2

A Man of Unusual Anger

The tattoo artist’s needle buzzed with an urgency that reminded him of a hornet flying around his head. The man with the needle hovering over him was a thickset, heavily muscled man, with multihued, entwined decorations creeping like vines up both arms, past his shoulders, and swirling around his neck, ending in a serpent’s bared fangs beneath his left ear. He bent down, like a man considering a prayer, the needle in hand. He stooped to the task, then hesitated, looking up and asking, “You sure about this, man?”

“I’m sure,” Michael O’Connell replied.

“I never put a tat like this on anybody.”

“Time for a first, then,” O’Connell said stiffly.

“Man, I hope you know what you’re doing. Gonna hurt for a couple of days.”

“I always know what I’m doing,” O’Connell answered. He gritted his teeth a little against the pain and leaned back in the tattoo parlor chair. He stared down and watched as the burly man began to work over the design. Michael O’Connell had chosen a scarlet heart with a black arrow driven through it, dripping blood tears. In the center of the pierced heart, the tattoo would have the initials AF. What was unusual about the tattoo was the location. He watched the artist struggle a little. It was more awkward for him to put the heart and initials on the ball of the sole of O’Connell’s right foot than it was for O’Connell to keep his leg lifted and steady. As the needle pierced the skin, O’Connell waited. It is a sensitive location. Where one might tickle a child or caress a lover. Or step on a bug. It was the location best suited for the multiplicity of his feelings, he thought.