The Tanner Letters

So there I was, thirty-four years old, standing in the loading line of the MV Tanner with a duffel bag full of tattoo equipment and absolutely nothing better to do with my life. Twelve hours from Port Hardy to Prince Rupert. Twelve! Do you know how long twelve hours is when your only entertainment options are a wall-mounted television that plays the same safety video on a loop and a vending machine with nothing in it but those dried noodle cups?

I didn't. Now I do.

The guy at the gangway checked my ticket and pointed me down the corridor to the little cabin, number 14, where I'd be spending the night wedged into a bunk that a person my size was clearly not designed for. I had to fold myself in like a beach chair.

I'll tell you something about me. I do tattoos. Have for about eleven years, mostly out of a little shop in Campbell River. It's good work, honest work, and I'm decent at it. But a conference in Prince Rupert for other tattoo people? That sounded about as fun as a dental convention, and yet there I was, because my shop partner said it was "basically a paid vacation."

It was not a paid vacation.

I slid the duffel under the bunk, and my knuckles grazed something on the floor. A piece of paper, folded in half, tucked partway under the door like it had been pushed there from the corridor.

Except when I opened it, it wasn't from the corridor at all. It was from next door. Cabin 15. I knew that before I read the first word, because I recognized the handwriting. Sharp little letters, all elbows. Like the person writing them was annoyed at the pen.

*Randy. Small boat, big water. What are the odds? Do you still think about me? Be honest. E.*

I sat down on the bunk so fast I nearly missed it with my ass.

Evelyn. Evelyn Bentley, thirty-three now, three years since I'd laid eyes on her, and she was in the next cabin. We dated for a year and a half, back when she was running the coffee place two doors down from my shop, and it ended the way those things end, badly and then quietly.

The wedding. That was the last time. Molly and Dave's thing, up in Courtenay, three years ago. I was at table eight with the single people and the divorced people, and Evelyn was at table six, and I spent the entire reception pretending I wasn't tracking her across the room. She caught me at it once and raised her glass about half an inch. That was it. That was the whole conversation. I remember thinking, well, that's that, then. And it was. Until a folded piece of paper showed up under my cabin door on a ferry in the middle of nowhere.

I did what any reasonable adult would do. I went to the bar.

The bartender was a big calm guy named Campbell, forty-one if I had to guess, with the particular patience of a man who has been asked for another beer ten thousand times and expects to be asked ten thousand more. I bought one beer, mostly as an excuse, and asked him for three napkins.

"Rough crossing?" he asked.

"Nah. Rough correspondence."

He looked at me like that was none of his business, which it wasn't, and went back to wiping the counter.

So there I sat in the little lounge with my beer and my napkin and a pen I stole from the gift shop, trying to write to a woman I hadn't spoken to in three years. What do you even say? Hey, how's the coffee business? Saw you got a new car on the internet once? No. No, no.

I wrote it plain. I figured with her, plain was the only currency she accepted.

*Evelyn. Yes. Since you asked, yes, I think about you. Mostly I think about your hands. You had this way of holding a cup with both hands wrapped around it, like it was warm even when it wasn't. I think about that more than I probably should. Enjoy the crossing. R.*

I walked the twenty feet down the corridor, felt like an idiot the entire time, and slid it under the gap of cabin 15. Then I power-walked back to my own cabin like a man fleeing a crime scene.

It took her eleven minutes. I know because I watched the clock on the wall-mounted television, which was playing the safety video for the eleventh time.

The paper came sliding under my door, and I picked it up with a heart rate that a person my age should be embarrassed about.

*Randy. My hands. Interesting choice. Do you remember the piece you did on my shoulder blade? The moth? Because I remember exactly how it felt, your needle. Light at the edges, heavier in the middle, like you were drawing a breath into me. I sat so still in that chair I forgot to breathe for real. You told me not to flinch and I didn't, not once, and you said afterward that I was the steadiest client you'd ever had. I went home and slept on my stomach for a week so I wouldn't smudge it. Would you like to play a game? E.*

Oh, she was good. She was always good. The moth. I remembered the moth. Three hours of work, the finest lines I'd done that year, and her lying face-down on my table with her shirt off and her hair pinned up, not moving a muscle, not even when I knew it hurt. I'd told her she could flinch, everybody flinches, and she'd said, "You told me not to, so I won't," and I'd thought, right then, that I was probably in trouble with this one.

A game. Okay. I got the pen. I was down to two napkins.

*I'll play. Here's mine: the first time I ever touched you, the back seat of my car, parked behind the shop after you closed. It was November and freezing and you said, "Well, are you going to or not?" and I said, "Going to