Tats

by Layce Gardner

“This is the life, huh?” Vivian says dreamily. “This is the fuckin’ life.”

  “Personally, I enjoyed the facial more,” I reply dryly.

  My manicurist attacks my nails with a file and a vengeance and I jerk my hand away out of sheer terror. “No, no,” she scolds, “Nail ugly. Give hand. Me make pretty.”

  I give her my left hand, saving my best hand in case she damages the other, praying she doesn’t have a chainsaw under her table.

  Vivian continues in a lazy voice, “You know if they make a movie of our lives, I want Drew Barrymore to play me.”

  “I want Queen Latifah to play me.”

  Vivian gives me a strange look. “Queen Latifah? She’s black.”

  “Oh, I’m sorry. I didn’t realize we were dealing with reality here. Then I choose Hillary Swank.”

  “Okay...” she relents. “I guess she’d look okay in dreads.”

  Vivian’s tits buzz. She digs her cell phone out of its hiding place with her free hand, glances at the caller ID, and bites her lower lip.

  “What’s wrong?” I ask. “Is it him? The Prince Charles guy?”

  A lightbulb pops on over Vivian’s head. She looks at her Vietnamese girl and asks, “Wanna make a quick two hundred bucks?”

  The manicurist’s eyes open wide at the prospect. Both sisters talk excitedly back and forth in Vietnamese, then Viv’s girl asks, “Do what?”

  “Answer this phone and talk dirty to him.”

  “Talk dirty?” the girl asks. Her twin talks to her in Vietnamese and they both giggle with their hands over their mouths.

  “Real dirty,” Vivian says. “Nasty. Sexy. Dirty,” she emphasizes.

  The girl smiles big and grabs the phone, answering, “Hello, big sexy man. Me talk dirty. Sexy nasty dirty.”

  I hear a garbled male voice on the other end.

  The little manicurist giggles and continues, “Me suck big dick. Ten dollar, titty only. Twenty dollar, me suck dick all night long. You likey suck? Me number one sucker. Hundred dollar, me suck dick, sister put thumb up ass. You likey big boy?”

  Dial tone on the other end.

  The manicurist frowns, shuts the phone and hands it back to Vivian. “No likey thumb up ass.”

  That sends Vivian and I both into loud guffaws. The manicurists look at each other and chirp again in their own language. Vivian’s girl holds out her palm, saying, “Me two hundred. Sister one hundred.”

  Vivian pulls the wad of hundreds out of her tits, peels off three hundred dollar bills and hands them to her, exclaiming, “Worth it. That was so fucking worth it.”

  I’m still laughing when my little manicurist exclaims. “Done! Give other hand.”

  I look at my done hand and flex it a few times. It doesn’t look any worse than it did before and it appears to be in working order, so I hand over the other.

  “Think we can we go get my Harley after this?” I plead.

  “Sure,” Vivian promises. “But first...” Then she says the two scariest words I’ve ever heard in my entire life. “...bikini wax.”

  If Vivian can do it, so can I, I keep repeating over and over in my head.

  It’s not helping at all.

  I have allowed Vivian to lead me to a private back room in the spa and now I’m lying on a cold table bare-ass naked from the waist down. I’ve kept on my shirt and my leather jacket and boots in case I decide to flee.

  There’s a pink curtain running down the middle of the room, separating me and Vivian. She’s over there just chatting away like she gets a Brazilian wax all the time. Maybe she does for all I know. Personally, I like my woman parts just fine. I don’t see any need to fuss with them. I fig leaf my privates with both hands and pray for this to be over real soon.

  “You’ll love the feeling, Lee,” Vivian says from behind the curtain. “Smooth and silky.”

  “I don’t want to look like a seven-year-old,” I grouse.

  The door opens and Julia Child walks in. Not the real Julia Child, of course, but a big, older lady who’s the spitting image of Julia Child. She has huge hands with hairy knuckles and a faint mustache on her upper lip. Ironic. She waxes people’s junk, why can’t she do her own mustache?

  Her name tag reads Marquis de Sade.

  Okay, not really, but I wouldn’t be one bit surprised if it did.

  “What’re you wanting today, honey?” Julia Child begins. “Heart? Heart’s are all the rage right now. Triangle? Boring. Landing strip?”

  That’s why they call it a bush, I guess. Because just like a bush you can trim it into cute little shapes.

  “How ’bout a teddy bear?” I ask.

  “Give her the full monty!” Vivian yells from the other side of the curtain.

  “Full monty it is,” Julia says. “Now move your hands, darlin’, let me get a look at you.”

  “I’d rather not,” I say.

  Julia grabs my hands and throws them away. I grimace while she gets her face right down next to it. She looks for a long time.

  “Gonna need more wax!” she yells over her shoulder.

  “Hah!” Vivian barks.

  “Is this going to hurt?” I whisper.

  “No worse than a good spanking,” she answers with a wink.

  Julia grabs a bottle of talcum powder with one hand and with her other hand she grabs my right ankle and yanks my leg up in the air. She shakes baby powder all over me. Then she grabs my other ankle and throws that leg up above my head and shakes some more. When she’s done, she slaps me hard on the ass and grins like she just floured me and next she’s going to throw me in a skillet of hot grease.

  She grabs a huge pot of hot wax and spreads it all over with what looks like an ice cream stick. It might be a tongue depressor, but I can’t let my mind go there right now.

  Julia lets the wax cool for a moment, then looks at it closely. She gets her nose right down next to it and blows on the wax. I’m about to make a blow job joke until Julia grabs a corner of the wax and rips the funny right out of my head.

  Holy shit! I bolt upright into a sitting position. I don’t know if I scream or just gasp, but the pain is fucking intense. Tears spring to my eyes. I look down at myself. My God! I look like a plucked chicken.

  I look up at Julia. She’s holding the dried strip of wax up like it’s a scalp and she’s a triumphant Indian war chief.

  I collapse back onto the table and take a deep, ragged breath. “Thank God, that’s over with,” I gasp shakily when I can finally talk again.

  “Not quite, darlin’,” Julia says. “Turn over.”

  “Turn over?”

  “That’s what I said, honey, flip over. You’ve paid for the Hollywood, so you’re getting the Hollywood.”

  “What’s a Hollywood?” I ask with the appropriate amount of alarm.

  “I’m going to clean your basement,” Julia says.

  “Oh no...” I protest not quite fast enough. Julia grabs my hips and flips me over like I’m a crepe in a pan. And before I can say nether regions, she has my cheeks spread and wax slapped on my nether regions. A few seconds and one mighty tug later, I’ve gone from hair to bare.

  There’s a delayed reaction. I’m thinking that didn’t hurt at all but it takes two or three seconds for the pain in my ass to register in my brain. I bite my hand and pound my forehead on the table to keep from screaming. I cannot believe women put themselves through this. I’d rather be waterboarded.

  Julia slaps my ass again and says, “Remember no sex for forty-eight hours.”

  “No sex? But tomorrow’s homecoming!”

  Julia wags her finger in my face. “Licky licky, yes. Sexy sexy, no.”

  “Oh. Well. I can live with that,” I say, rolling over onto my back.

  But before I can even sit up, the door bangs open and a man is filling the doorway. He’s dressed in a three-piece expensive-looking suit and penny loafers.

  “No men allowed in here!” Julia scolds.

  I know who he is in one glance. It’s Prince Charles, the gu
y from IHOP, the woman-beater, the man who no like thumb up ass. He looks at my face. He looks at my now bare crotch. He says in his sissy-girl accent, “Where is she?”

  “Run, Vivian!” I yell, jumping off the table and grabbing for my boxers and pants at the same time.

  He steps in the door and makes a lunge for me, but Julia blocks him with her big body, shouting again, “You are not allowed in here, sir!”

  He throws her against the wall. I make a quick decision that there’ll be plenty of time for pants-putting-on later. I grab the pot of hot wax and toss it at him.

  The wax splashes across his crotch, but I don’t stick around for the grand finale. I rip open the curtain to Vivian’s side.

  She’s gone.

  I jump over the table and bolt out the open door and down the hallway with Prince Charles’s screams chasing me out. I hit the lobby just in time to see Vivian hauling bare ass out the door. Good. I’m not the only one. I try to cover myself with my pants, slamming against the glass doors, spilling onto the sidewalk and exposing my whitest parts to everybody on the street.

  I run through the middle of all the double takes and pointing fingers and make it into the passenger seat of the Pinto just as Vivian starts the car. She guns the engine, jerks the wheel to the left, trying to unparallel park, but ends up taking the taillight of the car in front of us halfway down the block.

  After a couple of heart-thudding turns I look over at Vivian. She looks back at me.

  She grins. “Don’t I always show you a good time?”

  “I’ve had better times with my pants off,” I mumble, trying to get my damn boxers on over my boots.

  Vivian slams the Pinto to a screeching stop in the middle of the street, damn near causing a four-car collision and throws it in park. She leans over the seat, sticking her bare ass in my face while she fishes a skirt out of the jumble of clothes on the back floorboard.

  I want to bite her on the ass so bad. I don’t know if it’s lust, adrenaline or anger or if there’s even a big difference between the three. But before I can act on my impulse, she pops back up, wiggles into a skirt and takes off again just like she does this every day.

  Vivian drives, going nowhere as far as I can figure, and I have my feet up on the dashboard and my hand down the front of my jeans. Vivian was right. It is smooth and silky. And calming. I’m just starting to relax a little when Vivian says politely, “Can you please get your hand out of your pants?”

  “I don’t want to. It’s soothing.”

  She looks at me sternly. “I can’t focus on driving while you’re over there masturbating.”

  “I am not masturbating. I’m just...feeling it. I can’t help it. Like how when you were a kid and you lost a tooth. You just keep poking the hole with your tongue.”

  “You start poking the hole with your tongue and I’ll wreck for sure.”

  I’m the first to laugh. Vivian joins in and just to be nice, I take my hand out of my pants. For now.

  “I am BIG. It’s the pictures that got small.”

  Norma Desmond’s giant face looms in front of me. I sit up, take my hand out of my pants and click off the TV.

  I reorient myself. I was watching TV and fell asleep. Gloria Swanson in Sunset Boulevard woke me up. We’re at the Crowne Plaza hotel in downtown Tulsa. Vivian checked us in to the Presidential Suite (two bedrooms, sigh...), passed out some hundred dollar bills, then shut herself in her room with the bags of money.

  She left me in my room and the rest of the suite. The place is huge. Anne Frank’s entire family could live in just my bathroom.

  I wonder what time it is. How long was I asleep? I look at the window. It’s dark inside and out. And way too quiet.

  I get up and walk silently on the plush carpet to Vivian’s room. I press my ear against the door. I don’t hear anything.

  “Vivian?”

  Nothing.

  I open the door to her room and peek in. Sure enough, she’s passed out on her bed, lying catty-corner, arms flung out and legs spread. The only way I know she’s breathing is because she’s snoring.

  I sit on the edge of her bed and watch her sleep. With her makeup off and her hair every which way, she looks even more beautiful. I don’t think she knows it, though. She can’t know it or she wouldn’t work so hard to cover it up with all those artificial cosmetics.

  She’s left an opened bag of one hundred calorie cupcakes near her feet. I munch on one while I watch her. I smile to myself because I know she’s going to wake up and be all mad, ‘Who the hell ate my cupcakes? Where are all my cupcakes?!’

  I eat them anyway. Then I see a lone blue pill laying near her hand. I pop it into my mouth, too. I figure the worst thing that will happen is that I go back to sleep.

  I lie on my stomach and turn on the TV. I turn it down low so I won’t wake up Vivian and flip through the channels. A million channels in this hotel and I can’t find anything worth watching.

  I turn it off and open the mini bar. I take out all the little bottles of booze and line them up on the bed. I’m a sucker for miniature things.

  I start with the browns. When I’ve drunk all the brown stuff, I start in on the clear. It doesn’t seem like you’re actually drinking that much when it comes in tiny bottles. I count them. Eight. Eight little bottles.

  I lie on the bed beside Vivian and watch her eyes flicker back and forth under her eyelids. I wonder if her dreams are as vivid as mine. Dreams. I haven’t had a good dream in a long time. When I was a little kid I always dreamed about flying. Zooming down low over clotheslines and rooftops, peeking in windows, the feel of no gravity and being able to go anywhere and everywhere. That incredible rush of freedom and infinite power. Now all I have is nightmares. Nightmares filled with darkness, a crushing weight that pins me to the floor, loud voices and shattering explosions. For a long time now I’ve approached nighttime with dread and foreboding.

  Getting to sleep in prison isn’t a cakewalk either. The screaming, talking, coughing, fighting and frenetic grasps at hurried lovemaking are the sounds I lived with and slept through for twelve years. Now it’s the silence I find hard to deal with.

  I hope Vivian is having a nice dream. A good dream. A fluffy, marshmallow dream.

  When I was about three or maybe four years old, Mom used to sneak into my bedroom extra early in the morning while I was sleeping and stuff marshmallows down the back of my panties. I’d find them in the morning and show them to her. Mom told me I was a special, magical child whose dreams were real. That when I dreamed of flying high in the clouds, it was really true. And that’s why when I woke up I had bits of clouds down my panties. I called them my fluffy dreams.

  I stuff a handful of little cupcakes down the back of Vivian’s panties. Maybe she’ll have fluffy dreams.

  Between the tiny booze and the tiny blue pill, I’m starting to relax and that’s a good thing. I was numb before I met Vivian and I didn’t even know it. She makes me feel. Sometimes she makes me feel happy, sometimes she makes me feel sad, lots of times she even makes me feel mad. But, at least she makes me feel. I like that.

  Vivian makes me laugh. I like that, too. I’ve laughed more in the past couple of days than in my whole life. She surrounds me with a big bubble of laughter and like that old John Travolta movie, The Boy in the Plastic Bubble, nothing bad can get in.

  I wonder what life would be like if Vivian and I did get together? I think the future with Vivian would be fun. Even the little things would be fun. I’d go off to work every morning and when I got home, Vivian would be in the kitchen making supper. I’d walk in and give her a kiss and say something goofy like “Mmmm...that smells good.” And she’d say, “What smells good? The dinner or me?” And I’d laugh while I scrubbed all the oil and grease off my hands at the kitchen sink. Then Vivian would hand me a pickle jar and ask me to open it for her. And I’d open it even though I know she could probably open it herself, but it’s just her way of telling me she loves me.

  I think I’m in lov
e with Vivian. I mean, I must be if my fantasy revolves around pickle jars and I have the dream when I’m wide awake. I better not think about love. I should just throw that thought away right now. I’d be better off just thinking about laughing with her. Or even sex with her. Much safer. And healthier in the long run.

  Vivian has pretty feet. And ankles. I bet she hates her feet, but I think they’re pretty. They look way better out of those high heels she likes to wear so much. Those shoes are sexy, yeah, but her feet are even sexier unconfined and free. I bet she’d like to have her toenails done. I could paint them for her. She’d probably sleep through the whole thing. I bet she’d like her feet then.

  I grab her red bag and dump out all the girlie shit. I pull out five bottles of nail polish from the mountain of junk. Which color should I use? I can’t make up my mind. I don’t know if I should go with something pale and unassuming or something bright and bold. I contemplate the choices for a long time before realizing that I don’t have to make a choice. I can use them all. I’ll just paint each toenail a different color. It’ll be like looking at a bouquet of beautiful balloons.

  I open the first bottle. I’m going to take my time and paint each one like I’m a famous artist and the toenail is my canvas.

  When she wakes up, she’ll be so surprised and happy.

  Chapter Six

  Vivian stands on the far side of the room with her back to me, looking out the open window. The lights are off and the room undulates in moonlit shadows. A light breeze teases the curtains back and forth. I stand absolutely still, admiring her. She’s fresh out of the shower, wet hair, and wearing only a thin, short silky robe. She looks so tranquil and peaceful. I make a small noise in my throat so she’ll know I’m there, but she doesn’t turn around. Instead, she unties the belt and lets the breeze open her robe and caress her naked body.

  I softly walk up behind her and press my body close to hers. If she doesn’t want this to happen now is the time for her to say something. But she doesn’t. She leans back against me and tilts her head back onto my shoulder.

  I reach around her and lightly trace my fingers from one hip to the other. She relaxes even more. My hand moves upward and I caress under each breast. She moans deep from the back of her throat. Encouraged, my other hand—