Tats Too: The Case of the Devil's Diamond

by Layce Gardner

  Today, it takes a good fifty miles before I achieve Zen state. On the back of a motorcycle smells are richer, colors are fuller, and the warm wind whipping me in the face gives the illusion of flying without wings. This is why dogs stick their heads out the car window.

  What’s that noise?

  I glance in my side mirror and see a cop car with its lights and siren on.

  Shit fire. I have no choice but to pull over. I kill the engine but don’t climb off.

  Vivian whispers in my ear, “Let me handle this.” And since every time I’ve ever had a run-in with a cop I’ve ended up on the bottom of the dog pile, I nod okay.

  Vivian climbs off the back of the bike, leans up against the sissy bar and goes into full assault mode, swelling her tits up to twice their normal size. I swear I can feel the air around her spark with electricity and start to smell like…burnt microwave popcorn. (I happen to love the smell of burnt popcorn.)

  The cop shuts off the siren and climbs out of his car one big boot at a time. He’s wearing those cop sunglasses that shoot your own reflection right back at you. He’s a big dude, lots of muscles and a thick, black macho mustache. He hitches up his gun belt and struts toward us like his dick is trailblazing the way.

  “Shit,” Vivian turns to me and whispers out the side of her mouth. “He’s gay.”

  “How could you know that?”

  “Tell me he doesn’t look like one of the Village People,” she answers.

  Damn, she’s right. He’s got that gay man thing going on where he works out his chest, but his butt and legs are skinny.

  “Let me handle this then,” I offer.

  Vivian nods and deflates her tits just as he positions himself about three feet away from me. I look into his mirrored sunglasses at my own self looking back at me and breathe deep, summoning up all those times I spent late at night watching reruns of Inside the Actor’s Studio with that droll guy, James Lipton.

  “What’re you doing?” I manage to ask in a really good disgusted voice. My reflection even looks good and disgusted. I’m off to an excellent start.

  He hitches up his pants again and says, “I’m stopping you for speeding, ma’am.”

  “This isn’t in the script,” I say to him, then turn to Vivian and ask, “It’s not in the script, is it?”

  Vivian shrugs back at me with a look that says she doesn’t know what the hell I’m talking about. I look up and scan the sky and give a palms-up gesture that means, “what the hell” to somebody up there.

  Gay Cop takes his ticket book and pen out of his pocket, saying, “Do you know how fast you were going?”

  Okay, now I pull my exasperated look out of my actor tool bag and smooth it over my face. “The script says I’m going ninety, but I probably was doing more like seventy because I’m not the stunt driver because we let her go two days ago when we thought we were finished filming and then we got drug back out to the middle of Bumfuck, Egypt to shoot this last little bit.”

  G.C. looks up from his ticket writing and examines me closely.

  “You don’t know, do you?” I ask him. I turn to Vivian and say, “He really doesn’t know, does he?”

  “Apparently not,” she says in a bored voice, examining her cuticles.

  “Oh, I get it,” I say with a smile to G.C. “This is a hoax, huh? For the blooper reel. This is the film that’ll run over the end credits.”

  G.C. shakes his head, pushes his glasses up higher on the bridge of his nose and says, “Driver’s license and registration, please.”

  “Don’t you know who I am?”

  “Sure do,” he says in a tough-guy voice, “you’re the lady driving too fast on a state highway.”

  I laugh a little too loud and a little too long. When I look to Vivian, she laughs along, too. “Unreal,” I say. “Unfuckingreal. This guy is good.” I smile at him and ask, “They better be paying you above scale. You’re that good. Did Ridley put you up to this?”

  “Ridley?” he asks, lowering his glasses and looking me up and down.

  Vivian laughs. “He is good.”

  “Hasn’t even broken character once,” I agree.

  “I’m not telling you again,” he orders. “Hand over your driver’s license and registration.”

  I make a big show of looking behind him, then back at his car, saying, “Where’s the camera?”

  He takes a small step backward. “What camera?”

  “The movie camera,” I say in my best duh tone.

  Now it’s his turn to be exasperated. “I just need your driver’s license.”

  “I think he’s serious, Drew,” I say, amazed. “He has no idea who we are. He doesn’t even know we’re shooting a movie.”

  “No,” she answers. “He’s got to be an actor. He’s too good-looking to be a real cop.”

  G.C. smiles with one corner of his mouth, quickly takes it away, and asks, “Movie?”

  “I’m Hilary Swank. This is Drew Barrymore. We’re shooting a movie right now. How’d you get through the stops?”

  He hangs his sunglasses off his shirt pocket, looks back and forth between us before asking, “Stops?”

  “Dammit, Drew!” I yell at Vivian. “I told you we needed full crew to do this! How are we supposed to pick up this footage if we get stopped by a cop every time I have to go ninety?”

  Vivian shrugs and pushes a cuticle back.

  G.C. moves in a little closer and tucks his ticket book away. “What movie?”

  “You ever heard of the director Ridley Scott?” I ask.

  “Sure,” he says, suddenly animated, “Thelma and Louise, Blade Runner, Alien, Gladiator, my favorite.”

  Yep, this guy is as gay as they come. I look up to the sky and wave. Vivian mimics me. (Or maybe she’s still looking at her fingernails.) “Wave,” I urge G.C. “Wave at Ridley. He’ll put this over the credits.”

  He lifts an arm and tickles his fingers at the empty sky.

  I dig in my pockets and pull out a couple of movie tickets. I hand them to him, saying, “Here’s a couple of red carpet passes to the premiere. Bring your boyfriend.”

  “Boyfriend,” he gulps.

  “You’re way too pretty to be straight,” Vivian explains.

  “Thanks,” he sputters, pocketing the tickets.

  “Now, if you don’t mind, this is costing my production company a lot of money to buy out this highway,” Vivian says.

  “Oh, okay, sorry,” G.C. says, backing away toward his car and tipping his hat at us.

  I start up my engine, then holler over the pipes, “Wait a minute! I forgot!” I dig in my pocket and come up with the tracking device. I toss it underhanded to him. “That’s the remote pass. You’ll need it to get past the stop crew.”

  “Thanks!” he yells back, putting the device in his pants pocket.

  Vivian hops back on and I take off, slamming into gears as fast as I can. I check the mirror and see G.C. with his face tilted toward the sky and waving at nothing.

  They should really create a higher I.Q. exam for policemen.

  ***

  I swerve into the Fu King Chinese Restaurant & Motel on the outskirts of Albuquerque. Vivian and I walk a little bowlegged inside the motel office. I definitely don’t have my riding muscles back yet.

  “The Fu King Motel,” Vivian reads the sign out loud with a laugh. “Fu King priceless.”

  This motel is like the best 1970’s time capsule I’ve ever seen. If you were trying to re-create the decade of disco you couldn’t have done any better than this. Then to top it all off, there’s touches of Chinese stuff everywhere. It reminds me of a porn movie set. (Not that I watch porn, mind you.)

  Yellow, green, orange and great big flowers everywhere. Macramé hanging plants, ashtrays hanging by a gold chain, hanging lamps, even the chairs are hanging by ropes. I scan the ceiling. There must be a lot of reinforcement up there.

  The only artwork is a print of those poker-playing dogs and a couple of paintings of big-eyed, sad kittens. Behind
the counter hang a couple of framed, autographed photos of Kristy McNichol and The Fonz. Both photos show them standing in between a scowling Chinese man and woman.

  Vivian slaps the bell on the counter and calls out, “We need some Fu King service out here!”

  I giggle deliriously. Damn, I’m tired.

  Vivian looks at me and hee-hee’s, too. We egg each other on like two kids in church.

  Suddenly, the back door bangs open and a tiny Chinese woman minces over to the counter. Viv and I stop cackling long enough to check her out.

  The little woman has her gray hair piled up high on her head in that beehive style that looks like her head was Jiffy-Popped. She has on cat-eye glasses with little rhinestones in the corners. And she’s wearing a kimono that’s so long you can’t see her feet, so she looks like she’s floating when she walks.

  “What you need?” the woman asks in an abrupt Chinese accent.

  Vivian pulls on a super-serious, sweet face and says, “Is this the Fu King Motel?”

  “You read?” asks Mrs. Fu King, pointing toward the big neon sign outside. “Sign say plain English: Fu King Motel.”

  “So it does.” Vivian giggles. “We’d like a Fu King room.”

  I giggle on top of Vivian’s giggle.

  “Fifty dollar,” Mrs. F.K. says between our chuckles.

  I pull two twenties and a ten out of my boot and hand them over. Mrs. F.K. shoves a pen at me and spins the registry book around for me to sign us in. I sign a couple of aliases.

  “And we’d like a Fu King shower and a Fu King bed, because we’re Fu King tired,” Vivian says, suppressing her laughter.

  “All room have shower and bed,” Mrs. F.K. responds, giving Viv the evil eye.

  Vivian continues, “We need a Fu King king-size bed.”

  Mrs. F.K. looks at Viv out of the corner of her cat-eye glasses.

  “What’s the Fu King checkout time?” Vivian asks.

  I laugh out loud. Mrs. F.K. snaps her head at me so quick, I almost choke on my own guffaws.

  “You think you funny girl, huh?” Mrs. F.K. says to Vivian.

  “Okay…” I say super-duper serious. “Stop Fu King with her already. It’s not Fu King funny anymore.”

  Viv and I almost bust a gut on that one. Mrs. F.K. waits until our laughter peters out, reads the aliases in the sign-in register, then looks back to me. “You are Helen Bedd?” she asks.

  “Why, yes I am, thank you,” I say.

  “And you Mona Lott?” she asks Vivian.

  “Usually,” Vivian replies, and we both laugh heartily.

  Mrs. F.K. slides a room key toward me and says, “Haha, girls think they so haha funny, like me never hear Fu King joke. But I take you Fu King money, so who haha now?” She waves the fifty dollars in our faces, saying, “Who Fu King laugh last?”

  Vivian and I erupt into loud squeals as Mrs. F.K. floats back out the door.

  ***

  Vivian walks over to our Fu King room and I ride the bike over. I park it around back just in case. I’m headed into our room when I see it.

  The Gay Cop is sitting in his cop car at the intersection waiting on a red light. Suddenly, the Goodfella’s beige van squeals through the opposite red light and swerves to a stop right in front of the cop’s car. The van hip-checks the front bumper of the cop car and sends it crashing back a good ten feet.

  G.C. jumps out of his car. He does a Buster Keaton double-take at the damage to his car and reaches for his ticket book.

  The Goodfellas roll out of the van, guns drawn. Gay Cop fumbles with the snap on his holster, but CornNuts is faster. He rips the gun out of Gay Cop’s holster and presses the barrel of his own gun against G.C.’s temple, gangster-style, bending him over the car’s hood with his ass in the air. Gay Cop is so scared he looks like he’s going to shit his pants any second.

  The other Goodfella descends on the cop car, throwing open all the doors with his sawed-off shotgun raised and ready like he’s going to find me and Viv squatting down in the floorboard and blow us to kingdom come.

  Traffic screeches to a stop in all four lanes and some cars reverse and do U-turns when they see the real-life drama transpiring right in front of them.

  I duck inside the Fu King room and whisper, “Vivian! Come check this out!”

  I pull back the heavy drapes and stick my nose through the crack. Viv plants her face right under my chin just in time to see the Goodfella aim his shotgun at the closed trunk and fire off a couple of rounds.

  The cop car rocks from the blasts and the peppered trunk lid flies open. Goodfella looks deep inside then raises his head to CornNuts, yelling, “They’re not here!”

  CornNuts whips Gay Cop around and sticks the business end of his pistol in the guy’s mouth. “Where are they?” he yells.

  Gay Cop blubbers something around the gun’s barrel and starts crying real tears. The other Goodfella comes to the front of the car and aims his shotgun at Gay Cop’s crotch. They both start screaming at once and CornNuts frisks Gay Cop. That’s how he finds the tracking device in his pocket.

  CornNuts throws the tracking device into the middle of the street, letting loose with a stream of Italian obscenities. Both Goodfellas jump back in the van and speed away.

  Gay Cop stands in the middle of the intersection with a big piss stain on the front of his pants, shaking and sweating. Traffic starts moving again, cars honk at Gay Cop and one truck driver even flips him the bird, taunting, “Get the fuck outta the street, asshole!”

  Damn, real life is way better than TV.

  I pull the curtain closed and look at Vivian.

  “What d’ya want for dinner?” she asks.

  ***

  I get out of the shower, wrap the thin motel towel around me and find Vivian lying on the bed, wearing just an old OU T-shirt and panties, surrounded by fast-food wrappers and looking as content as a well-fed cat.

  I grab the burger bag from the top of the TV and pull out a cheeseburger, large fries, melting chocolate shake and an empty fried pie wrapping.

  “What happened to my pie?” I ask, tossing the empty container at her.

  “I ate it,” Vivian purrs. She picks up the empty container and shakes it over her open mouth to catch any crumbs.

  “You ate two pies?”

  “Sure,” she says matter-of-factly. “I’m not afraid of getting fat anymore.”

  I plop down in the gold velour chair under the green swag lamp next to the bed and unwrap my cheeseburger while she sucks down the dregs of her own shake. I turn the burger upside down to eat because I like the cheese to hit my palate before the meat does. “So you’ve gone from never eating pie to eating my pie,” I mumble around a big mouthful.

  “Sure seems that way.”

  I chew and swallow. “From now on I would appreciate it if you would just eat your own pie.”

  “Honey, if I could eat my own pie, I’d never leave the house.”

  I laugh and toss a french fry at her. Vivian picks it out of her hair and holds it like a cigarette. She turns over onto her stomach and pulls a piece of crumpled paper and a pencil out of her cleavage. She nibbles on the french fry while ironing out the paper with the side of her hand.

  “What’s that?” I ask.

  “Your bucket list.”

  “Not again…” I groan.

  “I never got past number one. I want to read the rest of it.” She reads, “Number two. Read the Bible all the way through.” She gives me a horrified look. “Are you insane?”

  I shrug. “I wanna know what all the brouhaha is about.”

  “Brouhaha? Did you really just say the word brouhaha?” She laughs, then affects a stiff, proper accent, “You sit there in your pantaloons, supping on a cheeseburger and dare speak to me of brouhaha?”

  “It’s a real word, Viv.”

  “You need to lay off those damn crossword puzzles.”

  “I just want to read the Bible is all,” I say. “I’ve only gotten through a couple of books.”

/>   “Well, I’ve read it all,” she says. “It’s scary as hell. Take my advice and just read the sex parts. Okay…” She goes back to the list and continues reading, “Number three. Parachute out of an airplane.” She sighs deeply and draws a line through number three, saying, “Not happening.”

  “Why?”

  “Because you could plummet to your death. You don’t write death wishes on a bucket list, Lee. That’s like an oxymoron or something.”

  “Are you calling me a moron?” I grin.

  “Nope, you’re an idiom.”

  I stick my leg out and tickle the bottom of her foot with my toes, teasing, “You just don’t want me to die. Why don’t you just admit that you love me so much you couldn’t live without me?”

  Vivian smiles slyly and turns onto her side, resting her head on her hand. “It’s just logic, Lee. If you died how would you ever complete number one?”

  “That’s why they’re in order,” I explain, running my foot up her leg as far as I can reach.

  Vivian pulls her leg away. “Fucking a fat woman is number one on your to-do list?”

  “Was,” I say quickly. “Feel free to mark it out.”

  She draws a big black line through number one and, I notice, moves her leg back so that my toes can tickle the inside of her thigh.

  “Number four,” she continues, “have sex on my motorcycle.” She looks pleased with that one as she says, “Oh, that’s an easy one.”

  “That one can happen?” I ask eagerly.

  “Sure. I don’t have a problem with that. It’ll be parked, right?”

  “Whatever.”

  “Okay, as long as it’s parked, and it’s not with a fat woman.”

  I scooch my butt down in the chair a little further. Just far enough that my big toe can tease her through the thin fabric of her pantaloons.

  “Number five,” she reads around the french fry cigarette clenched between her teeth. “Write a book.” She draws a line through that one, too, saying, “Number five accomplished.”