Free Until I Find You by John Irving Page A

breasts. (Even at four, Jack Burns had an eye for breasts.) Whether they were guests at the hotel or Oslo natives, they were as cool as any young couple who’d ever walked into Tattoo Ole’s. Probably they’d already been tattooed.
    “ Ask them,” Jack said to his mom, but she couldn’t bear to look at them.
    “No,” she whispered, “not them. I can’t.”
    Jack didn’t understand what was the matter with her. They were a couple in love. Wasn’t being in love a pilgrim experience, like getting your first tattoo? Jack had heard his mom and Ole talk about those turning points in people’s lives that inspire a tattoo—almost any pilgrim experience will do. Obviously this young couple was having one. And if they were guests at the hotel, they’d probably already had sex that evening—not that Jack knew. (In all likelihood, they couldn’t wait to eat their dinner so they could have sex again !)
    Not even the presence of the waiter, who stood ready to tell them the specials, could keep them from fondling each other. After the waiter had left with their order, Jack nudged his mom and said: “Do you want me to ask them? I know how to do it.”
    “No, please—just eat your salmon,” she said, still whispering.
    Even in that brutal weather, the young woman wore a skimpy dress and her legs were bare. Jack thought that they must have been staying in the hotel, because no one would have gone out in such a dress—not in that weather. He also thought that he spotted a tattoo—it might have been a birthmark—on the inside of one of her bare knees. It turned out to be a bruise, but that was what propelled the boy out of his chair and gave him the courage to approach the couple’s table. His mother didn’t come with him.
    Jack walked right up to that beautiful girl and said the lines he still said in his bed to help him sleep.
    “Do you have a tattoo?” (In English first. But if he’d spoken in Swedish, most Norwegians would have understood him.)
    The girl seemed to think Jack was telling her a joke. The guy looked all around, as if he’d misunderstood what sort of place he was in. Was the boy what amounted to live entertainment? Jack couldn’t tell if he’d embarrassed the young man, or what else was the matter with him; it was almost as if it pained him to look at Jack.
    “No,” the young woman answered, also in English. The guy shook his head; maybe he didn’t have a tattoo, either.
    “Would you like one?” Jack asked the girl —just the girl.
    The guy shook his head again. He regarded Jack strangely, as if he’d never seen a child before. But whenever Jack looked at him, he looked away.
    “Maybe,” his beautiful wife or girlfriend said.
    “I have the room and the equipment, if you have the time,” Jack told her, but something had distracted her. Neither she nor the man was looking at Jack; instead they were staring at his mom. She’d not left her table but she was crying. Jack didn’t know what to do.
    The girl, seemingly more concerned for Jack than for his mother, leaned so far forward that the boy could smell her perfume. “How long does it take?” she asked him.
    “That depends,” Jack managed to say, only because he knew the lines by heart. He was frightened that his mom was crying; in lieu of looking at his mother, Jack stared at the girl’s breasts. He became even more alarmed when he could no longer hear his mom crying.
    “How much does it cost?” the guy asked, but not as if he were serious about getting a tattoo—more like he was trying not to hurt Jack’s feelings.
    “That depends, too,” Alice said. She had not only stopped crying; she was standing right behind her son.
    “Maybe some other time,” the guy said; a certain bitterness in his voice made Jack look at him again. His wife or girlfriend only nodded, as if something had frightened her.
    “Come with me, my little actor,” Jack’s mom whispered in his ear. The guy, for some reason, had closed his eyes; it was as