Chapter 22: Opposite Legs

I said yes before he finished the question.

It was the first time I had ever answered something nobody had asked yet.

Tiernan said it counted.

Three days later my sister and I sat side by side in a tattoo parlor on South Broadway.

Our trouser legs were rolled up.

The tattooist looked at my right ankle and at Cordelia's left.

"Same design?" he asked.

"No," said Cordelia.

"Yes," I said.

We looked at each other.

"I'm not copying you," I said. "I'm asking for the same thing."

"That's the definition of copying."

"It isn't, if we both chose it before we got here."

"We did not both choose it."

"We did, on the phone, at the same time."

The tattooist put down his needle.

"I'll start with the one who's shouting," he said. "Show me the drawing."

I had drawn it myself, in pencil, on the back of a board agenda.

It was a thin gold line, no longer than my thumb.

It went just above the bone, where mine had healed crooked.

Cordelia had drawn the same line on her own agenda, in the same pencil.

Hers sat above the left ankle, where her bone had broken.

The tattooist looked from my paper to hers and back again.

"That's a very small tattoo," he said.

"It's three hundred and ten dollars," said Cordelia, who had called ahead.

"Each?"

"Each," I said. "Same price."

It hurt a great deal.

I gripped the arm of the chair and cried through the first inch.

Cordelia reached across the gap between us and held my hand without looking.

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