Tats (21 page)

I knock loudly on the double pane glass window. Vivian looks up at me surprised. Then she smiles and waves.

I motion for her to unlock the window. She saunters over with her red bag on her shoulder, unlocks the window from her side and slides it open.

“You scared me for a sec,” she says.

“How’d you get in there?” I ask.

“Just crawled on over through the ceiling,” she answers.

Of course she did. “What do you think you’re doing?” I ask. “Getting every pill in the place?”

“Not every pill.” She looks in her bag, naming what she’s collected so far, “Klonopin, Ultram, Skelaxin, Flexeril and Tramadol. That’s all so far. I haven’t gotten to the stimulant aisle yet.”

“Viv,” I start, “you can’t take all these pills.”

“I’m not going to take them all at once, you big goof.”

“No, I mean you can’t take them out of the store.”

“Sure, I can. That’s why I carry a big bag.”

“How about just a handful? Grab a couple and leave the rest. How about that?”

“I’m just taking a few of each one.”

“Vivian...I think you might have a problem here. A little pill problem.”

She sighs like she’s heard it a million times before. “There’s no problem. As long as I have pills, there’s no problem.”

She waves me off and continues with her shopping, picking up containers and reading the labels. At least she’s checking to see what they are first. That’s something, I guess.

“When’s the last time you were sober? Completely dry?” I ask.

“The day before I lost my virginity,” she says without hesitation.

“Don’t you think it’s time to slow down a little?”

“You don’t want to see me sober,” she says. “I’m boring as hell.  I don’t do anything but crochet afghans and cross-stitch toaster cozies.”

I give up. I don’t think I can run an intervention right now when we’re in the middle of a pharmacy. Kinda like taking an alcoholic to a bar and trying to get her not to drink. I’ll have to save this conversation for another day.

“We’re stuck here tonight, Viv. The place is locked up solid and if we try to leave we’ll set off alarms like crazy. I’m going over to the camping section to set up a tent for the night. Come by there when you’re done.”

“Okay,” she says absentmindedly, preoccupied with her shopping.

I’m halfway across the store when the intercom crackles on. Vivian’s voice booms over the system, “Lee? Be sure to get stuff to make s’mores.”

I sneeze a couple of times.

New jeans, new T-shirt, new boxers, new sportsbra, and new socks, all compliments of WalMart. I’m a brand-new person. I even dabbed a tester of men’s cologne behind my ears. I thought I’d like it, but now I just smell like a man and cologne has always made me sneeze.

“Bless you,” Vivian says.

I survey my handiwork from the hammock. I did a pretty good job of setting up a nice campsite. I cheated a little by blowing up an air mattress and grabbing some pillows and blankets, but I really don’t want to have to sleep on the hard linoleum if I don’t have to. The tent is one of those fancy ones that sleeps a whole family. I couldn’t drive the pegs into the ground (obviously) so I held the ends down with free weights from the sports section.

And, yes, I got the s’mores fixin’s which we cooked over the open flame of a gas grill. That made Vivian happy. She’s eaten about twenty of them already. Now that I stop and think about it, I’ve never seen her eat anything but sweets.

“You ever eat anything but dessert?”

“Nope. Why would you eat anything else when sugar is readily available?” she reasons.

“But you never eat your pie.”

“I don’t like pie,” Vivian answers.

“You always order it.”

Vivian shrugs. “I just like to know it’s there if I ever do want it.”

There’s a red flag in there somewhere but I’m too fucked up to put it all together right now. “How many of those blue pills did I take?”

“Just enough,” she says.

“At least I’m not crocheting an afghan,” I sigh. “I can’t believe the stuff you talk me into.”

“I don’t talk you into anything you don’t already want to do.”

“You’re probably right.”

Vivian stands and stretches her arms high above her head. “So what do people do in WalMart at night for fun?” she asks.

“We could have sex,” I say, figuring what the hell maybe someday she’ll give in and that’s what her stretching like that in front of me does to my thoughts.

“No, thank you,” she says politely, then adds, “I don’t get the whole lesbian thing. It’s so confusing.”

I hang one leg off the hammock and put my boot on the floor, rocking myself back and forth. “Sometimes I don’t understand it either.”

“I don’t understand the sex part. How it all works.”

“There’s more to being a lesbian than just sex,” I say.

“Like what?”

“I can have sex with a man...I mean, I have had sex with men, a long time ago, and sometimes it was okay. But I just can’t imagine living with a man. Having to talk to him all the time. Sharing my bed with him. Sharing a bathroom with him. All that hair. Chest hair grosses me out.”

Vivian crawls into the hammock and lays her head down by my boots. I pull her feet across my belly and massage them.

“What do lesbians do in bed?” she asks.

“Everything.”

“Except there’s no penis.”

“No real penis. You can buy a penis if you really want one,” I say.

“Do you have one?” she asks.

“Ginger got it in the divorce.”

“So you’re sans penis right now.”

“Yep,” I say. “And I don’t think WalMart sells them either.”

“Don’t get mad at me,” Vivian states, “but, I don’t think two women having sex is really sex.”

“Why?”

“It’s more like heavy petting. It’s like back when you were parking out at the spooklight with a boy and you let them feel you up. That’s not sex.”

“Some people think it is.”

“It’s not sex.”

“Well, in that case, do you wanna
not
have sex with me?”

“No, thank you.”

I grab her other foot and massage it. “Okay, then. You wanna have sex with me?”

“No, thank you.”

“I’m getting a little confused now.”

“See? I told you it was confusing.”

“Having sex with a woman is something every woman should experience. It’s way better than sex with a man,” I say with a tad of hope in my voice. “’Cause a woman knows how a woman works, you know. It’s about pleasing the other woman and not just getting yourself off.”

“This is going to sound crass,” Vivian says, “but sometimes I just want a man. I just want to be fucked.”

“I can fuck.”

She pats my knee like a beloved pet. “I’m sure you can, honey, I’m sure you can.”

“I bet if you didn’t know I was a woman...like if we were on
The Dating Game
and I was sitting behind the wall with two other men...and you couldn’t see me...based on just my answers to your questions, you’d pick me. You would chose me above the guys.”

She laughs. “Okay, Bachelor number one...What is your favorite food?”

“Toast,” I answer without hesitating.

“Toast? Why?”

“Because toast is the best vehicle for butter. I love butter.”

“Hmmm...okay,” she thinks out loud. “So, if you and I were on a date in a restaurant, what would you order?”

“I’d order a plate of butter, smear it all over your body, everywhere, and then roll you in sugar,” I say.

“Good answer,” she laughs.

I sit up and swing both legs over the side of the hammock.

“Where you going?” she asks.

“The dairy section.”

Vivian swats me on the arm and laughs. “Finish my feet, goofball.”

I lay back and Vivian rests both her feet across me again. She resumes the game with another question. “Bachelor number one...Tell me something about yourself. What do you like to do?”

“Well...I like to poke dead things with a stick. I believe in aliens and ghosts and Bigfoot. And G-spots. I’m also a professional Roller Derby player.”

“Ooh, how exciting! What’s your Roller Derby name?”

“Lezzie Borden. Sometimes Phyllis Killer. Or Shelly Splinters.”

“You’ve spent some time thinking about this,” Vivian laughs.

“Yes, I have.”

Vivian yawns big. “Do you really believe in aliens?” she asks sleepily.

“I
am
an alien,” I confess. “I just wear this human body costume while I’m here visiting earth. My inside doesn’t match my outside at all. I’m here in this costume to collect earth specimens to take back to my home planet.”

“What kind of specimens do you collect?”

“I’m glad you asked,” I say. “Orgasms. I collect female orgasms. I collect all that massive energy and put it in one big jar. So far I’ve collected about five times the energy of an atom bomb.”

“What’re you going to do with all that?”

“Dominate the universe.”

“Of course,” she says, closing her eyes and drifting off to sleep with a smile on her face.

I watch her sleep for a moment. She’s beautiful. I wish there were some way I could show her just how beautiful she is to me.

“You’re the best friend I’ve ever had,” she mumbles.

“I love you too,” I say softly.

I can’t sleep. I settle down and write in my journal for a long while, then walk aimlessly around the store, snacking on cold chicken nuggets, and end up in the book department. Since there’s nobody around to stop me, I do something I’ve always wanted to do. I pull all the Bibles off the shelf and restack them in the fiction section.

I almost drop Vivian. Damn, she’s heavier than she looks. She’s like dead-lifting three big dog food bags. I stuff her head first into a cart on top of our bags. Her legs hang out over the sides and kind of flop around when I push, but there’s not much I can do about that. I roll her as gently as possible toward the front doors when I see one of those things the clerks walk around with. One of those sticker guns or whatever you call them. This is a big blue gun already loaded with a big roll of yellow happy face stickers.

I can’t resist. I grab the gun and sticker Viv from head to toe. I put a yellow happy face sticker on every square inch of visible skin I see. I play nice, though, and don’t put any on her face. I put on stickers until the gun runs empty. That’ll teach her to pass out on me.

I hide in the aisles with my loaded cart until the doors to Wally World slide open. I waltz right on out the front doors, wheeling Viv and her happy faces. The little old Greeter even calls after me, “Have a good day!”

Chapter Ten

I sit on the bench just inside the doors of WalMart with a cart full of Vivian in front of me and no idea what I should do next. I haven’t thought this through very far. I know I can’t take my new Harley. Once P.C. discovers the kid in Hell Camino, he’ll be looking for the bike.

I keep one eye on the lookout and the other eye on Viv to make sure she stays breathing. A dead body in a cart right now would really complicate things. Plus, I don’t know how I’d explain the happy face stickers.

Vivian looks pretty dead, but she keeps on breathing. She even snorts a little once in awhile.

I finally come up with an idea. Maria, in prison, told me about it. It’s how she always got around town. Of course, she got caught a lot and ended up behind bars. That’s not what made her a lifer, though. She’s got life because of her hot Latina temper. She told me her lover wasn’t paying enough attention to her during a three-way so she accidentally killed her.  I never asked how you accidentally kill somebody with your bare hands.

What the hell, I decide to give Maria’s transportation scheme a try. I’m in it so deep now, one more little crime’s not going to hurt.

A little old lady walks by me with a cart full of groceries. She pushes through the exit and out into the parking lot. I follow behind her a ways, pushing Vivian in my own cart.

The lady stops her cart at the trunk of a big white Lincoln Continental and beeps the alarm off. I push past her car to the other side and pull my cart up next to a Honda Civic. I try to look busy, like I lost my keys in my pocket.

The lady opens her driver’s side door and puts her keys and purse in the seat. So far Maria is right about the stupidity of people. She unlatches the trunk, walks behind its open lid and begins to pile her groceries in.

That’s my cue.

I open the passenger door to the Lincoln and as quickly as I can, I lift Vivian out of the cart and toss her in headfirst. I throw all the bags in on top of her and quietly shut the door. I run to the driver’s side and scramble inside. I check the rearview mirror, but the old lady is hidden behind the trunk lid and is busy with her groceries.

I stick the key in the ignition and fire up the engine. I look over my left shoulder and see that the little old lady is frozen with a what-the-fuck? look on her face.

I lay on the horn and the lady jumps to the side.

I throw the car into reverse and peel out of the parking space, slamming into her cart and crunching some of her groceries under the tires. Whoops.

By now the lady is flailing her arms and hopping up and down and yelling. I power down the passenger window and toss her purse out.

“Sorry!” I shout and peel out of the lot.

We’re not five minutes down the road before Vivian wakes up and is none too happy to find herself sitting on her head with her feet on the ceiling. She moans and groans a lot, but manages to get herself into a sitting position. She looks out the car window a couple of long, tense minutes and finally says, “What the fuck? Every time I go to sleep around you, I wake up in a different world.”

“I couldn’t get you to wake up,” I explain. “And we had to get out of Wally World before P.C. came in after us.”

She looks down at her body and blinks a few times.

“I know, I know. You got really fucked up on pills last night and before I knew it you were putting those stickers all over yourself. I couldn’t make you stop.”

I concentrate on the road, but feel Vivian staring hard at my profile.

“I will get even,” she whispers. “Don’t think that I won’t.” She peels the stickers off one at a time and resticks them to the dash.