In Pinato Ink by Fred Nolan

In Pinato Ink by Fred Nolan

There’s this raised nasty red thing on daddy’s arm. It’s got a dark spot on top. It looks like spiders could come out, or already have. I find myself checking the corners of the room.

‘What happened here?’

Mama makes a curt face. ‘Hurt himself.’

Plus that bruise on his head a week ago, and fingernail marks a while back. It’s not like I can ask daddy no more.

‘How does he hurt himself, he can barely move?’ His nursing home took the barriers off the side of his mattress cause he’s too weak to fall out of bed. Think about that for a minute.

‘I’m sure I don’t know baby.’

I think about it a good long while, now I ask, ‘There’s cats here. You want me to start keeping an eye out?’

‘No, and I mean it. Don’t come in looking around as no cat. You know how all that ends.’

I’m so mad I don’t even laugh right. It sounds like a shot of steam coming out of a train car. I admit though, she might be right. There is that old German quote, the crazy mulekeeper said it. The one about staring too long at a dark hole.

‘Sure, but if someone is mistreating him.’

‘I hear you, kiddo. The best I can say is, if they are, he won’t remember. We’ll have to let it go alright? Promise me we’ll let it go.’

‘Why would I?’

‘Because I’m telling you it’s nothing. Imagine anyone else that dresses like us, drives cars like us, coming around accusing people who make eighteen an hour.’

How do I tell her? I’m not only accusing the staff. Mama spends as much time with daddy as they do. More.

And when I don’t say nothing she says, ‘Imagine paying as much as we pay, them earning as little as they earn, and we still come in, changing everything around, accusing, making it harder and harder.’

‘Pay? You mean, how much we pay for daddy’s room?’

‘It’s fourteen son. Fourteen a month.’

‘You told me CSU pays all that.’

‘No, I told you CSU pays for end of life stuff.’

I don’t like asking what I’m about to ask, not while daddy is sleeping here next to us. So I bring my voice down low and deep. It’s so far south it’s in every time zone. It’s dark six months a year there.

And my question is: ‘But he’s on hospice care, ain’t that end of life?’

‘There’s two kinds of hospice, son. At least two kinds. And the kind we’re talking about, CSU doesn’t pay a cent.’

I think, —Two kinds of hospice? Are there two kinds of dying, too?

But then I realize, —Dumb question. Of course there are. There’s two kinds of everything here.

In the end, though, I promise her. I won’t come looking around as a cat. Yet even though I do, she’s in no position to ask for it, which means I’m in no position to give.

& & &

In the street, late evening, after visitor’s hours, I run into that homeless woman again. She’s always bruised up and moves like she’s in pain. She looks exactly like Vivian Atunes.

Her son looks nothing like little Carlos, though. This one is a newborn. A swaddled infant done up in boar camo.

It’s pinato ink, I’m guessing. For luck. But it doesn’t wash away or smear off like regular dye. The best you can do with pinato ink is wait.

When he was healthy, daddy always said, —Son, never stare at a baby without touching him and talking to him. Most of all, it’s rude. But even if it’s not the family will think you’re up to something. No one trusts a watcher, a nursing mama most of all. Think about the people in your life who just watch and do nothing else.

The Vivian-looking woman and I pass so close we almost knock heads, and her child is less than an arm’s length away. I’m still thinking about daddy, as you can guess, so I reach out just like this, see?

She pulls the kid back and makes a horrible noise, but no words. I’ve seen her around for years—I’ve given her money a few times—but she never speaks. Not a hello, thank you, how do you do. Not a go to hell, it’s monkeys out, nothing. Our eyes meet, but I mean they bolt down, the same as padlocks. I’m blue-drowning in hers and by the feel of it she’s splashing around in mine.

Dang, but she looks exactly like our old buddy Vivian: small features that cast long shadows. Not a skin crease anywhere. Angry the way pretty girls are angry.

‘Sorry, ma’am.’

She doesn’t stay around long enough to answer, not that she would. I call out a name anyways, just in case. By the time I regret saying anything she’s turning a corner.

I don’t mention it to Beatriz, though. What I do mention is that wicked thing on daddy’s arm. I mention all the cats in the clinic. Also, I tell her about mama’s pleas that I leave well enough alone: —Don’t go in as a cat, son, just let one thing go without doing what you always do.

‘Maybe she’s right. Maybe you just leave it.’

‘If someone’s hurting him, though.’ The way I don’t put it is: —If mama’s hurting him, though.

‘Well, for a start, it’s not that great of a neighborhood.’ What she means is, where am I going to sleep while I walk the place as one of the cats? Home in bed? It’s too far for that.

Could I stay in one of the facility rooms, down the hall from daddy? Sure, if I was seventy-eight years old and infirm, at a price of fourteen thousand a month.

Will I leave myself behind a shrub? Will I hide out in the city dump?

What if I get lost as a cat? And even if I don’t, what if I get lost as a man?

If I sleep out in the open, delinquents could find me and piss on me, steal my clothes, kick me in my sleep and I won’t feel it, no pain at all. They could cut my throat, take my money, drive me off and drown me, nothing I could do. And the first sign I was gone would be a cat dropping dead in daddy’s room. No one’ll think of old Deacon Ailes because of some cat.

Like Beatriz says, it’s not that great of a neighborhood. But forget it, I already know what I’m going to do.

‘I’ll park my car near. Lock the windows and doors, hide in the trunk, who knows. Or you could watch over me.’

‘We have a son, Deacon.’

‘You could bring him.’

‘Sure, by all means. Luis and I’ll just sit in your car in the Toscani Quarter. You just faff around as a tomcat all night.’

‘I won’t be faffing around. I’ll be watching for something.’ And for the second time in an hour, I’m talking to a woman who’s wandering off.

She yells from the kitchen: ‘And what happens when you don’t catch anyone? You realize there’s another twenty-three hours a day and you should be making the rounds one more time. And still nothing happens, but you really need to catch someone this time. So you make the rounds again and then still nothing, and you make them again and again and again and still nothing. What happens then, Deacon?’

She’s not wrong. I’ll need to make the best use of my time. I’ll watch them during meals first, I’ll watch mama waking him up, kissing him at night, changing his pants and bed linen. Mama visits from dinner time until lights out, which she swears is only two hours. Less.

Two hours every night in the yellow light district. It don’t sound cheap but daddy’s got his pension checks coming in, once a month. I’ve got a stack of them where I keep my car keys.

& & &

‘Hi honey, are you Sergio?’

That’s my john name, Sergio Dias. I’ve used it before, a few times. By now Sergio’s got an email account, a burner phone, a reloadable credit card, a post office box.

Sometimes I send complaints with that name, too, along with a fake mailing address.

‘I am. And you’re Maria?’

‘Maria Del Nero. Come in, take a look at me.’

I think she misspoke; she probably meant let me take a look at you, but I like it better the way she put it. There’s not much for her to see. I’m thirty-six, my hair hasn’t combed right for a year. My shirt doesn’t tuck in right, and I don’t walk the same now that everything hurts. My skin gets more and more pale every time I look. Thank god Luis has his mother’s face.

‘I ain’t much. But you—’

She’s way out of my class. If you think money doesn’t kick down doors, then what am I doing here? Why has she let me in at all, and why talk to me in that voice? She moves slow and quiet, has soft, brown skin that smells lightly of candles. Her hair is long and black and thick and here I am, I brushed my teeth twice just to be in the same room with her.

‘It’s five hundred for the hour. If you could leave—’

‘It’s two hours, though.’

Maria blinks, grins, and does this cute thing where she looks far to the left. There’s no scheduling book over there but we can pretend there is, can’t we? Ain’t that why we’re here, both of us? Pretending?

‘Of course. Two hours. That’s eight hundred. If you could leave the proposal here, in the open. While I finish up you can get started.’

While I finish up you can get started. I love the implication that we’re running separate races. And maybe we are.

‘Eight hundred cruzeiros is fine. But I have to say.’

‘Tell me.’

‘There’s no need for stepping out, or making sure I’m undressed. You don’t have to call it a proposal, I’m just going to pay you and sleep. That alright?’

‘Honey, every minute of this is for you. It’s still eight hundred but we can sleep if you want. Or I can tickle your back, wake you up with a kiss. Men ask me every last thing under the sun, and it’s a great big sun.’

Why don’t I tell her what I’m up to? That there’s a facility just over the creek and I need to be somewhere safe while I cat-watch. What’s she gone and do, turn me in to the police?

‘But do be a love and set the money out in the open. I won’t be a moment.’

She leaves a chaste kiss on my neck, right on the vein. Right where it warms me the most, warms me all over.

& & &

This is my first time and nothing could prepare me for it. It starts with me thinking about daddy’s room, the carpet, the waiting area outside, the smell of bodies and laundry and unspiced food. Remembering the stink of feces and solvents and cat litter.

Then, in an instant, I’ll be damned if I’m not walking around in the memories, running down their halls, jumping on their surfaces. We don’t think much in words anyway; our inner life is a series of reactions, vague diversions, the occasional scare. A slight moan here, letting a grin change your face there. Taking over a cat is exactly like that, but you’re feverish, too, and the world is slow as mud. It’s as if you’re the only one still walking on pavement and your responses are dialed all the way up. The rest of the world is stuck in quicksand.

‘Qué onda, Chichu?’

‘Quiubo, mano?’

‘Afternoon, gentleman.’

‘Feo! Muy buenas!’

‘Chichu, Gallo, ven conmigo.’

I mostly spend my time here shut off in daddy’s room, watching his arms turn milky, watching the excess skin gather at his hips and stomach. I’ve forgotten how bustling the place is, with its nursing team of eight and its administrative staff of five, in charge of the whole floor.

Two dozen residents. Maybe three dozen, all trying to holler, chew, spill their water, get down the hall, steal each other’s things. Between them and the visitors and the closed doors and echoes, no one could keep track of it all. You wonder if the nurses forget a half-dozen patients at a time.

‘Paco! Pss! Fuck off.’

I’ve never been introduced to any of the cats, and have to wonder, now, if Paco is my cat. My host.

If he is, the nurse doesn’t need to tell me. I’m already fucking off.

Daddy is in room 128 but you don’t look at numbers the same way with cat eyes. And I realize now, just saying it, that cat eyes might mean dice to you, which is not a bad way to think of it. You don’t walk down the hall staring at the rooms to your left, you don’t count upward: 120, 122, and so on. What you do instead, you weigh the odds that the slash—next to the strange curvy mark, next to the two loops—means 128. Means daddy’s room. Then you go inside.

In this case, the odds pay off.

Mama is there petting the man’s old legs, singing one of their old songs. The first thing I notice is how different they smell, mama and daddy. She’s had a bath today, and put on perfume. Deodorant and laundered clothes. It’s a lot, but I don’t let it bother me much.

As for daddy the sickness is coming out a mouthful at a time when he breathes. I don’t mean he’s healing, it’s too late for him to heal. I mean the sickness is all he’s got left and when he breathes the last of it out, that’ll be the last thing he does. In the meantime that smell is filling up the room.

I watch for awhile, then I wake.

For a moment I still see like a cat, and pick up house scents the way a house cat does. I realize I’m covered in Maria’s perfume, detergents. Her scented candle smoke. I’ll need to shower it off before I go home, and then I’ll have to do something about my wet hair.

I can do that in daddy’s room, though. It’s close, and that’s the point. There’s even a hair dryer there. (The man lost his hair twenty years ago.)

‘How was your sleep, baby?’ Maria’s fingertip draws a small-scale floor plan on my chest. Has she been doing that all along, is that how I found daddy’s room?

‘It was nice,’ I respond. My voice sounds twenty again, and I’m about to say something I would have said at twenty: ‘I spent most of it dreaming of you.’

‘You’re sweet.’ She kisses me once and whimpers once. Her fingernails turn my chest cold, now my stomach. I ask, ‘It wasn’t two hours, was it?’

‘I saved a little time for us. Just in case. You sleep pretty deep. You sleep pretty, too.’

At home, long past ten, Beatriz asks me, ‘How was it?’

‘Simple. More than simple.’

‘You pulled it off? How?’

‘It’s easy. I can’t explain it at all, but it was easy.’

‘Where did you sleep, though?’

‘That was easy, too. There’s couches all over the place. There’s one outside his hall. Hell, there’s one in his room.’

Her shoulders sag a little, and that slight plunge spreads to her voice: ‘Honey, if you’re worried they’re doing something in your absence…doesn’t it stand to reason—?’

She finishes the question by not finishing it. From where she sits, I did something so dumb she’d feel sad saying another word about it.

But there’s a few words I haven’t said, either.

& & &

There is a huge swelling on daddy’s elbow. It’s round and smooth, about the size of a grapefruit. Grapefruit colored, too. It doesn’t look like it hurts, it looks sweet, like you’d pick it from a vine.

It’s not on his right side neither, it’s on his left. So he didn’t hit it against no wall in his sleep, don’t try telling me he did.

I hate even bringing it up to mama but if I don’t, no one will. These things are happening more and more.

I ask, ‘What’s going on this time?’

‘You tell me. You’re here more than me now. Sleeping on that couch, taking your pets out one by one.’

What does she know about it? Nothing, not one lousy thing. Only what she heard from Beatriz, who doesn’t know, either.

She goes on: ‘Now, what I’m not going to do, which is exactly what you did, I’m not going to imply anything, Deac. I won’t bother implying.’

‘Did I imply something?’

‘Yes, you did. And what did you turn up? I mean that as a question.’

‘I’m not doing what you think, mama. I’m just here looking out. He looked out for me when I needed him to.’

‘And I did too. So when I’m the one in that bed, every time I wake up, am I gone and see you there, in that chair, watching over me and bringing all the cats in to watch?’

I don’t like that she put it that way. I don’t like how she implies everything, and not one second after she told me she won’t be implying at all. And the difference is, daddy don’t wake up no more. He just sleeps and sleeps. I’m watching over him because the chance for him watching over himself is past. He’s too old for that. He sleeps too much, he’s too confused. Look, there’s a cat asleep and purring and rhythmically pawing: left paw, right paw, left right left. It’s laying square on his chest and he don’t even touch it.

Grandpa on daddy’s side cut the family up and started a new life, left daddy and my uncle when they were small, left grandma to beg and leg and work two jobs and bring in any kind of man. Mama and I aren’t morons, we know time repeats itself and men act exactly like their fathers most times. Even fathers they hated. Especially them. We always wondered if we were the second family and daddy just couldn’t get himself to tell us. We wondered if there was some first family out there still making calls, still driving the city a block at a time, parking the car, taking a songbird around, taking flight, saying where is that damn man, he owes what he owes.

I reckon back then they flew around as hawks and everything smelled like fresh rabbit. I reckon today they fly around as vultures and everything smells like rot.

Now here we are, this is how it winds up. One of them, a grandchild maybe, found him, forgave him, came to him as a sleeping cat on the chest, purring on him and letting him stroke his fur, then murdered one of his cousins when the songbird showed up at the window and his cat-nature took over. Remember: ‘Don’t come in looking around as a cat, you know how all that ends.’

Now mama asks, ‘You coming?’

She’s got her purse and a bag of laundry. She’s about to cut the lights off. It’s dark out. Yes, it’s early, but it’s already cold and dark.

‘I am.’

I take daddy’s hand and kiss it. He’s asleep, clearly snoring, but I swear he grins. I’m careful of his arm, but maybe his skin just wants to bruise. Maybe it wants to cut, swell up, inflame. Maybe no one is assaulting him, it’s just assaulting itself.

Maybe the pain is the last thing that keeps him sharp, I know it keeps me sharp. Aware. My senses all ratcheted up.

‘Then let’s go, sourdough.’

We sign out, mama hugs me a few times, and once we’re out on the street we can see our breath. That’s our ghosts, it’s how they skinny dip, feel refreshed. It’s stale inside, always ninety-eight point-six and always smells of baloney lunch. I don’t know about mama but in my case it’s always the same three or four bad ideas on repeat, and my inner hold music ain’t music at all, it’s just me worrying about this pain or that, about daddy, about him dying, me dying, all of it at a hundred beats per minute. Who doesn’t need a break from that by the time winter comes?

‘Vivian!’

I wasn’t paying attention, I was blowing out, watching the fog come out. But now I see it’s that vagrant woman again, the one I always pass, the one with the baby. The one who looks like Flávia’s daughter.

‘Vivian Atunes! It’s Erin. Erin and Deacon Ailes.’

The woman snorts a little. She steps back, sad and careful. And don’t that describe all of us, every one? But this one is taking it to extremes. Animal extremes.

‘Are you—?’ I’ve only had one friend go homeless and he didn’t make me ask. He stunk, he was starved, his clothes were all brown, so I’d have known anyway. He told me, though. He made sure to tell me about it, first thing.

Now I get why. One look at mama’s face, you know it’s the trickiest question there is: Are you homeless? How do you just up and say that?

Mama says, ‘Honey, your family has been worried sick. There’s posters asking about you. Posters all over. I bet there’s one on this street.’ She squints ahead, as if the fix for all this was a few meters out of view.

No answer. There won’t be an answer, neither. But I’ve got it figured out: wild boars took the open land out to the south and west. The river lands. You see, you can’t drive an hour without passing by a herd.

Mama implores, ‘Come with us, Vivian. Please come. Get out of the cold, get some clean clothes, sleep in a bed.’ Her baby doesn’t have his stripe markings anymore, but he’s the color of pinato ink all over. It’s as though she’s bathing him in it.

What I will say is: if she’s doing it for luck, it ain’t working.

There’s something with the boy’s mouth, too. It’s like he has lozenges under both sides of the bottom lip. I hope it’s not that. Can’t she see the baby would choke, can’t she see nothing no more?

& & &

I have to tell Beatriz this time. For all I know, Vivian will go and visit mama’s house before our lunch on Saturday. She’ll wash up, dress up, do her hair and eyes and by the time we show up to take mama to eat, Bea will have to watch the kid while mama and I and the pretty Atunes girl get martinis.

I know to make it ugly, though, so the way I put it is, ‘I think Vivian Atunes is a sow.’

‘Vivian At—, what? Say all that again.’

‘You remember her and her parents?’

‘Your cousin? The one from Utah? I think so.’

She’s not from Utah and she definitely ain’t my cousin, but I want to agree as much as I can. Because, if I know Beatriz, it’s about to get disagreeable.

I tell her, ‘Yeah, my cousin from Utah.’

‘Then what do you mean she’s a sow?’

‘You know that thing when you look through an animal’s eyes too much?’

‘No, baby. I don’t.’

I thought it was urban talk until I saw it first-hand. Again, it’s just like the mule-man said: you stare into the void and you become the void. You stare too long as a boar and you become the boar.

You lose your words, you lose your way. And if you don’t think those are one and the same—words and way—ask someone to tell you the way using only their boar-words.

I try explaining and she doesn’t believe a word of it. So I sum up with: ‘Can we agree she’s homeless then? She’s feral? And she’s got a baby that was covered in stripes, and they’re wearing off.’

‘Damn.’

‘Mama invited her over. I don’t know what she’s gone and do but mama said it, plain as day.’

‘Wait, she said what exactly?’

Didn’t I know it would come to this?

‘She said Vivian can stay with her.’

‘She’s bringing some wild woman into her house? A boar girl with a boar baby? And when all that’s too much or, I’m sorry honey, but when she’s gone, what happens to the house? What happens to the boars?’

‘Alright, I think that’s a bit premature.’

‘Is it premature to ask what happens if Vivian takes off and leaves the kid?’

I’ve been wondering exactly that. So no, it ain’t premature.

‘I don’t even know if she’ll take mama up on it.’

‘Good. Because I don’t know anything. Welcome aboard.’

‘What does that mean?’

‘It means you’re awfully tuned in to some cute feral thing you said disappeared five years ago. She’s not human anymore but she’s human enough to have a kid, a kid you’ve been watching as his stripes disappear, and you’ve never mentioned a word of it.’

‘Jesus Christ, I just wanted you to know we ran into a family friend. Randomly. And mama said something stupid. None of this has anything to do with you. Nothing is expected.’

She’s doing that thing women do. You boys know what I mean. She has all the facts wrong, she took everything I said and twisted it up. Yet she knows somehow. She don’t even know what she knows. The worst part of it is, she’s hasn’t caught me in a lie, she’s caught me telling the truth.

‘And what about you running around as a cat? Running around and around and around? What happens when you get stuck, Deacon? What happens when you’re just a cat boy?’

& & &

‘Hey there pretty. You must be Michael. Are you my archangel?’

I’m with Maria again. It’s been this way every night since spring, when daddy was still with us.

‘Yeah, I’m Michael. Come here. Give us a kiss.’

‘I will, I will. But we need to take care of business first. Maybe you’re a devil instead. Tell me, is this Michael an angel or a devil?’

The john has his hands on her warm hips. One of them moves to her bare, warm leg. He smells at her hair: wouldn’t you? It takes him too long to answer, and the best he’s got is, ‘I’m both and I’m neither. I’m whatever you need, gorgeous.’

Buffoon. What he was supposed to say was —I was an angel until you let me in your room, and I saw you in that dress.

Maria seems partial to cats, and to Pimmu most of all. She’ll bring him onto her lap, touch his fur and head, she’ll hold her ear to his ribs as he purrs. She’ll say, ‘You’ve got a diesel engine in there, Cosita. Your engine just revs and revs and never has to turn over.’

She calls every one of them Cosita. She does not chase them out when her johns come. She lets them wait around, she lets them watch. I’ll listen to her breath joining in with his breath, even this idiot Michael’s breath.

‘I’ll let you propose me five hundred for the hour. That’s in cruzeiros, you little devil-angel. Not dollars. Not bitcoin. I’ll finish up and we can start.’

Her bed is as quiet as feathers, even when the men are loud or rough or profane.

I’m mostly on the street these days, after Beatriz put me out and I had nowhere to go. It ain’t so bad, I can stay near daddy’s old clinic and I run into Vivian all the time.

We don’t talk, Vivian and I. Not a word. Hell, I don’t talk to anyone now. What’s that like, you ask? What do you think it’s like? You know how when you’re in a hurry and you’re trying to say one word in particular? You know exactly which one, maybe it’s facetious or paradise, maybe it’s elegant. You’ve used the word a hundred times, but this time it’s out of reach, and the more you grab around for it the more you push it off?

It’s just like that, but now it’s every word.

I’ll understand you. You can come up and shout, ‘Deac the Sneak! Long time, you look good!’ I’ll get everything you say, but when it’s time for me to answer the words are gone.

With Vivian it’s different. It’s comfortable, she doesn’t need me to answer, not that she asks me nothing. We just sit and watch her boar-boy’s underbite come in. We watch him snort at grown-ups passing by, and smile at how they give him a wide path around.

One of the last things Beatriz said to me was ‘Your child is in my belly, Deacon. What’s going to come out, a boy or some whore tomcat?’

Is it harder for Vivian? Or for her son she hasn’t named? I can’t say, and she sure can’t.

It’s nothing like I feared, though: sleeping on the sidewalk and joining up with other cats from here. Vivian looks after me sometimes but often forgets to. Maybe the city just leaves me alone because of the state of my hair, the state of my clothes. My smell. No one kicks me or cuts my throat, and I’ve got nothing to steal.

It’s sort of opposite from when people say game recognizes game. The discarded do not always recognize each other, and the world at large doesn’t recognize us at all.

* * * * THE END * * * *
Copyright Fred Nolan 2025