Pacing back and forth in the office, Maurice wondered where all the time went. In his youth, there was too much, and now he was losing all of it. His three best artists had given their leave of notice earlier this week, and the stress was thinning out his long, white beard. He had to find five apprentices, and then hire only three of them by the end of the month. The saddening part was that Gedeon, Maurice’s longtime friend and coworker, was retiring, too. It made Maurice think of his own mortality to the point of collecting a new tattoo on the back of his neck. It was a black and gray design of an hourglass positioned horizontally across the back of his neck mimicking an infinity sign. Judy thought that he worried too much about getting older, but came around to it when she was allowed to design it.
After four decades of collecting tattoos, the back of his neck was the only bare space he had left. He had black and gray realism spanning from his shoulder to his knuckles, a new school sleeve on his right, a traditional Japanese full back tattoo that he got with Judy, and various self-done tattoos on his legs for practice. If the tattoos weren’t intimidating enough, he towered at 6’3” with 250 pounds of muscle. It’s not that Maurice wanted to be scary looking, as his sensitive personality contradicted his outward appearance, but it was a survival tactic when he was doing walk-ins out of his garage.
Maurice stopped pacing when Bruto came into the office unannounced.
“Hey Maury, you got a second?” He asked as he held a manila folder in his hand.
“Bruto, I’ve got a client coming in a couple of minutes. I don’t have time for another one of your recommendations.”
“The kid’s got crazy talent. If given the chance, I really think he could develop a killer signature style.”
“This is a tattoo shop, not a charity.”
Bruto left the folder on the coffee table and left to man the front desk. Maurice collapsed into the leather couch across from the coffee table. His eyes drifted around the room until they reached the polaroid pictures taped to the wall under the large window looking into the shop floor. The picture was of him, Judy, and Gedeon standing outside of the grand opening of the Black Lotus Tattoo Parlor in East Palo Alto in the early 80’s.
Before East Palo Alto became a sought after suburbia, “sissy territory” in Gedeon’s opinion, they had to pay extra to install bulletproof windows and heavy locks to keep the shop from falling apart. Judy had a hard time adjusting at first as she grew up in the actual Palo Alto, while Maurice grew up a few blocks away. The shop was once a small convenience store and had one floor with a dingy basement. There were other tattoo shops in the area, but their shop had a reputation for covering up gang tattoos. Sometimes Maurice missed the old shop. He missed seeing the happiness of an ex-gang member looking in the mirror to see a new start for themselves: rather than the privileged college students they had a surplus of now. The old, quaint shop Gedeon insisted they paint a bright blue to attract attention was where Maurice proposed to Judy.
His eyes snapped up when he heard the clacking noise of Judy’s heels as she made her way towards the office. She was putting up her long white hair so he could see the little robin tattoo right behind her ear.

Since it was a nice summer day, Maurice had left the garage door open to try and attract more walk-ins. The sun reached all the way back to his one recliner chair for clients that his neighbor donated. He was doing some sketching when someone knocked on the garage door frame. Her hair was light brown back then, and it didn’t even reach past her shoulder blades. The large traditional Japanese back tattoo wouldn’t come for another ten years; the only tattoo she had was a self-done queen chess piece on her upper forearm.
“You still takin’ clients?” She asked. He scrambled to shake her hand and puffed up his chest a little bit.
“Uh, yes. Yes! I’m open for business. You can choose anything from the wall.” He pointed to the American traditional tattoos framed along the walls.
“What about the one you were sketchin’?” She walked over to the drawing of a sparrow.
“It’s-it’s not done yet.”
“May I?” She asked picking up his markers. He shook his head yes, and she started putting a light blue color on the wings and a wine red on the belly. She added some light pink around the tail of the bird and declared this is the tattoo she would like.
They became business partners within the year, bought their shop in five, were New York Times-recommended in the late 80’s, and married in another twenty. If it weren’t for her, he wouldn’t have the connections to buy their current shop.

Judy jumped onto the couch and startled him out of his reflection.
“Heard Bruto’s tryna to get you to start interviewing.”
“He has to cut me some slack. We’re not the rinky-dink business we used to be in the 80’s. We’ve got a reputation now, and it takes more effort to hire great talent rather than good. I’m getting old Judy, and the whole thing is getting to be too much.”
“Oh hush! You’re fifty-eight, not eighty-five. If everything is so God damn stressful, I’ll take the reins. What kind of expertise we lookin’ for? I got my hands on a watercolor portfolio I think you’d come around to. We could use some younga energy.”
“We don’t need watercolor experts. We’re losing our most veteran guys. Hell, we’re losing Gedeon! We need artists who’ve developed a signature style. We need well-rounded, reputable artists.”
“Don’t you trust me? She’s got an area of expertise, so do you and I. Does that make us rookies?” She sat up a little straighter and crossed her arms.
“Now you’re just being difficult.” He laughed and picked her up. “Do you trust me enough not to drop you?”

-----

Everyone looked so proud when they opened up the shop doors for the first time in two months. The walls were painted storm cloud gray except for the one mural of the original shop Gedeon had painted as a parting present: in new school style of course. They had ten tile mats spaced out across the wooden floor with chairs in the middle of each square. The American traditional tattoos in their original framing from Maurice’s garage hung across the top of one of the walls. The renovations were only possible after the Stanford varsity boys basketball team came in to get matching tattoos; they became Instagram famous overnight.
As the neon green open sign lit up, the shop flooded with clients. Since they’d been closed for a while the waiting list was a long as Maurice’s beard, and that included their apprenticeship applications. They were lucky to find three replacement artists before they left but needed more manpower with the extra space.
Maurice was looking through the schedule at who was doing what kind of appointments, and saw that one of the new artists was doing two tribal tattoo clients and Judy was doing three watercolor appointments. He called Judy to come over.
“What’s the problem, honey?” She asked and kissed him on the cheek.
“Don’t you want to take a break today? You’ve got the whole day booked for yourself, and we hired Gia for her watercolor talent.”
“Love ya honey bunches, but you gotta stop futsin’ about every lil’ thing.” She laughed and went to the front desk to welcome a client. Maurice sighed to himself, and went into his office to continue looking over applications. Bruto had dropped a few portfolios on the desk along with the numerous others. To help narrow down the applicants, he started skimming through them to find basic mistakes.
The applications started to look increasingly similar with every folder. Everyone had the same credentials: a signature style, good recommendations, a beautiful portfolio, classes with Arnold...
Maurice stopped.
Arnold used to be a renowned artist back in the 90’s, but had quit to start teaching his tattoo art classes: The Crimson Key. He knew exactly what to say, how to say it, and who to say it to. His charisma did not go unnoticed. Even before his classes took off five years ago, Arnold was surrounded by some of the most renowned artists and shop owners in the country.
Maurice took a closer look at the folder.
Name: Penelope “Pandora” Macy
Gender: Female
Age: 25
Recommendations: Bruto Hunter, Georgia Simmons
It went on to talk about how she held an apprenticeship with Daredevil Tattoo, and took classes at the Crimson Key. Then Maurice picked up another folder.
Name: Leto Medic
Gender: Male
Age: 23
Recommendations: Clara Brenner, Gedeon Murphy
He had spent five years working under Parry Chotipradit to perfect his new school, and took classes at the Crimson Key.
He picked up another and another. After a while, Maurice had to stop. The Crimson Key is stationed right outside of San Diego, and couldn’t even teach more than 10% of tattooers in California alone. Yet, he had looked at twenty applications in a row that included Arnold in their file. The chances of that felt unlikely to Maurice. The door creaked open and Janice came in.
“Yo, I finished printing out the folder for Isabella. You’ve gotta trust me on this one.” Maurice was taken out of his thoughts. Janice put the folder in front of him and left for the front desk.
Before he could open the application, which he firmly believed would include Arnold’s name in it, he saw the name on the folder tab: Isabella “Rose” Giannulli. Maurice buried his head in his desk as he realized that Teddy Giannulli had donated the money that went towards buying the chairs. Maybe he was wrong, and Janice’s recommendation was just a coincidence. Maybe Arnold’s classes were more widespread than he had thought.
His thoughts were interrupted by the sound of the door slamming against the wall. He jumped out of his chair.
“Reading something scary?” Gedeon laughed and closed the door behind him.
“I don’t know yet,” He put down the folder and gave him a hug. “It’s good to see you. How’ve you been?”
“Good, good. Willow’s been trying to get us back in shape nowadays. She’s been stealing my cigarettes and buying us yogurt and berries. I don’t know what to think of it.” They laughed, and Gedeon walked over to the desk. “I never understood why you still use papers instead of online applications.”.
“I like the physical feeling of paper. Having it all on my laptop gives me a headache.”
“You’re older than I thought.” They both laughed. Gedeon picked up a folder and started flipping through it. “You lookin’ for a chicano style artist?”
“Not in particular, but there’s a few of them in there.” Maurice walked over to him and looked over his shoulder. The line work was obviously spot on, the placement was good, but there was nothing striking about it. “I just don’t know, Earl. They’re all looking the same after application number forty. There’s nothing here that makes them different.”
“Well, Judy seems to like it.” Gedeon pointed to the recommendations list. Judy’s name was attached to a solid paragraph of encouragement.
“Eh, chicano’s not my style. She probably knows a good one better than I would.” Maurice shrugged and headed for the door. “You want the official tour?”
“Is there a free tattoo at the end?”
“Do you have any space on your wrinkly body?” They closed the door and laughed on to the work floor. The folders stayed in the office sprawled across the desk. Bruto came in only a few minutes later and reorganized the pile. Before he left, he put Pandora’s file on top of the stack.

-----

Maurice was supposed to be wrapping up shop, but he couldn’t bring himself out of his chair. He had been poring over the applications for the past three weeks now, and nothing seemed to be contradicting what he feared.
“I can always guess your mood based on the state of your office. Always have, always will.” Judy said coming inside and sitting down on the ground next to Maurice.
“You know me so well,” He gave a weak smile and put his arm on her shoulder. It was more than just exhaustion in the room; there was an unspoken tension in their silence. Without a word, Judy got up and started cleaning up the room. Maurice watched her, studied her, wondered if she knew that he knew.
“Stop.” Maurice sat up in his chair. “I want you to read that one out loud.” She bent down and picked up the folder labeled Hannah Tressels.
“Name: Hannah Tressels. Age: 25. Recommendations: myself and Tatia Harding. What’s the point here, honey bun? You’re obviously under a lotta pressure, and...”
“Read out your recommendation.” He said without bothering to hear what she had to say. The tension went from ignored to staring them in the face. Judy tensed up, took a breath, and started reading.
The paragraph was an ode to Tressels. “Profound talent... beautiful symmetry... defeated all odds from a poor neighborhood...” Everything she had said was plausible, except for the fact that Tressels lived in a beautifully wealthy area. Once she had finished reading, she sat down with her head in her hands. The jig was up.
“When did you think I’d find out? Where did you put the money?” Maurice asked, but his questions were met with silence. “I said, where did you put it?” His voice echoed off of the walls.
“Take a look at the back of your neck, Maurice. Time is of the essence, and we need money when our hands start shaking. The money I haven’t been putting into the retirement account has been going to the shop. How did you think we paid for new chairs? F*ing monopoly money?”
“You know why I’m scared about getting old? It’s not about survival. I’m worried I won’t leave anything behind. No one’s going to remember me because I didn’t do anything. There’s something bigger than myself, and I want to be a part of it.” He cried. They stood there in silence with tense muscles and red faces. Maurice didn’t know who he was looking at anymore, and left her in the shop alone.

---

Maurice sat across from Gia: a small girl with little to no tattoos. Most of her tats were black and gray work that were small and easily covered, but her hair was a bright blue bob. Maurice decided that he wanted to re-interview many of the newer workers and apprentices after his realization last week. Gia was one of the youngest artists, only 21 years old.
“Hello. Before we get started, I wanted to let you know that you cannot tell anyone about what happens in this room. This stays between us. If I hear anything about what happens here, you will be leaving by closing. Understand?”
“Yes, sir.” She said.
“I want you to look through your application and tell me if there’s anything you don’t recognize,” He handed her the folder and waited for her to respond. It took a few minutes, but she took out some of her sketches.
“These aren’t mine. I’m good at watercolor, but this isn’t my work,” she took out her phone. “These are my pieces.” Maurice looked through her phone. Her designs were beautiful, but it wasn’t the outstanding work that landed her the job.
“Did you know that this was in your folder?” Maurice asked.
“I didn’t. I swear I didn’t. What I have on my application on my computer isn’t the same.”
“I want you to share the original document with me so I can keep it for further consideration.”
“Yes, sir.” Her face was a ghostly white as she left on the brink of tears.
He didn’t know what he was going to do about the artists. Many of them were in their early to mid-twenties, and Gia wasn’t the only one who said their printed recommendation was different from what they had sent. They seemed honest when they had to defend their reputation. Maybe the kids really didn’t know about what happened, about Arnold’s exclusive services for the wealthy, but they had to know people’s jobs were on the line.
He hadn’t been speaking with Bruto and Gedeon recently; anyone associated with the plot was fired. As for Judy, he didn’t know yet. All of her talk about a younger workforce came true, but he had to lose everything he ever knew to get there. His work didn’t feel purposeful anymore, even if his work was honest. The shop looked dirty to Maurice. It wasn’t that it was physically dirty, but everything was riddled with shame.