(“If that slug-eared rent-a-pig comes through that door again, I will personally cover his pink hide with sorry marks made with my own fingernails—”)
Masafumi had found the mental picture of his boss creating Aboriginal ritual scars on someone’s body to be a disturbing one, so much so that he never let Ignazio know that he’d been listening in on his conversation with that customer who was getting the fine-line full-back design of the Corpse Bride and her reluctant pinched-faced groom. The customer was a city councilman, or so Ignazio claimed, and Masafumi had felt it unseemly to admit he’d been listening in when a government official—no matter how minor—was involved. But that hadn’t meant that he didn’t hear what the man with the increasingly animated back had to say in replay:
(“Not to worry, Iggs. After what that guy did back in the Mall of America, when he was assigned to that kiddie park section, no way no how is he going to get anyone to give him a nano-ribbon jacket. As if he’s going to be hired anytime soon by a real cop-shop. He’s lucky to be wearing that Halloween costume and Happy Meal badge of his—”)
“I have not seen him...but I have heard about him. A little. But not by name.”
“Oh, there can’t be two of him...nature wouldn’t be that cruel, or that damned stupid. I suppose Ignazzy still does nano-tube body armor, under the table, on real cops?”
Nodding, Masafumi replied, “Since it is still something of a medical procedure, it is not fully legal, but considering how expensive doctors can be....” He let his voice trail off, knowing that she knew full well that inserting nano-tube ribbons into the top-most layer of flesh was a quasi-legal enterprise at best. Technically, there were no laws against it, just as there were no laws against a bod-mod expert doing just about anything to a willing client—as long as no anesthetics were used. A nano-vest installation was uncomfortable, but far less painful than the kiss of fire from a branding, or a full back tattoo. What happened was this: Ultra-fine ribbons of pulled and spun nano-tube “yarn” was laid onto lightly-scored flesh, along the neck, upper shoulders and the outside of the armpit, all the spots where a traditional Kevlar vest failed to cover the body. He’d never seen it done, but had seen a tape of the operation on public access digital TV. Akin to a hair transplant, fine shallow hash-marks and cross-hatching was incised with a raked tool, barely scoring the epidermis, then a baster-like syringe loaded with miles of “yarn” was laid down and drawn—while depositing single strands of “yarn”—across every last incised spot, laying down an invisible internal bulletproof webbing. Once all the vulnerable segments of skin had been seeded, everything was wrapped up, and within a few weeks, the incisions healed, and the cross-woven nano-ribbons within formed unseen body armor. It was said (if the voice-over on the public access program was to be believed) that this application of nano-technology had saved over one hundred officers from death due to bullets which missed their Kevlar body armor and hit their necks, armpits, and so on. All Masafumi had thought at the time he was watching was that the whole thing was far more disgusting than tattooing, branding, or piercing could ever be, although he still had reservations about traditional Irezumi tattooing back home, which used to involve literally tapping the ink into the flesh with a multi-toothed stick and mallet.
It had also reminded him of the complex process of yuzen-zome resist dying, the painstaking delicacy which was an inherent part of the kimono-dying process, or worse yet, the application of tiny poppy-seed-sized makinori...he winced at the memory of those hours upon hours spent arranging the minute zinc particles on the cloth, after mixing them with rice paste and sprinkling the sticky mess onto wet silk, then coating the silk with wood wax to prevent the design from cracking, before fixing the entire swath of cloth with soy juice...and then picking off each piece of makinori after it was dry, just to achieve a mist-like subtle pattern in the background of the main design. Why he had ever thought that such intense, yet nearly intangible labors were his chosen life’s work, his life’s purpose, now escaped him.
All of it made his current work, that of quickly yet painfully piercing flesh, crating a fine wash of blood which constantly had to be wiped away from his work field, seem far more simple in comparison.
“—but that doesn’t stop Ulger from wanting his own nano-armor, even if he isn’t entitled to it,” Harumi was saying between puffs of her second clove cigarette, its incense-pungent smoke wafting around her head of khipus-like braids like morning mists encircling snow-dusted mountain peaks.
“Does he not carry a gun? To me, that might mean getting shot—”
“It’s strictly a Barney—empty, no bullets, and I’m guessing you never watch TV Land, do you?—something the store owners gave him for window dressing. Like putting up a security camera with no film in it, just a battery to make the red light go on. But I wouldn’t be surprised if someone still didn’t want to take a shot at him, for the hell of it...or not,” she added with a noisy draw on the end of her smoke, before dropping the spent conical butt onto the asphalt and grinding it into a shapeless grainy mass with her flip-flop sole.
“I...was under impression that he made my boss rather angry. So he has done the same with other people?”
“Ohhhh yeah, you could say that. Again. I don’t know for sure what he did to Ignazzy personally, but given that he’s a he, it sure isn’t what he did to me...but I figure it must have been equally rotten.”
“This Ulger person—”
“Walker. Walker Ulger, rhymes with ‘stalker’—”
“This Walker Ulger, he...did not behave as a man should toward a woman?”
(Memories of Masafumi’s initial reaction after his rescue sister’s first unwelcome beyond-his-closed-door visit, when he’d punched his walls in frustration just because she’d been where he hadn’t wanted her to be, came back to him in a shameful wash of crimson.)
“Uhmmm...you could say that. I started out sort of innocently enough.... I was smoking in the alley behind the restaurant, one of these clove jobbies, and he starts in about me smoking weed, insisting that this was a joint, when it looks next to nothing like a doobie, and I finally give him the center finger salute, and he starts in on me that he’ll report me to my boss for ‘assaulting’ an officer of the law, only all he was was a play-cop, and I told him as much, but then he goes, ‘I’m still on the payroll of your boss and every other boss on this block, so that makes me the law of this land’ and then he makes a grab for my smoke, and I mash it onto his arm, and then he goes medieval on my ass, and...ever since then, he’s been on my case, riding me for not genuflecting when I see his badge just about. Keeps claiming that he’ll stop harassing me if I get him an in with Ignazzy, convince him to give manju-head a nano-yarn sweater. Which I know Ignazzy wouldn’t do if...if I don’t know what. But he won’t do it. I know that much. And I don’t blame him...whatever he had to have done to Ignazzy must’ve been as obnoxious as what he tried with me. What I’m thinking is this, somewhere down the line, old amazu-shoga-ears must’ve leaned on the wrong person, which is why he feels that he needs a nano-yarn wrap. I can feel the fear on him, which makes him all the meaner...anyhow, every day, he comes into the restaurant for miso zuke dofu, only he never pays for it, even though it is an expensive dish, and while he’s eating he keeps asking my boss about me, making all these suggestive remarks, telling him he should try adding a living sushi bar on Saturday nights, that I would be better than cartoon sushi under the raw tuna...things like that. And all the while, I stay hidden in the kitchen, wondering if Ulger will mention me burning his arm with that cigarette, which I know will get me canned if the boss hears it...and every day, when I’m getting ready to go home, he tries to keep pace with me as I pedal my bike, saying ‘All you have to do is put in a good word with Ignazio...I know he has the extra nano-yarn, in his autoclave room. Too much of it for just us cops,’ and crap like that. So...that’s what’s been making me crazy lately. Enough to dump a tray of tofu onto the floor—”
“Tokugawa Shogunate...,” Masafumi found himself whispering, as he made a connection between Harumi’s ongoing troubles and that fifteenth-century restrictive emasure which ultimately created the entire painted kimono tradition. It was so