Tats Too (8 page)

I lock my wrist at seventy mph so I won’t go over the speed limit. That’s all we need. A speeding ticket written an hour after our alleged deaths. Cars blur by me on the left, all going eighty-five or more and I hate being the turtle. But I don’t dare go faster.

Delia’s probably found the note by now. I wrote out a note briefly explaining everything and stuck it in Georgia’s diaper. I pinned it up high so it wouldn’t get crapped on. It was pretty simple. It just said:
We’re not really dead. Get Chopper and Georgia and wait for us in Mexico City. Now. Hurry.
Delia knows me well enough to do as the note says. I hope.

I miss Georgia already. But I also feel kind of good. I mean only having myself to worry about. Not always checking diapers or warming bottles or getting spit up on. But I miss her. Am I going to be this confused for the rest of my life? Do all mothers feel this guilty?

I’ll have to remember to buy a Tulsa paper tomorrow. I want to know what they say about us after we’re dead. It would be fun to get some disguises and go to our own funeral.

A fat drop of rain splatters on my glasses. I wipe it off just in time for three more raindrops to nail me in the face.

Damn.

Vivian reaches around and tweaks my right nipple. That’s her signal for me to pull over. She points a manicured fingernail to up ahead and to the right.

The only thing I can see is a dilapidated barn setting about half a mile back from the road. I look ahead and see the highway stretching out flat with a long haul of nothing. The barn is the only shelter for God knows how many miles.

I slow down and turn onto the road leading to the barn. My back tire slides in the loose gravel and I have to put one boot down and yank hard on the bars to not dump it. That was a close call.

I keep my boots an inch off the ground all the way to the barn. I circle round to the back and park the bike so nobody can see it from the highway and the overhanging eaves will give it a bit of shelter.

Vivian jumps off, grabs her purse and stuff out of the saddlebags and skedaddles inside the barn. I find a loose 1 x 6 piece of siding, pry it off the wall and place it under the kickstand. This is a bike you definitely don’t want to topple over in the mud. It’s way too heavy for us to lift back up.

Viv and I stand in the doorway of the barn and watch the rain grow heavy. Vivian’s quiet, but I can tell she’s not in a good mood. She has both her feet planted firm on the ground, and her chin thrust out like she’s daring somebody to take a sock at her. I keep my mouth shut and let her sulk on her own.

Finally, she says without looking at me, “I bought some cigarettes.”

“We haven’t smoked in a long time,” I reply quietly.

“I used to smoke like a fish,” she adds, putting both fists on her hips like a gunslinger with an itchy trigger finger.

I’m not going to dare argue with her right now that fish don’t smoke. Not with that storm brewing behind her icy blue eyes.

I let my gaze travel out over the pasture and think about how good a smoke would taste. The best thing about smoking is that it gives you something to do to pass the time. What the hell do people do when they’re bored if they don’t smoke? Thank God, boredom’s never been a problem with me.

“Gimme one of those cigarettes,” I say.

She pulls a pack out of her cleavage, rips it open and hands one over. I stick it between my lips and sigh. It feels just like an old friend.

Vivian puts one between her lips and just lets it dangle.

“Gotta light?” I ask.

She laughs loudly. “I forgot to buy a lighter.”

I laugh, too. Looks like neither one of us is going to pick up old habits tonight.

Our laughter chases away the storm behind her eyes, and she sidles over next to me and loops her arm through mine. She stands on her toes and kisses me sweetly on the lips. I love it when she does that—kisses me out of the blue for no reason at all. She’s just as likely to punch me in the arm for no reason at all either, but I much prefer the kisses.

She nestles into my arms, rests her head on my shoulder and we just stand still, watching the rain fall over the pasture, and pretending to smoke.

***

By dusk we’re sitting in a dry haystack in the corner of the barn. I have my arms behind my head, and I’ve been passing time watching out the open door as the cars zoom by down on the highway. I’ve seen several beige vans chug by and I keep telling myself it can’t be the Mafia. Even if they figured out we didn’t die in the explosion, how the hell would they know which direction we went?

I’ve eaten seven bags of 100 calorie cupcakes and spent the entire time thinking about Georgia while Viv painted her toenails different colors over and over. She puts the last swipe of polish on her little toe and thrusts her foot under my nose.

“What d’ya think of the green?” she asks.

I pick a stray piece of hay from out between her toes and answer like how I feel, “Your feet look moldy.”

She examines her foot close-up, squinting at it in the dimness. “I think it’s pretty. It makes my toes look like dragon claws.”

She leans back in the haystack, wiggles her toes and puts her arms behind her head. I stick the piece of hay in my mouth and chew on it awhile, watching the intermittent flashes of lightning
flash across her face. I say hopefully, like I just got a great idea, “You know, we’ve never done it in a barn before.”

Vivian doesn’t respond. I’m thinking maybe she went to sleep because she can drop off like that with no warning.

I whisper, “Could be fun. We could pretend I live here on the farm and you’re my long lost city cousin who came to spend the summer. Or you could be a farmer’s daughter and I could be a traveling salesman.”

She snorts her answer, “I just started my period.”

The boredom closes in on me, wraps its bony fingers around my throat and I inhale deeply to keep from choking. The sound I make comes out like an irritated sigh. I wish I had a way to light a cigarette.

“Well, I didn’t plan it that way,” she says through the dark. “It’s not like I knew we were going to fake our deaths, go on the run and I could plan around a moon cycle calendar.”

I stick my itchy hands behind my head, too. “Did you buy any tampons when you bought cigarettes?”

She says dryly, “No, Lee, I thought maybe you could put some of your prison skills to good use and make me a sanitary napkin out of hay and cow dung.”

Uh-oh. She’s bored, too. And when Vivian gets bored sometimes she picks a fight just to have something to do. Well, I can pick fights, too.

I hear myself say, “Why don’t you draw on some of your ancient Cherokee skills and make them yourself. Then you can dig a hole fifty feet from the barn and bury them just like your people did.”

“Indians never did that.”

“You’re just bitchy because there’s no room service,” I say under my breath.

“And you’re just bitchy because I’m not jumping up and down at the prospect of fulfilling some weird-ass fantasy of yours. Next thing you know you’ll want me to gain weight so you can live out your big woman fantasy.”

Oh, shit. She must’ve found my secret stash of Lane Bryant lingerie catalogs. I hold my breath and brace myself for the sucker punch. I don’t have to wait long. She continues, “I threw
them away.”

Damn. Those catalogs were one of the things I was truly hoping wouldn’t blow up in the explosion.

It’s not like I have a special thing for big women. I like all women. And it doesn’t take a genius to figure out the bigger the woman, the bigger the tits. So when I got a catalog in the mail, I just kind of kept it. And I kept the next one and the next one. I didn’t mean to collect them. It just happened. And why would I throw away perfectly good pictures?

Also, if I’m being honest with myself, I’ve never had sex with a plus-size woman so it’s always been on my bucket list. But there’s no way in hell I’m going to tell Vivian that.

I decide that now is a good time to steer the conversation elsewhere. “I’m not on my period.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” she throws back.

Oops. I guess I shouldn’t have said that. I remember a little too late that old Indian story about the rattlesnake that asks the little kid to carry it up the mountain. The kid carries the snake all the way to the top of the mountain and then the snake bites him. The kid says, “Why’d you do that? I just helped you out.” And the snake replies, “You knew I was a snake when you picked me up.” Well, I knew Vivian was bored, spoiling for a fight, pissed off about the Lane Bryant lingerie catalogs and on her period, but I carried her up the mountain anyway.

Something in me just won’t leave it alone. “Just sayin’,” I mutter.

Vivian’s silhouette sits straight up. “Just sayin’ you want me to make love to you?”

I take a mental step backward. “Whatever.”

She sinks her fangs into me, “Why, Lee, I’d like nothing better. I’d like nothing better in this free world than to make love to you while I’m cramping and have a headache and my knees hurt and my back hurts like a bitch and I’m bleeding profusely out my hoo-ha than to make love to you. May I please?”

I retreat to the far side of my mind and wave a white flag, “Okay, okay.”

She lays back down and continues under her breath, “…In a barn surrounded by hay and cow shit.”

“It’s not cow shit. It’s goat shit.”

“So now you’re an expert on shit.”

I don’t even know what we’re arguing about anymore. Vivian does that to me. Weaves an argument around and around until I don’t know where we started or where we’re going and that’s how she always wins.

I counterattack anyway, “I
should
be an expert. You give me enough of it.”

There’s a long moment of silence and the tension slaps me in the face. Finally, she snarls, “You know if you were really smart, you’d shut your mouth and go to sleep.”

I think she truly means that, so I crawl over next to her and spoon up behind her back. “I’m sleeping already.”

After what seems like forever, I ease my tittie-dominant hand around her and lay it on her right tit. She doesn’t move my hand. I guess she’s not all that mad at me. I take another chance, asking, “Your tits are off-limits, too?”

“Yep.”

I wait a while longer, until I hear her breathing even out long and slow, then I move my hand a little. Her nipple hardens. I move my hand to her other tit and lightly brush my palm across that nipple, too. When it gets hard, I whisper, “Well, if you don’t want to have sex, you forgot to tell your nipples about it.”

She grabs my hand and throws it back at me, whispering harshly, “This is exactly why I don’t allow guns in the house. Because if I had a gun right now…”

Story of my life. Women either love me or they hate me. Vivian’s the first one who does both at the same time. Defeated, I turn onto my other side, facing away from her.

“I love you anyway,” I breathe.

“Love you anyway, too.”

We go to sleep like that, cheeks to cheeks.

***

I don’t dream that night, but I wake up to a nightmare. A hot gust of sour breath assaults my nostrils, and I jerk my eyes open to see an alien staring at me from only inches away. The alien is hairy, has a goatee and…

Wait a second. It’s not an alien, it’s a goat.

I slap the goat’s face away from me and sit up. I take inventory. We’re on the run. Headed to Las Vegas. A storm waylaid us. I’m in a barn. In a haystack. The sun is up and shining bright. Where’s Vivian?

A coyote howls loud and long.

No, wait, that’s Vivian howling. Over and over, she screams, “Leeeeeee! Lee, goddammit, help me! Oh my God! Lee!”

I jump to my feet and run out the barn door. I smash to a stop and try to figure out exactly what it is that I’m seeing.

Vivian is backed up to the side of the barn. A billy goat has her cornered and is butting her with his head. She screams and kicks at him with her dragon claws, and uses her red purse as some kind of gladiator shield, but Billy keeps on coming. He butts her in the side hard enough to flip her around then sticks his nose in her butt. She screams and kicks some more, turns back around and presses her ass harder into the side of the barn.