines. He had a few bags with different sized tips to help with the weight of the lines as well.
“Can you tilt your head to the side for me, please?” He positioned himself to her left. It would be best to work from one side of her head, across the top and back, then finish on the other side.
Darla bent her head so her opposite ear nearly touched her shoulder. “So, how did you get into tattooing?”
Tai hovered the bag near her scalp, careful not to let the edge of the cone touch her skin to prevent any scratchy marks. He squeezed the bag, pulling the string of henna paste to form a delicate scallop design around the curve of her ear, leaving the dark paste on her scalp much like puffy paint.
“I mean, I’m not sure I’ve ever met a kid who said, ‘When I grow up, I want to be a tattoo artist,” Darla continued.
Tai chuckled. “When I was a kid, I wanted to be a professional baseball player.”
“A baseball diamond is a long way away from needles and ink.”
“You’re telling me.” The thing with mandalas was that to make them look good, you had to have precise symmetry. Tai concentrated on his lines, glancing at the tablet screen every now and again to reference his design. Most people were chatty in the chair, however, so he was used to having a conversation while he worked. “Art kind of rescued me, though.”
“How so?”
“I was a bit of a sickly child. Fairly severe asthma, and my mother in particular worried about me a lot. I had to stay inside most of the time. Art became my escape. My way to express myself. Even an avenue to experience the world.”
“What do your parents think of the tattoo thing? Are they supportive, or do they wish you’d gone a direction without as much stigma to it?”
Tai readjusted the bag. “My mom, being the worrier that she is, is happy that I have a job that’s inside instead of out in the elements and that doesn’t make me exert myself physically.”
“Has the asthma not gotten better as you’ve gotten older? I thought a lot of kids outgrew it.”
Tai’s lips twisted in a wry grin. “It’s a lot better and more manageable now. In fact, it hardly ever bothers me. Okay, you can straighten your head now. Do you need to take a break to use the restroom?” Tai shook out his hand. He was used to holding the tattoo machine for hours, but that was all vibration and didn’t require his grip to constantly tighten. He was starting to get a small cramp near the base of his thumb.
“I’m good.” Darla crossed her ankles.
He didn’t know much about chemo, but he imagined it requiredlong stints sitting in a chair, hooked up to an IV. Darla was going to be a pro.
“Can you lean forward a bit for me?” He gently nudged her shoulder.
She did as asked, her eyes wandering around the studio. “It’s a nice place you have here.”
“Thank you.”
“I’m surprised you get enough business in this location.”
Tai smiled ruefully. Even though his shop had been open less than a year and was off the beaten path, he was booked out for months.
He worked for a few moments in silence, but Darla Shapiro apparently wasn’t one to stay quiet for long.
“Can I admit something to you?” she asked, her voice not quite as strong as it had been before.
