Tats Too: The Case of the Devil's Diamond

by Layce Gardner

  “I’m not your fucking bitch!” she shouts.

  “Sshhhh!” I warn.

  “Don’t sshhhh me!”

  I lower my voice and snarl, “Just back off the Indian, okay? She’s still pissed off about the whole buying Manhattan for twenty-four dollars thing, and she wants to get even by fucking my bitch.”

  “Nu-uh,” Vivian says, slapping me in the chest. “You did not just go there.”

  “Just don’t even think about flirting with her,” I order.

  “You can’t tell me what to think. And you sure as shit can’t tell me what to do. I’ll eye-fuck whoever I want to eye-fuck.”

  “You’re saying you want to fuck her?” I ask incredulously.

  “I’m saying I’m not your bitch and I’m not anybody’s bitch, so you back the hell off, Lee.”

  I hold my chin up high and look down my nose at her. “That’s right, Viv. You just go ahead and do it with anybody you want to. Because, obviously, that’s what you’ve been doing all along anyway.”

  “I have not,” she says. “I have not been with anybody except you since the first time we did it.”

  “Explain the whole pregnancy thing then,” I say, crossing my arms and raising my eyebrows. “I’m waiting.”

  “All those women on Jerry Springer said it happened to them, so I’m not the only one. Sperm can get up there in your tubes and lay dormant for months, years even,” she hisses.

  “Oh. Well, then…if Jerry Springer says it can happen—” I nod too many times. “Who am I to question?”

  “I don’t know why I thought you were different,” she says with fake melancholy. “You’re just like any other man. Worse even.”

  “You know what? Fine. Pocahontas can have you. I’m tired of your shit. Go get poked by Poke if you want. Go poke them all.”

  “Fine. Poke you, too.”

  “You’ve always poked whoever you wanted anyway. Maybe next time you’ll make sure he’s wearing a fucking rubber.” I flinch right after I say that because I’m preconditioned for Vivian slapping me whenever I say something smart-ass.

  But she doesn’t slap me. Instead, she says really low, “You know, I’m glad this is happening. I get to see who you really are before I waste my whole life on you.”

  She stomps off, and I turn my back on her like I don’t care.

  She’ll turn around and come back in just a second.

  She’s just trying to show me who’s boss.

  Any second now.

  She’s just trying to scare me.

  She’ll change her mind any second now.

  “Let’s go,” I hear Vivian say. “You can show me the real reason they call you Poke.”

  She’s not coming back.

  I hate her. I swear to God above, I hate her. I don’t want to ever see her again. I hope she rides off with them and gets poked a hundred different ways from here to next Sunday.

  I walk farther into the desert like I’m the one doing the leaving and not her. I just walk farther out in the sand, the middle of nofuckingwhere, like I have an appointment that I’m late for.

  Four motorcycle engines roar to life and I keep walking until they’re far down the highway and I don’t hear them anymore. Only then do I turn around.

  Fuck me.

  My bike is gone.

  They took my bike and left me with that suckass Harley that wheezes.

  I flop down flat on my back on top of the scorching sand and stare at the white ball of sun and let the heat sizzle its way through my withered insides.

  I’d cry if I wasn’t afraid of getting dehydrated.

  Chapter Six

  Desert Survival Guide, a how-to book by Lee Hammond. Chapter One, page one. To survive in a desert climate one must first know the terrain.

  From the relative safety of my prone desert-floor position, I lift my head and look around at the terrain. Sand. Cacti. Weird, scraggly shrubs. One lonely highway.

  Next, you must take inventory of what you possess in the way of equipment and/or tools.

  I feel my pockets. There’s my trusty Maltese cross pocketknife. Fifty dollars in folding money and about seventy- six cents in coins. I have on pants, socks, big shoes, boxers, sports bra and button shirt. There’s a dead Harley nearby. I can salvage parts of it to use as makeshift tools. Things are looking pretty good.

  Most important is the psychology of survival. You must calibrate your will to survive and what you are willing to do in order to survive against your emotional limitations. This is known as your survival ratio.

  Hmmm. I reckon I’d do almost anything. I’d kill a rattlesnake and eat it raw. I’d drink my own urine. I can’t think up anything I wouldn’t do except maybe eat spiders. I don’t really want to do that. Emotionally? Fuck emotions, I’m being nothing but rational here.

  I bet I have a survival ratio in the high 90’s.

  The desert in and of itself is not a dangerous place. The desert kills fewer than 100 people each year. However, hundreds more perish on the desert from its number one killer: Panic.

  There are four important steps to remaining calm and not allowing Panic to become deadly.

  #1: Acceptance. Do not cry (that’s a waste of precious hydration). Do not wail at the sky above (waste of energy). Do not curse God and the Universe with thoughts of killing Vivian and extracting revenge on Poke or vice versa (waste of time). Simply accept your fate and move on.

  I accept that I’m stuck in the middle of the desert with nobody around for miles and miles and vultures are circling overhead. That’s a fact.

  #2: Consider all options.

  Options? I guess my options are that I could lie here and die and be ripped apart by vultures, or I could get my ass up and walk.

  #3: Decide on a plan and stick to it no matter what.

  Okay. I’m going to go through Poke’s saddlebags looking for anything helpful, then I’m going to stroll down the middle of the highway and hope somebody comes along and rescues me. If they don’t, I’ll walk the rest of the way to Albuquerque.

  I find a bottle of water in the saddlebags and drink it down. I keep the bottle just in case I need to pee in it and drink that later.

  #4: Try not to go insane. Insanity inspires panic and panic kills.

  To keep my mind active and too busy to flirt with insanity, I decide to sing every show tune I’ve ever heard. But I just sing inside my head because I know that opening my mouth will cause me to dehydrate quicker.

  I start with the musical Oklahoma, because when you grow up in Oklahoma you’ve heard the songs 500 million times by the age of ten, and you know them all by heart whether you like the show or not.

  I walk. Down the highway. I walk and sing in my head down the highway.

  In my head, I sing a lot like Doris Day. When I was a little kid I used to practice singing like her because I wanted to grow up to be Doris Day with her virginal good looks and her wholesome take on life. Until one day I found out that her real name is Doris Ann Kappelhoff and she’s not a virgin, in fact she was married four times and not to Rock Hudson either. That’s when I decided I didn’t want to be Doris Day, I wanted to be with Doris Day.

  I’m on my fourth encore of Que Sera Sera when I realize it’s dark and those weird lights in front of me aren’t spotlights from a hovering UFO, but are actually headlights coming from behind. I turn around and jump up and down and wave my arms at the two approaching light beams.

  The high-beams blind me so I scrunch my eyes shut, and when I open them an old jalopy of a truck that looks like it’s held together by nothing but baling wire and spit stops mere inches from my knees. I squint into the bright light and see a cab full of Mexican men. They jabber at me in Mexican and the driver jerks his thumb to the truck bed, so I yell, “Gracias!” and squish myself into the already packed back.

  They squeal forward as soon as my boots hit the bed floor and the forward motion throws me against some tarp-covered crates. I lift up a corner of the tarp and have a look-see.

 
; Chickens. Live chickens. Umpteen chickens are crammed into little wire cages that’re stacked on top of each other.

  Shit a brick.

  I hate birds and I especially hate chickens. Anything that can have its head chopped off and still run around chasing you is not something I want anywhere near me.

  I climb over the cages, make myself some sitting room in the back under the cab window, curl up into the tiniest ball I can, and listen to the blaring radio music that reminds me of Speedy Gonzales being chased by a cat.

  Knuckles rap on the back window, the glass slides open and a brown, calloused hand thrusts a can of Schlitz at me. I take the warm beer, nod thanks at the hand and pop the top. It’s only one notch above drinking my own piss, but I down it all in two long swallows anyway.

  Chickens and Schlitz. That makes me giggle. Chicken schlitz. It smells like chicken schlitz back here.

  I giggle so hard a little beer spurts out my nose. I must be having heat stroke or something.

  Yessirree. I’m definitely going to get me some Poke revenge.

  I finish off the can of chicken schlitz, and crush it into a little aluminum ball.

  Go ahead and chop off my head. I’ll still be coming for you.

  ***

  The truck slows and I crane my neck over the chicken cages just in time to see a sign announcing the Albuquerque city limits. We go a couple of blocks and I decide we must be on the poor side of town. There’s lots of Hispanic music, tennis shoes dangling from power lines, little yipping dogs and bored gang-bangers driving low-riders that hydraulic up and down and side to side.

  There’s a little bar up on the right, squeezed in between Raoul’s Tire Shop and Miguel’s Tacos. A couple of neon beer signs blink on and off in the blacked-out windows and the small dirt lot holds a smattering of cars and maybe a dozen motorcycles. All Harleys. Even my Harley.

  I smack my palm on the back window a couple of times and the truck stops. I hop over the tailgate, toss the guys a heartfelt “Gracias!” and head into the lot.

  I recognize Mikey’s bike right away. Before I can think my way out of it, I get out my trusty pocketknife and slice through the fuel line. Gasoline flows out of the hose and soaks into the dry earth and the glug glug glug as the tank empties feels so damn good that I do it to the other motorcycles in the lot, too. Except for mine, of course. I fish my bike’s spare key out from underneath where I duct-taped it right by the oil drain bolt. I put the bike in neutral and walk it to the edge of the lot with its nose pointed down the road.

  I amble back to the shabby bar and take the time to read the words painted in one of the windows. It advertises Girl’s, Girl’s, Girl’s, (did they misplace the apostrophe or do the girls have something that’s not listed on the sign?) and Legs and Eggs. Every Thursday nite at midnite! That kind of grosses me out. I don’t want some stripper’s stanky twanky hovering over my plate while I’m trying to eat breakfast.

  I guess I’ve gotten a lot pickier since I met Vivian.

  There’s another painted sign over the door that reads: Lions Den. (They forgot the apostrophe in that one.) How fucking appropriate is the Lion’s Den? It didn’t stop Daniel and it won’t stop me either.

  Vivian’s right. I probably need to stop reading the Bible before it gets me killed.

  I throw open the door and strut into the Lion’s Den just like I own the place.

  I pause just inside the door. The door swings shut behind me. A needle scratches across a record. The music stops. Everyone jerks their head to the door and narrows their eyes at me. My boots make heavy clomping noises as I walk across the plank floor and spit a glob of chewing tobacco into the spittoon at the end of the bar.

  Okay, not really.

  I walk inside and stop, giving my eyes time to adjust to the dark and the smoke.

  It’s a typical biker bar from the looks of it. Except it’s all women. Smoke, whiskey fumes and 60’s music stifle the air. Lots of leather and lots of tits. Two topless strippers wearing tiny g-strings dance on top of the bar next to platters of dried out scrambled eggs.

  Damn. It must be Thursday.

  Bikers lounge in booths and at tables, playing with their bitches or trying to pick up new ones. A few femmes are perched on stools at the bar, watching the action and waiting to be put into the game.

  I spot Vivian right away, sitting at a table in the farthest corner. Poke sits next to her and has her arm draped possessively over Viv’s shoulder. They’re looking real cozy. I pretend not to notice Vivian or the shot of whatever she throws back when she sees me.

  I plant my ass on a stool at the end of the bar and put my back to everyone. Which isn’t as stupid as it sounds because I can still see behind me in the mirrored bar back, so Poke can’t sneak up on me Injun-style.

  The bartender is an older lady who looks like she’s been around the block more than a few times. She has high, bumped-up hair that would give Marge Simpson a run for her money. She has on heavy black eyeliner Cleopatra-style, several heavy rings on each finger and dozens of bracelets jingling up and down her arms.

  She gives me a little wink to let me know she’ll be right over to help me.

  In the mirror, between a dancer’s thighs, I see Toxic in the middle of the dance floor, windsocking to music only she can hear. Anything has her shirt off and is nasty dancing, humping the support pole with the myopic focus of a little yip-yip dog. Vivian throws back another shot, glares at my back and grabs Poke by the hand. Viv leads her to the center of the floor, palms her ass, pulls her tight and slow dances to Three Dog Night.

  Bitch.

  The bartender moves into my line of vision and scoots a bottle of off-brand tequila in front of me, saying, “Present from Mikey. She told me to tell you that any friend of Mabel’s is a friend of hers.”

  I glance around and see Mikey holding court in a booth halfway back with Cat and Scratch. She feels my stare and looks back at me. She turns her neck, looks at Vivian and Poke, then back to me. I look away, ignoring her pointed warning.

  “Funny,” I say to the bartender. “I didn’t know Mikey was the friendly type.”

  “She ain’t. You need a back with that, honey?”

  “Nope,” I answer, unscrewing the top. “I don’t even need a glass.”

  “Good thing,” she laughs. “We ain’t got no clean ones. How do you want your eggs?”

  “I like ’em over easy.”

  “Don’t we all. What do you want with ’em?”

  “Got any tits and grits?”

  She laughs. “That’s on Tuesdays.”

  “Is this Mikey’s headquarters?”

  “She comes through every few days or so on her way to and from Vegas.”

  I point the neck of my new friend, tequila, at her T-shirt. The Woodstock logo is so old and faded it’s barely recognizable. “Looks like an original,” I say.

  “Sure is,” she says proudly. “This shirt is older’n you.”

  “You were there?” I ask.

  “Honey,” she says, putting both elbows and both of her southward-bound tits on the counter, “Not only was I there, but I did everyone there. All the greats. Grace, Janis, Jimi, CCR, The Dead…”

  “Impressive resume. What’s your name?”

  She pulls a damp rag out of her waistband and wipes at the wet drink rings on the counter. “Jerri.”

  “Jerri, let me ask you… ” I lean forward a little like I’m sharing a secret, “How well do you know Poke?”

  She stops wiping and looks over my shoulder in Poke’s direction. She whispers, “She’s new around here. Said she’d been lone wolfing long enough and hooked up with Mikey and them.”

  “You ever seen her with an old lady?”

  “Nope. Not till tonight. Why, you got something for her?” she asks, tucking her rag away.

  “I got something for her, all right. But she’s not going to like it.” I lift the bottle to my lips, but Jerri grabs it.

  “You ain’t gonna cause me any trouble, are ya, sugar?
” she asks sweet enough, but I can tell that even though she’s a little bitty thing it’d be wise not to underestimate her.

  “I’ll take it outside, I promise,” I say, hitting the bottle for a deep draw.

  “That redhead she’s got with her looks like trouble just waiting for a place to happen,” she says.

  “You got that right. So, tell me, Jerri… What was Janis like?”

  She looks sad for a second as her eyes unfocus and travel back in time. Then she smiles and replies, “She was a tortured soul. God gave her a gift so big, no normal person could handle it. Not even a ballsy gal from Texas.”

  “Yeah, I know all that, but how was she in bed?”

  She throws her head back and laughs, using one hand to steady her wig in place. “Honey, that li’l gal could eat pussy like a champ.”

  “That’s what I wanted to hear,” I laugh. “Good for her.”

  “Good for me, too,” Jerri says, walking away still laughing.

  I suck down some tequila, waiting for its burn to turn numb and watching Vivian rub her tits all over Poke. Poke (what a stupid fucking name anyway) has her stupid fucking hands on Vivian’s hips, and is grinding her right there in front of God and everybody. How’d this happen? We’re mothers, for godsakes. We have a baby. A baby who needs us. Just the thought of where I was and where I am now makes my throat burn with acid. And there Vivian is rubbing her tits on somebody else like she doesn’t even care.

  I need to quit thinking about Vivian. Just concentrate on numb.

  Vivian grinds back and looks like she’s getting off on it.

  Bitch.

  Numb. Think numb. Another couple of swallows.

  Jerri’s comes back, this time with a cold bottle of beer in her hands. “You’re popular, tonight,” she says, putting the bottle in front of me. “Angel bought you this.”

  “Angel?”

  Jerri nods her head toward a woman sitting just down the bar from me.

  “Angel,” I mutter to myself. “God has sent an angel into the Lion’s Den.”

  Jerri laughs and moves away to carry a plate of eggs to another customer.