All I Want Is Everything

Tattoo You

They shake your hand and they smile
And they buy you a drink
They say we'll be your friends
We'll stick with you till the end
Ah but everybody's only
Looking out for themselves
And you say well who can you trust
I'll tell you it's just
Nobody else's money

Money changes everything
Money changes everything
We think we know what we're doin'
We don't pull the strings
It's all in the past now
Money changes everything

Cyndi Lauper, Money Changes Everything

They walked into Spider Tattoos at about a quarter past eleven. The guy on the register looked at Ella and called out to Ned.

"Ella! Welcome back," he said, coming over to them. He covertly checked out Becca, who smiled engagingly at him.

"Do you mind if I watch? Ella's so excited about this."

"Yeah, no problem. Plenty of room because of the holiday." The place was empty aside from the four of them.  "Ok, I did two, so you can take your choice." The first one was soft and wispy and dainty, so delicate and transparent, the weight of two flowers and an unopened bud curving the stems down. Ned demonstrated the placement; one opened flower was positioned on her inner wrist just above where the tendon disappeared into her arm and had a tiny record at the center instead of the stamens. The bud was positioned just at the start of the wrist on the outside of the arm, and the stems twisted around the wrist so that final poppy was centered on the back of her hand, on the lower part away from her fingers, with another record at its heart. Ella and Becca laughed. "You've got two gold albums already."

"It's so pretty," Ella said. Becca nodded.

"Then there's this one. I wanted a choice because I forgot to tell you that hand tattoos will  have to be touched up periodically and I can make this one straight with a little repositioning." This also had two fully opened poppies  with the gold records and a bud, but the delicacy was considerably less. The stems and leaves and smoky wisps still curved, but there was more sensuality and more determination. The arrangement was different too; the bud was about an inch down from the tendon, connected to the first open flower centered on the wrist just under the creases  from bending her hand with stems and wispy lashes. A stem curved around the base of her thumb wreathed in the wispy lashes and the second open flower nestled in the base of the V formed in her hand between her thumb and the bones of her hand. The poppies were about the size of a quarter, the bud about the size of a nickel. It used the anatomy of bone and muscle beautifully. All of a sudden, the first one that Ella had loved seemed droopy and sad and insubstantial. Ella longed to be substantial.

"That one, Ella," Becca said.

"Oh, yeah. Ned, this is fantastic. I miss the bracelet part but it's really elegant and easier to conceal until it heals."

"I'm glad you like it. It came to me after I did the first  one. That's more unobtrusive, which you wanted, but this just seems more awesome. I don't know you well, but it seems to me like it's more you. There's more shading, so more detail."

"What's next?" Ella asked cheerfully.

"I take payment, you get comfy in the chair here--" he patted what looked like an old-fashioned dentist's chair--"and I prepare your arm. First, I'll clean the area I'll be tattooing with alcohol, shave your arm, then clean with alcohol again. You don't have many hairs in that area so it won't be a big deal. I did a big half sleeve tattoo on a very hairy guy last month. His arm looked like the tummy of a cat that's just been spayed. I wanted to put one of those big stiff collars on him. I'll apply the stencil then and you get final approval of the placement. Then I get ready. We run all our equipment through an autoclave so it's sterile and you won't have to worry about getting an infection here. Then we start and you stay as still as possible. We start with outlining the design, then after that's complete, we go back for shading and coloring as we discussed last night. If you need to take a break, let me know, it's not a problem. After that, I often take a picture but it's not something you have to do if you don't want."