Free Tats by Layce Gardner Page B

telling what else is down there. Maybe if I wait long enough a rabbit will pop out. I giggle again.
    “Frenchmen are really weird, but for some reason they just love me,” she says. “They think I’m smokin’ hot.”
    “Well, you may be smokin’ hot, but I’m smokin’ pot. So there. I win.” I laugh at my own joke, but Vivian just looks at me like I’ve lost it.
    She continues, “I met this one Frenchman, Oliver, who was a narcoleptic and fell asleep right in the middle of it.”
    That mental image makes me laugh even harder.
    “I gave him my phone number. Then he starts calling me. I can’t speak French. He can’t speak English. All he says is ‘Hallo, Vivvi, Hallo.’ And I just say, ‘Bon jour and fromage.’ ”
    Fromage. That’s funny. Fromage is like the funniest thing I’ve ever heard in my whole entire life.
    “Sometimes when he calls I teach him to sing stuff like ‘Beans beans, the musical fruit’ and ‘A horse is a horse, of course, of course.’”
    I’m laughing so hard by now I think I’m going to pee my pants. I’m floating outside of my body, hanging up there somewhere in space and looking down on us. I can’t believe that’s me down there, doubled-up and laughing. Laughing my ass off on the hood of a Pinto parked out at the spooklight with Vivian the Cheerleader from high school.
    “I think I just peed my pants,” I wheeze. “I can’t believe I just peed my pants in front of a cheerleader.”
    “I’ll buy you some more tomorrow,” she says, lying back against the windshield. “I’ve got tons of money.”
    “Where is all this money?” I ask. “Down your shirt?”
    “Not yet,” she says, leaning up on one arm and grinning at me slyly. “You know where I can get a shovel?”

    “I can’t believe I’m doing this. I can’t believe I’m doing this. I can’t believe I’m doing this,” I chant out loud to myself.
    I’m going to blame it all on getting high. Because I like to think I wouldn’t be doing any of this in my right mind. Also, Sonny and Cher have more to do with it than I like to admit. Between her joint and her tits, I’ve lost all common sense.
    Not only did I steal a shovel out of some poor sap’s open garage, but I let Vivian drive me back to the cemetery and now I’m digging up her poor friend’s grave. And it’s raining. It’s fuckin’ raining again. No wait, X that out, now it’s hailing. I guess the only good thing that’s happened in the past two hours is that they left the tent up. I’m still soaking wet but at least I’m not being pounded by hail.
    I’ve been digging for two hours.
    “That’s one hour for each tit,” I say out loud.
    And I’m down in a mucky hole over my head. Vivian smoked cigarettes and watched me dig, but took off about twenty minutes ago, leaving me with strict orders to keep digging.
    I make a mental laundry list of all the illegal crap I’ve done in the past twenty-four hours: stole a car. Smoked some dope. Broke into a garage. Stole a shovel. Destroyed public property with a stolen shovel. Grave robbing.
    I hit wood. Finally. I scrape a few inches of dirt off the casket with my boot and scramble back out of the hole. I set the shovel on the dirt pile and sit wearily on the edge of the grave.
    “I found it!” Vivian hollers from out there in the dark somewhere.
    “Found what?” I yell back.
    “My shoe! My Choo shoe! My Choo shoe you threw!”
    “What is this, a Dr. Seuss book,” I grumble. “When I’m in jail it’ll all be so worth it.”
    I wipe the sweat and rain out of my face and see her walking my way, dodging hail bullets. God, nothing can faze this woman. 
    “Done?” she asks sweetly.
    “I could’ve used some help, you know.”
    “Well, if you had stolen two shovels maybe I could. But nooo, you’re not thinking ahead. You just steal one,” she scolds.
    “Why do I have the eerie feeling you just made me dig my own grave?”
    “You’re kidding, right?” Vivian leans over the hole