Tats (6 page)

Another girl took Lori’s place. And another took her place. And another. Sixteen minutes later I’d kissed each and every one of them.

“Who’s the best?” one girl asked.

“Yeah, Lee Anne, who kisses best?” they demanded to know.

“Lori,” I said. “Definitely Lori.”

Lori reached out into the dark between us and found my hand. She raised it to her mouth and pressed my knuckles to her lips.

If I’d been a little quicker on the uptake, I’d have declared it a tie and demanded a tie-breaker.

Later, I’m all tucked inside the sleeping bag on the cold linoleum floor in that half-sleeping state where I still felt the ghost of Lori’s lips on mine and my body was buzzing from it.

“Ssshhhh,” Lori said right next to my ear. She slowly and carefully unzipped my sleeping bag and crawled in with me, pressing her warm body up next to mine. Our lips found each other and she guided my hand to her chest. Her boobs were small and hard and when I touched her nipples she squirmed her hips against me.

She rolled over onto her back and pulled me on top of her. I kissed her lips and her neck and her ears and she grabbed my butt with both her hands and rubbed against me, making little whimpering noises in the back of her throat.

That night, I found salvation in the house of God.

And I’ve had a thing for red hair ever since.

I stow my journal back in my jacket and jump in the shower. I let the pinpricks of hot water hit my sore nose, kind of hoping the sharp needles of pain will take away from the throb in my head. My mind is still dancing with thoughts of red hair and Lori/Vivian and I get an overriding urge to touch myself. I lather up my hands and slip one between my legs.

I close my eyes and Vivian surprises me by stepping into the shower naked. She turns her back to me and lifts her face to the stream of hot water. I rub soap all over the front of her and she responds by pressing her ass into me.

That’s when the real Vivian swings open the door and walks in, startling me. I jump pretty good and even though I don’t think she can see me through the flowered shower curtain, I pretend I was washing under my arms the whole time.

I hear her peeing about six inches away.

“How’s your nose?” Vivian asks in a voice full of sleep and sand.

She sounds genuinely concerned, so I answer honestly, “Hurts some. But I don’t think it’s broken. I think it just popped back in place from the last time.”

“You got any plans today?”

“No.”

“You do now,” Vivian says. She flushes the toilet and my water is instantly scalding hot.

“Holy shit!” I exclaim, jumping backward. “That’s hot!”

“Do ya good,” she says on the way out, closing the door behind her.

By the time I walk out of the bathroom, fully dressed in my day-old jeans and bloody T-shirt, Vivian has somehow managed to pull it all together and look pretty fabulous in a new outfit. I don’t know how she managed that so fast. Must be all the cheerleader training. She’s wearing the same kind of ensemble, just a different animal print (zebra or maybe tiger. Hard to tell, but it does have stripes) and another pair of stabby shoes. Her tits are kind of heaved up and out like the prow of a Viking ship. She’s putting on lipstick in the mirror and that’s a pretty good signal that we’re not thinking the same thing at all.

“Guess I’m ready,” I say lamely, sitting on the end of the bed and pulling on my boots. “What’re we going to do?”

“You can’t wear that shirt,” she says, smacking her lips on a tissue. She roots around in her suitcase, finds what she’s looking for and throws it at me. “Try one of mine on.”

I look at what she threw at me. I hold it up and examine it from every angle. What is she, nuts? Has she not been paying any attention at all?

“I can’t wear this,” I say. “It’s not even a whole shirt. Just pieces of a shirt. Not even the best pieces.”

“It’ll look great on you,” she replies. “Less bloody, anyway.”

“This won’t even cover up my sportsbra.”

“God, you’re so helpless. You don’t wear a bra with that. The support is built in.”

I turn it over in my hands. “Where?”

“Put it on,” she orders.

I hold this thing she calls a shirt up in front of me and look in the mirror.

“That’s the back. Turn it around,” she sighs.

Now she’s tapping her foot at me and I’m getting nervous because I remember how lethal she can be with footwear so I disappear back into the bathroom. I strip off my T-shirt, wife-beater and sportsbra and look at myself in the mirror. My boobs are actually okay, just smallish. I press them together with my palms and hold them up as high as I can. That kinda hurts, but it’s the only way I can create cleavage.

I throw her shirt over my head and pull it down. It’s tight. Way too tight. I look in the mirror again. Yep. The shirt’s so tight, what boobs I did have are now mushed down to oblivion. I roll my eyes at my reflection and head back to Vivian.

When I walk in the room, Vivian looks right at my chest and knits her eyebrows. I turn beet red from head to toe.

“I really really really feel uncomfortable in this.”

“You don’t look half bad,” she says.

“Which means I don’t look half good either. I couldn’t find the support.”

“You just need to poosh them up some,” she says.

“Poosh?” I ask. “Did you just say ‘poosh’?”

“Poosh ’em up some,” she explains, cupping her own tits up high as an example.

“My boobies don’t poosh.”

“Boobies?” she laughs. “Did you just say boobies? Four-year-olds have boobies. Grown women have tits.”

“Some grown women do,” I retort. “Some don’t.”

“Oh, for chrissakes, you have tits. You’ve just been binding them down for too long.” Then she actually sticks her hand down the front of my shirt, cups my boobie in her hand and pooshes it up. “See?” she says, already pooshing up the other one too. “
Voila
! Tits!”

I look at myself in the mirror. She’s right. I have cleavage. The shirt is squeezing them high and hard and I actually kind of have tits.

Here comes her hand again. “Now if you can just make your nipples hard—”

“Stop it!” I yell, slapping her hand away. “Don’t do that unless you mean it.”

She laughs and flops down on the bed.  “You amuse me,” she says, “you truly amuse me.”

“Well, I’m happy you find me so amusing,” I say. “What’re we getting ready to go do?”

“Go eat,” she says and rolls off the bed with a peppy bounce. She walks to the window and peeks her nose through the curtain, looks around, closes it and heads to the door. She flings it open and steps outside, blinking in the hot sun.

She stops and scans the parking lot. “Which El Camino is yours?”

“IHOP is my favorite sit-down restaurant in the whole entire world. Endless coffee, six different types of syrup, you can even get pancakes shaped like Mickey Mouse’s head if you want,” I ramble while Vivian fixes her lipstick in my rearview mirror.

I score a parking spot near the front of the restaurant and get out of the car. I’m at the front door before I realize Vivian is still in the car. Now she’s using the rearview mirror to put on mascara. I cross my arms. I tap my foot. I count to twenty and back again. If I had a watch I’d look at it. I finally get tired of waiting and go on in.

Inside smells like pancakes and bacon and syrup and coffee and old women’s perfume. I love it. I could just wallow in the smell and rub it all over me. If somebody would bottle this smell, I’d buy a whole case of it.
Eau de IHOP.
It reminds me of my grandma, my mom’s mom. I only met her a few times and she died when I was six, but I remember her smell. She told me once that when she was a girl she couldn’t afford perfume, so she would dab vanilla extract behind each of her ears. She said it drove the boys nuts and virtually guaranteed that she’d get her ears cleaned every date.

A cute little brunette waitress with cat eye glasses and naturally pouty lips looks from my tats to my tits and up to my face. “Just one?” she asks.

“No, two. She’ll be here in a minute.”

The waitress grabs two menus from the podium and says, “This way.” She guides me to an empty booth halfway back. I scoot in and pick up the menu. “Pot of coffee, please,” I order.

“Just be a minute,” the waitress says, her eyes lingering on my tats.

She flips her hair and walks off toward the kitchen. I’m checking out her swing when Vivian opens the door and walks in. I wave at her and she starts toward our booth with a swing that puts the waitress’s to shame.

Damn. I haven’t seen her for all of five minutes and I get that little shock of how sexy she is all over again. As she passes by each table, all the men turn their heads and follow her with their eyes. She doesn’t seem to notice the stir she’s causing. She’s probably used to it.

Vivian hovers over me and orders, “Switch me sides.”

“Why?”

“I don’t like having my back to the door,” she answers.

“Okay, whatever...”  I slide into the opposite side and Vivian scoots into my warm spot.

“You know what you want?” I ask, pushing a menu across the table to her.

She flicks the menu away with a swish of her hand. “Pie. Lemon pie.”

The cute waitress delivers our coffee and I order pie for Vivian and a country breakfast and Mickey Mouse pancake for myself. This time when the waitress walks off I look at Vivian instead. She takes the sunglasses off the top of her head and puts them on while I pour our coffee.  I watch her dump about ten packets of sugar in hers before taking a sip. She peers around the restaurant through the brown lenses. I can’t see her eyes and I hate that. It’s so hard to tell what someone’s thinking when you can’t see their eyes.

I drum my fingers on the table and when it becomes all too apparent that Vivian isn’t going to say anything, I try to make conversation. My social skills leave something to be desired and I hate small talk, so I try to lead off with something a bit more meaty. “So...you’re a mistress for a living. And you came back here for a funeral?” I ask.

Vivian doesn’t answer or even give any indication that she heard me.

“How long are you staying? In Tulsa? In the U.S.?”

That question goes unanswered, too.

“What did you do right after high school? I mean, you didn’t go straight into...your current occupation, did you? Did you go to college?”

No response.

“I didn’t go to college. But I did get the reading list for all the classes from OU. Read all the books twice. I guess you could say I have a virtual master’s degree by now.”

At this point, I still don’t know if she hears me or not, so I throw a weird question in just to see if she’s listening: “How old were you when you lost your virginity?”

“Eighteen,” she says, still not looking at me. “I have a Master’s in English Lit from OU, which qualifies me to do absolutely nothing, and I’m going to be in the States until I leave.” She pulls her glasses down to the tip of her nose with her index finger and looks at me over the rims. “How long have you been out of prison?”

I gulp hard, burning my tongue on the hot coffee. I grab for my water and gulp that too hard, also.

Vivian pulls a business card out of the depths of her cleavage and places it on the table between us. I only have to glance at it to know what it is.

“Your parole officer’s card was in the visor.”

I pick up the card and without looking at it, put it in my back pocket. Now it’s my turn to not look at her.

“You don’t have to tell me about it,” she says, pushing her glasses back up. “I don’t really care. I just think it’s weird that you lied to me is all. And, perhaps, symptomatic of something deeper if you’re going to lie about little shit like that.”

“Sorry,” I say. “People just tend to freak a little when they find out I was in prison. Lying about it’s become a habit.”

The waitress brings our food and places all my plates around me and Vivian’s little pie plate in front of her.

“Nice tats,” the waitress says to me. She reaches out and runs one light finger over my tribal flame. “Who did ’em?”

“Prison,” Vivian cuts in. “She got them in prison.”

The waitress takes a step back, forces a gritted teeth smile at Vivian, then turns and walks like she can’t get away fast enough.

“A year and a half or so. I’ve been out a year and a half,” I admit.

Vivian leans forward and rests her tits on the top of the table, and I try not to stare directly at them. Now I wish I’m the one who had on sunglasses.

“Listen, Lee, if we’re going to do this thing, then we can’t be lying to each other. Understood?”

“Thing?” I take a quick sip of water. “What
thing
? I mean, I’m not saying there won’t be a thing, but do we have to call it a thing right now? I just met you.”

Vivian shakes her head a tiny bit and crinkles her nose in thought. “Let’s just call it an adventure. You wanna go on an adventure with me, don’t you?” She takes away her tits, adding, “I mean, unless you have something better to do.”

Adventure. I guess that’s a good way to look at it. I glance at Sonny and Cher and hear myself say, “Sure.”

“Okay then, it’s settled. Let’s don’t lie to each other anymore.” She takes a bird-size bite of her pie and says, “Seventeen.”

“Seventeen what?” I say with my mouth full of pancake.

“I was really seventeen when I lost my virginity. I just wanted you to know what it felt like to be lied to,” she says.

“You’re right. That really stings,” I say with maximum sarcasm.

We’re quiet for a long time. I shovel as much food as I can in my mouth, hoping to soak up all the excess alcohol left in my system. Vivian, still looking around at everyone else, just plays with her pie.

“Aren’t you going to eat?” I finally ask.

Vivian doesn’t respond.

I stab part of my pancake with my fork and hold it across the table to her, asking, “Wanna eat Mickey’s ear?”

“I’m a vegetarian,” she replies dryly.

“Vegetarianism implies a healthy lifestyle. Lemon meringue pie does not.”

“If you want a bite of my pie just ask,” Vivian says flatly.

“Can I have a bite of your pie?”