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Show spotted old ladies always sit. It was getting dark and a little cold by then. Owen was telling me about how it stays warm in Tucson all year round. It's strange how he has to sit, all sort of hunched forward so that he's not sitting on his bandage. "Won't you be uncomfortable," I asked, "sitting like that all the way on the bus?" "Sure," he said, "but it'll be worth it, it'll be worth it." Then I asked him some other things I wanted to know. "Where did you get them?" I said. "Get what?" "The tattoos?" "Here and there," he said. "Mostly in the navy, but lots of different places actually." "Why? Why did you get them?" "Well now. I got some because I was happy, like when we laid over in the Marquesas Islands and me with a native girl, and some I got cause I was sad, like when my Mom died. One I got cause I didn't catch anything bad in Nam. Another cause I was head over heels, you know, in love with a girl from Bethesda, Maryland. But mostly I got them just for something to do." "And you liked them?" "Of course I liked them. I wouldn't have kept getting them unless I liked them." "Then why are you having them all removed?" He went real quiet then, like he'd been caught in a trap, and I suddenly felt cold and my skin felt itchy and if he hadn't been |