“Stop looking at her tits, dumbass.” He says the words as he signs them and her face flushes. But there’s a grin tugging at the corners of her mouth at the same time.

I roll my eyes and sign back. Shut up. She’s f**king beautiful.

He translates for her. I would groan aloud, but I don’t. No sound has left my throat since I lost my hearing. Well, I talked for a while after that. But not for long. Not after a boy on the playground said I sounded like a frog. Now I don’t talk at all. It’s better that way. “He says you’re beautiful,” he tells her. “That’s why he was ogling your tits like a 12 year old.”

I flip him off and he laughs, holding out his hands like he’s surrendering to the cops. “What?” he asks, still signing. But she can hear him. “If you’re going to be rude and sign around her, I’m going to tell her what you say.”

Like I have another choice besides signing. You never heard of a secret code between brothers? I sign.

“You start whispering secrets in my ear, dickhead, and I’ll knock your head off your shoulders.”

You can try, asswipe.

He laughs. “He’s talking all romantic to me,” he tells her. “Something about kissing his ass.” She’s grinning now. The smile hits me hard enough I’d be on my knees, if I wasn’t stuck behind that table. She brushes a strand of jet black hair back from her face, tucking it along with a lock of light blue behind her ear.

I watch her open her mouth to start to speak. But she looks over at my brother instead. “He can read lips?” she asks.

“Depends on how much he likes you,” my brother says with a shrug. “Or how ornery he’s feeling that day.” He raises his brows at me, and then his gaze travels toward the tabletop. Shit. He saw me adjust my junk. “I’d say he likes you a lot.”

This time, she closes her eyes tightly, wincing as she smiles. She doesn’t say anything. But then she looks directly at me, and says, “I want a tattoo.” She points toward the front of the store. She’s still talking, but I can’t see her lips move if she’s not looking at me. I want to follow her face, to jump up so I can watch those cherry red lips move as she speaks to me. To me. God knows she’s speaking to me. But I don’t. I force myself to keep my seat. She looks back at me as she finishes talking and her lips form an O. “Sorry,” she says. “You didn’t catch any of that, did you?” She heaves a sigh and says, “The girl up front said to see you for a tattoo.”

I look over at my brother who just finished a tat and isn’t working on anything at the moment. Friday – really, that’s her name -- laughs and signs, “You’re welcome.”

I scratch my head and grin. Friday set me up. She does it all the time. And sometimes it works out well. She sends all the hot girls to me. And the not so hot girls. And the girls who want to sleep with the deaf guy because they heard he’s amazing in the sack. I’m the guy they don’t have to talk to. I’m the guy they don’t have to pretend with, because I wouldn’t know what they’re saying regardless.

If this girl is just there to sleep with me, we can skip all the tattoo nonsense.

“Don’t even think about it,” my brother says. “She wants a tat. That’s all.”

How do you know what she wants?

I just know, he signs. This time he doesn’t speak the words. Don’t try to lay this one.

I hold my hands up in question asking him why. “She’s not from around here,” he says, but he signs not our kind.

Oh, I get it. She’s from the other side of the tracks. I don’t mind. She might be rich, but she would still love what I can do for her. I reach for her hand and squeeze it gently so she’ll look at me. I flip her hand over and point to her wrist. My fingers play across the iridescent blue veins beneath her tender skin, and I draw a circle with the tip of my finger asking her Here?

Her mouth falls open. Goose bumps rise along her arm. Hell, yeah, I’m good at this.

I stand up and touch the side of her neck and she brushes my hand away, shaking her head. Her lips are pressed tightly together.

I look directly at her boobs and lick my lips. Then I reach out and drag one finger down the slope of her breast. Here? I mouth.

I don’t even see it coming. Her tiny fist slams into my nose. I’ve had girls slap me before, but I’ve never had one punch me in the face. Fuck, that hurt. The wet, coppery taste of blood slides over my lips, and I reach up to wipe it away. My nose is gushing. Paul thrusts a towel in my hands and tilts my head back.

Fuck, that still hurts. He presses the bridge of my nose, and I can’t see his mouth or his hands over the bunched up towel, so I have no idea if he’s talking to me. Or if he’s just laughing his ass off. He lifts the towel but blood trickles down over my lips again. I see her standing there for a brief second, her fists clenched at her sides as she watches me suffer.

Shit, that hurts.

Then she turns on the heels of her black boots and walks away. I want to call out to her to get her to stay. I would say I’m sorry, but I can’t. I can’t call her back to me. I start to rise, but Paul shoves me back into the chair. Sit down, he signs. I think it might be broken.

I see a piece of paper on the floor and it’s crumped. I take the towel from Paul and press it to my nose, pointing to the piece of paper. He picks it up and looks at it. “Did she drop this?” he asks.

I nod. It’s damp from her sweaty palms. I unfold it and look down. It’s an intricate design, and you have to look hard to find the hidden pictures. I see a guitar, the strings broken and sticking out at odd angles. And at the end of the strings are small blossoms. I turn the picture, looking over the towel I’m still holding to my nose with one hand. Paul replaces it with a clean one. My nose is still bleeding. Son of a bitch. I look closer at the blossoms. They’re not blossoms at all. They’re teeny tiny shackles. Like handcuffs, but more medieval. Most people would see the beauty of that drawing. But I see pain. I see things she probably wouldn’t want anyone to see.

Shit. I f**ked up. Now I want more than anything to know what this tat means. It’s obviously more than just a pretty drawing. Just like she might be more than just a pretty face. Or she might not be. She might be a bitch with a mean right hook that will eat my balls for lunch if I look at her the wrong way.

I spin the drawing in my hands and look around the shop. It’s late and no one is waiting. I punch Paul in the shoulder and point to the drawing. Then I point to the inside of my own wrist. It’s the only place on my whole arm that’s not tatted up already. I have full sleeves because my brothers have been practicing on me since long before it was legal to do so.

“No,” Paul signs with first two fingers and his thumb, slapping them together. “You’ve lost your mind if you think I’m going to put that on you.”

He walks toward the front of the store and sits down beside Friday. He’s been trying to get in her pants since she started there. It’s too bad she has a girlfriend.

I get out my supplies. I’ve done more intricate tats on myself. I can do this one.

He stalks back to the back of the shop, where I’m setting up. “I’ll run it,” he says. “You’re going to do it anyway.”

I hold up one finger. One change?

What do you want to change? He looks down at the design and his brow arches as he takes in the shapes and the colors and the handcuffs and the guitar and the prickly thorns. And I wonder if he also sees her misery. That’s some heavy shit, he signs. He never speaks when it’s just me and him. I’m kind of glad. It’s like we speak the same language when we’re alone.

I nod, and I start prepping my arm with alcohol as he gloves up.

Emily

It has been two days since I punched that as**ole in the tattoo shop and my hand still hurts. I’ve been busking in the subway tunnel by Central Park, and it’s somewhat more difficult to play my guitar when my hand feels like it does. But this tunnel is one of my favorite spots, because the kids stop to listen to me. They like the music, and it makes them smile. Smiling is something left over from my old life. I don’t get to do it much, and I enjoy it even less. But I like it when the kids look up at me with all that innocence and they grin. There’s so much promise in their faces. It reminds me of how I used to be, way back when.

I’m considering singing today. I don’t do it every time I play. But I am seriously low on funds. The more attention I get, the more change I’ll get to take home with me. Home is a relative term. Home is wherever I find to sleep that night.

I’m sitting on the cold cement floor of the tunnel; back a ways from the rush of feet, with my guitar case open in front of me. In it, there are some quarters, and a little old lady stopped a few minutes ago and tossed in a fiver while I played Bridge Over Troubled Water. Old ladies usually like that one. They haven’t seen troubled waters.

I’m wearing my school girl outfit, because I get more attention from men when I wear it. It’s a short plaid skirt, and a black ribbed short sleeve top that fits me like a second skin. Ladies don’t seem to mind it. And men love it. I sure got a lot of attention from that as**ole two days ago. He was hot, I had to admit. He had shoulders broad enough to fill a doorway, and a head full of sandy blond curls. He towered over me when he stood up from behind that table, at least a head and shoulders taller than me. Tattoos filled up all the empty space that used to be his forearms, and it was kind of hot. He had lips painted on his left arm, and I wanted to ask him what those were. Were they to remember someone? A first kiss, maybe? Or did they mean something the way the tattoo I wanted did?

I dropped my tattoo design as I ran out of the shop, which pisses me off. I thought I had it clutched in my hand and when I’d stopped to take a breath, it was gone. I almost expected the as**ole to follow me. But he was still bleeding when I left him.

I shake out the pain in my hand again. A towheaded boy stops in front of me, his hand full of pennies. He is a regular, and his mother stopped to pray over me once, so I switch my song to Jesus Loves Me. Jesus doesn’t. If He did, He wouldn’t have made me like I am. He would have made me normal. The boy’s mother sings along with my tunes and the boy dips his face into her thigh, hugging it tightly as she sings. When the song is over, he drops his handful of pennies into my guitar case, the thud of each one hitting the felt quiet as a whisper.

I never say thank you or talk to the kids. I don’t talk to the adults unless they ask me something specific. I just play my music. Sometimes I sing, but I really don’t like to draw that much attention to myself. Except today, I need to draw attention to myself. I had saved up three hundred dollars, which would pay for a place to sleep and that tattoo I thought I needed, but someone stole it while I was asleep at the shelter last night. I’d made the mistake of falling asleep with it in my pocket, instead of tucking it in my bra. When I woke up, it was gone. I don’t know why they didn’t take my guitar. Probably because I was sleeping with it in my arms, clutched to me like a mother with her child.

I wish I’d gotten the tattoo yesterday. It was a useless expense, but it was my nineteenth birthday, and it’s been a long time since anyone has done anything for me. So, I was giving it to myself. And trying to free myself in the process. Who was I kidding? I’ll never be free.

This city is hard. It’s mean. It’s nothing like where I came from. But now it’s home. I like the noise of the city and the bustle of the people. I like the different ethnicities. I’d never seen so many skin colors, eye shapes, and body types as I did when I got here.

A girl reaches her chubby hand to touch my strings, and I smile and intercept her hand by taking it in mine, instead. Her hands are soft, and a little damp from where her first finger was shoved in her mouth just a minute ago. I toy with her fingers while I make an O with my mouth.

Her mother smacks her hand away with a sharp, cracking blow to her forearm, and her eyes immediately fill with tears. You didn’t have to do that, I think. She didn’t mean any harm. But the mother drags the crying child with her toward the subway and picks her up when she doesn’t move quickly enough.

I draw a small crowd between subway arrivals, and one man yells out, “Do you take requests?”

I nod, and keep on smiling, playing with all I’m worth. He calls out, “I think you should suck my dick, then.” One of his buddies punches him in the shoulder and he laughs.

College kid. His mama never taught him any manners. I let my eyes roam over the crowd and no one corrects him. So, I start to play All the Wishing in the World by Matt Monroe. The irony is lost on the jock, and they walk away as the train pulls in behind them.

The platform fills with new people getting off the train, so I switch to some more familiar tunes. Money drops into my case, and I see a dollar float down. I nod and smile as the person walks by, but she’s not looking at me.

A big pair of scuffed work boots steps up beside my case. I look at them for a minute, and then up over the worn jeans and the blue T shirt that’s stretched across broad shoulders. And then I’m looking into the same sky blue eyes as the other day. My pic stumbles across the strings. I wince. His eyes narrow at me, but he can’t hear my mistake, can he? His head tilts to the side, and I turn my body to face the other direction.

My butt is freezing and my legs are aching from sitting on the cold floor for so long. But I don’t have anywhere else to go. My three weeks at the shelter were up yesterday. So, I have to find somewhere new to sleep tonight. I look down into my case. There’s enough there for dinner. But not for anything else. So, I keep playing.