Tats Too (11 page)

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 tha
t 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—”

“Same fucking thing!”

“Viv, I wrote that before I met you,” I plead. “A long time before. I only want you, you know that.”

“I notice you have added to the list since we met and yet somehow you forgot to edit number one.” Her bottom lip starts twitching big time and she sniffles back a few tears.

“Baby,” I soothe, “seriously, truly, I wrote that way before I met you.”

“You’ve been with tons of women,” she blubbers. “You’ve been with so many women that the only women you haven’t fucked are the fat ones. You’ve fucked so many women, all colors and shapes and sizes, all that’s left are the fat ones, and now they’re even on your list.”

“That is so not true, Viv.”

“And I was laying here thinking…” She swipes away a couple of tears. “Maybe if I get fat, she’ll stay with me. Maybe I’ll gain a bunch of weight and get really fat, because I can do it, you know, I could blow up a good fifty pounds in just a month if I didn’t watch myself. Then I thought, so I get all fat and what’s next? She writes on the bucket list that she wants to fuck Siamese twins maybe? Or maybe a bearded lady, though I could do that, too, if I didn’t pluck every day. Or maybe she’ll want a paraplegic or something. Then here I am all fat and with a beard and she doesn’t want me and nobody else does either…” She crosses her arms over her face and sobs pretty darn loud.

Wow. I am so not sure what the hell to say to all that. And laughing right now would not be in my best interest. So, I shove away the mental image of Vivian fat and bearded. Instead, I try to cheer her up a little. “You’ve gone off the deep end, Vivian. So to speak,” I kind of laugh, gesturing weakly at the deep end.

“Don’t negate my feelings!” she spews with righteous indignation. “Don’t you dare fucking tell me that what I’m feeling isn’t real because I’m feeling it and, believe me, it’s real!” She crosses her arms back over her face and sobs louder, choking out, “You were in there looking at freaks. Probably in there jacking off at the freakin’ freak show the whole time.”

Good Lord. This PMS shit is going to be the death of me. I do some quick math. Hopefully, she’s only got another seventeen or so years until menopause. Twelve periods a year times seventeen years…I only have to go through this about two hundred more times.

I jump off the side and into the pool. I slide my boots over to her and sit down. I take her in my arms and hold her tight while she sobs into my chest, getting snot and tears all down my front.

Once her tears start to dry up a little, I say softly, “I have an idea. When we get to Vegas, let’s get married. Let’s get an Elvis preacher and get married. I know it won’t be legal, but let’s find an Elvis who’ll do it anyway.”

“Really?” she sniffles. “You’d really marry me?”

I smile down at her and wipe some snot off her upper lip with the hem of my T-shirt. “Yeah, Viv, I love you. And I want you to know that you’re the only woman I ever want. You’re more than enough for me. I got you and I got Georgia and we’re a family, and that’s all I ever want or need. Okay?”

She nods a little and even smiles a tiny bit.

“And, look at the bright side. Now you know that if you do ever get fat, I’ll still fuck you. So, in a way, that’s kind of a positive.”

“What if I grow a beard?” she asks.

I smile. “We might have to talk about that.”

She snuffles, “If I were in a tragic accident and in a coma and a vegetable in the hospital would you come in every day and pluck my mustache and my eyebrows?”

“Baby, I’d be honored to.”

We both laugh a little, and she snuggles deeper into my arms.

I ask one of my own, “If I were a paraplegic, if I were paralyzed from the neck down and in a coma or something, would you still have sex with me?”

She giggles. “I love you so much, Lee, if you were paralyzed from the neck down, I promise I’ll sit on your face every day. Sometimes twice a day even.”

I laugh. “You’re so good to me. I don’t deserve you. Promise you’ll marry me? You’ll be my wife? You’ll be the mother of my child? You’ll save me from all the fat, bearded ladies and the freaks?”

“Yes,” she coos. “I’ll marry you, you big freak.”

Viv gives me a big wet sloppy kiss and I don’t mind at all. I hear the bottle fall onto its side and roll roll roll away from us. I don’t mind that either.

I lay down on my back and pull Vivian down next to me. She snuggles her nose into my neck and we hold each other tight like we’re in the middle of the ocean in a little rubber raft and there’s nobody but us for miles and miles.

***

We’re surrounded by blue. Blue, blue water that we can’t drink even though I’m dying of thirst, and blue, blue sky that beats the heat down on our sunburned faces.

Sharks circle us. I watch their fin thingies break through the water and slice big circles in the blue around us. Their circles get smaller and smaller.

One shark is so close now it splashes a tiny bit of water on my face. Another shark, a bigger one, rips by and more water slaps me in the face.

I open my eyes. My back is killing me. No wonder. Vivian and I fell asleep in the pool on the concrete floor.

Water splashes me in the face again.

I turn my head and look up. A man stands at the edge of the pool. He has his dick in his hands and he’s pissing on me.

“What the fuck?” I scream, jumping up.

The man laughs. I dart to the opposite side of the pool where he can’t reach me.

Oh, wait. He’s not pissing on me. That’s a beer bottle he’s holding. He sticks his thumb in the mouth of the bottle and shakes it. Then he tosses out a stream of beer and foam, laughing,
as it splashes Vivian in the face.

Oh, shit. It’s CornNut Breath. How the hell did he know we’re alive? How the hell did he track us here? Where’s the other Goodfella?

“Vivian!” I yell through my cupped hands. “Wake up!”

Vivian opens her eyes and does pretty much what I did. She wakes up, blinks, sits up, registers what’s happening and runs like the dickens. I think I may have screamed a little bit more, though.

The next few seconds happen in slow motion. Vivian takes three steps to her right, bends down, picks up the hillbilly whiskey bottle by the neck and winds up like a pitcher on the mound. She lets loose of the bottle and it’s like a breaking fastball aimed straight for CornNuts’ chest. He sees it coming and ducks. He ducks just enough that the bottle thunks him in the head instead of the chest and shatters into a zillion tiny pieces. The bottle, not his head.