Tats Too: The Case of the Devil's Diamond

by Layce Gardner

  She’s as creeped out as me. We sit on the bike for a long moment, looking both ways up and down the street. Where are all the people? At dark they pull the blinds and roll up the sidewalks?

  I don’t even hear anything except my motor ticking down and the wind whistling through the motel sign as it squeaks back and forth on its hinges. A lone tumbleweed blows down the dusty, deserted street.

  Okay, not really, there’s no tumbleweed. But it sure looks like there ought to be.

  “It’s got a real High Plains Drifter ambiance,” I say to Vivian.

  “Just go get us a room if they’re open,” she says, “I’m frickin’ exhausted.”

  ***

  I make a deal with myself as I squeak open the door to The Pearly Gates: If a guy named Peter is working the desk, I’m out of here.

  But there’s nobody at the front desk. I ding the rusty bell a couple of three times and wait. My eye catches a faded yellow flyer duct-taped to the top of the counter, advertising: See the world’s largest collection of freaks! Only five dollars!

  My eyes mosey around the dingy room, taking in the cracked Naugahyde chairs repaired with duct tape, the broken plate glass window repaired with cardboard and duct tape, and the roll of duct tape sitting on the counter. It reminds me of that old joke: If God would’ve had duct tape the world would’ve been made in five days.

  Then I see a hand-lettered sign duct-taped over a door in the back. It reads: Freak Exhibit. Enter if you dare. $5.00.

  What the eff? Life keeps getting weirder and weirder. Just a couple of days ago I was feeding my baby and eating a peanut butter sandwich and today I’m smack-dab in the middle of a Stephen King novel.

  “Anybody here?” I call out and ding the bell one more time.

  Nobody answers. I keep looking around the room waiting for something to jump out at me, but when nothing does, I decide to investigate. I walk quietly toward the Freak Entrance and turn the doorknob. The heavy door groans open like the lid to a crypt.

  Okay, maybe it’s more like a squeak, but still…

  Once my eyes adjust to the dim light, I see it’s just a narrow room, longer than it is wide, with free-standing metal shelves. Glass jars of yellowish, sluggish liquid line each shelf. Jars and jars and jars, some big, some small, all stinky.

  I walk down the aisle peering at the jars. Each one holds its own special brand of unique grotesqueness. Some of the stuff I recognize. There’s a whole shelf of just two-headed critters: snakes, lizards, chickens without feathers—

  —A set of eyeballs peers back at me from one of the jars. The eyes are deep-set into a wrinkled old face. The face is wearing glasses and there’s a cigar sticking out of the grinning mouth. The eyes blink—

  —And I stumble backward damn near jumping clear out of my boots. I run for the entrance door, but it’s shut itself behind me. I’m grappling for the doorknob when a voice calls out, “Whoa there! Didn’t mean to scare you!”

  I wheel around and see George Burns walking toward me. I flatten my back against the door and take a deep shaky breath. I blink a couple of times because didn’t George Burns die already? Like when he was 104 years old or something? This little man looks like he could be that old, except he looks mostly alive. He’s got those funny round black glasses and an unlit cigar stuck in the corner of his mouth. Plus, he’s wearing a white three-piece suit with a red bow tie and doesn’t appear to be sweating. At least he’s only got one head.

  I shut my mouth real quick only to open it back up and blurt, “You look like George Burns.”

  “So they tell me,” he says with a small nod.

  I open the door with still-shaking hands and hurry out into the motel lobby where stuff is normal again. Or more normal, anyway. My butt’s clenched tight and my nipples are hard from the scare he gave me. I breathe deep trying to take my adrenaline down a notch.

  He trails after me. “I worked as Mr. Burns’s stunt double in the movies and TV for fifty plus years.”

  He ambles behind the counter, puffs out his scrawny chest and pokes the air between us with his wet cigar, saying, “Anytime you ever saw him take a fall or there was a shot of just his feet dancing?” He jabs the cigar at his own chest. “That was me.”

  “Impressive,” I draw out because I don’t know what else to say. I make small talk noises to cover my jangling nerves, “How’d you end up here?”

  “Heaven Chamber of Commerce offered me this job. Right after the Oh, God! movie came out. They came up with the bright idea that having God at The Pearly Gates to meet and greet would improve tourism.”

  “How’d that work out for you?” I ask sarcastically, but the sarcasm must zoom right over his head because he spreads out his arms, palms-up, gesturing at all the nothing and asks back, “Does it look like it worked? There’s nothing but lost stragglers working their way through to California or Vegas.”

  I glance out the window and see Vivian rooting through the saddlebags. Her ass is aimed in my direction and this is how shook up I am: it takes me a good three seconds to admire the view.

  George Burns interrupts me, saying, “You gotta pay for your little look-see.”

  “What?” I ask, turning my head back to him. Since when do I have to pay for the privilege of looking at Vivian’s ass?

  “You took the tour, but you didn’t buy a ticket.”

  Oh. He means the freak show.

  He rubs his thumb and fingers together in that universal money signal and it rubs me the wrong way. I don’t like being squeezed, so I pull a one-dollar bill out of my pocket and toss it on the counter between us. “I only saw a couple of things.”

  He grabs the bill in his gnarly fist and gums the cigar from one side of this mouth to the other. He drums his yellowed fingers on the counter and says, “I’ve seen a few things, too.”

  We stare at each other for a full three seconds. His eyes glance down at his fingers drumming away and that’s when I see it. There’s a Xeroxed picture of me and Vivian setting out on the counter plain as day. Looks like the hateful FBI woman has been through here asking questions, too.

  I pull a twenty-dollar bill out of my pocket and set it on top of the picture. I hope that’s enough to keep his trap shut.

  “I got a two-headed coppermouth back there,” he says, ignoring the money. “Maybe you’d like to pay to see that.”

  He’s going to play hardball. I set out another twenty on top of the first.

  “Got a two-headed goat in a jar, too.”

  This is getting ridiculous. I add another twenty to the pile and say, “I must’ve missed that one.”

  “And the world’s largest peach pit. It’s in the Guinness Book of World Records. Weighs in at over three pounds and looks just like the head of Jesus. It was on the Johnny Carson show.”

  “Really.” Another twenty.

  He hands me something out of his breast pocket. It’s a postcard with a picture of the peach pit on the front. To me the peach pit looks a little more like Molly Ringwald than Jesus but I guess she’s not as big a draw, so I don’t blame him for the false advertising.

  George Burns straightens his bow tie with a little snap of his wrists and continues, “Even got a baby chick that hatched with three feet and two eyes. I bet you’d like to see that one.”

  Another twenty.

  “Don’t most chickens have two eyes?” I ask.

  “Yeah, but they don’t have three feet. Most of them anyway. Got a human fetus born with a tail.”

  “I’ve seen one of those before.” I throw out my last twenty. This is getting to be expensive. I pull my pockets inside out like rabbit ears so he’ll know I’m all out of money.

  “Yeah, it’s pretty normal.” He nods, then adds, “As freaks go.” He irons the stack of bills out on the counter, folds them and puts them in his pants pocket.

  I put my elbows on top of the counter and lean down until I’m near his height. “So where is everybody in Heaven?”

  He sticks the cigar back in his mouth and
takes a huge imaginary puff. He blows the nonsmoke into my face, saying, “You’re looking at him.”

  “You’re the only person in town?”

  He nods. “For going on three years now.”

  “Where’d the other three hundred and forty-nine people go?”

  “Most of ’em left during the drought.”

  “Most of them?”

  “Others left before that even.”

  “So, I guess you’ve got a room available then?” I ask.

  He reaches under the desk, pulls out a key and hands it to me. “Number seven.” He smiles. He doesn’t say anything else about money, so I guess the room is gratis.

  “Get it?” he chuckles. “Seven. Heaven. Seventh heaven.”

  “I get it.” I fake chuckle back at him. “Cute.”

  He points a crooked finger at the freak poster and asks, “Wanna buy another ticket so your friend can see my freaks?”

  I think it’s really creepy that he just said my freaks. It’s even creepier to think of him living all alone for three years with nothing to keep him company but his freaks in a jar. “I can’t afford it,” I reply dryly.

  I smile back at him smiling at me and when it becomes obvious that our conversation is over, I turn and head for the door. He stops me by saying, “Water’s extra.”

  “What d’ya mean?” I ask, turning back to face him. “What water?”

  He reaches back under the counter and pulls out a plastic bottle of water. “Twenty dollars a bottle.”

  That kind of pisses me off a little. Where does he think I’m from? California? The people out there may be stupid enough to pay for water in a bottle, but I’m Oklahoma born and bred and we drink it for free right out of the faucet like God intended. Or from a toilet tank if we’re hard-pressed enough.

  “I’d drink out of the toilet tank before I paid you twenty bucks for bottled water,” I say with a little snip to my tone.

  “No water in the toilet,” he says matter-of-factly, ignoring my attitude.

  “No water in the whole town?”

  “Nope. I told you we ran dry three years ago. Porta-Potty’s right by the pool. The lock works on quarters.”

  I start to ask him how he takes a bath, but my nose already knows the answer to that one.

  “What do you drink? That doesn’t cost twenty bucks a bottle.”

  He grins at me and pulls a cheapo bottle of whiskey out from under the counter. The label’s got a cartoon picture of a passed out hillbilly and two x’s where his eyes used to be.

  “How much for that?”

  “Ten dollars only.”

  I fish a ten out of my boot and scoot it across the counter to him. I grab the hillbilly whiskey and tuck it under my arm. “Got any matches I can buy?”

  He points to his cigar and says, “Does it look like I have matches?”

  “Okay. Thanks,” I say, then think: You’re the freak. And a price-gouging blackmailer to boot. I grab the flyer of me and Vivian, wad it into a tiny ball and shove it into my pocket.

  “Anytime,” he says, chomping on his cigar.

  ***

  When I saunter back out to Vivian, she’s sitting on the bike looking at nothing and not looking at me at the same time. The forgotten cigarette she’s smoking has an ash on it two inches long. I take it out of her hand, suck the last hit off it and flick it into the dust.

  She looks sad. Or maybe mad. I never really can tell the difference until she tells me and right now she’s too busy not telling me for me to know for sure.

  “Wanna see some freaks?” I ask. “It’s only five bucks if you don’t count blackmail.”

  She points her chin further away from me and pretends to look at something down the street. This is the part I hate about women. They get all sulky, for no obvious reason, and expect you to mind-read what they’re feeling.

  “He’s got a little freak sideshow in there. Peach pits and two-eyed chickens. Stuff like that.”

  She takes another cigarette out from between her tits, lights it and inhales hard. I don’t know what I did wrong, but it must’ve been a doozy because when Vivian doesn’t talk it means the fuse is short. I figure I have about one minute to defuse the bomb.

  I start talking without commas or periods, “The owner is dressed up like George Burns in that Oh God movie and he’s the only person in the whole town and there’s no water not even for flushing gotta use the Porta-Potty with quarters and I got whiskey to drink they serve whiskey in heaven who knew God was a blackmailer where’d you get the lighter?”

  I pause for a breath and Vivian says flatly, looking right between my eyes without blinking, “It was in your saddlebag.”

  “Oh. Guess I forgot about it.” I smile nervously.

  She snatches the smile off my face and the room key out of my hand, looks at the number on it and walks toward the end of the motel.

  I have maybe forty seconds left before the bomb goes off.

  I jump on the bike, start her up, steer around the big empty pool and hide the bike around the corner of the building. Just in case Feebie woman backtracks.

  I come around the corner just as Vivian opens the room door and walks inside.

  Ten seconds left.

  I shut the door behind me and see her sitting on the end of the bed all tense and rigid. The entire room is brown. I’ve never seen so much brown in my life. It’s either all brown or the place is really dusty.

  I sneeze. It’s really dusty.

  I smile a tiny bit in Vivian’s direction and say with a hint of humor, “Is this about the billy goat? You been stewing about that all day?”

  “No, Lee Anne, I am not stewing about the motherfucking billy goat.”

  Uh-oh. She’s mad all right. She only calls me Lee Anne when she’s working her way into a good lather.

  Five seconds.

  “Okay, but before you get all carried away with whatever it is that you’re feeling that I have no idea what it is I want you to consider something…”

  She tilts her head toward me, waiting.

  “…You are on your period and you know how cranky and irrational that makes you—”

  BOOM!

  She explodes off the bed, grabs the first thing she lays her hands on, thank God it’s a pillow, and throws it at me. I instinctively duck even though I know it’s just a pillow and it poofs into the wall behind me. My reflexes have improved since I met Vivian.

  I’m still cowering on my knees when she marches over to me, grabs the hillbilly whiskey out of my hand and goes out the door, slamming it so hard behind her that if the brown paintings on the wall weren’t bolted down they’d have crashed to the floor. A big dust cloud makes me sneeze again.

  I lock the door behind her, grab the pillow, put it under my head and lie on my back in the middle of the floor. There’s no way in hell I’m going out there or letting her back in. Not until she’s had a couple of drinks and calms down.

  I’m hungry. But the sausage biscuits are in the saddlebags outside. I’m thirsty, too. Not to mention I have to pee. I wonder if she’s calmed down yet?

  I get up, walk into the bathroom, pull my pants down, and decide to pee in the tub instead of the toilet. At least that way it’ll go down the drain and not just sit in the bowl stinking up the place. I hover my butt over the edge of the tub and try to aim as close as I can for the drain. I have to drip dry because I don’t see any toilet paper.

  I wonder if she’s calm yet?

  I edge over to the window and peek through the curtains. I don’t see anything.

  I twiddle my thumbs for about five minutes until I decide, fuck it, I need to go face the music and get this over with because I know that Vivian can hold out a lot longer than me, and I didn’t really lock her out so much as I locked myself in.

  Besides, she’s got the whiskey.

  I open the door a crack and peek outside. Nothing. I open it all the way up, bracing myself for a sudden attack. Nothing. I walk outside a couple of steps and look all around. Nada
. “Vivian?” Zip. Now I’m a little worried. “Sweetheart?” I call out louder. Zero.

  I’m a lot worried now. Where the hell did she go?

  I start walking. I walk down the entire length of the motel. I start back toward the motel office, skirting around the pool and I hear, “What else don’t I know about you?”

  I stop and look every which way. I don’t see her anywhere.

  “I’m down here, dumb-ass.”

  Uh-oh, she only calls me dumb-ass at the beginning of arguments. It’s going to be a long night. I look down into the empty pool. Vivian is lying on her back on the deep end floor, staring right at me with the unopened bottle sticking up between her legs.

  “There you are,” I say, relieved.

  I clomp along the concrete toward the deep end and sit on the edge of the pool with my legs swinging and my boots dangling about five feet off the pool floor. “You haven’t opened the bottle.”

  “Not yet,” she mutters under her breath.

  I give it a moment before I ask, “You going to let me in on what’s happening here?”

  She closes her eyes and sighs. When she finally opens them and looks at me, I can see some tears welling up. “What’s my shelf life, Lee?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “How long before you throw me away? What’s my expiration date? I’d like to know so I can be prepared.”

  “There’s no expiration date,” I say, dumbfounded.“What makes you think that?”

  She pulls a wadded up piece of paper out of her front pocket and uncrumples it. “Your bucket list,” she says softly. “It was in your saddlebag. I found it when I was looking for the lighter.”

  Oh, shit. It’s starting to make sense now. I completely forgot that was in there.

  “You read it?” I ask, already knowing the answer.

  She closes her eyes and recites, “My Bucket List. Number one. Fuck a fat woman.”

  “I didn’t write those exact words,” I say defensively. “I wrote: have sex with a plus-size model. And I—”