Tats Too

by Layce Gardner

  Better.

  Where’s Vivian?

  I open my eyes, but this time I sit up slower. I must still be drunk on that cheapo tequila present from Mikey because my brain’s all foggy soggy and I have to double-concentrate to make my body parts obey.

  Where’s Vivian?

  The bed next to me is empty. The blinds are drawn but I can see light behind the slats so I must’ve done some sleeping since the wreck.

  A nurse bustles in, cooing stuff like “Lay back down, honey, you shouldn’t have pulled those out, that’s a naughty girl” and other shit I don’t listen to.

  My words grate out through coarse sandpaper lips, “Where’s Vivian?”

  “Who’s Vivian?” she asks, gently pushing me back onto the bed.

  “The woman with me,” I say. “The other woman in the wreck. She bailed off the back of my bike. Where is she?”

  “There was nobody with you, honey. It was just you and the trucker, but he escaped with just few bruises.”

  “Vivian,” I mumble, pushing the nurse back and sitting up. I jump to my feet but have to grab the bed so I don’t fall. “Vivian was behind me. Where is she?”

  “Sit back down,” she says firmly, grabbing me under the arms and trying to get me back in bed.

  I push her and she stumbles back. “Where the hell is Vivian?”

  I can hear the hysteria in my voice and it expands inside me, fills me up like a helium balloon. I float for the door, bouncing off the bed, chair and walls, yelling, “Vivian? Where’s Vivian?”

  The nurse grabs me by my hospital gown, tugging on me, but I keep going, dragging her down the hallway with me one slow foot after the other, still screaming, “Vivian!”

  The hall fills up with people, all of them in green or white, all of them trying to grab me. I ricochet off hands and chests and bellies, flinging my arms out each time I almost fall, and I never stop screaming for Vivian.

  And then I start hallucinating big time because I see Chopper. He saved my life one other time, back when I got shot trying to rescue Vivian from that bastard, Prince Charles. Him and his whole motorcycle gang rode in and saved my ass. Chopper can’t be here, saving me again, can he?

  But there he is right in front of me. He’s real and he’s here. He takes my face in his hands and he looks horrible; he looks stricken, I fall into his arms, sink to my knees and he curls down with me and lets me nudge my nose under his strong shoulder and cry while he holds me tight against his body.

  Chopper’s body is strong and holds me still like a vise-grip, sheltering me against the rest of the world, and I suddenly know what it feels like to be protected and have a father’s love shelter you from the world, and even though he’s not my real father, I know I couldn’t love him any more than I do at this second.

  “Vivian’s dead, right? Vivian’s dead,” I sob. “I killed her in the crash.”

  “Vivian wasn’t with you, kid,” he whispers to me, reassuringly. “I don’t know where she is, but she wasn’t in the accident.”

  “She was!” I yell. I climb up Chopper’s body and the wall and somehow manage to get back on my feet. I grab the closest doctor by his stethoscope and jerk him toward me, screaming “All you motherfuckers tell me where she is! Tell me where my Vivian is!”

  Chopper pulls me back into his arms, but a bunch of whitecoats pry me away. Two men hold him back while the rest grab my arms and legs and I try to wrench myself free.

  I scream. I scream as they lift me up in the air and carry me thrashing and flailing back down the hall. I scream while they hold me down me on the bed and strap my wrists and ankles to the side bars. I scream while they give me a big elephant shot of something. And when I don’t have any voice left, I scream inside my head.

  ***

  Next time I open my eyes, my brain is waterlogged with drugs. I have a fistful of cottonballs in my mouth. I can’t even feel my toes anymore. I can see them move under the sheet but I can’t feel them.

  It’s dark outside the window. How’d it get dark so quick?

  I think Vivian’s dead and they’re just not telling me.

  She was on back of the bike, and I felt it the second she left the saddle and now she’s not here so that must mean she’s dead.

  They have me tied down like I’m crazy. They only do that to the crazies.

  So, it’s finally happened, I guess. My brain has snapped. My mind has unhinged itself from my body. I’m crazy. I’ve always heard that if you’re truly crazy, you don’t think you really are. I don’t think I am, so maybe I really am. But that means that I think I am, so maybe I’m not.

  Oh my God, whatever drugs they’ve given me are going to make me crazy if I’m not already.

  I’m pretty sure by now that I truly am crazy and that’s why when I see Vivian unbuckle my ankle and wrist restraints, I turn my face away and ignore her. She’s not real. I’m hallucinating. Or maybe she’s a ghost. I’m seeing dead ghosts just like those Winkle sisters.

  She’ll go away if I pretend I don’t see her.

  “Think you can walk on your own?” she asks.

  Great. Not only do I see her, but now I’m having auditory delusions, too.

  She shakes my shoulder a tiny bit. “You hear me?”

  “Go away,” I say. “You’re a ghost.”

  “I’m not a ghost,” she says. “I’ll explain it all. I just have to get you out of here first. We have to sneak out. Those Mafia bastards have guys posted out by the nurse’s desk in the lobby.”

  I turn my head and look her over. For some weird reason she’s wearing a black cowboy hat, black jacket and black snakeskin cowboy boots with tight Wrangler jeans. “You’re dressed weird.”

  “Get up.”

  I lean up on my elbows. This puts me face to tit with her. “You’re not real,” I say.

  “I’m real,” she says, taking a step back. “Now sit up.”

  I reach out, place my hand on her tit and give it a squeeze. “You feel real,” I say.

  “Get your hand off my tit,” she says.

  “Get your tit off my hand,” I counter with a giggle.

  Damn, these are some mighty fine drugs. It’d be a damn shame to let such good drugs go to waste. I reach out, grab her ass with both hands and pull her down on top of me. “I like the cowgirl thing. Let’s fuck. Keep the hat and boots on.”

  I grab her by the back of her neck and force her lips to mine. It only takes me about four seconds to realize something’s not right. It’s all in the kiss.

  This isn’t Vivian.

  I push whoever away and whisper harshly, “Who the fuck are you?”

  “You’re coming with me,” she says, flipping open her wallet to show me a shiny badge.

  Cowgirl Cop hops off the bed and wipes her mouth with the back of her hand, which offends me some, but I don’t have time to think about it too long before she grabs me under my arms and lifts me to the floor.

  We slow dance for a few seconds until I realize she’s not wanting to dance, she’s wanting me to walk.

  Walk where?

  And why?

  “We gotta get out of here. Start walking. Help me out here,” she says. She drapes my arm over her shoulders and I kind of flop along with her. I reach down and grab her tit.

  She flings my hand off, saying, “Keep your hands offa my tits.”

  “Sorry,” I say, “it just made a really good handle to hang onto.”

  She tangos me to the door, then leans me back against the wall, saying, “Stay here. Don’t move, I’ll be right back.”

  Her right back is long enough that I drift off, I guess, because she has to wake me up and get me off the floor. She deadlifts me into a wheelchair and pushes me into the hall.

  I fall asleep again, in this rolling bassinet, lulled by the constant clackity-clack of one sticky wheel in front.

  She wakes me up again in a fucking rude way by slapping my face. I try to bitch slap her back, but I miss and swan dive to the asphalt parking lot. She opens up
the back door to a gray Nissan Altima, and some man scoops me up. He pushes my head inside the car and Cowgirl Cop pushes at my ass.

  “Stop frickin’ pushing,” I mumble. I ball myself up inside and the door slams in my face.

  I look around. I’m in the backseat of a Nissan. Is this who was chasing me and Viv right before the crash?

  Cowgirl Cop climbs in the front, taking off her cowboy hat so she’ll fit inside. A man with a droopy black mustache and a five o’clock shadow gets in behind the wheel. He throws the car in drive.

  I scoot over to the other side right behind the driver so I can get a better look at her. My bare ass squeaks across the seat. Shit. I still have on the hospital gown and am total commando underneath.

  I take my time looking Cowgirl over. She’s pretty tall. Close to my height. She’s thinner, though. Like how I was before I gave birth. Now I have an fifteen extra pounds that just won’t come off. Vivian says she likes it on me. She especially likes it on my ass. She’s never told me that, but I’ve caught her staring at it more than once, and she’s taken to nibbling on it a lot lately.

  My mind keeps derailing. Where was I?

  Cowgirl Cop. She must be pretty strong because she manhandled me all around. Wiry type of muscles. The kind you get from reps with weights. Not the kind you get from real life working. Decent tits, though. I can’t see them under the jacket, but from what I felt already they seemed decent. They don’t even begin to compare to Viv’s, though. Vivian’s got the most righteous pair ever.

  There I go again. Sidetracked.

  Back to Cowgirl Cop. I dub her tits Cheech and Chong. Because I don’t like Cheech and Chong and I don’t think I like her either. Her dark hair is cut in one of those bob styles and she keeps pushing strands of it behind her ears. She’s soft butch. The kind that acts all tough and wants you to think she’s always on top, in control, but loves to be flipped. She probably paints her toenails then hides them inside her cowboy boots.

  Not my type at all.

  “Who are you?” I finally ask.

  “U.S. Marshal Dillon.”

  “Marshal Dillon? You have got to be kidding me.”

  “Can the jokes, I’ve heard ’em all,” she says with a Texas twang.

  “Who’s the guy driving? Festus?”

  “U.S. Marshal Martin Hernandez.”

  I shotgun questions at her and the buckshot scatters all over the place, “Why all the cloak-and-dagger shit? What do you want with me? Where are you taking me? Where’s Vivian?”

  She ignores my questions and hands me a Styrofoam cup over the back of the seat. “Here. Drink this.”

  “What is it?”

  “Coffee. You’re going to need to sober up.”

  I take the cup and sip. It’s cold and bitter. It matches my mood perfectly.

  ***

  Dillon and Festus escort me inside the federal building. The breeze opens and closes the back of my gown, tickling my bare ass. At least both of them have the decency not to look and laugh or anything.

  The top of my head is sobering up some, but my feet are still dopey. I have to step real high to even get them off the ground, then they slap back down all by themselves.

  They’ve got me by the arms like I’m a puppet and my feet feel like they’re on strings being controlled by somebody else. It makes me laugh out loud.

  They don’t laugh. I get the feeling they don’t think me laughing is appropriate at all. I grab Dillon’s hat and plop it down on my own head. I give them a John Wayne impersonation, “U.S. Marshal Rooster J. Cogburn.” Hiccup. “Fill yer hands, you sonsabitches.”

  I belch and Dillon grabs her hat back.

  “You guys are like super-serious, huh?”

  They don’t say anything.

  “You don’t happen to have any extra pants around, do you?”

  They still don’t say anything.

  “I get it. You all are like the Clint Eastwood type. Silent. Then kick the shit out of the bad guys.”

  A half-formed thought takes shape in my groggy brain. “Am I the bad guy? Did I do something? They told me the trucker lived. Didn’t even have a scratch on him.”

  They don’t even look at me.

  “Okay, shutting up now.”

  I’m quiet all the way across the lobby and up to the top floor in the elevator.

  They deposit me inside a room and leave. There’s just a rectangular table and two plastic beige chairs. Beige walls, beige everything. There’s a camera up in the corner with its red eye blinking. I self-consciously close the back of my gown. Don’t want my ass to end up on the evening news.

  I sit down and look across the table at the large one-way mirror on the opposite wall. At least I think it’s a one-way mirror. The mirror side is aimed at me. I raise my middle finger in case they’re behind there looking at me but all I see is myself saluting myself.

  They’re Feds. Marshals are Feds, right? Did I commit some kind of federal offense?

  Damned if I know. I do know that they can bring me in for questioning, but unless they charge me with something they’ll have to kick me loose. That much I learned in prison. It’s a universal truth that prisoners know more about the law than most lawyers.

  Why’d they leave me in here all alone? Are they on the other side of that mirror right now, watching me?

  Aren’t they going to question me? Play bad cop, good cop or something? Dillon was wearing the black hat. In movie lingo that means she’s the bad cop.

  Maybe they have mind-reading lasers pointed in here at me. I let my mind go blank just to screw with them……………………………………………………………………………………..

  Okay, I almost went to sleep there for a second. I’ll think some random thoughts instead.

  I wish Ellen would run for President of the United States.

  I think there’s something terribly wrong with a society that has hungry, homeless people and has entire companies that design, manufacture and sell platters specifically to hold deviled eggs.

  I love deviled eggs. I wonder if Ellen has a deviled egg platter.

  Portia would make a smokin’ hot first lady.

  I’m really fucked up. There’s no such thing as a mind-reading machine.

  Is there?

  “I’m really fucked up here,” I say to the mirror. I say it out loud in case there aren’t mind-reading machines. “I could use some more coffee. Or a Dr. Pepper or something.”

  No response for a long time.

  I lay my head on the table. “I’m going to sleep. You guys have bored me to sleep.”

  A couple of minutes pass before I hear the door open. When I raise my head and open my eyes, I see Marshal Dillon.

  The woman, not the Gunsmoke guy.

  She hands me a can of Dr. Pepper. I pop the top, take a deep gulp and belch the bubbles.

  “Can you read my mind?” I ask.

  “Yeah,” she says. “And there’s nothing there.”

  Oh yeah, she’s funny. “You must be the bad cop. I’d rather talk to the good cop. Where’s Festus?”

  She scoots out the other chair and sits down, slapping a manila folder in front of her. She leans her elbows on the table and looks at me hard. She has eyes the color of fudge.

  “I’m hungry,” I say. “Do you have any deviled eggs?”

  “Tell me about you and Mrs. Perelli.”

  Not this Perelli shit again. I take another drink to buy time. “I don’t know who you’re talking about.”

  Dillon opens the file and scoots an 8 x 10 black-and-white photo across the table to me. It takes me a couple of seconds to adjust my eyes. It’s a grainy picture of me and Vivian. She’s all decked out in her lingerie, laid back on our couch, and I’ve got my head between her legs.

  Judging from the angle of the shot, the camera was aimed through the living room window.

  How many fucking people were watching, anyway?

  “How…? Why…?” I give up. “What the fuck?”

/>   Dillon points at the photo and taps her fingernail on my head, saying, “That’s you.” She taps Vivian’s head, saying, “That’s Mrs. Perelli.” She leans back in the chair and crosses her arms. “Looks to me like you know her pretty good.”

  The Dr. Pepper hits the coffee in the pit of my belly and the liquids take turns leap frogging over each other. “I think I’m going to be sick,” I say.

  Dillon makes a wave gesture to the mirror. I turn the photo upside down so I don’t have to look at it anymore.

  “Her name is Vivian Baxter,” I say. “Not Perelli.”

  The door opens and Festus walks in with a tin wastebasket in his hands. I don’t even let him set it down before I jump up and spew into it.

  God, I hate puking. Especially when some of it spurts out your nose. One time I was chewing a piece of steak and sneezed and shot it through my nostrils and clear across the room. That didn’t hurt as bad as this.

  Festus hands me a paper towel and leaves, holding the wastebasket at arm’s length in front of him.

  “Thank you,” I say, sitting back down and blowing my nose into the paper towel a couple of times.

  “Feel better?” Dillon asks with a tone that tells me she’s really calling me a wimpy pussy.

  “Can I keep this?” I ask, holding up the photo. “I don’t have any good pictures of us together. And I’m thinking Christmas cards.”

  “You’re a real smart-ass, aren’t you?”

  Better than being a dumb butt like you.

  “Am I under arrest for being a lesbian? Is cunnilingus a federal offense? Because if it is…” I hold my palms out, saying, “…guilty!”

  “You really need to focus, Lee. Try to sober up.”

  “You were watching us and taking pictures? Did you get off on this, Marshal Dillon? Tell me the truth,” I wink, “did you watch this and touch yourself?”

  “Focus,” she snarls.

  “Sitting out there parked on my street with a camera in one hand and your other hand down your pants?”

  She snaps her fingers at me, twice, right in my face, like I’m her damned dog or something. “Fooocuuuus,” she draws out the syllables so my slow mind can understand.