Tats Too (27 page)

I got to be quite the noodling expert by the end of my sixth summer.

I put one hand on the steering wheel, slip my other hand down Viv’s pajama bottoms and silently thank my Grandma for teaching me how to noodle.

After her spasms still—Vivian has the longest orgasms ever; they can go on for what seems like a good ten minutes—and her breathing evens out, she pops another Dorito into her mouth and chews for a while.

“Thank you,” she crunches. She digs deep into the bag of chips, pulls one out and feeds it to me.

“You’re welcome,” I crunch back.

“I owe you one.”

“You actually owe me two,” I correct. “I’m counting the incident in the back room at the Lion’s Den as one.”

“Hmmm…” She thinks with one finger poised lightly on her chin. “You’re right. I owe you two.”

“Wanna make it three?” I ask, walking my fingers across her mountains and down into her valley.

“Mmmhmmm,” she answers, pushing my noodling hand back down to her catfish cave.

***

Two hours and four noodlings later (I had to stop at four because my hand was cramping), Vivian is asleep with her head in my lap, her arm still stuck down the Doritos bag and a little trail of orange slobber oozing down her chin. I glance in the rearview mirror and see a glint of something shiny. I eyeball the mirror until I see it again. This time I catch a hint of gray.

It couldn’t be.

I slow the big boat down to around sixty mph until I see it again.

Yep. It’s definitely who I thought it was.

I shake Vivian awake. “Hey, Viv. Wake up. Dillon and Festus are on our ass.”

She pulls herself out of her orgasm and Dorito delirium and sits up. “You’re sure?”

“Look for yourself.”

She turns around on her knees and studies the highway behind us for a while before offering her opinion, “Son of a bitch. How’d they find us?”

“I dunno how. There must be hundreds of people matching our description, stealing a hearse and driving it out of Albuquerque.”

“What’re we going to do?” she asks, choosing to ignore my sarcasm.

I don’t answer for a mile or two. Then I see our answer in the form of an oasis. The Oasis Diner to be exact. “We need a new ride.”

I wheel into the parking lot and punch the gas when I see a beige van nosed up near the front door. They must’ve passed us when we had our pee stop.

Damn. The Mafia and the FBI all at the same place at the same time. I guide the hearse around the corner of the building to the back side. There’s a couple of beat-up cars pulled up close to the back entrance. This must be where the employees park.

I cut the engine and power down the window.

There’s a teenage boy standing by a couple of metal trash cans. He has long stringy hair cut into a mullet with shots of purple dye streaked in back. He’s wearing a dirty apron tied around his waist and is tending a raging fire in one of the barrels.

He dumps another load of rubbish into the flames and squints at me through the smoke.

That’s when I notice his T-shirt. It’s black with the silhouette of a green alien on the front
a la Close Encounters of the Third Kind.
“Let me handle this kid,” I say to Vivian.

“Hey,” I say to him.

“Hey,” he says back with a chin-nod. He scratches his hairless cheeks, looks over the hearse, and asks, “Who died?”

“It’s not dead yet,” I deadpan.

He gives me a huh? look followed by a profound, “Huh?”

“This is going to sound kind of crazy,” I say conspiratorially, “but we found something out here. On the desert. Something that the government didn’t want to be found.”

He perks up and edges toward me, but I stop him with a raised hand.

“You ever heard of the
Men In Black
?”

He nods without blinking.

“They’re about five minutes behind us. What we got in here,” I hook my thumb toward the back of the hearse, “you don’t want to see.”

“Alien?” he asks.

It’s my turn to nod. I do it as solemnly as possible and add, “They’re going to kill us if they find us. We need your help.”

“Me?” he asks, swallowing the story hook, line and sinker. Thank God for all those Spielberg movies. There’s a whole generation of kids who think bikes can fly and aliens are real and eat Reese’s Pieces.

“I’ll pay you to drive this baby into Vegas. And you let me have the keys to your wheels. If the MIB catches you just scream innocent, they’ll cut you loose, but they’ll kill us, you know. All’s you gotta do is park this in Vegas at a hotel parking garage. I’ll park your ride next to it. We can switch again and that’s all you have to do.”

“What hotel?” he asks.

Good question. I have no idea.

“Bellagio,” Vivian blurts out. “Bellagio Hotel right on the drag.”

The kids nods. “That’s the one with the dancing water, right?”

“Right,” I say like I know. “I’ll pay you after you do it.”

“Lady,” he says, “I’ll do it for nothing. Anything to stop washing dishes and burning trash.”

“Okay.” I get out of the hearse and toss him the keys. “Remember, straight on to Vegas and no stopping.”

He digs in his pocket and tosses me his keys. “That alien you got back there. Will it hurt me?”

“No. Just don’t scream during the anal probe and you’ll be okay.”

He eyes widen in terror. I laugh. “Just kidding. God, how dumb are you kid? The alien is knocked out cold, it won’t bother you.”

He laughs and says, “You had me going there for a minute.” He jumps behind the wheel and starts the car. He starts to drive away, but I stop him with “Hey!”

He stops and peeks his head out the window to me.

I dangle his keys at him, asking, “Which ride is yours?”

He points between the two cars, saying, “That one.”

He peels out in a cloud of dust, and I watch him merge onto the highway without the faintest tap of brakes.

I walk over to where the kid pointed and sigh.

Vivian comes up behind me. “Shit a brick.”

“Looks like we’re going to Vegas on a scooter,” I laugh even though I don’t feel at all like laughing.

We barely both fit on the damn scooter. Vivian’s legs keep getting all tangled up in my legs so she finally wraps them around my waist with her feet crossed in my lap and her purse sandwiched between us. I have the throttle opened up all the way and our top speed is thirty-five. We must look like those Shriner guys in all the Christmas parades who ride the little scooters and cars. All we’re missing are the Grand Poobah hats.

Dark finds us before we find Las Vegas. And since the scooter doesn’t have headlights, it looks like we’re doomed to a night on the empty desert.

I stop when I just can’t see any more. I push the scooter off the road and over behind a rocky formation so we can’t be seen from the road. At least if Dillon finds the kid driving the hearse and backtracks, she won’t sneak up on us in the middle of the
night.

Viv and I lay down on the warm sand near the scooter. She pulls off her shoes and sets them aside. Next she takes off her pajama pants and wads them up under her head as a pillow.

I do the same. Might as well get as comfortable as possible. Besides, we’ve slept in worse places than the desert floor.

We lay side by side. I listen to her breathe and try to match my breath to hers.

“We could have sex,” she says. “I owe you quite a few.”

“We could,” I reply, but without really meaning it. I’m just too tired and really don’t want to be in my body right now.

“The stars are beautiful,” she says a moment later.

They are, too. I had no idea there were that many. I open my mind, will it to go blank and let it roam bareback and unharnessed around the bazillions of stars. By the time my mind comes back to the barn Vivian is asleep.

She can fall asleep at the drop of a hat. I’ve never been that lucky. After Georgia was born I couldn’t go to sleep at all unless she was laying froggie-style across my belly and chest with her head right over my heart.

But Georgia isn’t here. I can’t sleep.

I wish Vivian had some of those pills she used to love so much. I’m so tired, they’d probably knock me right out. Maybe she has one left over in the bottom of her purse, buried in all the lint and crap. She never cleans her purse out, just keeps adding to it.

I sit up and ease the purse away from her. I take it over to the scooter where I won’t wake her and rummage around in its depths. The stars are just bright enough that I can make out some of the stuff I pull out. Lots of makeup. Nail polish. Nail polish remover. Some of those fluffies she sticks between her toes when putting on the nail polish. Keys. (Which now unlock nothing.) Wallet. A couple of different hairbrushes. Our toothbrushes. Toothpaste. More makeup. Tampons. Good Lord, is there anything she doesn’t have in here?

I wrap my hand around something big and solid. A gun?

I pull it out and squint. It looks like…

I hold it up to catch the starlight. I gasp out loud and drop it.

I pick it back up. It’s a dildo. A great big, heavy-duty dildo with a black harness dangling off it. What the fuck? She’s carrying around a dildo in her purse and I didn’t know it? Is she hiding it from me? Where the hell did she get it and who’s been using it?

I hear Vivian utter, “Uh-oh.”

I turn to her with the monster in my hand. I hold it by the base and jiggle it in her direction. “What is this?” I accuse.

She sits up and brushes sand off her legs. “You really don’t know what that is?”

“I know what it is, Vivian. I want to know what it’s doing in your purse.”

She yawns and takes her time tying her long hair back in a knot. I feel like an idiot standing here with a big fake dick in my hand, which is probably exactly how she wants me to feel, so I sit sidesaddle on the scooter seat with Mr. Happy balanced on my knee and wait.

Vivian rises and struts over to me. She takes the dildo and holds it up, catching some star rays, and smiling at it. “It was supposed to be a surprise.”

“Oh, I’m surprised all right.”

She turns it over and admires it like it were some sort of… diamond or something.

“I bought it off the Internet from a place called The Pleasure Chest.”

“How long have you had it?”

“A month or so.”

“And you just carry it around in your purse because there’s no telling when it might come in handy?” I say.

“I packed it in my purse right before we blew up the house,” she answers. “Look,” she continues, punching a hidden button on the inside of the harness, ejecting the dildo, then snapping it back on with an audible click. “It attaches and detaches to the harness just like that.”

She looks at me proudly like she just performed some fascinating sleight of hand. She holds the dildo right in front of my face for me to admire its beauty. “It’s called a grape powercock. It’s nine inches of dense synthetic material molded after the finest cocks known to man. It won’t break, crack or burn. The material was developed by a rocket scientist.”

She pushes another little button right about where its balls would be if it had balls. “It even vibrates.”

I cross my arms.

Vivian looks at me quizzically, turns it off, and frowns, “Why do you look so mad? You said we could try out some toys.”

“You packed a dildo? You told me there wasn’t enough room to pack an extra pair of jeans, but there’s enough room to pack a dildo?”

“It’s not just any dildo.” She taps the head of it on my shoulder as she overenunciates each syllable, “This is a grape powercock.”

“A fruit-colored dildo,” I correct, brushing it away.

“That vibrates.” She holds it in both palms and gazes at it lovingly. “Isn’t it pretty?”