Tats

by Layce Gardner

  I hand the boxes over to couple of kids and they start ripping into them right away. I back away from the hard stares of the mourners, turn around and see the Hooker walking toward me.

  Women who are so self-assured in their sexuality thrill me and scare me at the same time. The scared part usually comes first. So, I hook my thumbs in my belt loops and try out my John Wayne stance. That doesn’t feel right and so I shift, hoping to strike a more Rebel Without a Cause pose.

  The Hooker’s high heels sink in the mud with each step and make slurping noises in the earth as she pulls them back out, but she doesn’t seem to notice. She lifts her knees higher in the air and keeps on marching.

  She stares straight at me and I get this eerie feeling that her stare is really a stab. I blink hard and look away. A spinning vertigo washes over me and I feel like I’m on a merry-go-round going much too fast. I inhale and hold my breath, hoping to God I don’t faint when she finally sucks her way over to me.

  When I open my eyes, she’s standing right in front of me wearing a little smirk at the corners of her mouth and for a long, slow second I’m lost in her perfume and in her long, red hair and in the little rivulets of rain dripping into her cleavage. She’s soaked through and through and cold, too, because her nipples are hard and aimed right at me. The logical part of my brain takes over and I say, “You’re wet.”

  She laughs in a throaty, unsettling way, looks like she’s about to say something, then takes it back. That’s when I get what I just said. I didn’t mean it that way, but I think that’s how the Hooker took it.

  I try to cover with a quick question, “You want a Girl Scout cookie?”

  She flashes her eyes at me and looks away. I guess that’s a no.

  “I’m not a real Girl Scout,” I blurt.

  She lights a cigarette, mumbles something I don’t quite catch, and hands me the lit cigarette with her lipstick marks on the butt. For some crazy reason I kind of like this and I put my lips right where her lipstick marks are.

  The first drag off the cigarette scorches my throat. I don’t usually smoke or drink or get high or anything anymore unless somebody hands it to me, but lately, it seems like people have been handing me lots of stuff.

  There’s an awkward pause and I take a few drags while pretending to watch the cattle graze on the cookies, but in reality I’m checking this woman out. She’s obviously bored and you can tell she’s somebody who doesn’t deal well with boredom. She’s got an entire animal print theme going on with her outfit, even the shoes, and I wonder what that means. Does it mean she has a wild side? Or does it mean if you get too close she’ll eat you alive? She feels me looking at her and tilts her chin up at me, looking my face over real careful before looking away again. I get a brief flash of something familiar, but there’s no way I’d have encountered this woman and not remember, so I just shrug it off.

  Another drag off the hot cigarette and I blurt, “I used to be a Girl Scout. But I got kicked out for eating a brownie.”

  She looks at me a little startled and before I know what I’m doing, I just keep blathering on and on. “Sorry. Bad joke. You know that little mechanism between your brain and your mouth that keeps you from blurting? I don’t have one.” I take another drag. “I think they call it Tourette’s.”

  She lights herself a cigarette and takes her time sucking the lipstick off her teeth. She still hasn’t said a word. I’m starting to wonder if she even speaks English.

  “Good fishing today,” I cast out there.

  She squints one eye at me through the smoke and I take a minute to savor the crinkles around her eyes before I jab my cigarette in the direction of the cookie-grazing mourners. I explain, “All the cattle are facing east. That means good fishing.”

  She throws her head back and laughs. Her laughter bubbles over from deep down in the well of her belly. She uses her whole body and every fiber of her being to laugh and it’s so contagious, I join in, too, and I know there’s nothing more delicious than this moment.

  Her laughter finally dies down to a few short hiccups and sputters and she sets about to right herself. She sticks her hand down the front of her blouse and lifts and separates Sonny and Cher. She tugs on the front of her short skirt, but that doesn’t help too much because now it’s just riding up higher in the back and you can honest-to-God see some kind of animal print panties that look like they’re being devoured. And even though the rain has finally stopped and the sun is peeking out from behind the clouds, I know I’m not going anywhere. I’m sticking around for the show.

  I hope I didn’t just say that out loud.

  “What show?” she asks.

  Thinking fast, I reply, “The...um, show, you know, the funeral services.” Okay, so that wasn’t thinking so fast.

  Her lips twitch again and her eyes laugh at me like she knows she caught me in a lie and that I know that she knows she caught me in a lie. She ends up blowing a short puff of air through her nose in my direction. I don’t know if she thinks I’m funny haha or funny weird.

  I try again. “This may sound retarded, but...you look familiar to me.”

  Her gaze cuts a path from my boots to my face, she lifts one shoulder in a half-hearted shrug and looks away. Her words come out in a cloud of smoke. “No one would even know you’re retarded if you didn’t tell them.”

  Did she really just say that?

  What the hell?

  The merry-go-round I’m on screeches to a halt and shocks me back to reality where I know this woman is just another hooker and her hair is dyed and she’s wearing purple contact lenses, not to mention her tits probably aren’t even paid for yet.

  “I’m going to pretend that you weren’t just a bitch,” I say with clenched teeth, because I swear to God, I’ll deck this Hooker Bitch, I’ll pick her up by her cheetah print panties and throw her into that open grave—a loud caw-like screech and a gust of Jean Nate blows this strange little woman right in front of us. She grabs the Hooker Bitch in a bear hug and talks absolutely nonstop: “Oh my God, Vivian, I’d recognize you anywhere. My God, how long’s it been? Fifteen years? Oh my God, hug me back! Don’t you remember me? Becky Sheldon! We were cheerleaders together! I was two years behind you in school!”

  And to prove her point, Becky takes three steps backward, plants both feet and claps her hands to her thighs. “Ready, Okay!” she yells. What follows are some strange contorted moves that were probably titillating when she was fifteen years younger, but now just look fuckin’ strange. This woman who calls herself Becky spells in her loudest voice: “Gimme a C! Gimme an H! Gimme an A! R! G! E! R! S!

  The Hooker Bitch stumbles a few steps back and bumps into me. She shakes her head at Becky. “I’m sorry, you’ve got the wrong person. I don’t even know how to spell Chargers.”

  Oh my God, that’s how I know this woman! Vivian Baxter the cheerleader from high school about a billion years ago. I got kicked out of pep club because of her. Well, her and the other cheerleaders. I’d already gotten kicked off the basketball team for smoking pot in the locker room and was pushed into the pep club reject pile. I’d entertained myself by picking ice out of my pop and tossing it at the cheerleaders while they did their stupid cheers on the floor in front of us. I scored a lot of three-pointers, right down their little sailor suit tops. All the cheerleaders were mad as hell and sent their little homely wannabes out into the pep club bleachers to spy and that’s how I got nailed. Fat Julie Randall ratted me out. When Julie told Vivian she saw me throwing the ice, Vivian snuck up behind me in the bleachers and dumped an entire pop down the back of my shirt. I got kicked out of pep club, but Vivian didn’t get squat.

  So this is what happens to cheerleaders after high school.

  “Vivian, you’re so funny,” Becky says, “Where have you been all these years? God, girl, we are going to have to get together. Let’s do lunch tomorrow!”

  Then the strangest thing happens. Vivian the Cheerleader grabs me by both elbows, leans in close enough that I can feel
Sonny and Cher pressing against me and whispers right under my ear, “Please, God, I’ll give you anything. Just get me out of here.”

  I wonder if her anything means the same thing as my anything.

  This is one of those what-if situations that are always and forever getting me into trouble. On the one hand, I know this woman is bad news and I’ll probably either end up in jail or with another tattoo, but on the other hand, I know I can’t spend the rest of my life wondering what could’ve happened—if only.

  “What time is it?” I ask a little too loud. “Oh my God, it’s time for your meds!” Vivian the Cheerleader looks at me with surprise. I’m even surprising myself with this little Oscar-winning performance. I grab her by the arm and pull her none too gently through the mud toward the Harley. I yell over my shoulder to a very stupefied Becky, “I’m sorry but my emotionally incontinent and developmentally disabled sister has to get back to the home before they report her missing again!”

  Vivian the Cheerleader’s eyes burn a hole in the back of my head and I suppress a smile as I add, “We let her dress herself today, sorry ’bout that!”

  Vivian the Cheerleader jerks her arm out of my grip, rips off one of her muddy shoes and whacks me in the back of the head with it, pointy end first.

  “Shit! That hurt!” I grab the damn shoe out of her claw and heave it about fifty yards away. “Are you fuckin’ nuts?”

  “That’s a Jimmy Choo!” she yells, hobbling off to retrieve it.

  “No, that’s a weapon!” I shout at her back.

  I watch her plod off to get the shoe, slipping and sliding in the mud, clutching her big red bag like a life preserver and I’ve got to admit I admire her pluckiness. What is it about cheerleaders? You could be down by fifty points, but they’re still jumping around, doing splits and backflips like there’s still hope. I shake my head and watch her trudge through the mud. She stops, pulls the panties out of her crack and scans the mire for her shoe. I catch myself smiling way too big and that’s when I smash face-first into the darker side of myself. I hate cheerleaders. I love cheerleaders. I hate them. I love them. Lord help me, I am going to love hating this particular cheerleader.

  I must admit I’m not too proud of what I yell at her next. “Listen, if you’d rather stay here with your shoes and do some cheers with Becky, I’ll understand. I’m sure you and Becky have a lot of catching up to do.”

  That does it. She does an about-face, takes off her remaining shoe, and marches back toward me. Without even so much as a glance in my direction, she brushes right by and swings a leg over the back of the Harley.

  Believe you me, short skirts are not meant for motorcycles.

  Vivian the Cheerleader looks up at me seductively and with saccharine dripping from her smile says, “We going? I believe I’m late for my meds back at the group home.”

  Chapter Two

  This is turning out to be a not-so-boring day. The sun has come out, the breeze is warm, and I’m riding a bike with a babe behind me. The grin plastered to my face gets even bigger when I pass a couple of good ol’ boys in a primered truck and they stare at us open-mouthed. I know, I know, don’t you wish you were me? I don’t know what Vivian looks like back there behind me, but I’m pretty damn sure she’s got enough skin showing that those boys are sweating pretty hard.

  Her knees press into my sides and her fist is gripping the waistband of my Levi’s. I adjust the side mirror so I can take a peek at her without her knowing. She squints into the wind and her hair blows about a mile behind us. The tops of her tits jiggle in time with the motor and I like that. I don’t think she’s ever ridden a bike before, judging by the death grip she has on my pants, but I think she’s discovered that a big rumbling, vibrating machine between your legs can be inspiring in more ways than one.

  I flip out the cruise pegs with the toes of my boots, stretch out my legs, lean back against Vivian and just stay in the now. Because right now is pretty damn good.

  We zip past the airport on our right, then the zoo on our left and I’m starting to get a little un-lost, though I have no idea how to get where we’re going or even where we’re going. I try not to think about it because that’s one of the joys of riding. To most people the road is a way to get somewhere. To me the road is somewhere.

  Vivian thinks she’s being sneaky, but I know exactly what she’s doing. She arches her back and leans forward a little. I look in the mirror and see that she has her eyes closed and is biting her upper lip. She squirms in the seat and I feel her tense and shudder against my back, then relax. A biker babe has been born.

  I level with myself in my head before I get too carried away with this cheerleader who has her hand stuck halfway down the back of my pants: I know Vivian’s straight. I just hope she’s not straight and narrow. She wouldn’t be the first straight woman I ever had a good time with. So, I promise myself that I’m going to keep my hands in my pockets and just go along for the ride because you never know what little detours life will take. Plus, as long as I’m being honest with myself, I have a big time thing for redheads and straight women. I have to stop thinking about it or I might let the vibration get to me and that could be deadly.

  I have about five minutes of numbing bliss before Vivian sticks her arm out to the right and punches the air with the heel of her shoe. She leans forward, sets her tits on my shoulders and yells over the engine, “Pull over there!”

  I guess I’ve been in one of those driving fugue states where you just automatically go somewhere but can’t remember how you did it. I look to where Vivian is pointing her shoe and it’s none other than The Glitter Box.

  “You don’t wanna go there!” I yell back, “That’s a titty-bar!”

  She snaps the elastic of my boxers, hard, and yells again, “Pull over there!”

  Then I understand. I pull into the gravel lot of the strip club and kill the engine. I hold the bike upright with both my feet planted on the ground so she can climb off first. I watch my side mirror in silent amusement as she tries to keep her skirt down and get off the back of the bike at the same time. Finally, after a few false starts, she gives up and just throws her leg off over the sissy bar and flashes anybody within flashing distance.

  I kick down the stand, take off my sunglasses and throw my leg off the bike. “Are you late for work?” I ask.

  “What did you just say?!”

  I can’t tell if she’s deaf or pissed. I decide to try for deaf. “I said, do you work here? Are you a stripper or something?”

  I’ll be damned if she doesn’t do it again. She takes her last remaining shoe and smacks me upside the head. I could’ve ducked it. I saw it coming. But I just couldn’t believe she was actually going to whack me with a shoe again.

  A small spark of anger flashes behind my eyes. “You’ve got to stop doing that!” I pry that damn evil shoe from her hand and throw it toward the Dumpster at the side of the parking lot. To my surprise it actually lands in the Dumpster. I take a deep breath, blow out the fire and offer calmly, “You’re not going to have any friends if you go around hitting them in the head all the time.”

  “That’s my last Choo!” she yells, running barefoot for the Dumpster. “The real fuckin’ thing! Do you have any idea how much those cost!”

  “Yeah, well, I’m out forty bucks on Girl Scout cookies. So, what? Suck it up.”

  She’s not about to let it go. She climbs the side of the Dumpster and fishes out her shoe while yelling, “A thousand bucks!” She turns back to me and emphasizes each word with a poke of her shoe, “One. Thousand. Fucking. Dollars!”

  Shit, is she real about that? A thousand dollars for something you can’t even walk in? They must’ve been made out of real leopards or something. I’m astounded. I watch her walk back toward me picking her panties out of her crack before I say, “Do you know how many pairs of panties you could’ve bought for that much money? I mean real grown-up panties. The kind that don’t crawl up your ass every time you move.”

  She stands d
ead-still for a moment and even squints at me a little. Then she actually cracks a smile. She flaps her hand in the air like she’s dismissing a bad thought, and punches me in the arm the way all straight women do when they’re imitating somebody macho, and says, “C’mon, I’ll buy us a drink.”

  She opens the door for me (still being macho, I guess) and I enter the darkness. My boots take turns making sticking and un-sticking noises as I walk up to the bar in the back of the room and I don’t even want to imagine Vivian’s bare feet.

  I sit on a stool, spin around and look the place over. It hasn’t changed much since the last time I was in here. Same smell of cigarettes, booze and sex, same flashing colored lights cutting though the dark, even the same tired girls gyrating around the poles on the raised platform in the center of the room.

  Every time I walk in here it feels as if my I.Q. drops about fifty points and even before I’ve taken a drink my senses dull. There’s so much raw sex vibing in the air I swear I can taste it.

  Tawny is dancing at the front of the stage. Tawny is Ginger’s ex-girlfriend and she’s always hated me. She probably can’t wait to get off the stage and call Ginger with the news that I’m here with another woman. I watch her shake her tits, but she’s had so many do-overs that everything except her tits shake. A 6.5 on the Richter couldn’t even make them jiggle. Personally, I think her money would’ve been better spent on a treadmill or one of those ab crunchers. I’m not usually that cruel about women, especially about their bodies, but I make an exception for Tawny who dances like she needs an exorcism.

  Tawny grabs some poor trucker by the ears and pulls his face smack-dab between her girls, Pebbles and Bam-Bam. Her eyes shoot poison darts at me from over the top of his balding head. I give her a wink and my best go-to-hell smile before spinning back around.

  Vivian stands beside me with her purse hanging off her shoulder and with a discerning expression, she looks around the room. She wrinkles her nose in Tawny’s direction before sitting down. I gloat a little bit over that snub.