Tats Too

by Layce Gardner

  They both laugh. Then there’s a moment of silence. I imagine they’re hugging, or maybe Vivian is holding Lulu’s hand in a gesture of poignancy.

  “You’re a good big sister to have, Lulu.”

  “I was a little afraid that…well, that you would be like Mother and think…” Her voice trails off.

  “Lu, honey, you’re just you. I love you. I don’t care what’s in your pants, it’s what’s in your heart that I love. I always have.”

  “That’s the nicest thing anyone’s ever said to me.” Lulu’s voice cracks.

  “Well, I mean it.”

  “I thought when I’d never heard back from you…”

  “Heard back? What do you mean?” Vivian asks.

  “All those letters I wrote you?”

  “Letters? I never got any letters.”

  “That bitch,” Lulu snarls.

  “You wrote me and Mother took them all? Oh my God… And I thought you left and didn’t care. All this time, I thought you just left me there with that bitch from hell to fend for myself. I hated you for a long time after that.”

  Lulu caresses with her voice, “I’m sorry I left you, baby girl. I’m so sorry. But I had to. I had to get out of there and be who I was. Not who she wanted me to be. I tried to find you for several years, but you were gone.”

  “Europe.”

  “Well, you’re back now. We can start over. Without Mother in the way,” Lulu says.

  “Good. I always wanted a sister,” Vivian teases.

  Lulu asks with a hint of humor, “Do me a favor?”

  “Sure.”

  “If I ever start turning into Mother, give me a good bitch- slap.”

  They laugh.

  “You got it,” Vivian responds.

  I open my eyes to tiny slits and peek. They’re hugging.

  Chapter Twelve

  Imagine Elvis in his prime. Now imagine him with green eyes and tits. That’s what Rachel looks like right down to the slicked-back pompadour. She even has a southern drawl that drips like honey, making even bad words sweet. She’s butch, too, but not in any affected way. She’s completely natural and a gentleman, and I like her the minute I walk in the kitchen and she says, “I sure hope I didn’t wake you, honey. That’s why I’m frying our eggs ’stead of scramblin’ ’em. Didn’t want to beat on any pans with everyone still sleepin’.”

  “Fried’s great,” I say. “Can I help with anything?”

  “Sure,” she says. “You can get us both a Dr. Pepper outta the icebox and fill me in on what all I missed. I found Lulu in bed this morning all cuddled up with a woman who, near as I can figure, looks to be her sister.”

  I pop open a couple of Dr. Peppers, take a long swallow off mine and let the carbonation fizz wake up my brain. “Yep,” I tell her. “That’s her sister, Vivian. And I’m Vivian’s Lee. And you’re Lulu’s Rachel who I heard about?”

  “One and the same,” she says, flipping the eggs over. “I’d ask you how you like your eggs cooked, but I’m not that good at it. You’ll have to make do with whatever I put in front of you.”

  “I usually do,” I say with a smile, sitting down at the kitchen bar. “Lulu said you two have been together two years?”

  “Well, that’s her story.”

  “What’s your story?”

  “More like five years. First time I ever saw her was at Pussy Galore. She was headlining, and I was bartending back then. I asked her out every day for three years before she said yes.”

  “Three years?” I gulp.

  “Three long years,” she draws out. “I proved I was worthy by not going out with another woman that whole time.”

  “Wow. That’s some determination.”

  “Honey, that li’l gal was harder to get into than Fort Knox.”

  I laugh. “What made her finally say yes?”

  “I think I just plumb wore her down. She ran outta excuses. Not a day goes by that I don’t know how lucky I am.” She hands me my plate and sits across the table from me with her own plate. “Of course not a day goes by that she doesn’t tell me how lucky I am.” She laughs, good-naturedly.

  “She was doing a drag show back then?”

  “Not just any drag show. The best damn drag show there was. She sang her own stuff, too, not lip-syncing. She was still a man when I fell in love with her. That was why she wouldn’t go out with me, she said. She wanted to be a complete woman before she’d date me. So, I waited through the whole thing, the operation and everything.”

  “She still has her show, though, right?”

  “But not as a drag queen. As a woman. As a damn good singer and performer.

  “I’d like to see her show sometime,” I say. “Yours, too.” I take another hit off the pop can before saying, “If I were a man I’d wanna be Elvis.”

  “Be careful what you wish for,” she laughs. “So what brought you all out here?”

  I fill her in over the rest of breakfast. Making sure to tell her all the bad parts, too. About the Mafia chasing us and the FBI chasing us, and the Hell’s Belle’s, too. I even tell her about the Devil’s Diamond, even though I leave out the part about where it supposedly is.

  By the time I finish with the story, Rachel is sopping up the egg yolk with the last square of toast. She pops it all in her mouth and chews and thinks, clearly taking her time to do both.

  “The only part I find completely unbelievable about the whole thing…” she says and swallows.

  “Is?” I urge.

  “Is…that Lulu put on a flannel shirt to go get the winnings.”

  I laugh. “Never underestimate what those two gals will do for money.”

  She grins. “Ain’t that the truth.”

  “Speaking of clothes. Lulu gave me your leathers to wear. I’ll have them cleaned and sent back to you, don’t worry.”

  Rachel waves a hand at me, dismissing my words. “Keep ’em. I know where they sell more.”

  “Thanks,” I say, taking our plates to the sink. “I’ll wash up, you cooked.”

  She spins on the chair and watches me stack dishes in the dishwasher for a moment, then says, “So, you and Vivian got both the Mafia and the FBI hound-dogging you?”

  “Yep.”

  “And you want to get a hold of this cursed diamond and get down to Mexico to fence it?”

  “Yep.”

  “What’ll happen then?” she asks.

  I smile. “Live happily ever after, I guess.”

  She winks. “I’m a romantic, too.”

  “Is that what I am?”

  “Yep,” she says, rising and slapping my back. “I hate to break it to you, honey, but you’re a true-blue hopeful romantic.”

  “I thought it was hopeless romantic.”

  “Love is always hopeful,” she says like it’s a law written down somewhere. “Can you dance?”

  “Not really.”

  “Can you do this?” she asks, gyrating her hips and knocking her knees around.

  “You mean like Elvis?”

  “Give it a try, follow along with me,” she orders, swinging her hips and belting out the first couple of lines of Heartbreak Hotel.

  Her act is so infectious, I don’t think twice about joining in. And that’s how Vivian and Lulu find us: singing at the top of our lungs, our pelvi a-quaking, and knees a-shaking. I can’t help but think that the big man up above is holding his belly and having a good laugh. And by “big man,” I’m talking about Elvis, not God.

  Their applause is what slams me back down to earth in the middle of the kitchen. I take an awkward bow, trying to cover my embarrassment.

  “Wonderful!” Vivian laughs. “Dueling Elvi!”

  “Kind of like the dueling banjos in Deliverance,” Lulu adds. “Except without the banjos.”

  Rachel laughs and slaps me so hard on the back it almost sends me to my knees. I grab the counter for support and wheeze, “Well, I don’t guess I’ll be giving up my day job anytime soon.”

  Vivian kisses me sweetly on
my nose, saying, “Honey, you don’t have a job.”

  “I have an idea!” Lulu exclaims, sounding just like the million times Vivian has said the exact same thing. And just like all those other times I’ve heard those same four words, a chill creeps down my spine. She continues, “We don’t have much time. Pride Parade is this afternoon, and we need some female help. I’ll call all the girls. I bet I can have them all here in just a couple of hours.”

  ***

  Lulu was wrong. She got all the girls here in less than an hour and she only made one phone call. All she said was, “Tina, get all the girls together. We’re having a coming-out party. My place. ASAP.”

  There must be a drag queen phone tree that reaches across the city of Las Vegas because the condo is packed to the gills with a passel of drag queens. Not passel. A gaggle? That doesn’t seem right. What do you call a pack of drag queens? Pride? A coterie? Cotillion?

  “A Flame,” Tina Turner says. “Drag queens travel in Flames.”

  Whoopsy daisy. I didn’t realize I was thinking out loud. I smile sheepishly at Tina, who’s sitting very, very close to me on the sofa and dwarfs me in size, weight and sheer presence.

  Tina giggles and lays a big, black paw on my thigh. I hope her overly-manicured hand fondling my leg is just her way of being friendly. I’ve never told anyone about my dreams of the real Tina. I have this recurring Mad Max, end-of-the-world, meteor-hits-America-and-destroys-all-life except me, Tina Turner and cockroaches dream. And Tina does all kinds of beastly, naughty things to me. I always wake up scared and in a cold sweat. And horny as hell.

  My Tina dreams are even better than my Queen Latifah dreams.

  Yeah, I got a thing for sexy black women. When I’m around them I emit pheromones that smell stronger than Henry the Eighth. Tina must’ve sniffed them out.

  I scooch closer to the end of the sofa and pretend to be entertained by all the drag queens milling around the living room. So far I see one Barbra, one Judy, one Bette, one Ann-Margret, two Chers and three Lizas. There’s also a blonde that I don’t know if she’s Madonna or Britney. And another one that’s either Sonny Bono or Janis Joplin, I can’t tell. And the one with the weird eyebrows is either Joan Crawford or Faye Dunaway.

  “If I were a man, I’d want to be a woman, too,” I say out loud on purpose.

  Tina laughs and scoots closer to me until our thighs are touching. That makes me so nervous, I keep rambling, “But if I were a woman, which I am, but pretend I’m not for the sake of this conversation, if I were a woman, I’d want to have a penis. I’d like to put out campfires with it. That’s the second thing I’d do with it. Does aiming one of those take a lot of practice? And why do men pee for such a long time? They must have bladders the size of a basketball. I’d think it would take at least three firemen to hold a piss stream that hard.”

  Tina laughs again, then says, “You smell scrum-dilly-ishous.” I look at her leg touching mine and wonder how the hell can she get muscled-up quads like that. Is it from wearing six-inch heels all the time? Maybe I should start doing squats and thrusts with heels on.

  “Yeah…” I stutter and keep on rambling, “with all this leather on, I smell like the inside of a new car. I love that smell, don’t you?”

  “Mmmmhmmmm,” she hums. “Leather is the new polyester. You don’t have to iron it and it wipes clean with a damp cloth.”

  Where’s Lulu? Or Rachel? I need some help here. Tina is obviously not going to let me go easy, and she has me so squished into the side of the couch, it’s going to take the Jaws of Life to get me out.

  Vivian stands up on a coffee table, oh wait… my bad. That’s Lulu. She’s wearing Vivian’s jeans, white T-shirt and white tennis shoes. She even has Viv’s trademark red purse slung over one shoulder. Her makeup is toned down several notches and she looks more like Vivian than Vivian does.

  Where is Vivian? I haven’t seen her in about half an hour.

  I grab the nearest evening gown and use it as a rope to haul myself out of the sofa cushions.

  Lulu sticks two fingers in her mouth and whistles loud enough to call the cows home. Everybody snaps to and gives her their full attention. She smiles benevolently and says loudly, “Sisters, thank you for being here.”

  I nudge, poke, prod and squeeze my way through the Flame and head for the kitchen.

  No Vivian.

  “As you all know by now, you have assembled to help me and my little sister.” Lulu’s voice booms from the living room.

  I go back on the scout. I check every room in the house, but can’t find her anywhere. Maybe she’s in the guest bathroom. I see a slice of light under the door and knock.

  No answer.

  “Vivian,” I ask and knock lightly again.

  “Just a sec,” she says from behind the closed door.

  Is she crying? That sounded like her crying voice.

  I turn the door handle, but it’s thumb locked. I knock again.

  No answer.

  “Vivian, what’s going on? Let me in.”

  No answer is all the answer I need. I hold my shoulder high, take a couple of steps back and ram the door as hard as I can.

  It flies open, banging against the tile wall behind it.

  Vivian sits in the empty tub, her legs curled up to her chest, head on her knees and sobbing.

  I don’t know what to do, so I sit on the edge of the tub and rub my hand over her head.

  And that’s when I see it. Lying on the seat of the toilet. It’s one of those pee stick things that tells you if you’re pregnant. I pick it up and take a look. There’s a blue minus sign in the little window.

  “Viv?” I whisper to her.

  She looks up at me. Her cheeks are red and splotchy from crying and her body shakes all over.

  “Honey?” I ask, holding up the pee stick.

  “Good news,” she says, snorting the snot back up her nose. “I’m not pregnant after all.”

  I don’t think she feels good about this news at all. In fact, it looks like she feels pretty damn bad about the good news.

  And maybe I do, too. There was a little part of me that was hoping…

  Vivian rests her forehead back on her knees and blubbers, “It was just a hysterical pregnancy. I just made the whole thing up. My whole body just bloated up because I’m fucking crazy in the head and wanted to have your baby, and you should have me committed or something.”

  I slide into the tub with her and pull her into my arms. She lays her head against my chest and sobs. I trace my fingertips lightly up and down her back because that’s what my grandma used to do to make me feel better.

  I stare at some space beyond the white tile wall for a long time before I realize that I’m crying, too.

  “You didn’t really sleep with anybody else, huh?” I ask.

  “I already told you that.”

  “I know. But even if you did, I’d already decided that I can’t live without you anyway.”

  “Well, now you don’t have to worry. There’s no baby,” she says, smearing her snot on my leather.

  “Do you want a baby that bad?”

  She shakes her head. “Hell, no. It would wreck my body. My tits would get saggy and my ass would get huge and I’d have all kinds of scars. This is a relief,” she sputters, “a huge, fucking relief.”

  I pull her closer to me and hug her even tighter. “Because we could, you know. We could have another.”

  “We could?”

  “I’d like that. I’d like that a lot. And I don’t care if you get scars or your tits get saggy.”

  “I love you so much, Lee. You know, you’re the first person I’ve ever had sex with when I was sober.”

  I didn’t know that. Damn.

  She continues, “And I want to have your baby.”

  I lift her chin so she’s looking in my eyes and I tell her the truth, “Then it’s settled. We can figure out the logistics later. But we’ll need to do it quick so Georgia and her little sister or brother won’t be that far
apart in age.”

  Vivian throws her arms around my neck and hugs me tight. “You’re my favorite.”

  “Your favorite what?”

  “My favorite everything, silly.”

  “Well, I’m actually being kind of selfish about the baby thing,” I say. “I’ve never had sex with a pregnant woman, and I’ve never had sex with a fat woman. Two birds, one stone, you know.”

  She laughs and kisses me on the chin.

  Lulu walks in the bathroom, takes in the scene and claps her hands for attention. “I don’t know why you’re choosing this moment in time to sit in my tub and cry, but you better get over it. We’re wasting daylight.” She points at Vivian and says, “Your hair is a fucking mess and your complexion looks like shit. And as for the rest of your body…” She yells over her shoulder, “Rachel! See if one of the girls has an extra girdle!”

  Vivian laughs. “Remember how you told me to bitch-slap you when you sound like Mother?”

  ***

  Lulu and Vivian have drag queen mentalities. Nothing is ever quite perfect enough and everything could stand to be bigger. Hair, makeup, clothes, tits (I’m actually okay about the bigger tits part). I’m not so scared of the Mafia anymore. I think drag queens are scarier. And, I’d have a better chance of surviving a Mafia attack.

  It only took about ten minutes for Rachel to turn me into Elvis. The hardest part was hiding my dreads under the wig, but Lulu fixed that by putting some pantyhose over my head before sticking the wig on. One of my dreads keeps sticking out the back like a pig’s tail, but Rachel just said not to turn my back on the audience. She once did an entire show with the seat of her pants split and nobody ever knew.

  I squeezed into a tight baby blue jumpsuit with a flipped-up collar and more rhinestones than Glen Campbell and I don’t look half bad. The open neckline plunges all the way down to my wide belt and I was worried about showing my boobage, but Rachel just duct-taped my boobies further to the sides and that seemed to work. Duct tape is my friend until I have to rip it off my nipples.