Tats Too

by Layce Gardner

  “Viv, I wrote that before I met you,” I plead. “A long time before. I only want you, you know that.”

  “I notice you have added to the list since we met and yet somehow you forgot to edit number one.” Her bottom lip starts twitching big time and she sniffles back a few tears.

  “Baby,” I soothe, “seriously, truly, I wrote that way before I met you.”

  “You’ve been with tons of women,” she blubbers. “You’ve been with so many women that the only women you haven’t fucked are the fat ones. You’ve fucked so many women, all colors and shapes and sizes, all that’s left are the fat ones, and now they’re even on your list.”

  “That is so not true, Viv.”

  “And I was laying here thinking…” She swipes away a couple of tears. “Maybe if I get fat, she’ll stay with me. Maybe I’ll gain a bunch of weight and get really fat, because I can do it, you know, I could blow up a good fifty pounds in just a month if I didn’t watch myself. Then I thought, so I get all fat and what’s next? She writes on the bucket list that she wants to fuck Siamese twins maybe? Or maybe a bearded lady, though I could do that, too, if I didn’t pluck every day. Or maybe she’ll want a paraplegic or something. Then here I am all fat and with a beard and she doesn’t want me and nobody else does either…” She crosses her arms over her face and sobs pretty darn loud.

  Wow. I am so not sure what the hell to say to all that. And laughing right now would not be in my best interest. So, I shove away the mental image of Vivian fat and bearded. Instead, I try to cheer her up a little. “You’ve gone off the deep end, Vivian. So to speak,” I kind of laugh, gesturing weakly at the deep end.

  “Don’t negate my feelings!” she spews with righteous indignation. “Don’t you dare fucking tell me that what I’m feeling isn’t real because I’m feeling it and, believe me, it’s real!” She crosses her arms back over her face and sobs louder, choking out, “You were in there looking at freaks. Probably in there jacking off at the freakin’ freak show the whole time.”

  Good Lord. This PMS shit is going to be the death of me. I do some quick math. Hopefully, she’s only got another seventeen or so years until menopause. Twelve periods a year times seventeen years…I only have to go through this about two hundred more times.

  I jump off the side and into the pool. I slide my boots over to her and sit down. I take her in my arms and hold her tight while she sobs into my chest, getting snot and tears all down my front.

  Once her tears start to dry up a little, I say softly, “I have an idea. When we get to Vegas, let’s get married. Let’s get an Elvis preacher and get married. I know it won’t be legal, but let’s find an Elvis who’ll do it anyway.”

  “Really?” she sniffles. “You’d really marry me?”

  I smile down at her and wipe some snot off her upper lip with the hem of my T-shirt. “Yeah, Viv, I love you. And I want you to know that you’re the only woman I ever want. You’re more than enough for me. I got you and I got Georgia and we’re a family, and that’s all I ever want or need. Okay?”

  She nods a little and even smiles a tiny bit.

  “And, look at the bright side. Now you know that if you do ever get fat, I’ll still fuck you. So, in a way, that’s kind of a positive.”

  “What if I grow a beard?” she asks.

  I smile. “We might have to talk about that.”

  She snuffles, “If I were in a tragic accident and in a coma and a vegetable in the hospital would you come in every day and pluck my mustache and my eyebrows?”

  “Baby, I’d be honored to.”

  We both laugh a little, and she snuggles deeper into my arms.

  I ask one of my own, “If I were a paraplegic, if I were paralyzed from the neck down and in a coma or something, would you still have sex with me?”

  She giggles. “I love you so much, Lee, if you were paralyzed from the neck down, I promise I’ll sit on your face every day. Sometimes twice a day even.”

  I laugh. “You’re so good to me. I don’t deserve you. Promise you’ll marry me? You’ll be my wife? You’ll be the mother of my child? You’ll save me from all the fat, bearded ladies and the freaks?”

  “Yes,” she coos. “I’ll marry you, you big freak.”

  Viv gives me a big wet sloppy kiss and I don’t mind at all. I hear the bottle fall onto its side and roll roll roll away from us. I don’t mind that either.

  I lay down on my back and pull Vivian down next to me. She snuggles her nose into my neck and we hold each other tight like we’re in the middle of the ocean in a little rubber raft and there’s nobody but us for miles and miles.

  ***

  We’re surrounded by blue. Blue, blue water that we can’t drink even though I’m dying of thirst, and blue, blue sky that beats the heat down on our sunburned faces.

  Sharks circle us. I watch their fin thingies break through the water and slice big circles in the blue around us. Their circles get smaller and smaller.

  One shark is so close now it splashes a tiny bit of water on my face. Another shark, a bigger one, rips by and more water slaps me in the face.

  I open my eyes. My back is killing me. No wonder. Vivian and I fell asleep in the pool on the concrete floor.

  Water splashes me in the face again.

  I turn my head and look up. A man stands at the edge of the pool. He has his dick in his hands and he’s pissing on me.

  “What the fuck?” I scream, jumping up.

  The man laughs. I dart to the opposite side of the pool where he can’t reach me.

  Oh, wait. He’s not pissing on me. That’s a beer bottle he’s holding. He sticks his thumb in the mouth of the bottle and shakes it. Then he tosses out a stream of beer and foam, laughing, as it splashes Vivian in the face.

  Oh, shit. It’s CornNut Breath. How the hell did he know we’re alive? How the hell did he track us here? Where’s the other Goodfella?

  “Vivian!” I yell through my cupped hands. “Wake up!”

  Vivian opens her eyes and does pretty much what I did. She wakes up, blinks, sits up, registers what’s happening and runs like the dickens. I think I may have screamed a little bit more, though.

  The next few seconds happen in slow motion. Vivian takes three steps to her right, bends down, picks up the hillbilly whiskey bottle by the neck and winds up like a pitcher on the mound. She lets loose of the bottle and it’s like a breaking fastball aimed straight for CornNuts’ chest. He sees it coming and ducks. He ducks just enough that the bottle thunks him in the head instead of the chest and shatters into a zillion tiny pieces. The bottle, not his head.

  In the next instant, C.N.’s eyes roll back and he belly flops into the deep end, landing with a sickening thud.

  “Nice shot, Viv,” I say, impressed.

  She turns to me, nods once, and wipes her hands together as she says proudly, “You’re looking at the Alexander Hamilton Junior High School Dodgeball Champion. Three years running.”

  “Of course I am,” I mutter, full of awe.

  I wipe my face off with the tail of my shirt. Damn, I’m going to smell like beer all day.

  “Who was that guy anyway?”

  “Was?” I ask, suddenly alarmed.

  “Was, is, whatever.”

  “He’s one of the guys from the van with the cameras. One of your Italian husband’s hired gunmen. A Goodfella.”

  I climb out of the pool and watch Vivian walk over to C.N. She rolls him over and puts a couple of fingers right on his carotid.“He’s still ticking,” she says a little disappointed.

  Thank God. Putting him out of commission for a while is one thing, putting him out of commission forever is another.

  “We best get outta here,” I warn. “There’s gotta be another Goodfella lurking around here somewhere. They always travel in packs.”

  Vivian reaches inside C.N.’s jacket and pulls a gun out of his shoulder holster. She stands there for a second with one hand on her hip and the other hand dangling a big-ass gun, her T-shirt soaked throu
gh, amplifying her tits, and with a look of steely determination on her face. She looks like a movie poster. Like a movie I’d pay eight bucks to go see any day.

  She reaches into his jacket pocket and pulls out a magazine of ammo. She places the magazine in the chamber, snaps it in with the heel of her hand and slides the top part of the gun back until there’s a loud click.

  I think it’s at that exact clicking moment when I realize my life has gotten way bigger than me. My house is blown to high heaven, I haven’t seen my baby in days, my soon-to-be-wedded-by-Elvis fiancée looks like a deranged killer (a super friggin’ hot deranged killer), the Mafia and the FBI are on our asses and I smell like a brewery. I’m pretty sure this is as bad as it gets.

  Vivian jerks her head up at me and squints. Why is she looking at me like that? I didn’t just say all that shit out loud, did I?

  She raises the gun and points it right at me. What the hell? She’s going to shoot me?

  “Duck!” she shouts.

  I almost do. I almost duck. But before I can, a couple of arms grab me around the chest in a vise-grip and lift me off the ground.

  I try to struggle, but it’s pretty hard to do when your arms are pinned to your sides and your feet are dangling off the ground, so it comes out more like an exaggerated wiggle.

  I look down at the arms. Dark, oily, hairy with gold bracelets and rings. It’s the missing Goodfella.

  He spins me around and I see the Porta-Potty with its door open. The sonofabitch was in there the whole time. He tosses me inside the tin can and closes the door. I land with a bounce on the seat and say a quick prayer of thanks that my ass is too big to let me fall through the hole. I bounce back up and am opening the door—

  —BANG!—

  —a bullet whizzes by my left ear—

  Holy shit.

  I close the door real quick, lock it (like that’s going to keep bullets out) and see a hole in the door right about where my eye is now.

  Holy shit.

  I hear two more bangs. Vivian must be having a freakin’ western-style shootout with the Goodfella.

  I crouch into a ball on the filthy floor and try to make myself as small a target as possible. Something or somebody crashes hard into the side of the Porta-Potty and it spins round and round like one of those teacup rides at a carnival, and I end up on my head with my ass in the air.

  I peek between my legs and that’s when I realize that if I don’t want a bucket of slop to dump down on my head like I’m Carrie at the prom I need to think fast.

  I scream. Once or twice or five times. I stick my feet out over my head and slam the toilet lid down on the shithole.

  I’m lying on my back with my legs in the air, my feet holding down the crapper lid, but only for a few seconds. Because next thing I know, I’m sailing through the air, ass over teakettle.

  I land with such a slam that the air is knocked out of my lungs.

  I hate small spaces and I double-hate being trapped inside a Porta-Potty. At least the Potty didn’t land ass-up with the tank emptying out on me.

  When my breath comes back I start screaming again. I scratch and pound on the tin sides like I’m buried alive. I’ve landed on the door and can’t get out, and Vivian’s probably been shot dead and I wish somebody would fucking put me out of my misery, too.

  Okay, now I’m pretty sure this is as bad as it gets.

  “Lee!”

  I stop screaming.

  “Lee!”

  It’s Vivian! She’s not dead!

  “Vivian?”

  “Hold on!” she yells, “I’m going to roll you over and get you out of there!”

  “Hurryhurryhurryhurrygodhurry,” I plead.

  I feel the Porta-Potty move and then I’m rolled over twice and the door is facing up.

  “You have to open the door, Lee, I don’t have a quarter,” I hear her say.

  I roll around until I’m right side up, slide the knob back, throw open the door and jump out of the Porta-Potty like a crazy jack-in-the-box. I scramble away on all fours as fast as I can. Only the pool walls stop me from crawling farther away.

  Damn. I was thrown down into the dry pool inside the stinky Porta-Potty.

  Vivian just stands there with the gun still in her hand, staring at me open-mouthed. She drops the gun with a clang. Her face breaks into a smile and then she’s laughing.

  She laughs and points at me while she does it.

  I know I look deranged or like I was raised by wolves, but panic is hard to stop once it gets going.

  Vivian grabs her stomach and sinks to her knees, laughing so hard that she pounds the cement floor with her palm. Every time I think she’s about to stop, she looks at me and starts in again.

  I manage to finally get control of my breathing and calm down a little. I pat my dreads back down and say, “It’s not that funny, Vivian. You’re just trying to one up me for the billy goat incident.”

  “Karma’s a bitch, ain’t it?” Vivian laughs, rising to her feet.

  “Did you at least kill the sonofabitch?” I ask.

  “No,” she says, “I think you did.”

  She points to the Porta-Potty and for the first time I notice two giant loafered feet sticking out from under it. When I fell into the pool, I must’ve landed right on top of him just like Dorothy did to that wicked witch.

  Vivian puts her hands on her hips, surveys C.N. and the other Goodfella and utters, “What a waste,” with a click of her tongue.

  “Believe me, assholes all the way,” I say.

  “I meant what a waste of good whiskey,” she clarifies.

  “Oh.”

  “I think we can leave them here just like this,” she says. “To the untrained observer it looks like a drunken sex party turned sour.”

  “And to the trained observer?”

  “It looks like a couple of women went all Thelma and Louise on their asses.”

  I laugh. “Looks more like we went Lucy and Ethel on their asses.”

  ***

  I have my nose under the hood of the Goodfella’s serial killer van, using my trusty pocketknife to unscrew the battery cables, and Vivian’s inside the van doing whatever it is that Vivian does when I’m not watching.

  “Holy mother of God!” Vivian screams.

  My reflexes slam into overdrive, I throw open the sliding door of the van and jump inside like I’m Errol Flynn and my three-inch pocketknife is Excalibur.

  But Vivian is just sitting in front of the computer and fancy equipment staring at a monitor.

  “Are you okay?” I ask.

  “No, I am not okay,” she says, hitting a button on the keyboard. “Look at this, Lee.”

  I walk behind her and look at the monitor. It’s black and white and a little fuzzy, but, unmistakably, it’s the sex tape I was worried about. Yep, there’s Vivian laid back on the couch, moaning and shit (it has pretty good audio) and, yep, there I go moving in for the kill.

  Vivian hits the pause button, saying under her breath, “I cannot believe this shit.”

  “What?”

  “Do I really make that face when I come?” she asks.

  Hmmm…I don’t know what kind of answer she’s wanting here. So I take my time studying her face in pause. I tilt my head to the right, then back to the left. Yeah, she pretty much has that scrunched-up, pained, constipated look.

  I answer truthfully, “Yeah, that’s what you look like.”

  “Shit,” she says, forwarding the tape frame by frame and studying it. “Next time I’m on film I’ll have to remember not to wrinkle my forehead like that. It makes me look ten years older.”

  “Don’t take this the wrong way, but I truly hope next time is not on film.”

  “And help me remember,” Vivian says, “to get some french-cut panties so my legs’ll look longer.”

  I sniff the air. I smell booze. I squint one eye at Vivian and ask, “Have you been drinking?”

  But before she can answer, the door slams open and, Christ Almighty, it�
��s C.N. resurrected.

  He’s still a little discombobulated and this gives me enough time to land a solid kick right to his family jewels.

  He grabs his dick, bends over and slams his face into my fist.

  That puts him out cold.

  And it damn near breaks my right hand. I stick my right hand in, stick my right hand out, dance the hokey-pokey and I shake it all about. “Damn, that’s my good hand…”

  ***

  I duct-tape C.N. to the chair with his hands behind him and his mouth even duct-taped shut (I stole the duct tape out of the motel office, but left a Hollywood movie premiere ticket in its place) while Vivian frenetically pounds away at the computer keyboard. By the time I have him trussed up, she steps back from the monitor, pushes him in front of it and says proudly, “Here we go.”

  The sex tape plays through beginning to end and I have to admit I watch it all and if we weren’t in the middle of a Mafia chase, I might try to relive it right here in the van. As soon as the tape ends, it starts all over again.

  “I looped it to play continuously,” Vivian says. “When he wakes up, he’ll have to watch it over and over and over. Pure torture because he can’t even jack off. We’ll blue ball him so bad he’ll wish he were dead.”

  I have to agree. I can’t think of a worse torture.

  ***

  I give my Harley the once-over and it only takes me maybe thirty seconds to find the tracking device those mothers put on it. It’s duct-taped underneath right beside my gremlin bell. I decide to hang on to it for a little while. I slip the little bugger into my front pocket, because who knows, it might come in handy.

  Chapter Five

  Albuquerque—367 miles.

  I lose myself in the steady vibration of the road and the constant growl of my pipes. Some people use prayer beads. Some do yoga. Others climb mountains or levitate. Me, I ride. It’s where I go to Zen out. I won’t go so far as to say I reach out and touch God when I ride, but I will say that it’s the best place for me to reach out and touch myself.