Tats

by Layce Gardner

  “Housecleaning,” she mouths.

  I shut and lock the door and roll back into bed.

  Thirty minutes or so later there’s another knock at the door. This time I open it with a sheet wrapped around me and much lower expectations.

  It’s the manager. He’s balding and somewhere in his late fifties with pants pulled up way too high. Probably because he’s wearing both a belt and suspenders. He has a little chili or something like it globbed on his tie. The glob totally missed the napkin he has tucked into his collar. He, too, looks me up and down and seems disappointed that I’m covered up.

  “Checkout was an hour ago,” he says, licking sauce off his mustache.

  For one serious second I actually entertain the idea of pulling him inside and paying for the room the old-fashioned way before I realize I’d rather be homeless.

  “I’ll be out in a minute,” I say, shutting and locking the door firmly between us.

  I get into a steaming hot shower and scrub scrub scrub everything about Vivian off my skin. I don’t want to smell her, think about her, talk about her, or any fuckin’ thing about her ever again. It takes me until the water runs cold, but I’m pretty sure she doesn’t exist to me anymore.

  I put my dirty old clothes back on and feel a sizeable lump. There’s a roll of bills in my right front pocket. I quickly count the money and realize I’m holding twenty grand in my hand. Thanks, Vivian, I’ve never been paid for sex before, but thanks for making me sink to new depths.

  I’m planning on just walking out the door, but I don’t make it that far. I catch sight of the lipstick heart drawn on the mirror and wild fury coats my brain and acid roils in my stomach. I ball up my fist and pound the mirror. I pound it over and over and over again, screaming, “I hate you! I hate you! Why the fuck did you leave me?”

  Exhausted, I sink to my knees and cradle my cut, bleeding hand. I crawl to the bathroom and yank the roll of toilet paper from its holder. Panting like some damned dog, I wrap the toilet paper around and around my hand to stanch the bleeding.

  “Bitch,” I whisper through gritted teeth. “Look what you did to me.”

  I use the bathroom sink to pull myself to my feet. I crunch through the broken glass, open the door and step out into the bright sunshine.

  The cab drops me off at WalMart and I am so fuckin’ glad to see that my Harley is sitting right where I left it.

  I zip up my jacket, put on my sunglasses, open the fuel cock, stick in the key and fire her right up.

  This is why I love motorcycles more than people. They do exactly what you tell them to do.

  The bike’s loud pipes drown out any thoughts of my own, which is a nice break. I have no idea where I’m going. All I know is I’m going there at eighty miles an hour and I’m going feet first. It must’ve been instinct because when I roll to a stop, I’m parked in Ginger’s driveway. Just here to pick up some of my shit, I tell myself. Just get my shit and leave.

  I pick the house key out of the dead potted plant by the door and let myself inside. It smells stuffy and smoky and like stale alcohol. I flip on the kitchen lights to discover where the smells are coming from. The place is a mess. Dishes are piled shoulder high in the sink and ashtrays are overflowing everywhere. Instead of emptying the ashtrays somebody’s just been stomping out the butts on the floor. Empty Wild Turkey bottles and beer cans and Margarita Mixer cartons are scattered around on every visible surface. Good. Maybe when she has to clean up by herself, she’ll realize I was good for something.

  I walk down the hallway to my room only to find the door open. Clothes are thrown about. The closet doors are open, the chest of drawers is tipped over, the bed sheets are off the bed and balled up in a corner. Looks like Ginger went on a little rampage. I don’t really give a shit. I find three T-shirts and a couple pair of jeans that look less dirty than the rest and roll them into a ball. I get my stack of journals out of the ceiling panel where I hid them. I shrug at everything else. I guess that’s all I really need.

  Except food. I can’t remember the last time I ate anything and my belly is letting me know about it. I go back to the kitchen and open the fridge. Good God. Condiments. Beer. And a leftover half-eaten Subway sandwich. I take out the sandwich and a beer. I open a cabinet door looking for a clean plate. The cabinet is bare. I open the dishwasher kind of hoping that maybe Ginger has actually washed some dishes. It’s empty too. Except for...I pull open the top rack. Wow. It’s a big neon blue dildo. Nine to ten inches long at least. I wonder if they ran it through a cycle already or if it’s still dirty and just sitting in the dishwasher. I don’t touch it just in case. I guess Ginger hasn’t missed me too much.

  I grab a chair and tip it over so all the shit that’s on it dumps to the floor. I sit down heavily, pop open the beer and drain it all. Then I start in on the sandwich.

  I’m only into it a couple of bites when the door opens and Ginger appears in the doorway. She’s wearing some kind of spangly miniskirt. And, if I know Ginger, and I do, nothing underneath. She has on knee-high red boots and a black pleather bra. She takes one look at me, crosses her arms and leans against the doorjamb.

  “Well, look what the cat drug in,” she says. “What happened, Lee? You nail the little straight girl a couple of times and then she leave you?”

  “Nope,” I respond around mouthfuls of teriyaki chicken. “I just nailed her once.”

  Ginger smiles at me and I get a little queasy in my throat. Ginger smiling is not necessarily a good thing.

  She swings right into my space bubble and looks down at me. “You miss me?”

  “Nope.” I take another bite.

  “Not even a little bit?” she pouts.

  “Nope.” I swallow.

  “I bet I know something you did miss.” She reaches behind her back and pops open her bra, throws it across the room and straddles my lap. This position effectively traps me in the chair, puts her huge tits right in my face and now I can’t finish my sandwich.

  “I’m trying to eat here,” I say.

  Ginger squirms a little in my lap and pushes Bert and Ernie even further into my face, and if there’s one thing Ginger knows, it’s me.

  “C’mon, baby,” she coos. Her squirming becomes more insistent. “I need to relax. Why don’t you relax me, hmmm?”

  She sucks on my earlobe. That’s not fair. That’s not playing fair at all. She darts her tongue in and out of my ear and I drop the sandwich. Goddammit. When it rains, it fuckin’ pours.

  I relax Ginger in the chair. I bend her over the kitchen table and relax her again. Then I relax her once more on the floor.

  I pull my pants back up, grab my cleanish clothes and journals and head for the door.

  “Where you going, baby?” she asks.

  “I don’t know. I’ll know when I get there,” I say, slamming the door behind me.

  Like a dog chasing its own tail, I ride in circles. And just like a loyal dog, I go back home to the same master that kicked it.

  The blinking neon lights and smell of desperation hit me as soon as I pull into the parking lot of The Glitter Box. I got nowhere else to be, so I might as well be here. At least there’s some girls to look at and nobody ever bothers me at the bar.

  It hasn’t changed from the last time I was in here with Vivian. Loud music, mostly naked girls swinging their tits, and Dixie’s still slinging the drinks.

  I nurse a beer for the next hour and think about how all tits start to look the same when you see so many of them. I pass the time by giving them all names: Fred & Ginger, Starsky & Hutch, Tom & Jerry, Sanford & Son, Adam & Eve... Even the dancer’s names seem interchangeable: Tawny, Ebony, Brandi, Candi, Buffy and Kitty. And those are just the girls working tonight. I wonder if they became strippers and changed their names, or if they were born with those names and were destined to become strippers. I watch all the lonely men stuff their paychecks in the girls’ G-strings and wonder how many of them are going home to their wives and how many of them are going home to jer
k off in the shower. Or both.

  Ginger comes out on the stage after awhile and I watch her work over a drunk redneck with a pocket of ones. She keeps glancing my way and I know she’s dancing more for me than him. Or maybe that’s just my ego thinking. After a couple of songs she leads him to the private room. She looks back over her shoulder and throws me a kiss. I feel absolutely nothing.

  A woman sits down next to me even though there’s at least three empty barstools to either side. She orders a crantini. I study her in the mirror behind the bottles. She’s probably closing in on fifty. She just looks real good for her age. She’s got it going on strong. She’s stacked pretty good and dresses to show off her Pamela Anderson’s. (With tits that big you only need one name.) She glitters from head to toe in diamonds. She has expensive clothes, expensive hair, expensive jewelry and cheap taste in women if she sits down next to me.

  I turn away from her when she catches my eye in the mirror. We both sip on our drinks and pretend to study the dancers, but I can feel her eyes on me.

  Dixie points at my beer, but I shake my head. “Want another, Delia?” he asks the lady next to me.

  “Sure, doll,” she says. “And give her another beer too.”

  I look at this Delia for the first time straight on and say, “I can buy my own.”

  “Sure you can, sweetie. But why would you do that when Delia will buy it for you?”

  I think it’s a little strange when people refer to themselves in the third person, but I don’t tell her that. I just shrug and look away.

  Dixie brings the drinks back and doesn’t collect any money. This Delia lady must be pretty important because I’ve never seen him run a tab before.

  Delia swivels on her stool to face me and takes her sweet time looking me over. Normally, this would make me a little self-conscious, but I’m not in the mood. In fact, I’m primed for a fight. “See anything you like?” I ask.

  “You have a very dark aura,” she replies.

  “It’s the lighting.”

  “I’ve seen you in here before,” she says, sipping her fancy drink. “You’re Ginger’s girl toy.”

  I think of about a million smart-ass remarks to make, but don’t voice any of them. Probably because I know she’s right. That’s all I was. All I am. Somebody’s girl toy.

  I turn on my stool and look from her huge tits to her face and hear myself say, “Not anymore, I’m not. I’m totally available.”

  Delia picks up her rhinestone-studded purse, stands and orders, “Dixie, you’re closing it down tonight. Put the deposit in the safe and get all the girls out of here in one piece.”

  “Sure thing, Delia.” Dixie nods.

  “Come,” Delia orders me, heading for the door.

  I put my tail between my legs and follow her out.

  Delia beeps her key and an orange Cadillac beeps back. I jerk open its door and hit the passenger seat and try not to think about what I’m getting ready to do. The inside is spacious and comfortable and smells like new leather. Delia scoots behind the wheel and sticks the key in the ignition. I snatch the keys out and hide them in my fist. I lean in and kiss her hard, but she places her palm in the middle of my chest and pushes me away. “You taste like cheap booze and stale cigarettes,” she says.

  I scoot back to my own side. I catch my reflection in the dark tinted window and ask out loud, “Why am I here?”

  Delia seems to sense some deeper meaning to the question and doesn’t answer. She holds out her hand and I give her back the keys. “Don’t worry,” she says, starting the car. “I’ll have your motorcycle brought over in the morning.”

  I’m so fuckin’ exhausted. I lean back in the seat and give in to her driving. I close my eyes, feel a left turn, then a couple of rights and the next thing I know, I’m back in prison.

  I’d just turned eighteen, I was a convicted murderer and I was scared shitless. It didn’t help any that I was the whitest person there.

  I spent the first two months avoiding Teddy and everybody else. It wasn’t too hard to do except during meals. All the white women sat at tables in the middle. The black women took up three tables to my left. The Mexicans were to my right and Indians claimed their space in the very front.

  I grabbed my lunch tray and sat alone at a table in the back. I bit into my grilled-in-butter-flavored-Crisco cheese sandwich. I chewed and swallowed quickly so I didn’t have to actually taste the food.

  I finished my sandwich and started in on my soggy fries. The food tasted like shit, but I never got enough of it. Seemed like I was always hungry.

  I glanced up and saw that all the Mexicans were staring at me. The entire table was staring me down and I had no idea why or what I did. The french fry lodged itself in my throat and I took a quick gulp of milk to wash it down. When I looked back over, Maria flashed her white teeth at me in a smile.

  I had noticed Maria right off, like the first couple days I was in. She was impossible to miss. She had long, curly black hair and curves that made my mouth water and my palms itch. Every night I’d wait until Teddy was snoring, then I’d think of Maria and get busy under the thin blanket. One night I came seven times in a row just thinking about her tits, Frida and Diego.

  I quickly looked away. I didn’t dare smile back at her and the heat of my embarrassment lit up my face like Rudolph’s damn nose. The Mexicans laughed at me. I forced myself to stare at my tray and choked down a few more fries.

  A grilled cheese sandwich flopped down onto my tray. I looked up to see Maria looking down at me over those gorgeous chichis of hers and my heart lurched into my throat. Close up her eyes were black like a shark’s. She devoured me with just one bite of those eyes.

  She flipped her hair, turned and sashayed back to her table. All the Mexicans hooted and hollered and made lip-smacking noises in my direction. I picked up the grilled cheese gift and stuffed half of it into my mouth at once.

  I looked at Maria while I chewed. She pursed her lips and blew me a sexy kiss. Her table went wild. I suppressed a grin and ate the rest of the sandwich without looking at them.

  That night, after Teddy was asleep, I set a new personal best.

  Shower time was my favorite time in prison. I didn’t care if I was naked in front of the guard and I didn’t care if I smelled like household cleansers when I was done. All I cared was that twice a week for ten minutes I got to feel halfway human again.

  I rubbed the suds between my legs, up my butt crack and under my arms, getting all the important parts first. I rinsed that away under the lukewarm water, closed my eyes and lifted my face into the needles of spray and let it massage my head.

  A wet hand reached into mine and grabbed the bar of soap. Maria. She stood before me in all her naked glory.

  I looked around. We were alone except for the guard who stood at the doorway with her back to us. I wondered briefly how Maria pulled that favor in.

  Maria let the bar of soap slip through her hands and drop to the floor. She pressed her body into mine and I took a second to savor the startling difference between her brown skin and my pale skin. She leaned down and wrapped her lips around my right nipple, nipping with her teeth.

  She smiled up at me. “We have seven minutes,” she said.

  I pressed her back against the cold tile wall, buried my face in her long hair and Maria became the very first woman I ever fucked.

  Seven minutes wasn’t a very long time, but it was just long enough to violate several laws of the state of Oklahoma.

  The next day I sat in my spot with my lunch tray and it only took me about ten seconds to realize something was up. I glanced to my right. The Mexicans were quiet, way too quiet. Even Maria wouldn’t meet my eyes.

  A chola stood up from the middle of their table and walked slowly and deliberately toward me.

  Shit. I swallowed my spoonful of rice and it dropped to my belly like a hunk of lead.

  The chola had a faded blue bandanna wrapped around her close-shaved head. She had teardrop tattoos under her ri
ght eye and letters tatted all up and down her arms. She was tall, not as tall as me, but she had a good fifty pounds of bulk on me. She had muscles ripped in places I didn’t even know muscles existed.

  I’d read that when you’re about to be attacked by a bear, the worst thing you could do is run or act scared. You were supposed to stay calm, don’t move, and look it directly in the eyes. I forced myself to look directly into the chola’s sneering face. She edged up next to me, her hips touching my shoulder.

  “Gusta bajar al pozo?” the chola asked.

  I had no idea what she just said.

  She laughed and her table laughed along with her. Encouraged by her own sense of machismo, the chola asked me louder, “Chaca chaca Maria?” She wiggled her hips back and forth, knocking into my shoulder and said it again, “Chaca chaca, huh?”

  I was pretty damn sure what she meant by that so I answered with a clenched smile, “Chaca chaca, yeah, I chaca chaca’ed Maria.”

  The chola’s smile melted. She reached out with one hand and deftly flipped my tray into my lap. I didn’t wipe the slop off. I pressed both my palms on the top of the table and lifted myself to my feet, turning to her.

  She called my bluff with a mighty chest bump that sent me stumbling backward and onto my ass. I was debating whether to get up and take my beating or let her just go ahead and kick the shit out of me on the floor when a big black shadow loomed over us. I froze and watched as Teddy moved her huge bulk between me and the chola.

  Teddy was so immense that even the chola couldn’t disguise the fear in her eyes. She spoke to the chola quietly, so quietly only her and I could hear: “Chaca with her and you chaca with me.”

  The chola took one step back. Two. Then three. She waved her hand in the air, dismissing me and strutted back to her table.

  Teddy reached out her hand and I accepted. She pulled me to my feet, pushed me down into my chair and said, “Now sit yer scrawny ass down and keep your mouth shut.”

  She walked back to her table.