Tats

by Layce Gardner

  “Guess I’m ready,” I say lamely, sitting on the end of the bed and pulling on my boots. “What’re we going to do?”

  “You can’t wear that shirt,” she says, smacking her lips on a tissue. She roots around in her suitcase, finds what she’s looking for and throws it at me. “Try one of mine on.”

  I look at what she threw at me. I hold it up and examine it from every angle. What is she, nuts? Has she not been paying any attention at all?

  “I can’t wear this,” I say. “It’s not even a whole shirt. Just pieces of a shirt. Not even the best pieces.”

  “It’ll look great on you,” she replies. “Less bloody, anyway.”

  “This won’t even cover up my sportsbra.”

  “God, you’re so helpless. You don’t wear a bra with that. The support is built in.”

  I turn it over in my hands. “Where?”

  “Put it on,” she orders.

  I hold this thing she calls a shirt up in front of me and look in the mirror.

  “That’s the back. Turn it around,” she sighs.

  Now she’s tapping her foot at me and I’m getting nervous because I remember how lethal she can be with footwear so I disappear back into the bathroom. I strip off my T-shirt, wife-beater and sportsbra and look at myself in the mirror. My boobs are actually okay, just smallish. I press them together with my palms and hold them up as high as I can. That kinda hurts, but it’s the only way I can create cleavage.

  I throw her shirt over my head and pull it down. It’s tight. Way too tight. I look in the mirror again. Yep. The shirt’s so tight, what boobs I did have are now mushed down to oblivion. I roll my eyes at my reflection and head back to Vivian.

  When I walk in the room, Vivian looks right at my chest and knits her eyebrows. I turn beet red from head to toe.

  “I really really really feel uncomfortable in this.”

  “You don’t look half bad,” she says.

  “Which means I don’t look half good either. I couldn’t find the support.”

  “You just need to poosh them up some,” she says.

  “Poosh?” I ask. “Did you just say ‘poosh’?”

  “Poosh ’em up some,” she explains, cupping her own tits up high as an example.

  “My boobies don’t poosh.”

  “Boobies?” she laughs. “Did you just say boobies? Four-year-olds have boobies. Grown women have tits.”

  “Some grown women do,” I retort. “Some don’t.”

  “Oh, for chrissakes, you have tits. You’ve just been binding them down for too long.” Then she actually sticks her hand down the front of my shirt, cups my boobie in her hand and pooshes it up. “See?” she says, already pooshing up the other one too. “Voila! Tits!”

  I look at myself in the mirror. She’s right. I have cleavage. The shirt is squeezing them high and hard and I actually kind of have tits.

  Here comes her hand again. “Now if you can just make your nipples hard—”

  “Stop it!” I yell, slapping her hand away. “Don’t do that unless you mean it.”

  She laughs and flops down on the bed. “You amuse me,” she says, “you truly amuse me.”

  “Well, I’m happy you find me so amusing,” I say. “What’re we getting ready to go do?”

  “Go eat,” she says and rolls off the bed with a peppy bounce. She walks to the window and peeks her nose through the curtain, looks around, closes it and heads to the door. She flings it open and steps outside, blinking in the hot sun.

  She stops and scans the parking lot. “Which El Camino is yours?”

  “IHOP is my favorite sit-down restaurant in the whole entire world. Endless coffee, six different types of syrup, you can even get pancakes shaped like Mickey Mouse’s head if you want,” I ramble while Vivian fixes her lipstick in my rearview mirror.

  I score a parking spot near the front of the restaurant and get out of the car. I’m at the front door before I realize Vivian is still in the car. Now she’s using the rearview mirror to put on mascara. I cross my arms. I tap my foot. I count to twenty and back again. If I had a watch I’d look at it. I finally get tired of waiting and go on in.

  Inside smells like pancakes and bacon and syrup and coffee and old women’s perfume. I love it. I could just wallow in the smell and rub it all over me. If somebody would bottle this smell, I’d buy a whole case of it. Eau de IHOP. It reminds me of my grandma, my mom’s mom. I only met her a few times and she died when I was six, but I remember her smell. She told me once that when she was a girl she couldn’t afford perfume, so she would dab vanilla extract behind each of her ears. She said it drove the boys nuts and virtually guaranteed that she’d get her ears cleaned every date.

  A cute little brunette waitress with cat eye glasses and naturally pouty lips looks from my tats to my tits and up to my face. “Just one?” she asks.

  “No, two. She’ll be here in a minute.”

  The waitress grabs two menus from the podium and says, “This way.” She guides me to an empty booth halfway back. I scoot in and pick up the menu. “Pot of coffee, please,” I order.

  “Just be a minute,” the waitress says, her eyes lingering on my tats.

  She flips her hair and walks off toward the kitchen. I’m checking out her swing when Vivian opens the door and walks in. I wave at her and she starts toward our booth with a swing that puts the waitress’s to shame.

  Damn. I haven’t seen her for all of five minutes and I get that little shock of how sexy she is all over again. As she passes by each table, all the men turn their heads and follow her with their eyes. She doesn’t seem to notice the stir she’s causing. She’s probably used to it.

  Vivian hovers over me and orders, “Switch me sides.”

  “Why?”

  “I don’t like having my back to the door,” she answers.

  “Okay, whatever...” I slide into the opposite side and Vivian scoots into my warm spot.

  “You know what you want?” I ask, pushing a menu across the table to her.

  She flicks the menu away with a swish of her hand. “Pie. Lemon pie.”

  The cute waitress delivers our coffee and I order pie for Vivian and a country breakfast and Mickey Mouse pancake for myself. This time when the waitress walks off I look at Vivian instead. She takes the sunglasses off the top of her head and puts them on while I pour our coffee. I watch her dump about ten packets of sugar in hers before taking a sip. She peers around the restaurant through the brown lenses. I can’t see her eyes and I hate that. It’s so hard to tell what someone’s thinking when you can’t see their eyes.

  I drum my fingers on the table and when it becomes all too apparent that Vivian isn’t going to say anything, I try to make conversation. My social skills leave something to be desired and I hate small talk, so I try to lead off with something a bit more meaty. “So...you’re a mistress for a living. And you came back here for a funeral?” I ask.

  Vivian doesn’t answer or even give any indication that she heard me.

  “How long are you staying? In Tulsa? In the U.S.?”

  That question goes unanswered, too.

  “What did you do right after high school? I mean, you didn’t go straight into...your current occupation, did you? Did you go to college?”

  No response.

  “I didn’t go to college. But I did get the reading list for all the classes from OU. Read all the books twice. I guess you could say I have a virtual master’s degree by now.”

  At this point, I still don’t know if she hears me or not, so I throw a weird question in just to see if she’s listening: “How old were you when you lost your virginity?”

  “Eighteen,” she says, still not looking at me. “I have a Master’s in English Lit from OU, which qualifies me to do absolutely nothing, and I’m going to be in the States until I leave.” She pulls her glasses down to the tip of her nose with her index finger and looks at me over the rims. “How long have you been out of prison?”

  I gulp hard, burning my tongue
on the hot coffee. I grab for my water and gulp that too hard, also.

  Vivian pulls a business card out of the depths of her cleavage and places it on the table between us. I only have to glance at it to know what it is.

  “Your parole officer’s card was in the visor.”

  I pick up the card and without looking at it, put it in my back pocket. Now it’s my turn to not look at her.

  “You don’t have to tell me about it,” she says, pushing her glasses back up. “I don’t really care. I just think it’s weird that you lied to me is all. And, perhaps, symptomatic of something deeper if you’re going to lie about little shit like that.”

  “Sorry,” I say. “People just tend to freak a little when they find out I was in prison. Lying about it’s become a habit.”

  The waitress brings our food and places all my plates around me and Vivian’s little pie plate in front of her.

  “Nice tats,” the waitress says to me. She reaches out and runs one light finger over my tribal flame. “Who did ’em?”

  “Prison,” Vivian cuts in. “She got them in prison.”

  The waitress takes a step back, forces a gritted teeth smile at Vivian, then turns and walks like she can’t get away fast enough.

  “A year and a half or so. I’ve been out a year and a half,” I admit.

  Vivian leans forward and rests her tits on the top of the table, and I try not to stare directly at them. Now I wish I’m the one who had on sunglasses.

  “Listen, Lee, if we’re going to do this thing, then we can’t be lying to each other. Understood?”

  “Thing?” I take a quick sip of water. “What thing? I mean, I’m not saying there won’t be a thing, but do we have to call it a thing right now? I just met you.”

  Vivian shakes her head a tiny bit and crinkles her nose in thought. “Let’s just call it an adventure. You wanna go on an adventure with me, don’t you?” She takes away her tits, adding, “I mean, unless you have something better to do.”

  Adventure. I guess that’s a good way to look at it. I glance at Sonny and Cher and hear myself say, “Sure.”

  “Okay then, it’s settled. Let’s don’t lie to each other anymore.” She takes a bird-size bite of her pie and says, “Seventeen.”

  “Seventeen what?” I say with my mouth full of pancake.

  “I was really seventeen when I lost my virginity. I just wanted you to know what it felt like to be lied to,” she says.

  “You’re right. That really stings,” I say with maximum sarcasm.

  We’re quiet for a long time. I shovel as much food as I can in my mouth, hoping to soak up all the excess alcohol left in my system. Vivian, still looking around at everyone else, just plays with her pie.

  “Aren’t you going to eat?” I finally ask.

  Vivian doesn’t respond.

  I stab part of my pancake with my fork and hold it across the table to her, asking, “Wanna eat Mickey’s ear?”

  “I’m a vegetarian,” she replies dryly.

  “Vegetarianism implies a healthy lifestyle. Lemon meringue pie does not.”

  “If you want a bite of my pie just ask,” Vivian says flatly.

  “Can I have a bite of your pie?”

  She pushes the plate toward me.

  I stab a big forkful of pie and I guess I underestimate the size of the bite I’m about to take and half of it falls off my fork and ends up in my new cleavage. Vivian quickly leans across the table and scoops up the meringue with her finger and pops it in her mouth.

  Wow. What the hell was that? I look around and see that every man in the whole restaurant is staring at us open-mouthed.

  “Men are staring,” I whisper.

  “Uh-huh,” she agrees.

  “Well, I don’t like it when men stare at me,” I explain.

  “They’re not staring at you. They’re staring at your tits,” she explains back.

  “My tits are me.”

  “Don’t be so naive,” Vivian says. “Your tits aren’t you. They’re just garnish.”

  She reaches deep into her big red bag and pulls out an aspirin bottle. She opens it and scatters a few different colored pills across the tabletop. She picks out a blue pill, swallows it and puts the rest back in the bottle. I don’t ask.

  I eat half the pie in silence while Vivian tears her paper napkin into tiny little confetti pieces and nervously looks around. Something’s going on with her, but I haven’t known her long enough to know what exactly.

  “You mad at me?” I ask. “I said I was sorry.”

  “Don’t be such a girl,” she says.

  “I am a girl, though, you know.”

  “You don’t have to act like it. Talk about something else. Anything, just talk.”

  Okaaay. She’s so nervous and fidgety that I hope whatever pill she just took kicks in quick. If she wants me to talk, so be it. Rambling is what I do best anyway. So, ramble I do. “I like IHOP. I’d have to say it’s my favorite. No matter where you are, there’s an IHOP and the food is always good. I like that kind of knowing. You walk into an IHOP you know exactly what you’re getting.”

  I pause for a bite.

  “Uh-huh,” she mumbles, not looking at me.

  I swallow and ramble on, “I love to ride my bike to out-of-the-way places. Just head out on a county road with no destination in mind and just see where I end up. You know? You find some of the best eating places that way. I love those small town greasy little diners that’re tucked back out in the middle of nowhere, don’t you?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “I like to ride and just end up in some little town in some little diner where all the locals gather. I like to eat with the cowboys, farmers and those big-haired, big-boned women. I like to hear them talk and smoke and spit. I like to see their bellies dance when they laugh. I like to guess what they do for fun, and I like to overhear what makes their lives worth living. I like it that the old men always call me ma’am and never mistake me for a man even though I’m wearing hats and tats and boots. They know a woman when they see one. I just love the people I come from. Don’t you?”

  “Sure,” Vivian says.

  I shake my head and take another bite of pie. “I can’t believe you were over there in England. Why’d you ever wanna go there? All those bad teeth. I can’t understand what they’re saying half the time between those bad teeth and that accent. You know what’s weird? Listening to a black person speak with a British accent. It just sounds wrong. And when men speak with a British accent they sound like sissies. I mean, music aside...I love the Beatles and the Rolling Stones as much as the next person, but England’s full of wimpy guys. Why, just one ordinary Oklahoma farm woman could single-handedly beat up ten of those English boys. And outdrink ’em, too. My grandma lived through the Great Depression and the Dust Bowl at the same time. She drank moonshine that she made in her barn and she slaughtered her own food. She could’ve won that Revolutionary War all by herself. For instance,” I say, pointing my fork at a very proper looking man in a dark business suit, “that man there with the sissy accent. My grandma could eat him for breakfast and still be hungry.”

  Vivian follows the trajectory of my fork point over her right shoulder and sharply inhales. I don’t even have her pie finished, but she slaps a twenty on the table and harshly whispers under her breath, “We’re leaving. Now.”

  “But I’m not finished,” I mumble with my mouth full.

  “That’s why you should always eat dessert first. Now put your fork down.”

  I do.

  “Nonchalantly,” she admonishes, putting a period at the end of each syllable.

  I pick the fork up again and ease it back down to the table, resisting the silly urge to whistle.

  “Follow me.” She holds a menu over her face and cuts elaborate zigzags around the tables until she’s out the front door.

  As soon as we’re out the door, Vivian snatches the keys out of my hand.

  “Hey!”

  “You drive like an old woman
,” she says, opening the door and sliding behind the wheel. “Get in!”

  I manage to hop in the passenger seat a split second before she squeals in reverse. She slams the car into drive and burns rubber tearing out of the lot. I slam the door shut just as she turns onto the main road.

  “What the hell, Viv?”

  “Light me a cigarette,” she orders. “I can’t drive without a cigarette.”

  Vivian screeches my car into the Redman Motel and whiplashes up alongside room number seven. The door is partially ajar and the lights inside are on.

  “Shit. They’ve been here,” she whispers.

  I take her cue and whisper back, “Who? The maid?”

  She flicks her cigarette out the open window and says quickly, “The less you know, the better. You have a gun?”

  “Noooooo,” I answer. “You’re scaring me, Vivian.”

  “You have a knife?”

  “Sure,” I say. I dig deep into my right front jeans pocket and pull out my pocketknife with the red maltese cross.

  Vivian looks at it and rolls her eyes. “Not a pocketknife, goofball. A real knife.”

  “This is a real knife. A real live pocketknife.”

  Vivian sighs through her nose and slips off her stiletto heels. She hands me one shoe and grasps the other by its toe. She quietly gets out of the car and creeps up to the door barefoot, wielding her shoe like a deadly instrument. She flattens her back against the outside wall.

  I roll down my window and whisper as loud as I can and still be whispering, “I think you’ve seen too many action movies.”

  She puts her finger to her lips and hushes me. Then in one swift motion, she turns, kicks the door wide open and assumes a fighting stance with her shoe held high. She looks around and then disappears inside.

  I wait a few tense moments, tapping the toe of her shoe into my palm, then just as I’m starting to get really worried, Vivian sprints back out of the motel room with an armful of clothes. She throws them through my window, dumping them over my head and dashes back inside.

  I mostly unbury myself just in time for her to throw more clothes through my window. She hauls ass back in the car, slams it into gear and is out of the lot before I can even get her panties off my head.