Caleb's Ladder

My official submission for the "On the Job" story event, where the entire story has to be set in a place of work (in this case a tattoo parlour), and also a return to a category in whichI do not usually write. Fingers crossed on how it turns out.

Votes, comments and any feedback are most welcome. If you thought something of this story, let me know, good, bad or (hopefully not) ugly.

Thanks to my editor blackrandl1958.

* *

"So you're Floyd?"

Floyd Hewitt nodded. It almost felt as if the eyes on the other side of the table could see right through him. He had seen it all when people looked at him: judgement, hate, pity, even love one time, but he could not quite settle on what this man thought.

"I have to tell you, Floyd. It's been over five years since I last did a tattoo, not that I've wanted for offers. Even now my social media is filled with eager customers. Just last week I turned down a Welsh heiress who wanted a full-scape Jon Snow on her back and was willing to pay upwards of a million for it.

"I take it you wouldn't have asked me to meet you here if you were going to turn me down?"

"I'm curious," he said. "Why did you think I would want to do what you want me to do?"

"Because you owe me, Caleb," Floyd said through gritted teeth. "You fucking owe me, and I'm here to collect."

Caleb merely leaned back and contemplated his choices. His own hands showed his work in vivid detail: impossible fractals and mosaics blending together and exploding in a riot of colour all the way from his wrist to his shoulder. A pair of wings showed on either side of his neck, the tips bordering on his thick beard.

"Show me the picture."

Floyd retrieved the picture from his jacket and put it on the table between them. Caleb picked it up with trembling hands.

"He looks beautiful."

"I know that," Floyd said. "We took it on a holiday to Fire Island."

"You want this face on your back?"

"Can you do it?" Floyd asked. "Or have you lost your touch after all this time?"

"I'm pretty much the only one who can do it." Caleb said. "And you fucking know it."

"Good. Let's talk numbers, then. How long will it take?"

"It's an art, Mr Hewitt. Not an exact science."

"Ballpark then."

"A couple of days to outline. Maybe five or six weeks after that."

"In colour?"

"Most definitely in colour. I'll reach out to some of my old contacts who still keep the dyes I will need."

"How much do you want to get paid for your efforts?"

"I have something in mind," said Caleb with a deep sigh. "Not money, though. I'll let you know when the time comes."

"Okay then," said Floyd, business-like as always. "It was good to meet you. When do you think we should say we can start?"

Caleb checked a few notes.

"I should have the ink I need by the weekend. Let's meet up on Sunday, unless you have other plans."

"Sunday," affirmed Floyd, getting up.

"Leave the photo."

Floyd looked momentarily stunned by the request.

"I'll need it to estimate how much ink I'll need."

"Sure you will," Floyd responded acidly.

A few moments of indecision hung in the air before he put the photo of the smiling Evan down on the table and turned around.

"It's okay. I've got so much more where that came from."

<c>*****</c>

"Take off your shirt and lie down on that table, please."

Floyd complied. The metallic surface felt cold against his dark skin.

"Any way I could get some padding here?"

"What do you think this is, a massage?" Caleb retorted. "Now stay still while I draw the outline on your back."

Floyd obeyed and tried to find some semblance of relief. His eyes wandered to the wall, where a picture of Caleb and Evan together hung with some mountainous wilderness in the background.

"You put that picture there on purpose so I could see it, didn't you?"

"Just thought it would be a nice change from the blank wall," came the reply. "I wasn't thinking about you at all, Floyd."

"Sure you weren't."

Floyd was a broad shouldered man and narrowed only slightly at the base of his back. There was a lot of canvas with which Caleb could work.

"How long do you plan to stay in town?"

"Haven't decided, really. At least until my publisher starts complaining."

Caleb kept making smooth markings on his back.

"Just so you know, Floyd, I've read your novel. Evan insisted I do so. I'll be honest with you, I loved it. Almost four hundred pages and I couldn't put it down until I had read the last one."

"I'm flattered. I actually sold the movie rights to Warner Brothers the week before coming. I have a pile of cash to burn through before I need to write again."

"I look forward to seeing it."

"I don't. I really wanted Daniel Day Lewis to play the role of Paul as an old man. Now that he's retired, I have no idea who can pull him off."

"What about Paul as a teen and Paul as a middle-aged man?"

"Those can be anybody, but Paul as an old man is what binds the story together, when he sits in his rocking chair and looks back on his life with only regret. Only Daniel Day could have pulled that off."

There was a period of silence as Caleb leaned over and applied the second layer of markings.

"I always pictured old man Paul as more Jack Nicholson."

Floyd chuckled in agreement.

"Maybe all hope isn't lost after all."

<c>*****</c>

"The outline is coming along nicely. It's been a while since I had to put in this much work."

"The price of being an artist," lamented Floyd dramatically.

He stayed face down in silence while the quiet humming of the tool injected more ink into his skin. Surprisingly, it didn't hurt any more than an electric razor running across his spine.

"I started reading it again."

"Requiem for Hope?"

"Yes. I found the book in a box of Evan's old things."

Floyd stiffened slightly at the mention of the name. He looked at the picture on the wall that had now been added to the previous one. This picture had Caleb and Evan with their arms around each other, with Amsterdam's distinctive coloured roofs behind them. He saw how Caleb's beautifully inked arm wrapped around the neck and shoulder of the man he loved.

Caleb was obviously enjoying tormenting his client. He might even be smiling, the crafty bastard.

"I looked you up. Did you really win the Pulitzer Prize for fiction AND the Man Booker Prize? Evan told me, but I never believed it."

"I did. Evan talked about me a lot, didn't he?"

"Not a lot, but you did come up here and there. Mostly when he was bored."

It was almost as if Floyd could sense Caleb smiling above him, imagining his reaction.

"Yeah. Fuck you too, Caleb," he said loudly.

"There's no need for profanity," Caleb said gently. "You don't want me to spoil the outline, now, do you? Just imagine having Evan's misshapen face permanently etched onto your back."

"You wouldn't do that. Your art is your true love. Everything else comes after. Do you know who told me that? Evan."

"Five years after he's gone and it's almost like he's still in the room with us."

Floyd felt no need to point out the two pictures on the wall that showed he was still very much in the room.

<c>*****</c>

"Oh come on. You're doing this on purpose now."

A week had gone by, and the outline had set. Caleb was armed with a whole spectrum of coloured ink and five unique sizes of tattoo machines for different parts of his work.

Floyd was more perturbed by the wall he was forced to look at while he remained prone. Two pictures had now become nine, each with Caleb and Evan in a different exotic locale.

"I just like showing off my travels," Caleb shrugged nonchalantly. Neither he, nor Floydb bought that excuse.

"Evan and I went to Europe too, you know? To Stockholm."

"Booking your Nobel Prize in advance?"

"I'll get that when I'm like ninety... and that is if I can bang out a few more novels. The Academy doesn't look kindly on one-hit wonders."

He lay still, now used to the routine while Caleb took the second thinnest tipped machine and loaded the ink into it. He stared longingly at the pictures, looking from left to right and back again.

"That's us in Zaragoza, running with bulls."

Floyd smirked inwardly. He knew why Caleb felt the need to mention each adventure.

"There we are in Hobart. We did some scuba diving in waters so clear, you can see all the way to the bottom. The colours on the corals inspired my next work actually."

There was a moderate sting when the needle made first contact with his skin, but Floyd calmly clamped his lips and waited for the pain to subside into the comfortable buzz of an almost imperceptible pin prick.

"Us at the top of Mount Fuji after a twelve hour trek. Evan timed it perfectly so we reached the peak just in time to see the sun rise and light up fields filled with cherry blossom trees."

Floyd clenched and unclenched his fist. Part of him wanted to get off the table and flatten his tormentor, but he knew Caleb had six inches and around fifty pounds of muscle on him. He would last about as long as ice cream on a hot day.

"And right there... that's us in a hot air balloon over the Valley of Kings in Egypt. You won't believe how incredible all the tombs look from high up."

"Must be quite a change for a small town man like yourself."

Caleb went quiet, focusing on a particularly challenging part of Evan. Evan's hair always looked a wet mop, like an emo teen who never grew up. Carefully, he added lines of black to the hair, hair through which he loved running his fingers.

"Face it, Caleb. If you hadn't met Evan, you'd probably have died five miles from where you were born, alone and friendless. Oh, wait, you're going to fucking do that anyway."

"Watch it," came a sharp warning. "You wouldn't want me to test how deep this needle can go."

"What did Evan even see in you? I bet you never even fucked him as well as I did."

"All right," said Caleb, standing upright. "This is my place of work and you are not allowed to talk about my partner that way. You can keep what I have done, but that will be it until you apologise."

"Fuck you, asshole," Floyd yelled. He got up, wincing at the raw wounds on his upper back. Throwing on his shirt, he walked out the door.

<c>*****</c>

"It's been two weeks since I last saw you. Are you ready to pick up where we left off?"

Floyd was back. He had clearly not showered or shaved in the two weeks since he stormed off.

"It was our anniversary, Evan's and mine, two weeks ago, and you hang up all these pictures of the two of you together. I hate to admit it, but it got under my skin."

"I didn't know," replied Caleb honestly. "I took them all down, anyway."

"You can put them back up," Floyd said, taking off his shirt and lying down again. "Just don't rub it in so much. You actually make a cute couple when you're not bragging about it."

Caleb picked up one of his tools and loaded it with black ink.

"You really loved him, didn't you?"

Floyd let out a long sigh.

"Cat got your tongue?"

"Love and I have a more complicated relationship than you think."

"Tell me about it," said Caleb, letting the humming needle go back to work along Floyd's spine.

"Remember Paul, from my novel?"

"Which one? The high school version? The middle-aged man? The old man?"

"The eighteen year old in high school, the white Jewish boy from a strict family in Queens who struggled with his homosexuality, who serviced older married men at motels and strangers at gas stations to feel... something."

"That was you?" Caleb was clearly surprised.

"Of course not," chuckled Floyd. "I'm not white, nor Jewish... also I grew up in Brooklyn. The rest of it though...."

"That's awful."

"Up until I met Evan, my Prince Charming was usually an older married man in a dirty motel room with an Amex."

Caleb tutted as he continued his work. He changed his tool and added a combination of inks to get the colour he wanted for Evan's face.

"How were they?"

"Most of them were just transactional. They gave me money, I gave them what their wives couldn't - a few hours of freedom before going back to the misery of an unhappy marriage. Some of them were nicer. They talked to me, bought me nice things. Some exchanged numbers for repeat business."

For a few long moments, there was no sound apart from the quiet hum of the tattoo implement injecting skin onto the upper layer of Floyd's skin.

"Definitely sounds like Paul as a teen."

<c>*****</c>

"You didn't come yesterday."

"There was an author thing for me. I'm a celebrity in this town."

"Any luck with the writer's block?"

"Still plugging away. I have a couple of ideas, but nothing that could be a follow-up for <i>Requiem</i>."

Caleb refilled his machine and went back to his work.

"I owe it all to Evan," he admitted. "I would have lived and died of depression in that hole-in-the-wall shithole in Brooklyn if it wasn't for him. When he found me, I was full of pain, but had no words to show for it. He convinced me to turn my life, all the pain, anger and catharsis, into a novel. He believed in me when no one else did, not even myself."

Caleb paused at hearing the name. He took a deep breath and resumed framing the high cheekbones onto the exposed skin on his table.

"If it hadn't been for him, I'd still be inking swastikas on Neo-Nazi bikers."

"Was that the only alternative you had?"

Caleb paused to feel the curvature of Floyd's back before he spoke.

"When I got back from my third tour of Iraq, there was nothing left for me here. My wife had split long before, the rest of my family had moved away. All I had left were The Patriots. They were the only ones left who didn't look at me with pity or condescension."

"The Patriots? That's what they called themselves?"

"Yup," came the reply. "A brotherhood spanning all the way from Pennsylvania to Massachusetts."

"What did they do?"

"Mostly guns and drugs. Occasionally some violence for hire. Remember the vicious attack on a gay couple in Brockton that made news several years ago? That was them."

"Sounds like a charming bunch. What did you see in them?" asked Floyd.

"Nothing, but they were the only ones there for me when I returned from war. They accepted me as one of their own when no one else would. Do you know what that's like? Your own family rejecting you because you're too damaged?"

Floyd chuckled face down.

"No," he replied sarcastically. "The gay son of a Southern Baptist was always welcome at the dinner table."

"Ouch, sorry."

"Remember Paul as a middle-aged man? A father of three, miserable in a marriage he didn't want to be in."

"Vividly. Some of your best writing."

"That was my father."

"For real?"

"Floyd Senior. The memory that I remember him by is of his usual morning. He would stand in front of the window with a cup of coffee in his hand and stare out at the world, as if trying to make sense of how it had moved forward and left him behind. A bitter black man with a cup of bitter black coffee contemplating his life choices. What scared me the most was that could be me some day."

He turned his face to the side to see Caleb diligently working on his back.

<c>*****</c>

"The face is coming along nicely. With any luck, I'll be done by the weekend."

Floyd shifted slightly, getting comfortable on the table for a couple of more hours.

"I saw you at my book reading the other day. Right at the back of that tiny little room."

Caleb smirked and started his work. The low mechanical hum of his implement raked over the lower half of Floyd's back.

"You didn't come by for an autograph, though."

"I had places to be."

Floyd looked at his usual wall. Today, there was an extra picture. Not an exotic locale, but the happy couple outside their house, which was just up the road. Caleb saw his gaze.

"Evan helped me repair that place. Before, it used to be a mess all the time. A magazine here, a syringe there... I can't even imagine how I survived as long as I did."

"Long enough to meet Evan and play house with him, obviously."

Caleb took a step back. He had not expected the acid tone. In another life, he and his brotherhood would have dealt with a black gay man a whole other way if he dared take that tone (and even if he did not). Not now, not after Evan.

"Do you have a problem with me, Floyd?"

"God damn right I do. All your vacations, all the time you spent with Evan were stolen from me."

"I hate to break it to you, but he came to me at the bar that night."

"Of course he did," spat Floyd. "That night we had a huge fight about something stupid. So stupid that I barely remember what it was now. He said he didn't want to see me for a few hours, and he took his car and drove off. He did that from time to time. Driving outside the city helped him clear his head."

Floyd sat up and looked at Caleb.

"I waited for him all night long. I called him over and over again, but he didn't pick up."

Caleb put his tool down and drew up a chair. He had expected this confrontation from the moment Floyd first walked into this room.

"The next day, he finally calls me and tells me he has found someone else. He had helped me to be the best version of myself and he wanted to do the same for the man he met at a bar in some small town."

Floyd paused to choke back the angst in his voice.

"That bar, right fucking up the road. He saw you and knew you needed his help more than I did."

Caleb balled his hands into fists so tightly his knuckles turned white before firing back.

"Do you know what it's like being surrounded by people who would kill if you if they found out the truth? That was my life. Every single day. Hoping. Praying that I could keep my desires hidden. Praying no one would find out. I was drowning, Floyd. I was broken when Evan found me."

"Classic Evan," said Floyd. "He didn't find a broken man he couldn't fix. I should know."

"I was drowning and he saved me. Can't you be happy for that?"

Floyd walked to the wall and saw the pictures. He carefully studied each one, the smiles, the scenic locales.

"The five years since that day you spent together should have been mine. Mine. All your memories and all your vacations with Evan are stolen from me. I deserved to be with him in all these places. You stole my husband."

The last accusation hung in the air. A strange mix of anger and hatred was written across Floyd's face as he turned around to look at Caleb.

"Five years. Five years I was all alone, wondering what I did wrong and Evan was with you."

Floyd pointed an accusing finger at a surprisingly calm Caleb. The words and pent-up emotions roiling inside him for years had finally been allowed to escape.

"Do you feel better now?" Caleb asked calmly.

He did, but it was not something he could admit. All the hatred and angst he had felt against Caleb now rang hollow, a beneficiary blaming another.

Caleb reached into his jacket and took out a folded piece of paper.

"I knew it would eventually come to this, so I carry this around with me."

Floyd picked up the note and opened it. Complete silence hung in the air for a few minutes. Caleb sat back and pursed his lips.

"I don't understand," was all Floyd could manage.

"When Evan got sick, when we went to the doctor..." It took considerable effort for Caleb to eke the words out. "The news left me numb. The man who had come into my life and helped me so much in five years only had another ten months to live. He knew how I felt, he always did. That night, I went to bed determined to be with him every step of the way."

His voice choked before he could get the rest of it out.

"When I woke up, he wasn't there. All that was left was this note. How much he would always love me. How he was so proud of how far I'd come. How he wanted me to remember him by how he was, not how he was going to be. How he wanted to die in your arms."