Tats Too: The Case of the Devil's Diamond

by Layce Gardner

  “Hello, Mr. Feinberg,”Vivian whispered into her phone. “This is Mrs. Perelli.”

  When I heard her say the name Perelli, a little flash of anger or jealousy or something ugly flashed through me and I guess I bit her because Vivian said, “Ouch!” and thumped the back of my head.

  “Mrs. Perelli! My favorite customer!” the man said.

  I moved my mouth over to her other tit.

  Vivian giggled, “And you’re my favorite funeral director. I’m calling about my casket,” she flirted into the phone.

  I poked my nose further down into her bra. Her nipples were rock hard. I took a little satisfaction in that. She might’ve been flirting with him, but it was me who was making her respond. At least I hoped it was me.

  “I was going to call you tomorrow,” I heard Feinberg say. “I have some bad news and some good news.”

  “Really?” Vivian said in her little girl pouty voice. “I do hope it’s not too bad.”

  “No, not too bad. Just that the casket you had on layaway has been recalled.”

  Vivian dropped her act and said a full octave lower, “Recalled?”

  Feinberg continued, “It was recalled by the factory because it had a leakage problem.”

  “Who the hell recalls a casket?” Vivian all-out growled.

  I went back to the other tit and listened to Feinberg explain, “But the good news is that they sent a newer model of the same casket in its place. It costs more, but I’ll let you have it for the same price. It’s identical to the older model. Except it doesn’t leak, of course. And no scratch.”

  I sucked her nipple into my mouth and she moaned, “Oh, God…” then cleared her throat and spoke again, “I don’t want a new casket, Mr. Feinberg, I want the casket I picked out.”

  I sucked extra hard on one nipple and moved my hand up and pinched her other nipple, because quite frankly I was getting more than a little upset and if I didn’t keep myself fully occupied I was going to lose it completely. Vivian sucked in air between her teeth and gave that little squirm of her hips thing that she does when she’s aroused.

  “But the newer model is identical. And better.”

  “It is not identical.” Vivian raised her voice. “Believe you me, it is not fucking identical! I want the casket I paid for!”

  That was when the lid to the coffin raised and I looked up with a mouthful of left tit and a handful of right tit to see Feinberg looking down at us.

  He looked even more surprised than me.

  Nonplussed, Vivian stared right at his shocked face and spewed, “And you can bet your sweet ass I’m going to demand a full refund!”

  ***

  “Did you see his face?” I snorted between laughs.

  Vivian was oh-so-not amused as she slammed her door and started the car. “Lee Anne, I’m sure that someday I will see the humor in you sucking on my tits in a coffin while a little Jewish man watches, but right now I’m more concerned with a ten-million-dollar diamond and being killed!”

  I tried to choke the laughter back but ended up on my knees in the floorboard. “Is it possible,” I said, holding my belly and gulping air, “to laugh so hard you come?” I burst into loud guffaws and wheezed out, “Because I think that’s what’s happening…to me…right now!”

  Vivian rolled down her window and stuck her elbow outside. She screeched the tires all the way out into the traffic. “Let me know when you’re done,” she said. She laid on the horn at the little old lady in front of us for going too slow and punched the gas, swerving around her.

  I managed to collect myself and catch my breath. “I think I came.”

  “Good for you,” she said with an eye-roll.

  “What’re we going to do now?”

  “We’re going to the factory and getting the fucking diamond back, that’s what we’re doing.”

  “Where is the casket factory?” I asked, grabbing the dash for support around her next ninety mile per hour swerve.

  Vivian pulled a yellow receipt out of her bra (how the hell did I miss that?) and handed it to me. “Cushman Coffins. Las Vegas, Nevada. So…revised plan. We’re going to Mexico—via Las Vegas.”

  This should’ve been the cue for the soundtrack to start playing Elvis’s “Viva Las Vegas.” Unfortunately, I think this B movie had turned into a drama because all I heard was traffic and car horns and something that sounded eerily like myself laughing from far, far away.

  “Right after we die in an explosion about seven hours from now,” she amended. “When we get there, I’ll look up my brother. Last I heard he lived in Vegas. He can help us out.”

  “Brother?”

  “Yeah.”

  “You never told me about a brother.”

  “Yes, I did, Lee. I told you about him when we first met.”

  “I think I would’ve remembered,” I said. “What’s his name?”

  “Lulu.”

  “I definitely would’ve remembered if you’d told me you had a brother named Lulu.”

  “He’s my sister.”

  “He’s your sister?” I echoed.

  She nodded. “Yep. My brother is my sister.”

  “Is he a drag queen or something?”

  She sighed, “Nope. He’s a woman now. I don’t talk about him much. I haven’t even seen him since I was in junior high. His name was Vance, and he’s five years older than me. I wasn’t allowed to mention his name after he left. My psycho bitch mother disowned him.”

  “Why?” I asked, “because he was gay?”

  “He wasn’t gay. He liked girls.”

  “But he wanted to be a girl?”

  “Right.”

  “Does he still like girls?”

  “Sure. I guess. He’s just a girl now.”

  “He’s a lesbian?”

  “Right.”

  Talk about confused. Me, not him. “He liked girls, then he became a she and he still liked girls, so now he, I mean, she is a lesbian?”

  “Right.”

  “Okay, I think I got it now.” Or did I? “Does she have a penis?”

  Vivian shook her head, “No, Lee, she doesn’t. He traded it in for a vagina and tits.”

  “So, she’s just a lesbian. Like a normal woman.”

  “Yes. Except she used to have a penis back when she was a man,” Vivian said.

  “All right, I got it, I think.”

  This brought up a whole pocketful of questions, though. Like when they cut off his penis what did they do with it? Did they burn it? Feed it to the pigs? (That’s what my grandma would’ve done.) Maybe they put it on ice and saved it. All those detached peni are stored in some cryogenics bank somewhere so that women who change to men can have them sewn on? Was there a catalog somewhere where you order a real live frozen penis?

  And who was in charge of making a man’s new vagina? Where did they get the pussy model? Was there a woman out there who was voted world’s prettiest pussy and all the surgeons used her pussy as a model to make their fake vaginas? Did that mean all transsexuals were sporting look-alike pussies? And what about the G-spot? Did they make sure to put that in a man-made vagina? If so, did it cost more? Did they need a consultant? That would be a good job for me. Or maybe they needed a tester. I could test out the new pussies to make sure they were functional.

  These new women could have orgasms, right? Oh my God, what if you got a defective pussy and couldn’t come? Could you sue for malpractice?

  I’d probably know the answers to these questions if I ever watched Oprah.

  I wondered if Lulu was hot. I hoped she was hot. Maybe I could get her drunk and she’d show me her stuff. Or at least answer some of my questions.

  I hoped she was hot.

  Vivian turned in her seat and pierced me with an ice-cold, blue-eyed dagger. “You do realize you’re talking out loud, right?”

  “Oh. Sorry.”

  Chapter Three

  My nose points west and Vivian’s ass points east as we speed along the interstate. A storm percolates behi
nd us. My side mirrors show dark clouds boiling over Tulsa so I pull over at the gas station next to McDonald’s halfway to Oklahoma City. If we’re going to outrun this storm, I need a full tank to do it.

  I pull into the gas station just as a gang of Harleys peel off onto the interstate. They have on matching cuts, but I can’t catch what their rockers say. A couple of them look like women, but it’s hard to tell for sure.

  I nose my bike up to a pump and Vivian slides off the back before I get off. She yanks her purse out of the saddlebag, pulls her hair back and ties it in a knot, then takes her time picking her panties out of her crack. (She spends an inordinate amount of time doing this. Maybe she should consider wearing those thong thingies that are supposed to be in your crack.)

  “What?” she asks.

  “You deviated from the plan,” I accuse.

  “How?”

  “Vacuuming? That wasn’t part of the plan. You were supposed to just wake me up.”

  “Gawd, Lee, leave some room for whatchamacallit, impromptu,” she says with a smirk, crossing her arms over Sonny and Cher.

  “It doesn’t make any sense, Viv. We were getting ready to blow up the house, so why would you vacuum it first?”

  “Exactly,” she stretches the word to about seven syllables. “That’s exactly what I want them to think. Why would I clean a house just to blow it up minutes later?”

  Okay, that kind of makes sense, I guess. “But in your lingerie? And you also didn’t tell me we were going to have sex. What was the reasoning behind the sex show?”

  She flaps her hand in the air. “Oh, that. I was just horny.”

  “On camera? You knew they were watching. Now that sex tape is out there floating around somewhere. If I’d wanted to do a live sex show, I would’ve…” What would I have done differently? “I would’ve been mentally prepared.”

  “Uh-uh. Don’t blame me for that. I told you just to watch. It was your idea to dive in face first,” she reasons.

  “Well, I don’t like it,” I say under my breath.

  “You must’ve liked it a little,” she says, slapping me playfully on the ass. “’Cause it only took you about five seconds.”

  She struts away, leaving me hitched at the pump and goes inside to pay. With cash because we can’t leave a paper trail. I watch her walk away and wonder why she doesn’t wear jeans more often.

  Damn, she looks good coming and going. She should have a warning sign on her back that reads Dangerous Curves.

  She must feel me staring at her ass because without even looking back at me, she throws her hand in the air and flips me off. And I know without seeing her face that she’s smiling.

  I stick the nozzle into my tank and reset the bike’s trip odometer. I like to fill up every hundred miles or so just to be on the safe side. I feel like somebody’s staring at me and when I look over I see a woman shooting arrows at me while she gasses up an older Harley.

  “That shit’s bad for your engine,” I say. I’m just trying to make nice with another woman rider, but I can feel her glare and it isn’t so nice back. Oh, well. I shrug. If she wants to put ethanol in a delicate piece of machinery, it’s none of my business.

  She sticks the nozzle back in its handle, throws her leg over the saddle and starts her bike. The engine belches a couple of times. I don’t say I told you so even though I could.

  She roars off in the direction of the other bikers, farting black smoke the whole way.

  ***

  I lock my wrist at seventy mph so I won’t go over the speed limit. That’s all we need. A speeding ticket written an hour after our alleged deaths. Cars blur by me on the left, all going eighty-five or more and I hate being the turtle. But I don’t dare go faster.

  Delia’s probably found the note by now. I wrote out a note briefly explaining everything and stuck it in Georgia’s diaper. I pinned it up high so it wouldn’t get crapped on. It was pretty simple. It just said: We’re not really dead. Get Chopper and Georgia and wait for us in Mexico City. Now. Hurry. Delia knows me well enough to do as the note says. I hope.

  I miss Georgia already. But I also feel kind of good. I mean only having myself to worry about. Not always checking diapers or warming bottles or getting spit up on. But I miss her. Am I going to be this confused for the rest of my life? Do all mothers feel this guilty?

  I’ll have to remember to buy a Tulsa paper tomorrow. I want to know what they say about us after we’re dead. It would be fun to get some disguises and go to our own funeral.

  A fat drop of rain splatters on my glasses. I wipe it off just in time for three more raindrops to nail me in the face.

  Damn.

  Vivian reaches around and tweaks my right nipple. That’s her signal for me to pull over. She points a manicured fingernail to up ahead and to the right.

  The only thing I can see is a dilapidated barn setting about half a mile back from the road. I look ahead and see the highway stretching out flat with a long haul of nothing. The barn is the only shelter for God knows how many miles.

  I slow down and turn onto the road leading to the barn. My back tire slides in the loose gravel and I have to put one boot down and yank hard on the bars to not dump it. That was a close call.

  I keep my boots an inch off the ground all the way to the barn. I circle round to the back and park the bike so nobody can see it from the highway and the overhanging eaves will give it a bit of shelter.

  Vivian jumps off, grabs her purse and stuff out of the saddlebags and skedaddles inside the barn. I find a loose 1 x 6 piece of siding, pry it off the wall and place it under the kickstand. This is a bike you definitely don’t want to topple over in the mud. It’s way too heavy for us to lift back up.

  Viv and I stand in the doorway of the barn and watch the rain grow heavy. Vivian’s quiet, but I can tell she’s not in a good mood. She has both her feet planted firm on the ground, and her chin thrust out like she’s daring somebody to take a sock at her. I keep my mouth shut and let her sulk on her own.

  Finally, she says without looking at me, “I bought some cigarettes.”

  “We haven’t smoked in a long time,” I reply quietly.

  “I used to smoke like a fish,” she adds, putting both fists on her hips like a gunslinger with an itchy trigger finger.

  I’m not going to dare argue with her right now that fish don’t smoke. Not with that storm brewing behind her icy blue eyes.

  I let my gaze travel out over the pasture and think about how good a smoke would taste. The best thing about smoking is that it gives you something to do to pass the time. What the hell do people do when they’re bored if they don’t smoke? Thank God, boredom’s never been a problem with me.

  “Gimme one of those cigarettes,” I say.

  She pulls a pack out of her cleavage, rips it open and hands one over. I stick it between my lips and sigh. It feels just like an old friend.

  Vivian puts one between her lips and just lets it dangle.

  “Gotta light?” I ask.

  She laughs loudly. “I forgot to buy a lighter.”

  I laugh, too. Looks like neither one of us is going to pick up old habits tonight.

  Our laughter chases away the storm behind her eyes, and she sidles over next to me and loops her arm through mine. She stands on her toes and kisses me sweetly on the lips. I love it when she does that—kisses me out of the blue for no reason at all. She’s just as likely to punch me in the arm for no reason at all either, but I much prefer the kisses.

  She nestles into my arms, rests her head on my shoulder and we just stand still, watching the rain fall over the pasture, and pretending to smoke.

  ***

  By dusk we’re sitting in a dry haystack in the corner of the barn. I have my arms behind my head, and I’ve been passing time watching out the open door as the cars zoom by down on the highway. I’ve seen several beige vans chug by and I keep telling myself it can’t be the Mafia. Even if they figured out we didn’t die in the explosion, how the hell would they kno
w which direction we went?

  I’ve eaten seven bags of 100 calorie cupcakes and spent the entire time thinking about Georgia while Viv painted her toenails different colors over and over. She puts the last swipe of polish on her little toe and thrusts her foot under my nose.

  “What d’ya think of the green?” she asks.

  I pick a stray piece of hay from out between her toes and answer like how I feel, “Your feet look moldy.”

  She examines her foot close-up, squinting at it in the dimness. “I think it’s pretty. It makes my toes look like dragon claws.”

  She leans back in the haystack, wiggles her toes and puts her arms behind her head. I stick the piece of hay in my mouth and chew on it awhile, watching the intermittent flashes of lightning flash across her face. I say hopefully, like I just got a great idea, “You know, we’ve never done it in a barn before.”

  Vivian doesn’t respond. I’m thinking maybe she went to sleep because she can drop off like that with no warning.

  I whisper, “Could be fun. We could pretend I live here on the farm and you’re my long lost city cousin who came to spend the summer. Or you could be a farmer’s daughter and I could be a traveling salesman.”

  She snorts her answer, “I just started my period.”

  The boredom closes in on me, wraps its bony fingers around my throat and I inhale deeply to keep from choking. The sound I make comes out like an irritated sigh. I wish I had a way to light a cigarette.

  “Well, I didn’t plan it that way,” she says through the dark. “It’s not like I knew we were going to fake our deaths, go on the run and I could plan around a moon cycle calendar.”

  I stick my itchy hands behind my head, too. “Did you buy any tampons when you bought cigarettes?”

  She says dryly, “No, Lee, I thought maybe you could put some of your prison skills to good use and make me a sanitary napkin out of hay and cow dung.”

  Uh-oh. She’s bored, too. And when Vivian gets bored sometimes she picks a fight just to have something to do. Well, I can pick fights, too.