Break the Skin by Lee Martin

to see what was going on. She’d drawn on her eyebrows with a sharp peak in each center rather than the half-moon arc she usually used. Her lipstick strayed at the corners, as if someone had jostled her arm, and she hadn’t got her hair all the way brushed out after taking it out of the curlers. She was a woman who looked startled.
    “No,” I told her. “No trouble.” I didn’t see a need to go into the story of Carolyn and Slam Dent and ruin the pleasure Emma took from hating Carolyn. “They just had more questions about Pablo and that cattle rustling.”
    “Did you tell them what they wanted to know?”
    “I don’t know anything, Emma.”
    “Does Carolyn? Is that why she was here last night?”
    I pretended to be peeved at her. “Emma, were you snooping out your windows?”
    She twisted up her mouth in disgust. “I was not . I saw that woman leave this morning when I was setting up my sprinklers.” Emma crossed her arms over her chest and gave me a haughty look. “A body has a right to take note of a few things, doesn’t she, Miss Baby Ruiz?”
    “She needed a place to stay.”
    “And you let her?”
    I tapped my chest with my fist. “What can I say? Soft heart.”
    “Soft head is more like it. Oh, Miss Baby. What on earth were you thinking? Lord-a-mighty. After the way that woman’s treated you?”
    “Things are looking up, Emma. That’s all I’ll say.” I took her by her scrawny arm, pulled her close, and whispered in her ear, “I got married.”
    She tipped her head back and squinted at me. “While I was in Mississippi?”
    “Justice of the peace,” I said. “A courthouse wedding.”
    “That Donnie fella? I didn’t even know you were keeping time with him.”
    “Well, Emma, you just don’t know everything.” I winked at her. “Even though you want to.”
    “Are you saying I’m nosy?”
    “Come on in here.” I took her hand and led her toward the kitchen. “I want you to meet my sweetie.”
    Donnie was standing just where I’d left him, as if he couldn’t unstick himself from that spot.
    Emma walked right up to him. “You’re Donnie,” she said. “Donnie True.”
    “True enough,” he said.
    She got tickled. “True enough.” She cackled and swatted my arm. “Did you hear that?” she asked me. “Donnie True is true enough.”
    He took her hand and raised it to his lips, and that was enough tostop her from having the hysterics. She put her other hand to her mouth, amazed. I saw a little blush creep into her cheeks the way it must have when she was a girl and a boy paid attention to her. Donnie kissed the back of her hand where the veins were roped up and the knuckles were all knobby. He kissed her hand like an old-time Southern gentleman, and I knew he’d won her over.
    “Charmed,” Donnie said.
    “Why, Mr. True,” said Emma. “What a sweetie pie you are, and cute as a Kewpie. Believe me, sir, the pleasure is all mine.”
    WHAT CAN I SAY? We got on, my Donnie and me. Our first whole day together, after Emma had gone home, we walked back to where we’d started—the corner of Fry and Oak—and I opened up Babyheart’s Tats.
    “So this is our shop,” I told Donnie.
    He leafed through a binder full of sample tats. “I’m a tattoo artist?”
    What was I to tell him? Yes? No? I wasn’t sure which way to go, afraid I might scare him off.
    “You’ve done it before,” I finally said.
    He slapped the binder shut. “I don’t think I could do it now. I wouldn’t remember how it all went.”
    “That’s all right,” I told him. “You don’t have to remember everything at once. We’ll take it slow.”
    And we did. All through the rest of September, we fell into a gentle rhythm—the easy tempo of our own fairy tale, as I came to think of it. Pablo, when he’d finally run, had left things in my house—jeans and shirts and underwear and socks and toiletry items. He and Donnie had the same build, so it was easy to convince Donnie that everything was his. While I