Seeing Stars by Diane Hammond Page B

his balls take a little inward breath, though, the way they sometimes did when he saw girls bending over or running or something.
    When he finished his food he watched his purple high-tops walk back down the street— slap, slap, slap —and east on Santa Monica again, on the opposite side of the street but toward the apartment. He passed a trendy tattoo studio and stopped to watch the action through the window. Two women were getting work done. One of them had the black outlines of a dragon on her upper arm that the tattoo artist was filling in with green and fuchsia ink. The tattoo started on her shoulder, so from the front it looked like the dragon was peeking around her arm. He liked that. The other woman was getting a tattoo on her lower back. If he ever got a tattoo, he’d get one that said, “Tattoo.”
    Watching the tattoo artists was surprisingly boring. They’d scribble on the person’s arm and then wipe it off, scribble, wipe, scribble, wipe. The best part was their purple gloves. They’d look great on him with his purple high-tops. Maybe he should go in and see if they’d give him a pair. He watched for another few minutes, but then he lost interest and headed back to the apartment. Mimi had him in a showcase this afternoon at three. She was being pretty good about letting him do stuff at the studio any time he wanted, as long as he behaved himself and didn’t do inappropriate things. He just couldn’t live with her anymore. Mimi was pretty cool, even though she’d kicked him out. She’d tried to get his mom and dick of a stepfather, to bring him back home to Seattle after that. He’d heard her on the phone, saying, “—yes, but he’s floundering and I think he needs to spend some time at home.” It hadn’t worked, though. His mom and Nelson were willing to send him a shit-pile of money as long as he stayed in LA. He could have taken a class every day if he’d wanted to. He could have told them he needed a thousand dollars a month and they’d probably give it to him. Hell, he could probably tell them he needed five hundred dollars a month to buy weed or Ecstasy and they’d have sent it, that’s how much they didn’t want him to ever come back home. They never even asked him about what had happened at Mimi’s. He assumed Mimi had told them, though. He assumed pretty much everyone knew. That’s why he wasn’t in classes anymore with any kids younger than fifteen. Like he was some sort of sex freak. He didn’t see what the big deal was.
    Jasper was upstairs when Quinn got back. He was Pakistani, with a permanent five-o’clock shadow, dark brown eyes like a dog’s, and an accent Quinn could mimic perfectly. He and Baby-Sue looked like a car wreck together—she was a big-boned redhead with rabbit teeth and an overbite—but they had a good time. They’d been living together for a year. Sometimes Quinn tried to imagine what their kids might look like. Then he usually gave up.
    “Hey, bud,” Jasper said when Quinn came in. He was sitting at a card table eating Chinese takeout from Win Sum Yum around the corner.
    “Hey.”
    “Man, I aced my audition. I’m going to producers with this one, baby. Morty’ll be happy.” Morty was Jasper’s agent.
    “So that’s good,” Quinn said, even though he didn’t really care. Jasper wasn’t even SAG yet. All his gigs were nonunion and paid crap. The only reason he had an agent was because Mimi had begged a favor while she and Jasper were still on good terms, which now they were not. Quinn had seen him act once or twice in Mimi’s showcases, and he was okay, but between the accent and the skin tone, he was doomed to play ethnic forever. At least that was one problem Quinn didn’t have.
    “So what have you been up to?” Jasper said, chewing vigorously. He had pink, pink fingernails. Some of the skin around them was very dark, darker than the rest of him, like the pigment had leaked out and pooled there. His palms were pink, too. Next to Jasper,