Tats

by Layce Gardner

  “Is the rumor true?” I ask. “Do all Englishmen sit down to pee?”

  He pokes me hard with the gun and I stumble back a step. He closes in on me again, pressing the length of his body against mine. “I should fuck you,” he hisses into my face. “And make Vivian watch.”

  “I’ve already seen her do that once,” Vivian says loudly. “And, believe me, it’s not pretty.”

  P.C. turns his head to look at her. In that split second, I seize my only chance. I bring my bound hands up, swiping the gun away and at the same time I bring one knee up right into his crotch with all the oomph I have.

  He doubles over and crashes to the floor, grabbing me by my belt and taking me down with him. The gun falls about twenty feet away. Now we’re both wrestling on the ground trying to get to the gun first. Vivian is in the mix, scrambling too.

  P.C. and I both get a hand on the gun at the same time. Unfortunately, his hands are untied and he hits me across the face with one of them and comes up with the gun pointed right at me with the other.

  We both jump to our feet, me much clumsier than him. He holds his balls with his left hand and has the gun trained on me with his right. Vivian has been thrown backward and is lying to my side with her skirt twisted high. My first thought is that she should’ve been wearing pants because miniskirts just aren’t proper kidnapping and hostage attire. My second thought is that P.C. is now in a rage and is definitely going to kill me.

  “Where’s the bloody money?” he screams.

  “You kill me,” I say without inflection, “and I’ll never be able to tell you where it is.”

  “Then I’ll kill her,” he says, moving his aim down and to my side.

  I hear the thunder of motorcycle engines and time freezes solid. P.C. is too smart to look behind him, but I see panic register behind his eyes. He jerks his gaze to Vivian and one side of his mouth twitches. “Goodbye, dearie,” he says to her.

  I see his intention before he even finishes saying goodbye. I react entirely by instinct and dive headfirst in front of Vivian a split second before he pulls the trigger.

  My head dive sends me rolling and I end up about ten feet from where I began and on my back. I look down to see a rose blooming across my chest. Damn. My new white linen shirt. The pain is suffocating and I can’t breathe right. Getting shot hurts way more than the movies make it out.

  I try to say something, I don’t even know what I’m going to say, but all that comes out is a gurgle deep in my throat. From somewhere beyond my tunnel vision, I hear gunshots and yelling, but I can’t sit up to help.

  I offer up a silent prayer and hope all those Baptists are right about there being a God: Dear God, please don’t let him kill Vivian. God, I know I haven’t talked to you in a long time, maybe never really, but please God if you’re there and you’re listening, don’t let him kill Vivian.

  From out of the darkness, Vivian crawls on her hands and knees over to me and I’m so relieved to see her face looking down at me that I cry. I start to sob big ol’ tears and I want to reach out and grab her, hug her, but my arms just don’t want to move.

  Vivian hovers over me and when I see the sheer horror on her face, I realize how bad off I am. She presses her hands on my chest and presses and presses...

  “You’re going to get all bloody,” I think I manage to say.

  Vivian’s face is just inches from mine and she’s crying real tears too. “Don’t die on me, Lee. Don’t you dare fucking die.”

  Then from out of nowhere Chopper’s face appears beside Vivian’s. “Stay with us, Lee. Keep your eyes open and don’t go to sleep. An ambulance is on the way.”

  “Chopper...” I gasp.

  Chopper takes off his cut and wads it up behind my head. “Hang on, girl. Don’t go anywhere, just hang on.”

  “I’m so sleepy,” I say.

  “Listen to me, Lee,” Chopper begins. “You can’t die now. You’re a fighter, remember?”

  Vivian rips open my shirt. She strips her own shirt off over her head and wads it up. She presses her shirt hard against my chest.

  “Keep talking to her,” Vivian says to Chopper. “Keep talking and don’t stop.”

  Chopper takes my chin in his hands and points my face back to his. “Lee...I want you to know something. I know you’ve been through three kinds of hell. But the thing is, you went through it. And because you did, there’s lotsa kids out there who don’t have to go through the same thing. We need you to stick with us, okay? Your work’s not done. Not by far.”

  “Shit, Chopper...” I say. “Don’t cry.”

  He actually laughs a little. I look over to Vivian and lift my hand to her face. I place my palm on her cheek. She’s so beautiful. Even when her makeup’s all smeared and stuff. I drop my hand and watch her tears mingle with the bloody hand print I’ve left on her cheek.

  “Viv...?”

  “Uh-huh,” she breathes.

  “Remember...what I said earlier? About just wanting to be your friend?”

  “Uh-huh,” she says.

  “I didn’t mean it.” And then I don’t know if I tell her I love her or I just think it. I’m too tired to know the difference. My eyelids are too heavy...

  “Open your eyes, Lee,” Vivian sobs. “Look at me! Don’t leave me, dammit!”

  But I’ve never been so sleepy in my life.

  Chapter Eighteen

  I’m flying. I don’t have any wings and I don’t even have to flap my arms. I soar above the rooftops and church steeples. Tulsa sure has a lot of church steeples. The air is warm against my face and I can fly anywhere I want with just a tilt of my head. I zip through clouds, which aren’t nearly as solid as they seem from the ground. I nosedive down to a city park and circle the treetops, watching the children laugh and play. I zoom down a highway, passing all the cars in the passing lane.

  I fly low over my childhood neighborhood. I see me, a nine-year-old wild child, riding a bicycle. I see a young Delia parked in her car down the street watching me. She’s crying. When I pass her on the bicycle, she starts her car and drives away, swiping at her eyes.

  I fly a few blocks over to my childhood house and get there just in time to see it surrounded by police cars and an ambulance. A gurney is wheeled out of the house with a sheet-covered body on it. It’s loaded into the ambulance and it pulls away without its siren on. Two female police officers come out of the house escorting a tall, skinny girl with wild hair and wilder eyes. They load her into the back of their police car and drive away.

  I follow the police car for a ways, knowing I can’t do anything to stop it, but following it anyway. We pass by a cemetery and I stop. I see a handful of people standing before a gravestone marked Margaret Hammond.

  It begins to rain and I fly to the opposite side of the cemetery to an open gravesite encircled by a lot of people. Vivian stands in the rain apart from the rest of the crowd. She’s surrounded by so much pain and loneliness that nobody can get near her. I see myself standing under a tent wearing a leather jacket and motorcycle boots. Vivian flicks her cigarette away. She laughs out loud and walks over to me. There’s a spark or a current or something that happens as we stand side by side. It’s like a blue electric field of energy swallows us, enlivens us.

  Next, I fly to Delia’s house and find her sitting on her back veranda. She’s wearing a fuzzy robe and no makeup and her hair is a mess. She’s crying into her hands. Chopper walks out onto the porch and wraps his arms around her. She cries into his shoulder and he holds her tight.

  I fly to St. Francis hospital and see Vivian outside on a concrete bench. She shivers against the cold wind. She sits in a tiny pool of sunshine and looks lonely and sad. People pass by and nod hello, but she doesn’t see them.

  I fly up to the hospital’s second story and hover there, looking in one of the windows. I see myself laying in a bed. Machines and tubes and cords are everywhere. I am very pale and very still. One of the machines beeps with each one of my body’s heartbeats while another machine
does all the breathing for me. I hope to God nobody accidentally trips on one of those cords and unplugs it.

  I bang on the window, trying to wake myself up. I bang and bang and bang, but it’s no use.

  Vivian walks into the room just then. She pauses at the foot of my bed and watches my body for a moment. Then she does the sweetest thing. She walks around to the side of the bed and kisses me lightly on the forehead.

  She sits in a chair beside the bed and watches my body. I float through the windowpane and settle down next to Vivian. I know she can’t see me or hear me, but I hold her hand anyway. We both watch my body try to breathe on its own.

  Hours, weeks, days, seconds, Time is one big ball rolling into itself. I open my eyes and sometimes I catch glimpses of Delia or Chopper, sometimes it’s a woman or a man in white, mostly I see Vivian’s face staring intently at me. My eyes close immediately after opening them.

  I open my eyes and this time I manage to keep them open. The sun is bright and hot through the window. White is everywhere and blinding. I have tubes hooked up in every orifice in my body and some man-made holes too. My whole body is one big, dull ache. My lips are dry and stuck together.

  I turn my head and blink at a bright splash of color in a chair next to my bed. It’s Vivian. She’s sleeping and her arm is stretched out over the side of the chair like she’s reaching out to me.

  “Viv?” I croak hoarsely.

  Vivian’s eyes fly open and she rushes to my side with a big, scared smile on her face. “Oh, my God, Lee, you’re awake!”

  “I’m alive?” I ask, because it seems too good to be true.

  “Yeah, you’re alive. And you’re going to be just fine. You got shot in the chest and it got one of your lungs and you’ll have a really bitchin’ scar.”

  “I told you that I’d never leave you,” I say.

  Tears spring to Vivian’s eyes. “You sure didn’t,” she agrees.

  “How long have I been in here?” I ask.

  “Two weeks and three days.”

  Vivian is wearing old gray sweat pants and a baggy T-shirt. Her hair is pulled back in a loose ponytail and her face is clean and shiny.

  “You look beautiful,” I say.

  She laughs. “You must have some brain damage.”

  “I wasn’t too smart to begin with.”

  She hands me a glass of water with one of those little bendy straws and inserts the straw between my lips for me. “Thank you for saving my life,” she says softly.

  It’s weird she thinks that. It was more impulse than thought. I don’t know if you should get thank you’s for impulses.

  She adds, “That’s twice now. The first time you saved my life, I slept with you.”

  I raise my eyebrows at her.

  “But don’t think it’s going to happen again,” she says. “I can’t go around sleeping with you every time you save my life.”

  “Well, I wish you’d told me that before I got shot,” I say.

  We both laugh. God, it feels good to laugh. I’m so damn glad to be alive, I laugh a little too loud and a little too long. It hurts like hell, but even the pain feels good because it reminds me that I’m alive.

  Then, as if cued by some magic button, people fill up the room. They’re all wearing white and I assume they’re doctors and nurses. One tall, skinny guy with glasses constantly sliding down his narrow nose, steps forward and examines me. They’re all doing something to me: Punching buttons, looking at tubes, prodding me in different places. They all talk at once and ask me questions and all I want is a Dr. Pepper.

  The doctor pushes his glasses back up his nose and talks directly to me. He speaks a lot of mumbo jumbo doctorese and I just hope Vivian understands what he’s talking about. Then he says something that jerks me back to reality and sits my ass down hard, “...and your baby is going to be just fine.”

  I look at him and tilt my head to the side just like how dogs do when they hear a squeaky noise. “Baby?”

  “You didn’t know you’re pregnant?” he asks.

  I look to Vivian for help, but she’s as floored as me, staring at the doctor with her mouth hanging wide open.

  “No, sir,” I say. “That’s news to me.”

  “Well, congratulations,” he says. “You’re approximately four months along.”

  Everything else he says from that point on goes absolutely unrecognized by my brain. I push the rewind button in my head and realize that the one time with Houston is the culprit. I’m overwhelmed to say the least. The strangest part is...I feel this little ball of warmth in my chest. And it’s getting bigger and bigger...

  Finally, all the people leave the room and it’s just me and Vivian again. She takes my hand and holds it in hers. Her eyes are all wet and shiny and she asks, “Is it mine? Is the baby mine?”

  I laugh a little, then gasp out loud from the pain. “Oh, don’t make me laugh anymore, Viv, it hurts too much.”

  She leans down and wraps her arms around me as gently as she can. “We’re going to have a baby,” she breathes. “A baby!”

  The next time I open my eyes, Vivian and Delia and Chopper are looking back at me. I smile a little because I realize that everybody I love is standing right here in my room. Three people may not seem like a lot to anybody else, but it’s three more than I knew about last year.

  Vivian sits on the bed beside me and gently holds my hand. I note that Delia and Chopper are holding hands too.

  Delia sits on the other side and lays her hand on top of my leg. “How you feeling, baby?”

  “I feel good,” I say.

  They all three look at each other. Something unsaid passes between them before they all three look back to me.

  “What?” I ask.

  “We have to talk,” Chopper says.

  I feel good enough to walk, but the nurse insists that I leave the hospital in a wheelchair, so Chopper rolls me out the electric doors. I stand up on my own and am so not prepared—Hundreds of people, a whole mob of people, cameras and microphones surround me. A policeman and Chopper grab me by the elbows and escort me to a makeshift podium up some stairs.

  Flashbulbs pop and blind me and microphones are in my face and cameras are thrust just inches in front of me and I wish I was anywhere else but here. I hope to God I don’t faint or something. I search the crowd—

  Suddenly, I feel a hand on my left arm and it’s Vivian. She’s standing right beside me smiling up at me and I know it’s going to be okay. I’ll get through this somehow.

  I take a deep breath and say into the bouquet of microphones, “Uh, hi...”

  I don’t get anything else out before questions are hurled at me so fast and furious, I can’t understand what anybody is saying. I speak into the mics again, “How about one question at a time? Just one at a time okay?”

  I point to a lady closest to me. “How does it feel to be a hero?” she asks, then pushes her mic at me.

  I grin. “I dunno, you’ll have to ask a hero.”

  A man throws a question at me, “Did you know the three men you shot and killed? Did you know they were on the FBI’s most wanted list?”

  “Uh...no. I just knew they had kidnapped Vivian and, uh, I wanted to un-kidnap her. That’s pretty much all I was concerned with.”

  “Tell us your side of the story,” some reporter shouts.

  “Well, it’s all a little blurry, you know. I just knew that Vivian was kidnapped and I tried to help her, but that didn’t work out so good. They threw us in the trunk of a car and dumped us at some old chicken plant. They said they were going to kill us. But when the main guy, I don’t know his name, shot at Vivian...I kinda got in the way. Then we all...fought. I guess I got the gun. And you know the rest of the story.” I nod that I’m finished, then quickly add, “It was a lot more exciting than that at the time. I guess you had to be there.”

  Everyone laughs.

  I point to another reporter and he asks, “What precisely is your relationship with Vivian Baxter? How would you descr
ibe your relationship?”

  Shit. I’m not prepared for that one. Especially since I don’t really know what my relationship with Vivian is yet. I’m all prepared to say “No comment,” just like Chopper coached me, but Vivian reaches out and pulls the nearest microphone to her and says, “I would describe our relationship as good. And if you really need to know more than that...I love her.”

  Holy shit.

  I look at Viv and smile big. “You got some balls, you know that?” I whisper low.

  “I told you I was really the butch one,” she whispers back.

  Chopper leans into the mics and says, “That’s all for now. Thank you.” He grabs me by the arm and a police officer parts the crowd so we can get through. One really pushy little reporter squeezes through and jumps right in my face with: “Have you sold the book rights yet?”

  “What?” I ask.

  “Have you decided which publisher you’re selling your book to?”

  “No comment,” I mumble as Chopper pushes the nosy little guy away.

  I look around for Vivian but she’s gotten lost somewhere in the mix of people and reporters. Chopper pulls me to his truck and opens the door for me, but I push him away. “I got it,” I reprimand. I climb into the truck and he gets behind the wheel. I wait until we get on the road good before asking, “Did I do all right? You think that went okay?”

  “You did great. My guys at the police station are taking care of the paperwork and the details so we should be fine. Everybody’s pretty happy this guy’s gone, especially the British government, so nobody’s going to throw too much of fit.”

  “What’d that guy mean about a book?”

  “Vivian knows all about that shit. You’ll have to talk to her.”

  I nod and ask another, “Where we going?”

  He ignores the question by saying, “Delia and I have decided we’re going away for a while.”

  “No shit?”

  He smiles. “No shit.”

  “She’s married, you know.”

  “For now.”

  “Where you all going?” I ask.