The Illustrated Woman
By Steve Sabatka
“The colors burned in three dimensions. They were windows looking in upon fiery reality. This wasn't the work of a cheap carnival tattoo man with three colors and whiskey on his breath. This was the accomplishment of a living genius, vibrant, clear, and beautiful.” — Ray Bradbury
I’d been in a creative slump for a while, staying home and peeking out the window every hour or so — not for my singing Samoan mailman, or the homeless guy that goes through my recycling for bottles and cans, but for the creaking Reaper himself — and not writing much at all. Thanks, COVID-19. (Maybe when this blows over Weird Al Yankovich will do a parody of the old Steely Dan song, “Hey Nineteen,” and we’ll all have a good laugh.)
It’s tough to write about Rod Serling weirdness when we live in an actual “Twilight Zone” episode these days. Here lately, I’ve turned to the writer and poet, The late, great Ray Bradbury, for both escape — and guidance. You know his books: “The Martian Chronicles,” “Fahrenheit 451,” “Masks” — a timely title if ever there was one. I especially love Bradbury’s short stories. (Read “The Fog Horn,” an eerie tale about a dinosaur, surviving to the present era and mistaking the mournful boom of a lighthouse fog horn for the mating call of another of its species. Then look out to the Yaquina Bay Lighthouse — at night. You will see something huge, saurian — and lonely — rising out of the bay and looking back at you with “great lantern eyes.”)
Mister Bradbury wrote in an almost childlike way, about awe and wonder. But he also wrote about taking chances in life, and not being afraid:
“You've got to jump off the cliff all the time and build your wings on the way down.”
I was feeling Bradbury-brave the other day, and sick of the chili I’d stockpiled, so I blew out the door for freedom — and fried chicken. I hit 101, cackling like an escaped death row inmate and, ere long, found myself in line at a local market, mask on my face, glasses fogged up — and standing six feet behind a young lady. She wore a sundress, army tanker boots that were worn at the heels — and tattoos on her bare, tanned shoulders and on her arms and high on her neck. With nothing better to do, I studied those images through misted lenses.
I’m not a fan of tattoos. I don’t have any. Tattoos are like fiction to me. Scars, on the other hand, tell the truth. But these were traveler’s tattoos, collected one at a time at various places around the globe: Long braids of Sanskrit verse. The points of a compass. A silhouette of Thailand, I think. Other images were more obscure and obviously personal, especially that geometric mystery that looked as if it had been engraved with a glinting obsidian knife and then rubbed over with the ash of a cremated king. Every tattoo was a song, a symphony with its own melody, harmony and percussion. And, for a time, I forgot about wings and thighs and I listened to those far-off rhythms, those exotic lyrics, sung in extinct languages, all floating in overgrown forests and echoing between the walls of sunken temples.
But the needle came skidding off the record then I saw the beast, climbing, scratching its way up onto the woman’s shoulder with bony, mandarin fingers. This wasn’t another tattoo, suddenly come to cold-blood life. This was a reptile, a lizard, real and staring, and it freaked me out.
Quick back story: Last summer I spent a few weeks in Indonesia, where I was haunted, if not hunted by a four foot monitor lizard — a species known by local folks as Halu, and revered for the curing properties of its meat. I thought I was shed of the creature, but now the scaly fiend was after me again, all these months and nightmares later.
“What are you looking at, schmuck?” Halu sounded exactly like Don Rickles — who always seemed a tad reptilian to me. “Is that your head or did your neck throw up?”
The Illustrated Woman paid for her Red Bull and Red Twizzlers and made for the door.
That fried chicken wasn’t going anywhere, so I got out of line and gave chase.
“Excuse me, ma’am?” That was a risky move. Some women, especially here above the Mason-Dixon Line, don’t appreciate the Southern form of address. As far as they’re concerned the word “ma’am” denotes advanced age — or worse, assumes gender. It’s hard to be a gentleman in these woke times.
When The Illustrated Woman turned and removed her mask, I realized that I knew this woman, or had at least seen her before — somewhere in the dozens of National Geographic magazines, stacked in the family room when I was a kid. I used to go through them, stare at the pictures, especially on rainy nights, and study the wonderfully earthy, bronze-glowing faces of people from all over the world — friends and relatives that I hoped to meet one day.
I took off my mask. “I was standing behind you just now, listening to your songs.”
“Songs?” she asked, with just a trace of an accent that I couldn’t quite place. The Illustrated Woman tilted her head to an inquisitive, 15-degree angle. So did that hell-fiend Halu.
“Your tattoos,” I said. “They sang to me.”
The Illustrated Woman nodded her head — slowly, in a way-chill, Lisa Bonet kind of way.
I was in. “I just had to talk to a woman with singing tattoos and a baby dinosaur on her shoulder. You’re like a character in a Ray Bradbury story.”
“Ray who?”
I should’ve bailed right then and there — and would’ve saved myself from the bloodletting that was a moment away. But no. “Ray Bradbury. He’s my favorite writer. He wrote about Mars and mummies and all kinds of cool stuff.”
No response. I had to keep the conversation going so I just threw it out there without much thought. “What’s your lizard’s name?”
“That’s Rudy.” The Illustrated Woman smiled. “He goes with me everywhere.” And then she dropped the Big One. “He even sleeps with us.”
Us? Us! That’s when I noticed the pickup truck — and the dude sitting behind the wheel. Buff. Man bun. Tattoos of his own.
I was sunk. Burned. Rejected with extreme prejudice. “OK,” I said, laughing like my grandmother used to laugh when she didn’t get the joke. “Check out Ray Bradbury if you get a chance.”
The Illustrated Woman left me standing there and bleeding. And as she got in the car with her boyfriend, probably headed off for some depraved ménage a reptile, Halu raised up a gnarled hand and made the reverse “L” sign against his scaly forehead. “Loser.”
When I got home with my chicken, I pulled some of the dark meat off the bone, sprinkled it with some cumin and turmeric and ate it on sticky rice — Indonesian style. But it just wasn’t the same as actually picking Halu’s roasted bones clean with my teeth and a pair of bamboo chopsticks.
Hear me and hear me well, Halu. Hijacking a beautiful woman was a cheap trick. I’m going back into seclusion — for now. But I will plot and I will plan and next time, I will find you, so help me, Ray Douglas Bradbury.
Steve Sabatka teaches at Newport High School — home of the Cubs. His young adult novel, “Mister Fishback’s Monster,” is available from Black Bedsheet Books.