Down 'N' Derby (6 page)
Unable to sleep anymore, I walked into the kitchen. We had left a mess, too tired to clean after eating. But I wasn’t doing anything else other than driving myself mad, too many thought streams keeping me from sleep. I put the leftovers away, washed the dishes as quietly as possible.
“Falcon, Owen called me a dill weed. What’s a dill weed?” Maddox whispered that question to me from the top bunk of our wooden bunk beds. We shared a room in our first house because Owen refused to share a bedroom with me and Mad didn’t bother me one bit. He used to draw pictures in his bed with a flashlight tucked under his chin.
I laughed, he wasn’t quite old enough to know what a dill weed was. “Mad, you’re not a dill weed. And don’t say that again, especially in front of Mom. You won’t be able to sit down for a week if she hears you say that.”
“Why does Owen always pick on me?” He whispered, half asleep. We went through this almost daily.
“Because he loves you. That’s what Owen does. You have to worry when he stops speaking to you.”
“Ok,” he said and just when I thought he’d finally drifted off above me he said, “He told me that you’re a dork.”
“You didn’t hear me come in here. Either you’re deep in thought or my ninja skills are heightening.” I put the last dish in the drainer without turning around. I was deep in thought.
“Thinking about Mad,” I said simply and turned to face her.
“What about,” she asked.
“He used to ask me about things late at night. We used to share a bunk bed. He asked me why Owen called him a dill weed.”
She laughed at that and then sombered.
“How old was he?” She asked.
“Um, I was about eight so he was six or so.”
“That was before he knew.” She said, her whispery, mousey voice told me everything.
“Come here,” I opened my arms and she came willingly.
“I’ve been hiding some things.” She murmured and I could feel her jaw move as she spoke.
“You ready to share,” I asked.
“I can share one,” she said.
“I’ll take what I can get at this point.” I said, my lips moving on her hair.
“I was going to wait until our wedding night but I know you’re getting antsy.” She started to lift the hem of her shirt. My eyes widened and I looked for a way out, preferably somewhere cold.
“Not that, sleeve.”I bowed my head and shook it.
“Not you too—please don’t encourage her by actually using her words in a sentence.” We both laughed and then grew serious again.
“Whatever you’ve got to show me, let’s go to bed. Show me there. I have a feeling we’ll end up there anyway.”
She took my hand and led me to our bed and I sat on it while she stood before me the lights from her stained glass window made her skin look like the reflections of a disco ball. She turned to the side and lifted her slip of a shirt up to expose her ribs. She looked at me hesitantly, seeking approval but my feelings crashed against each other. One part of me, clearly the homo-stupidus caveman part, was livid. She’d marred her beautiful skin, and I was too stupidus to notice. But the other part of me was honored beyond words. I should’ve been more specific when I asked her not to get my name inked on her. I should’ve known she’d find a way around it, if her heart was set on it. And she did. Lying perfectly along her long and slender torso was a intricate, abstract falcon with swirls and lines that made it look feminine.
“When,” I asked, reaching my fingertips out to touch the bird of prey that marked her as mine.
She shivered while she replied, “A week ago when I was with Nellie.” She still had question on her face but I had to press a little more.
“It looks good; you’ve been taking care of it. This is why you didn’t want me to…”
“Yeah, I was gonna wait until our wedding night but I thought showing you would help—us. I don’t know why, I just wanted you to see. I feel like we’re coming unglued or something.” I could see the tears coming down her face for the second time that night and as she looked back down at the tattoo, they fell on her chest.
“Don’t ever say that. We will never come unglued. There is nothing in this world that could ever separate me from you. Distance, time, family—nothing will ever tear us apart. And you, getting inked for me just—it slays me and makes me so honored to be your choice. If we were already married, there would be no sleep for you tonight—at all.”
She let her shirt go and it cascaded down her waist, back into place and on top of my hand, not willing to leave her ink yet. She turned to face me, and my hand rounded the curve of her waist, around to her back and down to where those two dimples sat above the waistband of those tiny shorts she insisted on wearing to bed.
She reached out, grabbed my other hand and placed it on the corresponding spot on her right side.
“You’re not gonna go home, are you?” She whispered it to me, here in the dark while her thumb set me on fire, running across my bottom lip.
“Baby, you are my home,” I answered and pulled her down with me to show her.
Chapter 11
Maddox
I hate cartoon tattoos.
“We have to get inked, like before we get to California.” Nixon was more excited than I’ve ever seen him, and I’ve seen the boy at birthday parties all his life.
“Yeah, I’m down with that. What are you gonna get?” I was driving this leg and we had decided to go through Nevada and hit Vegas on our way to Venice.
“I don’t know. I’ve never gotten one. What do you have,” he asked. I had gotten several within my first few weeks of being of age.
“I’ve got an anchor across my chest and the stars on my elbows. Find a tat shop on your phone and let’s go before we get into Vegas.”
“Ok, cool. Um—you don’t get—twitchy or whatever when they tattoo you?” It was a valid question.
“No, somehow the gloves help. Can we stop talking about how weird I am—please.”
He found a tat shop about twenty five miles up the road and stopped in but as soon as we entered the place, Nixon turned puke green and sat in the closest metal chair. The man on the other side of the counter had enormous gauges the size of cup rims in his ears. I already knew what I wanted.
“Whatcha gonna get today?” He said in a slightly condescending tone.
“I’m getting a pinup girl on my ribcage. This guy,” I hitch-hike-thumbed in Nixon’s direction, “He’s a first timer. He’s probably gonna get a Mom heart or something.”
“Oh yeah,” Nixon stood up, having found his boys again, “If you add a ‘W’ to your dad’s name it becomes Weiner.”
Everyone in the place cracked up and one of the tattoo artists, a girl with rainbow hair, had to put down her tattoo machine so she could laugh without hurting her client.
“Where in the Hell did that come from Nixon—Jesus.” I turned around at the same time to give him a ‘Please don’t embarrass me in front of these people’ look.
He threw his arms in the air and said, “You know how I get when I’m nervous Mad—shit.”
I laughed at him some more, “I know, just pick what you want and shut the hell up.”
The man with the gauges plopped a big leather clad binder in front of me. It had page after page of pin-up girls in it. I wanted a real classy pin-up girl—Lord knows my Mom would twist my ears up until they bled if I got a naked one. I finally settled on a girl, sitting on a beach, clad in one of those hot vintage bikinis. The gauge guy drew up the sketch and placed the stencil on me. While he got his station ready, I cleared my throat and told him, “I just decided, I want her to be a brunette instead of a red-head, she would look better that way.”
“No problem, man.” He said. I sat on the black leather table, topped with the crackly white paper and then laid down after removing my shirt. He snapped on his black latex gloves and started in. It got a little painful around my ribs but at least it was something other than that damned skin crawling sensation.
I saw Nixon pass by with some picture in his hand. The rainbow haired girl was tattooing him and he looked pleased. I heard a very girly scream from the other side of the room and all eyes snapped to his direction. “Shut up, her hands are cold.” He defended.
“Shut up, her hands are cold,” I parroted back to him but in a much girlier voice.
It took about an hour and the guy did a fantastic job. She was lying on the beach, sun in her brunette hair. She was a dream. This was the only way I could get a girl on top of me without twitching.
I sat in the metal chair by the entrance when some guys came to leave a pile of flyers on the counter. I got up and took one from the top of the pile.
Antique, Classic and Futuristic
Car Show
Las Vegas
June 13-14
I knew those dates well. Reed had been nuts for months about getting everything right for the wedding and it was to be June 14
th
. June 13
th
, we were supposed to give Falcon a huge bachelor party. I knew they would be happy and while I was at the car show, still looking for a man I’d never met, they would be walking down the aisle together, starting their lives. It sucked that I couldn’t be there, but I was sure it would all be fine without me. The world didn’t stop just because I wasn’t there, right? Of course not. And it would be selfish of me to think it would.
I opened my mouth and nearly stood to tell Nixon about the car show but I could see from across the room that his whole face was contorted in pain and his fists were balled. The girl kept soothing him, “We’re almost done. Hang in there.”
I folded the flyer up in fourths and stuffed it in my back pocket. I looked around while bouncing my knees in boredom. I spotted an internet/coffee shop across the street and decided to check my e-mail.
“Nix, I’m goin’ across the street to check my e-mail.” I signaled the guy behind the counter and paid for my tattoo and Nixon’s. It set me back three hundred but I had plenty with all of my graduation presents, especially Falcon and Reed’s.
I walked into the café and signed my name for time on a stone aged computer. They should probably give people more than thirty minutes per session since it took nearly ten minutes just to log into my email. I had seventy two messages.
To my surprise most of them were from Owen. Some asked me about where I was and why I wasn’t calling in. One e-mail told me simply that he loved me and missed his little brother. That wasn’t something I’d ever heard from Owen. He wasn’t one to come out and say loving words except to Nellie. Another e-mail caught my eye with the subject: Remember Moses.
I opened the e-mail and as I read the story he talked about I remembered,
Falcon was maybe seven and I was five and Owen was eleven or something. I couldn’t really remember our exact ages. But Falcon dressed up as Moses and Owen was a camel because he refused to say any ‘ridiculous’ lines. Falcon had cut a hole in one of my mom’s white top sheets and had a long stick from outside. Owen wore an old horse Halloween costume but put two pillows in the back for the humps. I was always the last one at the dinner table, usually because I refused to eat my salad or green beans or whatever green thing happened to grace the plate. I would feed it to the dog bit by bit until the plate was empty but that night my brothers made a plan to set me free. They walked in, Falcon as Moses and Owen as a random camel and Falcon demanded with a clang of his staff on the floor to ‘let his people go,’
My mom tried really hard to compose her face as she said, ‘Um, Moses, I don’t have your people.” Dad lifted his newspaper to cover his face but we could see it shaking—he was laughing his butt off because Falcon was so damned serious about the whole thing.
