SACRED PLACES
alexandra isacson
While she lay on the massage table draped with vermillion towels, he rubbed her shoulders with warm lavender oil with his strong hands.
"Practicing law is so corrupt in Arizona. I feel cut off spiritually," he said. "How 'bout you?"
"Valium screws my dream life."
He pulled her wife-beater up in the back and her sweat shorts down some. He rubbed oil at the base of her back into her tattoo. She felt closer to him, touching one of her most sacred places.
"This tattoo's ethereal," he said. "Who did this?"
"My first love. I found a design that da Vinci put on the sleeve of one of his angels."
She asked him to do it in sepia, the color of his eyes.
"It's one of the most beautiful tattoos I've ever seen."
"He did it with a trinity of needles, he said he didn't want to tear up my skin with one."
"Your father's name?"
"Where I come from, that's what people do,"she said. "What is written on people's soul rises to the surface of their skin he told me.