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it, though she’d inked three of them herself.
    The tattoo machine buzzed in her hand as she injected blue ink into his arm.  Cassidy had already drawn the outline in black, and now she was moving in for the fill.
    “Is that robin’s-egg blue?” Big Ted craned his neck over his shoulder.  He was a hairy, beefy man in his fifties with a thick salt-and-pepper mustache, his chest flab lying on his bare stomach like big-nippled boobs as he sat shirtless in the chair.  “I wanted robin’s-egg blue.”
    “It’s the same hue you picked out,” Cassidy said.
    “I can’t see it real good from here.”
    “Check it.” Cassidy held up a hand mirror so he could look.  Big Ted squinted at the stripe of blue she’d just added to the cat, and he rubbed his grizzled chin thoughtfully.
    While Big Ted might have lacked any sense of theme or order to his tattoos, he was an enthusiastic collector of them.  His back was a madman’s mural featuring thuggish cartoon animals, a tree that grew thorny vines instead of leaves or fruit, a gravestone with his mother’s name, a bottle of Jim Beam, and a big red-white-and-blue American eagle driving a Harley-Davidson with its talons, its patriotic wings splayed wide above the motorcycle.
    “Cassidy!” a man’s voice shouted from the back. “Your mom’s on the phone.  Again.”
    “I’m tattooing, Jarvis!” Cassidy called back.
    “I told her that.  Again.” Jarvis walked out of the back holding out a cordless phone.  He was the manager, a short guy in his mid-forties who was furiously resisting his age with lots of hair gel and stupid hipster glasses.  He wore a tank top to show off his stringy vegan jogger’s body and his full-sleeve tattoos.  Jarvis favored weird marine life, and his wrists and forearms were sheathed in suckers and spiny teeth.  He adjusted his glasses for no apparent reason and glared at Cassidy. “I’ve told you, I don’t want that crazy bitch calling here.”
    “Don’t call my mom a crazy bitch!  You fuckhead!”
    “You call her a crazy bitch all the time,” Jarvis said as she took the phone from him.
    “Cassidy?  Hello?” her mother’s voice crackled.
    “That’s not the point!  You realize she could hear you say that?” Cassidy waved the phone at him.
    “Nah, I put it on mute.  Right?” He frowned and squinted at the phone.
    “Go back to your video game, Jarvis.” Cassidy held the phone to her ear. “Mom?”
    “There you are, Cassidy,” her mother said. “Do you know he told me you were too busy to talk to me?”
    “I have a client sitting right here.” Cassidy offered Big Ted an apologetic smile. “What’s the emergency?”
    “I’m making boiled beef,” she said. “You should come home for dinner tonight.  We haven’t seen you in months.”
    “That’s not an emergency, Mom. You could’ve left me a voice mail.”
    “So you could ignore me more easily?”
    “I’ll just go,” Big Ted said in a stage whisper.
    “No, wait, Ted, this will just take a second—” Cassidy began.
    “Lunch break’s almost over, anyhow.  Gotta head back for the afternoon shift.” Ted stood up and reached for his shirt. “I can come back Monday to finish up.  Same time?”
    “Yeah, sure...no, wait.” Cassidy grabbed her bulging black appointment notebook.  All the extra papers crammed inside it—business cards, sketches she’d drawn, and Post-Its and notes jotted on scraps of paper—spilled out and fell into a scattered snowdrift on the floor.
    “Fuck!” Cassidy shouted.
    “Cassidy!” her mother admonished over the phone.
    “Sorry, Mom.  Sorry, Ted.  Um...” Cassidy dropped to her knees and began sweeping the scattered pieces of paper together with her hands.  She opened her notebook and flipped through it, trying to find her Monday appointments. “I can’t, sorry,” she said into the phone.
    “Monday’s no good?” Big Ted asked.
    “No, Monday’s fine,” Cassidy told him, still looking for the right page.