Lily and the Octopus(44)

Kal is perhaps more tattooed than not and I find it immediately disarming, the amount of ink his body is able to absorb and, instead of looking marked, radiate empowerment back. He’s handsome and slightly older and gray at the temples. Native American, maybe? But more like Native Canadian. Inuit or Eskimo. He cuts through my awkward attempt at a handshake with an encompassing hug.

“There is no real word for hello in Inuktitut,” he says, “So we shake hands or hug.”

“Hugging is good.” At least it is when it’s explained to me what the hug means.

Kal motions for me to sit on a stool. It’s a slow day, and we talk for a while about life, about nature, about relationships—the ones that are fleeting and the ones that are not. I ask him about the tattoos of his that I find most interesting and he tells me the stories behind them. He can tell that I’m stalling, but he doesn’t seem to mind.

“What’s your favorite thing about tattoos?” It’s such an amateur question, something a third-grader might ask while interviewing him for some school project, although I don’t know what school would assign a project on tattoo artists. Maybe a charter school, or a Montessori.

“Their permanence,” Kal says.

“But now there’s laser removal.”

Kal shrugs. “It still leaves a scar. Like a ghost.” He looks deeper into me than anyone has in a long time.

“But eventually we die, and the flesh rots away.”

Kal smiles at me with unwavering eye contact. It’s unnerving, or at least I am unnerved.

“Let me guess, people leave ghosts, too.”

“You’re scared. That’s normal for first-timers.”

I don’t recall mentioning that this is my first time, and I’m fully clothed, and so he can’t possibly see that I am unmarked, but he knows. “I’m scared. But not about the needles or the pain or regret.”

“About what, then?”

“About memorializing someone who isn’t gone. That I’m giving up the battle. That I’m surrendering in war.” I can hear Jenny tell me to say what I really mean. I carry my thesis further. “Afraid of death, I guess. And, maybe for the first time, of my own mortality.”

“Death is a unique opponent, in that death always wins.”Kal offers a small hiccup of a shrug, as if this is of little significance. “There’s no shame in surrender when it’s time to stop fighting.”

“Comforting.” I say it sarcastically, but I’m not sure sarcasm is a language Kal speaks.

“Isn’t it?” Kal asks. I don’t think he’s without a sense of humor, but he’s completely serious here. I laugh, but in that nervous way you do when you can’t think of something to say. Kal opens a drawer and pulls out a Polaroid and hands it to me.

“What’s this?”

“The last tattoo I did. I don’t like to do quotes. Not much challenge in them for me as an artist. But I like this one, and we were able to do it in an interesting way.”

I look at the photograph. Across a guy’s rib cage are scrawled the words “To die would be an awfully big adventure.”

I recognize it immediately. “Peter Pan.”

“J. M. Barrie,” Kal corrects. “Peter Pan isn’t real.”

“Isn’t he? I always thought Peter Pan was death. An angel of death who came to collect children.”

Kal raises an eyebrow. “You’re darker than I thought.”

“I didn’t used to be.” I am transforming.

“What is death? Is it the end of photosynthesis, chemosynthesis, homeostasis?” Kal has the rhythm of a poet. “The last heartbeat? The last cell generation? The last breath of air?”

“Maybe all those things.”

He has a real philosophical approach.

“We don’t know, do we? It could be the tipping point, the point in life when extinction is assured.”

“If that’s the case, isn’t death the moment of birth?”

“Or conception, even.”

“Your favorite thing about tattoos doesn’t really exist.” I look down at my feet. I’m almost embarrassed to have to point this out.

“Permanence?”

“Not really. Not if we’re all past the tipping point.”

“Permanence is a relative idea.”

I smile. “What, really, is permanence anyway?”

Kal smiles, too. He gets that I’m being cheeky. “Let’s not go too far down that rabbit hole.”

“It’s hard not to.” But he’s right, we could be here all day and all night. I look at Kal. Not that that would be so bad.

“If you spend your entire life trying to cheat death, there’s no time left over to embrace life.” He puts his hand on my shoulder and it is warm. “Don’t be afraid. That’s all I’m saying.”

Kal’s right. I’m done being afraid. Having ink, like the octopus, is the final step in my metamorphosis.

“Besides,” Kal says. “I have a better idea.”

“What’s that?”

Kal opens a drawer, pulls out a sketch pad and charcoal, and sets them down on a drafting table. “Let’s draw.”

I smile the way I did as a child when receiving a fresh box of sixty-four Crayola crayons—unabashedly, showing all my teeth. I remember how much I used to love to draw, and I wonder why I don’t do it anymore. I write, I guess. I draw with words. But when I see Kal’s pad and charcoal, I’m overwhelmed with the feeling that it’s not the same.