Black and grey realism tattoo of a woman's face split into two offset halves, shown on the inner forearm.

Split woman's face on a forearm

Realism · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

A woman's face is drawn in profile and in three-quarter view, with the two halves offset so the features look fractured. The linework is fine and the shading is smooth, with soft grey gradients across the cheeks, hair and neck. The tattoo is entirely black and grey and sits centrally on a forearm against a plain black background.

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Nobody at the Palais liked the mirror behind the bar, least of all Vera, who swore it always sat a half-beat behind her. I took it for dressing-room talk. Dance-hall girls say all sorts to pass the long wait between sets. But on the night she crossed the floor under the chandeliers, I watched her face hang back on the glass like a coat left on a hook, and I stopped sweeping.

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She wanted the glass taken down. Mr Oakes, who wore spats even in August, said the mirror had come with the building and the building was not his to sell. So Vera came to me, because I mended the gramophone and the pianola and knew how to lever a thing off a wall without it falling on somebody. We worked through the Tuesday with a borrowed jemmy while the band rehearsed Begin the Beguine upstairs, the tune coming down through the plaster in pieces.

When the backing came away there was nothing behind it but brick, a folded programme from 1931 tucked into a crack, and a tear-shaped smear of old silver. Vera looked at it a long while. Then she laughed, once, and said the other half of her had been waiting for the wall to come down so it could finally dance with the band. She slid the programme into her glove and went upstairs to rehearse.

I still have the jemmy. On Saturdays I hear the piano through the floorboards, and the tune arrives a half-beat late, the way she always said it would.

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