Josiah Marquez Part 3

The first client of the morning was quite unsettling. The woman entered silently and left silently, watching me as I tattooed the semicolon on her left wrist. She had very peculiar green eyes with yellow streaks around the pupils, under dark, arched eyebrows. The rest of her body was covered by a long black dress that concealed everything, revealing only her neck and up. I was somewhat unsettled when I started tattooing the small red heart on the middle phalanx of her left ring finger. The woman was so composed... She didn’t flinch, and that area of the finger is notoriously painful. She didn’t even say goodbye or thank me when I finished; she walked away, fiddling with her phone, her dark hair flowing in waves down her back. I had the impression that I knew this mysterious woman from somewhere… A few minutes later, I began attending to the next client.
Absorbed in my work, as I glided the tattoo machine over the back of the brunette in front of me, painting the phoenix wings in shades of red, I noticed a figure in the room. By the sweet scent of grape gum, I knew it was Isa. She was addicted to sweets, especially gum.
“Josiah, can you come to the reception for a second?”
I didn’t look in her direction, ignoring the worried tone. I shook my head, taking a while to finally make my voice heard.
“I’m in the middle of a job, man!” I warned.
I got pissed when I was interrupted like this, and she knew it. It broke my concentration. I continued ignoring the groans of pain from the client, who was gripping the table, pressing the backrest against her chest. Most tattoos hurt; it’s the price for the beauty that would be permanently etched on the skin.
“It’s Ana!” she confessed, her voice alarmed, trying not to draw attention from the woman I was working on.
I looked at Isabela, noticing the look of fear dancing on her pale face. There was a lot of nervousness in her body as she snapped her fingers while counting, standing under the door arch that matched her hair color.
“Something with my daughter?” I asked, dropping the tools on the black rolling cart in front of my stool and walking out of the room, leaving Isabela behind.
“Calm down!” she pleaded, running in front of me and pushing my chest, trying to make me stop. “Ana is pounding on the gate and shouting curses over the intercom. I asked if it was about Júlia, and she said she was going to kill you and that if I didn’t open the gate, she’d jump the fence and smash my face.”
“Damn it!” I cursed, putting my tongue between my lips and smoothing my hair, calming my heart that was racing uncontrollably just thinking that something might have happened to my Little One. “Let me see the camera!”
I walked to the reception desk and looked at the security monitor of the gate. There was Docinho, screaming while pressing the intercom button a thousand times, cursing and shouting at the camera. What did she want? I took off my gloves and tossed them into the red trash bin below the desk, checking my wristwatch and realizing she had probably already dropped off Júlia at daycare, as she had said she would.
I answered the intercom, which was blaring with Ana constantly pressing the button at the front gate.
“What the hell do you want?” I grunted. “Is something wrong with my daughter?”
“You asshole! You put that damn…” she yelled through sobs, sounding out of her mind.
I hung up on her. What the hell was going on? I was unsure of what to do, but with a stake in my chest, terrified that it might be something with my little one, I decided to let her in. I pressed the button to unlock the gate and saw through the camera that Ana was running inside.
“Isabela, go distract the client! Turn up the music, say anything, but don’t let Ana see you,” I instructed, hearing the heavy footsteps of my daughter’s mother on the stairs outside.
“This is going to go bad!” the redhead said, closing the door to my room behind her.
When I looked at the reception entrance, an enraged Ana appeared. Her face was completely red and swollen, her eyes wide and frantic in a way I had only seen once before. And that was the time she messed everything up.
“Motherfucker!” she screamed, charging at me and punching my chest.
The pressure of her fists was so much that I almost lost my balance, nearly falling backward onto the reception desk. I grabbed her wrists while my ex groaned, threatening to kill me, struggling as I turned her back to me, restraining her.
“Damn it, Ana!” I shouted. “Are you crazy?”
“I’m crazy! You did it, Josiah,” she shouted, kicking the air. “You managed to screw me over, you bastard! But it was dirty…”
And she repeated the “it was dirty” like a mantra, over and over again. Damn! Ana was completely out of her mind, literally in a rage-induced breakdown. I kept holding her while she thrashed, trembled, cried, and screamed countless curses.
It took a while for her to calm down, to stop thrashing, for the chest under my arms to slow its pace. Those minutes of terror felt like hours, as nervous and scared as I was trying to stabilize her crisis.
I remembered that night, that Ana in a trance, violent, that…
“Why did you do this to me?” she whispered.
“What did I do, Ana? What are you talking about?”
“You…” she whispered, her body softening. If I hadn’t been holding her, she would have fallen to the floor.
“Ana, tell me, is something wrong with Júlia?” I repeated, feeling like the ground beneath me might crack if the answer that came from those swollen lips was positive.
Then I suddenly understood Ana’s parents. I understood that if I lost my daughter, life would be meaningless. It was a love so strong that it hurt. The thought of anything bad happening to Júlia made me go insane.
I had been to the heavens when interacting with her for the first time, giving the kisses I had longed for, hearing her call me “daddy,” playing with her, watching her laugh. No! I could endure losing everything, but I couldn’t endure losing Júlia.