Tats

by Layce Gardner

  He downs the glass of champagne he’s holding.

  Vivian growls, “Baby, you don’t know how much I missed this.”

  His pants drop around his ankles. Tidy whities. He tosses the empty champagne glass to the floor. Vivian sits on the edge of the bed, wraps her legs around his and pulls him down on top of her.

  The bedroom door opens and one of the goons pokes his head in. As soon as he sees P.C. laying on top of Vivian, he says, “Beg your pardon.”

  P.C. looks over his shoulder and commands, “Wait in the car.”

  The goon shuts the door. I hear him out in the living room talking to somebody, probably his twin goon. The front door opens and closes.

  P.C. goes back to Vivian and smothers his face between her tits. And the part that hurts the worst is that she looks like she’s enjoying it.

  I can’t bear to see anymore.

  I shut the door.

  I numbly walk into my bedroom. I turn in a couple of slow circles before I grab hold of the first emotion that runs by and I jump on its back and ride it hard.

  I hate her. I hate every fucking thing about her. I hate her red hair. I hate her perfect tits. I hate her laugh. I hate how she makes me feel. Most of all, I hate her for making me fall in love with her. I even hate her for making me hate her.

  I go back to the bathroom and quietly undress and put on every stitch of Vivian’s discarded animal-themed clothes.

  Two can play this game.

  Fifteen minutes later I’m in the hotel bar. I wound my dreads on top of my head trying for the octopus thing again, but ended up looking like Medusa. I’ve got on Viv’s panties, her short skirt, her matching shirt and those damn shoes she loves so much. I don’t know where to scratch first. And I’m quickly developing a newfound respect for women who can actually walk in high heels. I hope I don’t have to get anywhere quickly.

  I try to look nonchalant and sexy at the same time as I plant my ass onto the first barstool I see. I peer through the ambiance and scout out a target. I get one in my sights and pull the trigger.

  “Buy me a drink?” I coo to the man next to me.

  He looks me up and down, takes a big gulp of his drink and scoots down three places.

  This isn’t as easy as it looks.

  I’m well into my third (or fourth, who the hell’s counting) drink and looking desperate when I hear a lip-smacking voice near my ear say, “Can I buy you drink, pretty lady?”

  I almost look around for the pretty lady before I realize he’s talking to me. “Sure, baby,” I answer, “I could do with another.”

  He sits next to me and I see exactly what I expected to see: a middle-aged man with too much hair on his chest and not enough on his head. He’s a little soft in the middle but not too bad for a man who sits at a desk all day every day. His eyes are a little unfocused which explains why he chose me. He’s wearing his uniform of suit and tie with snakeskin boots and ten-gallon hat, and I’m guessing he wants to take a story back to his office in whatever town he’s from. I glance down at his wedding ring and have a pang of remorse.

  I gulp down the drink and dive straight in before I can change my mind. “What’re you doing tonight?” I ask.

  “Nothin’, sugar,” he says.

  “You are now. You’re doing me,” I slur. (It worked on Joey Hanes in high school, I just hope it works now.)

  “Sure, sure...okay,” he stumbles.

  Once we’re both standing, I realize I’m a good head taller than him.

  “You’re a tall drink of water,” he drawls.

  That’s when the panic sets in. I swallow hard and squeak a question to myself, “You doin’ this or not?”

  “Lead the way, little lady,” he says.

  He small talks all the way up in the elevator, but the only voice I can hear is that little Jiminy Cricket in my head that keeps telling me this is a really bad idea.

  I ignore all the voices coming at me and put my card key into the slot.

  I take off the heels once I’m inside the door and my toes cry from relief. I put my index finger over my lips in the universal quiet gesture and he does it back to me with a drunken “ssshhhhh.”

  We tippy-toe to my room and I turn on the lamp on the nightstand. He shuts the door quietly behind him. I toss my shoes into a corner of the room. Fueled by Jack, I strip down naked in about three seconds. I turn to face him.

  He whistles low and between his teeth.

  “I have to tell you something,” I say. “I’m a lesbian.”

  “I’m from Houston,” he replies.

  Buckass naked and all too aware of the jiggle in my boobs, I do my best slither up to him. I imitate what I saw Vivian do and bury my face in the cowboy’s neck while I try to get his belt undone. He has on some powerful cologne and before I can stop myself, I sneeze into his shoulder. I think I must be allergic to men.

  “Bless you, sugar,” he says.

  He gently pushes me down onto the bed and unfastens his belt all by himself. His drawers drop and fall around his boots. He’s already standing at attention and I give myself a mental pat on the back for at least being able to accomplish that much.

  He takes off his shirt and tie, but leaves his hat and boots on. But at least he’s polite about it because he actually tips his hat at me before he crawls between my legs. He squirms around a little bit and I feel as if he’s going to crush my ribcage. When I try to wriggle out from under him, he mistakes this for excitement and shoves it right in without warning. He starts doing his thing and I just lie there allowing it and berating myself for ever thinking this would help with anything.

  I punch him a couple of times on the back and he stops.

  “You almost done?”

  “I could do this all night long,” he says in a slow Texas drawl.

  “Oh, fer Chrissakes,” I mumble. I push him off and get on my knees and elbows with my ass in the air. “Do it this way, so I don’t have to look at you,” I offer. “You’ve got five minutes.”

  “My wife won’t do that,” he says in true awe.

  “I’d like to meet her someday. Four minutes thirty seconds and counting down.”

  He climbs on like the cowboy he is and begins again.

  That’s when Vivian walks in all dressed in her new Miss Jackson sexy-ass-dress-with-matching-new-heels-ensemble. Her seeing this this doesn’t feel anything like how I planned it. It was supposed to make me feel good and her feel bad, but somehow all I feel is mortified. I bury my face in my hands. Maybe she can’t see me if I can’t see her. I peek between my fingers to see if it’s working.

  “Wellwellwell...” she smirks, crossing her arms and thrusting out one hip, “Where’s a camera when you need one?”

  Houston tips his hat at her and grunts, “Ma’am.” He goes back to business and after a couple more thrusts, he’s blessedly done.

  Nonplussed, Vivian scoops up his clothes from the floor and tosses them at him. “Okay, cowboy, you done broke that wild pony, time to leave.”

  I hide under the bed covers while Vivian coaxes him out the door one pantleg at a time. I hear the door in the other room shut and her footsteps coming back toward me. She whips the covers back. “Lee, we gotta get out of here.”

  “I saw you fucking Prince Charles,” I say.

  “And I saw you fucking a fat cowboy. We got to get outta here before he wakes up.”

  “Before who wakes up?”

  “Prince fucking Charles, that’s who!” she whisper-shouts and walks into the bathroom, expecting me to follow. I wrap the sheet around me and tag after her. She quietly opens the door to her bedroom and motions for me to look.

  I peek around the door.

  What the hell?

  “What the hell’m I looking for?” I ask.

  She throws open the door, revealing what I already saw: Nothing. Nothing but a messed up bed and an empty room.

  “Where the fuck did he go?” she shouts, running into the room. I pick up the end of my sheet and follow her in. She
points to the empty bed, “He was right here. I popped some pills into his champagne... Boom, he’s out cold...”

  “You’re sure?” I ask in a tiny voice.

  “Of course, I’m sure!” she screams at me. “He was naked and passed out right here on the bed!”

  “Well, you don’t have to yell at me! I didn’t sneak in here and take his damn body!”

  “I’m not yelling at you!” she yells at me.

  “I’m obviously the only person in here, so if you’re not yelling at me, then who the fuck are you yelling at?”

  “You’re the one who’s fucking doing all the yelling!” she yells.

  “And you’re the one who’s doing all the fucking!”

  “Me?!” she screams. “Then what were you doing in there with the cowboy if you weren’t fucking?!”

  “I didn’t enjoy it!” I scream at the top of my lungs. I suddenly realize that what I’m yelling about isn’t really what I’m yelling about. I take a deep breath and let it out slow. “It doesn’t count if I didn’t like it,” I say slow and calm.

  Vivian nods and says softly, “Yeah, I know what you mean.” She takes a deep breath of her own, then throws her hands up in the air. “Well, where the hell is he?” she asks.

  “Looking for me?” a voice slurs behind us. We both spin around.

  Prince Charles leans in the doorway, naked and drugged and holding a gun. His eyes sluggishly take us in and he raises the gun, pointing it right at Vivian.

  Hold on a minute. That’s not a gun. It’s an empty champagne bottle. He laughs and almost falls to the floor before catching hold of the door handle and straightening up again. “Vivian...” he laughs, stumbling a few feet forward. “Tsk, tsk, tsk. Shame on you, dearie.”

  “Charlie, I’m so glad you’re not gone,” she says, slinking his way. “I thought you’d left me.”

  “Don’t!” he points the champagne bottle at her chest. “Move! Don’t move.”

  Vivian freezes. He squints one eye, aiming the bottle at her like some kind of English Wyatt Earp. “Bang!” he slurs. “You’re dead.”

  He raises his imaginary gun to his lips and blows a short puff of air on the bottle neck. And that’s the last thing he does before he falls over, smashing face-first on the carpet.

  I must stare at him for a full five seconds before asking, “You think he’s dead?”

  Prince Charles’s butt twitches a couple of times, then he lets out a loud snort and snore.

  “Nope,” Vivian answers. “Just sleeping. But I think he’s going to be really pissed off when he wakes up.”

  Chapter Eleven

  We go from the lap of luxury to a rent-by-the-hour motel named Dick’s Halfway Inn. I let Vivian register us at the front desk, which may have been a mistake because she signs us in as Fred and Ethel Mertz.

  We’re back to one room and one queen-size bed and I try not to think about the sheets. The carpet is so matted and gross I don’t think about that either.

  I jump in the shower and scrub like Karen Silkwood while Vivian runs next door for a bottle of something brown and cheap and strong. When I come out of the bathroom in my boxers and wifebeater, she pours me a lethal dose of the liquor and helps herself to several pills. We lie on the bed for a long time, staring at the ceiling without talking.

  Finally, Vivian aims the remote at the TV, turns it on and there’s nothing but horizontal stripes flipping by on every channel. I get up and land the TV a couple of solid kicks. The picture flips and holds and stays there. I lie back down again. I must’ve found the animal channel because some documentary about prairie dogs is on. Vivian sets the TV to mute just as one little fuzzy dog climbs on the back of another and starts rutting away.

  “Remind you of anything?” Vivian snorts.

  “Fuck you.”

  “You changing teams or what?” She snickers.

  My residual anger leaks out. “It was a mistake!” I take a big drink and choke out a miserable, “It was a mistake. You ever make mistakes?” I swipe away a couple of hot tears and look away from her searching eyes.

  “C’mon, Lee. It was just one time. One guy. Nothing to cry about.”

  “That’s not why I’m crying. You saw it and...I dunno.”

  Vivian reaches over and pats me on the knee. “Darlin’, I don’t care.”

  “That’s why I’m crying! ’Cause you don’t care!” I throw her hand back at her and finish off the glass in one big gulp. Vivian gets off the bed, grabs the bottle and pours me another. She sticks the bottle between my legs and lays back down with her hands behind her head, staring at the TV. The prairie dogs are still going at it.

  “Sorry,” I mumble, finally breaking the heavy silence.

  “Do we really need to have this talk again?” she asks without looking at me.

  “No.”

  Through the paper-thin walls, I hear the bed springs next door creak. The headboard bangs against the wall separating our beds. I watch the prairie dogs hump but the soundtrack is coming from next door. It’s like humping in surround sound. And it really does seem like those cute little prairie dogs are the ones saying, “Do it, Daddy, do it, do it, Daddy, do it!” Or maybe I’ve just had too much to drink tonight.

  “Maybe we need to break up,” Vivian says.

  “We’re not going steady.”

  The banging headboard gets louder. Vivian looks at the shaking wall then back to me. “I just think I’m not so good for you. You go out and pick up a man when you clearly didn’t want to. Then you blame it on me. You lesbians are so weird. And I mean that in the nicest way.”

  “I don’t want to break up,” I say. “I don’t know what I’d do if I didn’t have you.”

  Viv sits up cross-legged and looks at me long and hard. “You’re tired and drunk. My pills are kicking in. Neither one of us is going anywhere tonight.”

  Now the headboard next door bangs the wall so hard our bed bounces. Vivian turns to the wall and pounds it with her fists, screaming, “Hurry up and come, already! What the fuck is taking so long!”

  I giggle a little. She giggles back. The headboard stops.

  “Thank you, Gawd,” she drawls.

  I reach out and take her hand in mine. I trace the lines in her palm with my fingertip. “I just want to know something, Vivian.”

  “What?”

  “At the funeral...why’d you leave with me? Outta all those people there, why’d you ask me to take you away?”

  She pooches out her lower lip, thinking hard. “I recognized you.”

  “From high school?”

  “No,” she says, quickly. “Not that kind of recognize. I mean I did, but that’s not what I mean. I just saw something familiar in you.”

  “Like what?” I ask.

  “I’ve always felt like an outcast. Like I never quite fit in. And that’s what you looked like too. Like you were on the outside looking in.”

  I nod.

  “We just fit,” she says.

  I nod again.

  “Why’d you take me away? You didn’t have to, so why did you?” she asks.

  Because I just saw you and immediately I knew you were the one. But I just think that because I know I can’t say it out loud to her. So, instead, I shrug and say, “I liked your pom-poms.”

  “You’re such a man sometimes,” she laughs.

  “I know.”

  I take a deep drink straight from the bottle and feel the burn work itself down to my toes.

  “Vivian?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Where we going?”

  “Wherever the road takes us,” she says simply.

  She looks to the TV and I follow her gaze. The female prairie dog is now giving bloody birth and shooting the pups out one at a time. I grab the remote and turn it off.

  Vivian and I lie in total darkness and quiet for a long time. I listen to her breathing and am soothed by the rhythm. I’m drifting off to sleep when Vivian leans up on one elbow, facing me. She traces her finger across the scar on
my forearm.

  “Why were you in prison?” she asks gently.

  “Where’d that come from?”

  “Why haven’t you ever told me? You think I’m going to freak out or something?”

  “Maybe.”

  “Well, I won’t.”

  “I don’t like to talk about it.”

  I get all goosefleshy from her fingertips and she senses this and rubs some warmth back into my arm.

  “Murder?” she asks.

  I pull my arm away. “I don’t like to talk about it.”

  “I heard it was murder.”

  I sigh. “Depraved-mind second degree murder to be exact.”

  “Your father?”

  “Stepfather.”

  She wraps her hand back around my forearm and caresses the scar. “He raping you? That how you get this scar?”

  “Why’re you asking if you already know?”

  “I want to hear it from you, not from everybody else. I wish you’d trust me enough to tell me.”

  I’m quiet for a long time. She listens to my quiet and waits patiently for me to say something. So I close my eyes and try to find the words. “I got the scar when I was fifteen. I guess I’d had enough and I tried to fight back. It’s my fault, really. I mean, I knew better than to fight. My mom left not long after that. He was doing the same thing to her, beating her and shit. I guess she thought I was okay, I dunno. She never put her bottle down long enough to see me. So, she just packed up one day and never came back.”

  Vivian snuggles up next to me and pulls me close. I open my eyes and look at her for a second. She wipes away the wet under my eyes with her thumb, and I continue, “He didn’t do it all the time, you know. There’d be a couple of months go by...then he’d wake me up, drunk and sweaty... My senior year I hardly ever went back to the house anymore. There was this biker guy I knew when I was a kid. Chopper. He was actually married to my mom for like a year maybe. That’s his pocketknife I have. With the red Maltese cross? I stole it off his nightstand the day Mom made him leave.”

  I laugh a little. I don’t know why, it’s just easier than crying.

  “Chopper was cool. I worked in his shop when I was a kid, just cleaning up and stuff. So, I went there. I started living in his shop at night. He didn’t know. I slept there and ate stuff out of his fridge. Then I’d go to school in the morning before he came in. But I had to go home sometimes. Get clothes and do laundry. I’d sneak in when the bastard was asleep and go through his pockets and shit and get whatever money he had in them. One time...he woke up. He grabbed me by the throat. Threw me down. He took his time. I didn’t fight back...just...let it happen, you know. When he was done, I got up to leave. He went back to bed, was actually snoring and shit. I’m almost out the door and I dunno, I snapped or something. I looked at my body and it wasn’t mine. I looked in the mirror and it wasn’t even me looking back. The person looking back was horrible. She was beyond angry, had this crazy look about her. This other person, this girl... I watched her go to the closet and get the shotgun off the top shelf. She cracked it open to make sure it was loaded. She clicked the safety off. She walked calmly down the hall to his bedroom. She pushed open the door with the butt of the gun. She braced her feet and raised the shotgun and held it tight against her shoulder. She woke him up by saying, “You should’ve kept your dick in your pants.” He sat up and she fired. It threw him back against the headboard and she spread her feet wider and aimed and shot again. She watched the blood spread across his chest and...actually marveled at how pretty it was. Then she laid the gun down on the foot of the bed and walked to the kitchen and picked up the phone and called the police. She said, ‘I just shot the bastard. You don’t have to hurry. He’ll still be dead when you get here.’ She hung up and went outside and sat on the porch steps and waited for the cops.”