Frost Moon Read Free Page A

back to Mary’s to pick up my Vespa. But as we started to pull out of City Hall East’s garage the colorful lights across the street gave me a better idea.
    “Wait,” I said. “Drop me at the Borders.”
    “Are you sure?” Horscht said. “It’s a long way to East Atlanta.”
    “It’s… nine fifty-five,” I said. “I can take care of myself in a brightly lit commercial fortress, and call on a fare-slave to cab me back to Mary’s for my Vespa. I never leave before midnight, anyway.”
    “But after seeing that—”
    “The full moon is like, ten days away,” I said, with false bravado. “I’m not worried.”
    “The lady can take care of herself,” Gibbs said, smiling. “Anything else we can do?”
    “Sure thing,” I said. “Next time you give me a ride, I want to do it in cuffs.”
    Horscht was befuddled, but Gibbs whistled low. “Sure thing, girl.”
    “But if she hasn’t done anything wrong—”
    “Damn, Horscht, you never got a Sunday morning call?” Gibbs said, punching my raised fist gently. “I’ll explain it to you later. You’re all right, girl. Later.”
    I started sniffing around the bookstore for something on Richard Sumners. It was hopeless—I hate bookstores and this one was a brightly lit warren. I ferreted around their computer kiosk for a minute, browsing for any of the books I knew: The Craft of Ink —no. Flash, Ink, Flash —out of print. Anything by Richard Sumners—yes! One, titled Richard Sumners , three in store, shelved improbably in Art & Architecture | Photography | Photography Monographs, where I had absolutely no luck. Finally I collared a pimply-faced teen manning the Customer Service kiosk, whose end-of-day funk brightened considerably as soon as he saw my breasts.
    “Oh, yes, that,” he said, staring straight at the bulge in my top. In fairness, my breasts were about level with his head, and he seemed scared to make eye contact. “Right over here.”
    In Bargain Books: Richard Sumners by TASCHEN - $7.99. Right between Sicily in Pictures and More Amazing Kittens! I wanted to pop a blood vessel, but just stood there, seeing Sumners’s life work end up in a bargain rack. Finally I picked it up, thick little brick, thumbing its thin but curiously heavy pages.
    “At least it’s selling,” I said.
    “Anything else?” he asked, eyeing my breasts again.
    “You got an almanac for 2005?” I asked, but he shook his head.
    As I turned to go, finally his eyes darted upward. “That,” he said, “is one cool-ass shirt.”
    I looked down. Edgar Allen Poe stared upside-down at me between the lapels of my coat-vest. I’d sewn glitter and sequins onto the shirt to jazz it up, and his sparkling eyes had ridden up over the ridge of my breasts. “Thanks,” I said, but by that point the kid had fled.
    I grabbed a maple mocha and camped out in the cafe. There in the ghetto library, as we affectionately called it, I started flipping through this glossy tombstone to Richard Sumners’s work, looking for clues to who might have worn the tattoo.
    Richard’s magical inking began before I was born, back in the 60’s, but the wreathed snake had a modern flair to its design. I started to see some of the distinctive elements that made up the tattoo crop up in THE EARLY NINETIES section, but it wasn’t until EVE OF THE MILLENNIUM that I hit paydirt.
    At first I thought I had it: a man covering his eye with a tattooed hand bearing a mark nearly identical to the one on the lid. But it was too small, and I remembered Sumner didn’t design his own flash: he had graphomancers do that for him, just like I did, which meant he ended up reusing the same design. Sure enough, there were three other people with similar tattoos, ending with a full-page shot of a young woman with the mark just above her breasts.
    The tat was close—really close: the same size, on a flat piece of skin, sans belly button or the curve of a shoulder that would have shown up as a wrinkle on the lid. I stared