Work Text:
Jack met him while documenting the healing process of a patient who had necrotizing fasciitis on her right breast and lost her nipple after a skin graft. He’d heard of medical tattooing, naturally, but he’d never been tapped to photograph any of it, so the entire subject just sort of failed to sink into his brain as anything more than cosmetic flourish, a novelty.
Michael Robinavitch was not a novelty.
“Just call me Robby,” he said to Imani, the patient Jack had been photographing on and off for two years. Robby and Imani shook hands, and then his attention was on Jack, hand outstretched. Jack took it on autopilot. He had a firm, dry grip, and he gave Jack a single shake before letting him go.
He was taller than Jack, with full sleeve tattoos that disappeared under his scrub sleeves, a lush beard going gray, and dark hair sticking up everywhere. Round glasses slipped down the bridge of a distinctive nose, and from behind them Jack was pinned by the prettiest goddamn pair of brown eyes he’d seen this decade. Crucially, said devastating peepers didn’t even flicker over the thick ropy scars that wound up Jack’s right arm and burst over his collarbone to stretch over his neck and terminate in pearlescent tendrils across his jaw, cheekbone, and temple.
“Jack Abbot, medical photographer,” Jack said. “Looking forward to watching you work.”
The corners of Robby’s mouth quirked up and his crow’s feet deepened. Jack had just enough time to think, you’re in danger! before he was pitched headfirst into something he hadn’t felt since he met Sara more than twenty years ago. His heart was fluttering so madly he almost missed what Robby said.
“I gotta admit I didn’t know ‘medical photographer’ was a job you could have. I always figured a nurse or something took the pictures in charts, probably with a phone.”
That was certainly true for informal stuff, but Jack’s work was in journals and encyclopedias and medical textbooks. He traveled all around the northeast and occasionally across the continent to get good shots of rare or complicated cases, and he was paid well for the privilege. Not that he was about to say any of that.
“Ha! Then I guess it’s time for me to admit I didn’t realize medical tattooing was this much of a thing, either,” Jack said.
“He’s the best in Pittsburgh, and the only one who does it for free,” Imani said. “I was lucky to get in this quick.”
“Oh, by the way, do you mind if my apprentice observes?” Robby asked. “You can say no, and you don’t have to let her tattoo you if you say yes.”
Imani glanced at Jack. He shrugged.
“I bet you have a lot of people looking to train under you,” Imani asked.
“She’s very good, I can promise you that,” he said.
“They gotta learn sometime, right?” Imani said. “Yeah, okay, she can come in.”
“Great,” Robby said. “I’ll go get her.”
He left the tattoo suite, and Imani fidgeted in place.
“Nervous?” Jack asked. He took the lens cap off his Nikon and made sure all his settings were in place for the millionth time. Fluorescents were hell, but he was used to it after twenty years of working in medical environments.
“I know it’s a different thing, but I’ve had other tattoo artists tell me they can’t promise anything will show up on skin as dark as mine, or that they can’t work on scar tissue at all. It’s not exactly inspiring. But I’ve seen this guy’s work, it’s literally a miracle, he’s already done a consult, I shouldn’t be so—” She did a little jazz hand action.
“He seems...” Jack searched for the right word. That part was why he couldn’t hack it as a photojournalist. “…legit.”
“He is,” Imani said. “I know he is. But, you know me. Never found a situation I couldn’t be anxious about.” She forced out a little laugh.
Jack smiled at her. He reached out and patted her on the shoulder.
“You got this,” he said. “After everything, a little tattoo’s nothing to worry about.”
“Right. Yeah. Exactly.”
There came a knock at the door, and then Robby was slipping inside again, followed by a young woman with a dark ponytail, big arresting eyes in an unusual shade of blue-green, and tattoos littered in controlled chaos over her arms. Some were old stick-and-pokes that had been incorporated into the grander design with a palpable sense of whimsy.
“Trinity Santos,” she said, sticking her hand out first to Imani and then to Jack. “Can’t wait to make your shit less gnarly.”
“Santos!” Robby barked.
But Imani only laughed, tension draining from her shoulders.
“You know, I’d really appreciate it if you did,” she said.
Santos snapped out a shit-eating grin and took a seat to Robby’s left.
“All right, let’s take a look,” Robby said.
He parted Imani’s paper gown with the barest pinch of his fingertips and exposed only the affected breast. Santos leaned in for a closer look while he adjusted a lamp and tilted his head back to look at the scarring through his glasses. After a while, he readjusted the gown to cover her breast and sat back to look Imani in the face.
“What’s the verdict, doc?” she asked with an nervy smile.
“You’ve got nothing to worry about,” Robby said. “But I want to review what your expectations are for your result, and remind you that if it gets too uncomfortable, we can always finish at a later date.”
“Oh, right. I’m hoping you can just knock it out in one day, but I’ll let you know if I need to stop.”
“Good, great. And can you tell me what you’re hoping to achieve?”
Imani blinked at him. Shrugged.
“Well, a nipple.”
“Sure.”
“They took the graft from my arm, and apparently that’s a different color than my breast, so I’d like them to match better.”
Robby was nodding.
“Definitely,” he said.
“And the scars,” Imani said with a wince. “I know they’re…they got infected and keloided up. I know there’s no fixing that. But, if you could just get the color a little nicer…”
Robby’s face was deadly serious and he looked Imani right in the eye when he said, “We’re gonna take care of that for you. Is there anything else?”
“That’s it. I think.”
“All right. Well, if you think of anything else, don’t hesitate to pipe up. We’re gonna get started on color matching now.”
Santos put on gloves, opened a series of flesh colored inks, and started mixing some together while Robby opened Imani’s gown again, this time to inspect both breasts. He pulled up an art program on his tablet to reveal a stencil drawing of a nipple that looked remarkably like the one on the healthy unaffected breast. He made some minor adjustments and then started tapping away. Across the suite, a printer spat out a piece of paper with four nipples on it, each slightly bigger than the last. He held each one up to her right breast while both he and Santos glanced between right and left like audience members at Wimbledon.
“Number three?” Robby said.
“Number three,” Santos said.
“Great,” Robby said.
He applied the stencil and held up a mirror so Imani could see.
“Looks good,” she said.
And then, they got to work. Robby started the color matching work first, and used not one mix of pigments but several, often consulting with the left breast for symmetry. He even put in freckles and near-invisible hair follicles. When Robby took a bathroom break, Santos showed them some of the ink he’d done for her: a Bakunawa, a dragon from Filipino folklore, on the inside of her bicep, and a tarsier, an actual Filipino animal that only looked mythological, on her calf. Both of them were in a drippy, dreamy style that resembled watercolors. Jack hadn’t even known it was possible to get tattoos to look like that.
Maybe, for the first time in his life, he wanted a tattoo.
When Robby came back, Imani asked to see the tattoo Santos had given him. He rolled his eyes but smiled, Santos looked about ready to burst, and Robby lifted his shirt just enough to expose his hip and flank—and the delicious dusting of dark hair that fanned over his stomach only to thicken as it disappeared into his pants. On his side was a rugelach crescent with a ribbon of chocolate winding through. It managed to look like it was actually shiny.
After that, Imani allowed Santos to work on her tattoo. Robby sat back and watched, guiding her through tricky parts. He handled the first of the keloids, but let Santos take over after going over, for probably the thousandth time, the techniques for tattooing over significant scar tissue.
Jack, for his part, hung back to make sure he wasn’t hovering while both of them did their work, but took photos from several angles at several different parts of the process, zooming in to capture only the breast and the hands working on it. He got Imani a cup of water when she needed one, and let her grip his hand when the needle got too close to her armpit, which was apparently notoriously painful.
If he got a few more artfully composed shots of the painfully handsome artist at work without any breast exposure at all, well, that was his business.
Imani was a trooper who didn’t ask to split the appointment. They did the nipple last and with such care that it alone took an entire hour. Robby let Santos take point on it, though he handled the color blending between the regular breast and the areola. Under Santos’s hand, Jack was amazed to find the nipple and even the tiny Montgomery glands started to look three-dimensional. He would never know it was flat just by looking at it.
When the tattoo was complete, Jack was shocked. Not much shocked him after three tours, being blown up, losing a leg and a wife, and seeing the nastiest conditions and injuries that could happen to the human body up close and personal, but apparently a hyperrealistic tattoo that transformed a scar-ridden, grievously injured breast into something that looked damn near normal could do the job.
Imani was so thrilled by the results she teared up. Jack took several photos of the finished work while Robby told her about aftercare and what to watch out for. He put a protective layer of Saniderm over it when Jack was done and told her not to worry if liquid pooled up in it. When she left, she thanked both Robby and Santos profusely and told Jack she’d call him for a final session when the tattoo was completely healed. Jack, like an asshole, was making excuses to hang around.
“Listen,” he said when it was just him and Robby in the hallway. “I’ve got a friend, a journalist. We collaborate on important stories sometime. How would you feel if we did a profile on you and your work? It’s fucking amazing, man, if you’ll pardon my French. And that’s just the visuals—I can’t even begin to imagine the emotional impact you’re having on these patients.”
To Jack’s swiftly smothered delight, Robby’s face went a deep pink from the tips of his ears to beneath the collar of his scrub top. It took some work but Jack kept his face open and hopeful instead of howling at the moon.
“I don’t know,” Robby said. “This part is just like, a flower once you cross the finish line.”
“The fuck it is, man,” Jack blurted. Robby’s eyes went wide, and now it was Jack’s turn to blush, but he bulldozed through it because what else could he do? “I know Imani, I’ve been working with her through her entire ordeal. I’ve never seen her smile like she did today. This is whole-person care, brother. This is giving people control of their bodies back. And you know that, you know how important it is. That’s why your books are six months deep, that’s why you’re training up the next generation, that’s why you’re doing it at all. It means something, to be able to give this to people. To be one of the only people around who can do this one insane, incredible thing. Flowers, Robby? It’s a whole fucking garden in the desert.”
Robby was staring at him with huge eyes. His face had lost its violent blush, but for the apples of his cheeks, which still blazed. Jack refused to be embarrassed about his own outburst.
“So let me do this for you, man,” he said. “We’ll shine a light on it. Maybe get you more funding, more people interested in getting into it, get the word out to the people who need it, the whole shebang.”
“I—okay. Jesus.”
Jack grinned. Robby ducked back into the tattoo suite and grabbed a card.
“Here,” he said. “I do better with phone calls than texts, and I like texts better than emails, so.”
“Thanks,” Jack said. “When do you get off work? I’ll give you a call then.”
“Um. I’m here til seven today.”
“Great. Cool. I’ll see you then. I mean. Hear you. Call you.”
Now Robby was smiling, and Jack’s ears were burning up.
“Looking forward to it,” Robby said.
Jack gave him a sloppy salute with his own business card and beat it the fuck out of there.
In his car, he smacked his forehead against the steering wheel until he was pretty sure there was a dent in his big stupid head. When he finally got a grip on himself, he pulled his phone out and called Ellis.
“O Captain, my Captain,” she said when she picked up. “To what do I owe the pleasure?”
“I may have overpromised something I absolutely cannot underdeliver on,” he said.
“Uh oh.”
“That’s where you come in.”
“Oh, obviously.”
“Please, Ellis. I’ll give you my nineteenth, twentieth, and twenty-first borns.” He’d already promised her numbers four through sixteen.
“You know, I’m beginning to think your old gameless ass is gonna underdeliver on that. Where am I even keeping this baker’s dozen of Abbots? And what if I wanna be a deadbeat dad, you ever thought about that?”
“When are they too old to be used in the barter system?” Jack asked.
“What do you want, Abbot?”
He detailed his situation to her. When she was done shrieking with laughter at his pathetic gay crash out, she said she’d shop the story around among the big dogs, see if she could get any bites.
“But I’m absolutely not third wheeling in this roulette wheel of awkward, dude,” she said. “Ask his ass out on a date, record his answers when you inevitably pretend it’s really an interview, and I’ll write it up.”
“Thank you thank you thank you,” Jack said. “Seriously, I owe you.”
“Pfft. We’re just trading off offspring at this point. All right, go get ’em, tiger. And text me immediately if you get laid, everyone in the bullpen’s got their bets down.”
“I’ll have you know I’m very popular amongst middle-aged women.”
“Bitch, me too. Bye, Abbot.”
Jack thumped his head against the steering wheel one last time. For posterity.
Jack chose an upscale casual place with suggestive lighting and showed up in a green button up that showed off his arms and tasteful dress pants that might have been a little tight around the thighs and glutes. He debated getting a beer while he waited, but decided that would be too casual. He tried to calm the bouncing of his knee, but it always snuck back into hummingbird mode as soon as he wasn’t thinking about it.
When Robby showed up, he was in a burgundy button down and dark wash jeans that fit close against his legs. He looked tall and lean, even with the slight press of his belly against the shirt. Jack’s mouth went dry. He stood when Robby got to their table and held his hand out for a shake. Robby smiled as he obliged him.
“Jack,” he said.
“Robby, good to see you.”
Robby held his hand a beat too long, but dropped it soon enough and buried himself in the menu so Jack couldn’t see his eyes.
“What’s good here?” he asked.
“Oh, I haven’t been here yet,” Jack said. “Buddy of mine said his wife liked it, so.”
Jack caught a glimpse of a smirk before Robby hid his face again.
“Well, if your buddy’s wife liked it.”
“She has excellent taste in everything but husbands,” Jack said.
“If he’s your buddy, what’s that say about you?”
“Oh I’m a loyal son of a bitch,” Jack said, “and not too proud to admit it.”
Robby’s eyes were twinkling like mad, even from behind his glasses.
They did end up getting beers, some ridiculous craft thing for Robby and a seasonal Sam Adams IPA for Jack. The waitress took one look at Jack and thanked him for his service. He forced a smile and hoped she wasn’t about to comp him his drinks or something. Robby rolled his eyes a little while she was giving her spiel on the specials, and Jack let his hackles come down.
They exchanged pleasantries: Robby was a hometown boy, though he was born in Philly like some kind of traitor, while Jack was an army brat from nowhere in particular who had landed here after a series of personal and professional circumstances too boring to detail; Robby had been tattooing people for nearly thirty years but had transitioned to medical tattooing about seventeen years ago, while Jack had become an EMT after he was discharged from the army but was spending all his time playing in the dark room and managed to parlay that into a freelance photography career; Robby was single but sort of had a stepson, while Jack had to drop the dead wife bomb and hope it didn’t decimate the entire vibe. Robby’s eyes slid over the ring Jack still wore, though Jack couldn’t hope to decipher what he thought of it.
“I’m really sorry to hear that, man,” Robby said.
Jack plastered on his patented noble widower soldiering on, don’t worry about me face.
“Thanks,” he said. “Six years in, I’m trying to be happy about the time I got with her, instead of dwelling on how much was stolen from us.”
“That sounds remarkably well-adjusted.”
“And only all my friends’, family’s, and therapist’s blood, sweat, and tears to get here!”
That earned him another twinkly-eyed smile. Before Jack could have a heart attack about it or slip further into the conversational quicksand that was widower life, he pulled out his digital recorder and set it on the center of the table.
“I guess it’s about that time,” he said. “You cool with me recording your answers? My partner in crime would appreciate the primary source rather than having to decipher my bullshit game of telephone.”
Robby’s brows rose like he forgot the pretense for this dinner, and Jack got the sinking feeling he’d fumbled. Again.
“Or, we don’t have to, I mean—”
“No, it’s fine,” Robby said. “Yeah, record the Q & A, sounds good.”
Jack smiled, but it felt plasticine and askew on his face.
“Cool,” he said. He turned it on and pressed the record button. A green light blinked on. “So, um. How’d you get into medical tattooing?”
Jack nearly died right then and there. He’d had a whole list of good questions, but he didn’t want to whip them out and rattle them off like this wasn’t personal, and now he couldn’t for the life of him remember how Ellis had worded any of them. He snapped his mouth shut before more dumbassery could spew out and pinned his eyes on Robby’s face to show him the utmost attention.
“Oh, um.” Robby cleared his throat and shifted closer to the recorder. “Maybe twenty years ago, I had this guy contact me looking for a consult, and when he got to our appointment, it turned out he had these really thick, purple scars on his arms that people wouldn’t stop staring at and commenting on. He’d heard about medical tattooing and I don’t know, I guess he thought any good artist could do it. It was flattering, but because of the particular challenges of tattooing scar tissue, I’d never even thought about it as an option that might be open to me before. There’s a bunch of extra training you have to do, and the only artists who did it at the time were in the bigger cities, so it seemed moot. But I felt bad, obviously. I wanted to help this guy. I managed to hook him up with someone in New York, but the cost was unbelievable and he couldn’t afford it. I don’t know how it ended up for him, but I couldn’t stop thinking about it. I liked doing what I was doing, etching real art onto people’s bodies, getting the chance to be part of their self-creation, but suddenly I was like, what if there’s something more? What if I could be materially improving people’s lives after something devastating had happened to them? So, I took a massive chance and moved to New York to become an apprentice again. Eventually I came back here and met Doc Adamson, a plastic surgeon who dealt with a lot of mastectomies and other reconstructive surgeries. He gave me my own space in his practice, and together we got the nonprofit up and running so we could offer these tattoos for free. So.” He shrugged and then rolled his shoulders inward as if to make himself smaller. “The rest is history, I guess.”
“Wow,” Jack said. “It’s really impressive you were able to do all that. And it sounds like you were the first medical tattoo artist in Pittsburgh, which must be satisfying. But now I’m thinking, what about your artistic drive? Do you think the medical stuff fulfills that side of you?”
For some reason, this amused Robby. He took a long draw of his beer.
“‘Quid pro quo, Clarice,’” he said.
“What?”
Robby nodded his head at him sharply.
“What about you, man?” he asked. “Does taking overexposed macro shots of funky wounds and diseases artistically fulfill you?”
Jack’s mouth fell open and let out a scoff instead of actual words.
“What does that have to do with anything?” he said. “And I’m helping people too, you know. And fuck you overexposed, my shit is lit perfectly.”
“No, I know, what you’re doing is important,” Robby said. “But you can’t tell me the guy whose art shots of his experiences in Afghanistan and Iraq were enough to launch an entire career is happy as a clam with the technical constraints of medical photography.”
“I do other things sometimes,” Jack said. “I take my gear on hikes, or around the city, or whatever.”
“And I get my kicks microstabbing my friends,” Robby said.
Jack huffed out an incredulous laugh.
“That’s something, I guess,” he said. “If it makes you feel better, I’ll need some actual photos of you at some point. I’ll get to exercise my fine art brain on you. For the, uh. Profile.”
Robby’s brows quirked up.
“Oh yeah? And, what, me bent over a scar in my scrubs won’t do?”
Jack shrugged.
“I’ll get those too, if you have any clients who’ll sign off on it. But no, I’ll want something more personal. The man, not the miracle worker. Maybe during golden hour.”
“Thirty years of experience isn’t a miracle,” Robby said.
Their food came before Jack could respond. Over their meal, Jack asked which cases stuck with Robby the most, what the challenges of tattooing over scar tissue were, and how he got into tattooing in the first place.
The answer? Teenage rebellion.
“You know my grandmother wanted me to be a rabbi?” Robby said with a conspiratorial little scoff, as if Jack should find the idea of Robby as a spiritual leader as hilarious as he did. And, okay, maybe the piety aspect didn’t jive with what Jack knew about him, but the part where he was a strong, steady comfort to the people he served? Effortlessly competent in a way that made his clients relax when he spoke to them? The quiet confidence that shifted the energy of the room when he arrived? No, it didn’t seem like the most insane thing in the world for him to be a rabbi, tattoos and all.
“I can think of worse occupations for you,” Jack said. “Tax attorney to the rich and famous. Guy who bulldozes historical buildings to put up luxury apartments. CEO of Walmart.”
Robby laughed. Jack’s attention got stuck on his crow’s feet again.
“What about you?” Robby asked.
“Huh?”
Robby tilted his head at him, still smiling. The eyes were killing him.
“What did your your million-generation career army family think of you hanging it up to take pictures?”
“Oh, they think I’m a SWAT medic.”
“What?”
“Sometimes I volunteer for it, you know, shits and gigs, but they think I’m full time when I’m really not. I don’t wanna hear from the fucking Colonel about his opinions on art.”
“So you just…pretend.”
“My family’s scattered all over the country,” Jack said. “I’m closer to a couple of my sisters, but for the most part no one keeps close tabs on me, and I like it that way.”
Robby propped his elbow on the table and set his chin in his hand, suddenly rather close. He raised his second beer of the night.
“To disappointing our families with our art,” he said, eyes locked on Jack’s.
Jack scoffed and clinked his beer against Robby’s.
“To saving the world with it,” he said.
Ellis called him three days later.
“This is embarrassing,” she said. “Why are you so embarrassing?”
“What?” Jack said.
“That man was flirting with you, Jack. That man was flirting with you and you couldn’t stop kicking yourself in the balls.”
“What, no he wasn’t! I kept trying and he kept deflecting!”
“He kept asking you about yourself and you kept squirming out of it to ask about tattoos some more! How much more do you need to know about tattoos! You didn’t even look at my questions, did you?”
“That’s not—he didn’t—wait.”
“And fuck you for leaving the recorder on while you ate, Abbot. Do you have any idea how loud forks and knives on dishes are right next to a microphone? My ears are bleeding. What’s wrong with you?”
“I just, I wanted him to know I was interested in him as a person.”
“Well you sound like a serial killer who hunts tattoo artists.”
“I am so normal and regular.”
“Every day I wonder how you ever landed Sara.”
“She was way crazier than me.”
“What am I supposed to do with this, huh? You know I’ve got The Sun and The Atlantic on the line, right?”
“It’s fine, I’ll interview him again. I’ll even read your questions off a piece of paper like a dork.”
“Number one: he definitely already knows you’re a dork. Number two: how do you expect to achieve this when he’s clearly going into witness protection even as we speak?”
“Joke’s on you, Parks, we already have another appointment so I can take pictures of him.”
“Can you be chill? Like can you just chill out this one time, for your own sake?”
“I’m chill all day every day.”
“Jesus, okay, Mr. Freeze. You’re lucky putting a camera in your hands transforms you into a genius.”
“Goodbye, Ellis,” Jack said.
“Yeah, yeah. Hey, maybe pop a Valium before you meet him again, what do you think?”
Jack hung up.
The thing was, the camera really did settle him. With an SLR around his neck and his hand poised on the lens, Jack knew exactly what to do and when to do it. He could be entirely in the moment but remain its observer, its witness, its voice if it needed one. In the viewfinder, he could see everything in perfect building blocks of truth and beauty—love, pain, joy, loss, delight, fear, surprise, hatred, peace—and make sure everyone else saw it too. The camera put Jack back in his body without all the seams in the way.
So, when he met Robby at the Color Park in the early evening, all his nervous energy had diffused and sharpened into a clear, focused knowledge that he would capture something honest.
“Hey,” came Robby’s voice.
Jack turned away from the sight of the Pittsburgh skyline, face splitting into a smile. He had a bunch of his gear on him, but he didn’t expect to see Robby emerging from the trail with his own bag of tricks. Jack snapped a photo as Robby approached, looking cool in sunglasses, a leather jacket, and a barely-contained smirk. Robby’s bag sounded like a bunch of tin cans knocking together.
“Don’t tell me I’m about to witness the master artist working in another medium,” Jack said, excitement filling him like helium.
“Bodies aren’t the only things with scars,” Robby said.
He led Jack through the maze of painted concrete blocks until they got to the trains. He circled them, looked up and leaned down and inspected all the images on each panel. He appeared to be looking for something. Jack took photos, and Robby quirked a brow at him when he noticed.
“Really? I’m not even doing anything yet.”
“I’m not looking to get you posing or doing anything in particular,” Jack said. “I’m just waiting for one good shot of who you really are.”
Robby’s brow furrowed even as his mouth curved up. He shook his head.
“I have no idea what that means,” he said.
“Don’t worry about it,” Jack said. “Just do whatever you’re gonna do, don’t mind me.”
“Ope,” Robby said, and straightened. He rolled his neck. Jack snapped a few shots and came up behind him.
“What’ve we got?” he asked.
“Paydirt,” Robby said, and smacked a metal panel with, sure enough, a swastika on it. Hidden in a more ornate design, but not cleverly enough.
“Christ,” Jack said.
“You can always find something,” Robby said. He dropped his bag and squatted to open it up. He started lining up bottles of spray paint, stencils, and what looked like WD-40 straws on a concrete block. Jack set his recorder out.
“You mind?” he asked.
“Hm?” Robby looked up. “Oh, do you have more questions?”
“Nothing formal,” Jack said, sending up a silent apology to Ellis. “But if we end up talking about something cool, it’ll be better for the article if we can get a direct quote.”
“Right, right.”
“So you’re good with recording?”
“Sure, yeah.”
Robby stood again and took off his jacket. He draped it over another concrete block, presumably out of the line of fire. He was wearing an old t-shirt that showed off the tattoos along his arms. The tatty collar gaped and revealed ink crawling up his collarbone, too. Jack swallowed around nothing, mouth dry. He snapped a few photos of Robby shaking up cans and sticking straws on the nozzles.
“What do you think?” Robby said.
“What do I think of what?” Jack said.
Robby nodded at the swastika.
“What are we covering it with?” he asked.
“Oh. Shit, dude, I don’t know, you’re the artist.”
Robby scoffed and tilted his head at him, shaking a can.
“Like you’re not an artist,” he said. “Gimme a break.”
“Sure but I don’t like, create it with my hands,” Jack said. “That’s a whole other thing and you know it.”
“But you’ve got the eye.”
“That’s what they tell me,” Jack said.
Robby squinted at him. After a moment of staring, he collected two cans in each hand and approached the train.
“You might not want to stand downwind,” he said.
Jack moved. When Robby started spraying, Jack started snapping.
“So even when you’re not bringing the light back into patients’ eyes, you’re out here doing God’s work,” Jack said. “But it’s all this outsider art kind of stuff. Graffiti. Tattooing. The kind of thing that doesn’t show up in museums. Can you tell me what draws you to that?”
“There’s a tattoo art museum in Shadyside,” Robby said without glancing his way.
“Ha! Okay, I’ll have to check that out.”
“Art, even the kind that might just look like a scribble on the wall, is part of what makes us human. Looking for beauty. Creating it, even out of ugliness. Especially out of ugliness.”
“Yeah,” Jack said softly. “Yeah, I get that.”
“If this weren’t going into some nationally published article, I’d have taken you somewhere it isn’t legal to be doing this,” Robby said. “There are bridges and underpasses and walls all over this city that need attention, but you can’t take pictures of me actively vandalizing.”
“Oh. Right.”
“I don’t really subscribe to the idea that art can have insiders and outsiders,” Robby said. “Art is an action, a drive, a thing we do. It can be genuine expression, it can be, fucking, whatever, soulless hotel prints. It can be bad, it can be good, all it really has to do is be. You can bust your own balls getting a degree and accolades and exhibits and what have you, like, sure, that’s a life you can pursue if you want, but it’s not the only way to create or experience art. Museums, institutional approval, selling your work for tens of thousands of dollars—nice work if you can get it, I’m not gonna pretend it isn’t. It just isn’t the end all be all. It became clear to me a long time ago that what I really wanted from my own work was for it to matter to people, and the everyday stuff was so much more impactful than the masterpieces cloistered away in museums.”
His brow was furrowed in concentration as he worked. Jack got long, medium, and close shots. So many close shots, Robby’s nose catching light and throwing shadows in perfectly dramatic lines that led the eye across any given image. Profile, quarter profile, three-quarters profile. The sweep of lashes. Paint gathering on fingertips. He was specific and angular and compelling, a man made to be captured on camera, and Jack was finally looking as much as he wanted.
“Even like this?” Jack asked. “When it’ll get painted over in a week or two? It’s basically the opposite of ink in skin.”
Robby’s teeth glinted when he grinned, though he didn’t pause in his work or take his eyes off it.
“Yeah, so much of what I do is permanent,” he said. “And I love that, I’ve always loved that—the idea that something of me could be carried with someone for the rest of their life, that no matter what happened, I’d be there under their skin, indelible. It’s intense, intoxicating even, and there was a time I found it romantic in a fucked up way. But this, I don’t know.” He stepped back and flung his arms out as if to hold the entirety of the Color Park in the space between them. “There’s beauty in the transitory, too. Butterflies live like a week, and no one goes around saying there’s no point to them.”
Robby chucked his empty cans into his bag and stepped back to look at what he’d made. Jack came up beside him and raised his camera, only to let it drop around his neck so he could look at Robby’s work without the barrier he usually insisted wasn’t a barrier.
Robby had painted a pair of eyes, each as big as his head. They were realistic, a fresh, living green with coppery rings around the pupils and laugh lines crinkling the outside corners. They were crowned with finely-rendered gray eyebrows that lent them an air of mischievous fondness as they watched over the rest of the art. Jack hadn’t even known this kind of detail was possible with spray paint. His heart hammered.
“Seriously?” he asked.
Robby wore a shit-eating grin.
“I like to paint from life,” he said.
Jack drank it in. He raised the Nikon and snapped photos of it straight on. He stepped closer, and closer still. He took photos from every viable angle. He took super close-ups. He changed his lens and took macro shots of the finest details.
“I don’t buy it, you know,” Robby said as they walked down the line of trains. The sun was setting, and he cut a dramatic figure against the trees, the river, the shining lights of the Pittsburgh skyline.
“Don’t buy what?” Jack asked.
“Your ‘oh, what’s so important about art’ act. I’ve looked up your stuff. The nonmedical stuff, I mean. You’re all over AP. You’ve got shots of soldiers and trailer parks and protests that look like Renaissance paintings. That’s not something that happens by accident.”
“I never said art isn’t important, I just wanted to know how you’d put it in your own words. How you’d talk about your own work.”
“But what’s the point of pretending you aren’t driven by the exact same thing as me?” Robby asked. “What’s with the ‘aw shucks, I just fell into it backwards’ act?”
Jack barked out a laugh and shook his head.
“I don’t know, man, toxic masculinity?”
Robby’s laugh echoed down the concrete path.
“What?”
Jack had to try to stem his giggling now.
“It’s my friend’s favorite thing to say to me when I’m being stupid,” he said. “She says—hold on let me see if I can remember the exact quote.” Jack stopped walking and screwed his eyes shut theatrically. “‘Gen X men use their allergy to sincerity as a shield to avoid being seen, and then when they aren’t seen they cultivate resentment over the lack of intimacy in their lives and make it everyone else’s problem.’” Jack opened his eyes again and he held out his hands like ta da!
Robby’s eyes were crinkling at him in a way that was personally devastating.
“Okay, read for filth as the kids say, but what does that have to do with this?” he said.
Jack found himself beaming back at him, pretty seriously unable to tear his eyes away. He shrugged, raised his camera, and took a bunch of shots without looking into the viewfinder.
“How am I supposed to know?” he said. “My allergy to sincerity prevents me from being honest with myself and others.”
Robby guffawed and finally dropped Jack’s gaze to start walking again.
“Okay, I’m starting to see what your friend is saying,” he said.
“Ouch,” Jack said.
They wandered through the park, Robby adding little creatures here and there to spaces that could use a refresher or a cover up. They talked about their favorite things to do in and around western Pennsylvania, their favorite restaurants, what the state of the Pens and the Pirates meant about Pittsburgh as a concept (whatever that meant). Jack learned Robby was an only child and had to admit he was one of five. When the sun had completely set and there was no more natural light to work with, Robby came up to him, close enough for Jack to smell him, to feel the living heat of his body. His breath caught.
“Here,” he said, and pressed a can into Jack’s hand. His gravelly voice rumbled through Jack’s gut and up his spine, sent his cock twitching.
“I don’t—I’ve never tried to draw with spray paint before,” Jack said.
“It doesn’t have to be good, man, have you been listening to a word I say? All you have to do is leave your mark.”
Jack’s fingers brushed against Robby’s. He turned to a broken block of concrete that had nothing presentational on it at all anymore. He shook his can and aimed.
Ellis called him while he was editing his shit in Photoshop. Staring at Robby’s face and hands in a thousand different ways. Tomato, tomahto.
“Better,” she said, “but are you fucking serious about not sealing the deal when this man fully painted a portrait of your eyes right in front of you?”
“Look, I don’t even know if he swings my way.”
“Girl, what are you so afraid of? You’ve been in war zones.”
It felt too big. Too real. It felt like if Jack said something and he was wrong, if Robby didn’t like men or wasn’t looking for anything serious, it would break something inside Jack that had only just gotten back up on shaky legs. In a war zone, he was meant to jump in head first and save lives. There was a reason to wade into the shit and to work through the fear. In this, there was only the fear. If Jack struck out with Robby, he wouldn’t go up to bat again. Bench-warming had never been his style back in the day, but he was fifty years old with a heart criss-crossed in scar tissue and still bleeding. He could save himself a lot of trouble by not stepping up to the plate in the first place.
“It doesn’t matter,” Jack said.
The photo whose framing and contrast he was adjusting had caught Robby in a moment where his eyes had flicked to Jack, so now he was staring into him with a strange sort of knowing. On the other end of the phone, Ellis’s silence burgeoned uncomfortably.
“Well,” she said eventually. “At least the conversation you got this time is something I can actually work with. You got some pics to send me or what?”
“I’ll send a few to give you a sense of him, but I’m not even a quarter of the way through yet.”
“Jack Abbot. Did you take three thousand pictures of this man?”
“…maybe.”
“Are you gonna jerk off to any of them?”
“This is harassment. You’re harassing me.”
“You’re lucky I have too much professional integrity to call him up in the name of friendship.”
“I’m hanging up on you now.”
“Coward!”
Jack poked the end call button with more verve than was strictly necessary. He tried to lock in on his editing, but he kept fidgeting. He picked up his phone and scrolled to his text thread with Robby. Before he could second-guess himself, he shot off a message.
Any chance you have a client who wouldn’t mind my getting some shots of you working your magic?
Gray bubbles popped up and disappeared over and over while Jack’s heart threatened to fly out of his gullet.
Still haven’t gotten enough of me?
Jack found himself grinning down at his phone.
Never
Wednesday, 6pm
I’ll be there with bells on
The office manager let Jack in at precisely 5:55pm but hustled out the door herself while Jack sat in the waiting room. Jack frowned. He supposed it was late enough to pack up, and maybe Robby’s last client was already back there. At 5:59, Robby emerged from the back in black scrubs and tilted his head upon finding Jack, eyes going soft. Robby jerked his head.
“Come on back,” he said.
Jack followed him in, only to find the tattooing suite empty when they got there. He turned and looked up at Robby with raised brows. Robby shrugged.
“Had a cancellation,” he said.
“Oh. Right, okay. Do you want to reschedule, or—”
“Why don’t you hop on the bed, Jack,” Robby said. He sat on his rolling stool and started setting out ink pods.
“I—what?”
Robby looked at him over the rim of his glasses and inclined his head toward the bed.
“Wait,” Jack said.
“I wonder if anyone’s ever told you you use that camera to hide,” Robby said.
“Oh, Jesus, here we go.”
“So I gotta wonder: is this native to who you are or is it the way people look at you when they put together the muscles and the scars and the way you stand and the way you favor that right leg.”
“I don’t know what to tell you, man, chicks dig scars.”
“So you put that camera around your neck and then you don’t have to be there at all. You’re just—” He spread his hands. “—recording.”
“Oh fuck you, you think all that ink on your body isn’t armor?” Jack snapped. “You think all that art is some grand truth people can read so you don’t have to say anything rather than just another way to keep people from looking too deep?”
“There he is,” Robby said softly, eyes glinting.
“What does that even mean?”
“It means it’s nice to meet you, Jack, I’ve been waiting.”
Jack scoffed and shook his head. He passed a hand through his hair and gripped some at the base of his skull before letting go.
“Do the scars bother you, yes or no?” Robby asked.
“It doesn’t matter,” Jack said.
“You’d never say that to Imani, or any client who walked through my door, or any patient whose conditions you were photographing.”
“That’s not—it’s different!”
“Why?”
“It just is!”
“Because it’s you.”
“Yes!”
“So, they deserve to be given their peace of mind back, but you deserve, what? To have your day constantly interrupted by people who don’t know the first thing about what you went through? To be on display for anyone who might want to get a good stare in? To feel like shit when it happens because you earned it somehow?”
“Look, I don’t know where you get off…”
“I’m trying to know you, Jack,” Robby said. “And the fuck of it is, I think you want to know me too, but you keep skittering away like a rat when the light’s turned on.”
Jack crossed his arms, shoved his fists into his armpits and hitched his shoulders up to his ears.
“I don’t know what you want from me,” he said.
“The first thing you did when you got me alone was offer to help my business with this article,” Robby said. “Sit down and let me help you back, man.”
Jack ventured a glance at him. Those eyes of his were too warm, too soft. Fucking lethal. He swallowed the lump that rose in his throat. He sat on the hydraulic tattoo bed and tucked his chin into his chest. Robby rolled up to him and ducked into his line of sight.
“Show me where I can fix it,” he said.
Jack raised his right arm.
“Where else,” Robby said.
Jack pulled his collar down to show the scar snaking up his neck.
“Where else,” Robby said.
Jack closed his eyes for a long moment. When he opened them again he turned his face away from Robby and gestured to the shiny white crosshatching of scars that fanned down the right side of his face.
Robby, gloveless, cupped Jack’s face. He rubbed his thumb along Jack’s cheekbone. Jack risked meeting his eyes.
“I’m told I make things weird,” Jack said.
“I only like weird things,” Robby said.
“I’m gonna sink my claws in and not let go.”
“Guess we’ll have to be careful not to tear each other to shreds then.”
“I don’t know how not to be alone anymore.”
“We’ll figure it out together.”
“I haven’t sucked cock in twenty years.”
Robby’s laugh reverberated through the tattoo suite. He sat back, dropping his hands.
“You think you can scare me off with small potatoes shit like that?” he said. “Brother, as soon as you walked in that door last month I was fucking gone.”
“But…”
“But what, man?”
“But I look like I went through a wood chipper.”
“You look like a guy who’s had a life and is still standing.”
“On one fucking leg,” Jack said.
“All I see is strength, man.”
“Is it just like, canvas to you?” Jack gestured vaguely at the right side of his body.
Robby’s brow knitted.
“It’s pain I can ease,” he said. “If you really don’t want it, I’m not gonna force-tattoo you or some shit. All I want is for things to be good for you, Jack. That doesn’t have to include me.”
Jack’s hand shot out and gripped Robby around the wrist. He heard a sharp inhale, and Robby went still.
“I’m sorry I’m like this,” Jack said. “I never met a good thing I couldn’t try to poke with a stick.”
“I don’t scare easy,” Robby said.
There was a time Jack would have described himself the same way, but now all he could think of was the way Ellis’s voice echoed in his ears when she called him a little bitch.
“Okay,” Jack said. “Yeah, okay.”
“Okay what?”
Robby’s eyes were shining up at him. It was Jack’s turn to reach out and cradle his face.
“I’m greedy,” he said, “and I want it all.”
“Oh, good,” Robby said, and tipped his mouth up to meet Jack’s.
Later, though the only light shone in from a streetlamp through his bedroom window, Jack would snap photos of Robby pushing up his shirt and trailing sucking kisses into the web of shrapnel scarring along Jack’s torso. He’d get shots of Robby’s eyes, hooded but blazing, as he swallowed Jack’s cock. He’d take shot after shot of Robby’s hands on his hips, his chest, his residual limb. He’d capture the stretch of Robby’s ass around his cock, and the way Robby’s mouth opened in a moan. And, in bits and snatches of time after the practice had closed and all of his clients had left, Robby would pour ink into Jack’s beleaguered skin with steady hands.
One day soon, Jack would wake up with a man he loved by his side and a reflection whose eyes he didn’t shy from meeting in the mirror.
End