The Gideons have left a Bible in the room. That and a bottle of whiskey get him through the first night. It is a rough night.
It is a rough room. Full of old smells and stains. A white plastic ashtray had been placed next to the white plastic No Smoking sign screwed down on the corner of the nightstand. The No Smoking sign is scorched and warped where countless cigarettes have been snuffed out on it.
It is a rough morning. Eventually, though, he starts the car. He rolls the windows down, cranking the handles slowly in an automotive ritual of yesteryear. Drops the Bible in the passenger seat and lays back in the driver’s seat with his hand on it, eyes closed, listening to the car rumble. Feeling its power thrum through him.
It takes some time, but he is eventually able to put it into first.
He roars the engine and drops the clutch, shooting gravel from under the spinning back wheels at the motel behind him. A bigger pebble cracks the window of his vacated room. One more scar for the old whore to mark his night in her.
The tires scream as they hit the asphalt of the road. He guns the engine up through the gears and then eases off, putting it into neutral to idle the engine and coast back down under the speed limit.
The road was once the highway to the city. Once a highway; now just a road. Two lanes without shoulders. Once a marvel of the golden age of automobiling; a dustless, smooth tarmac connecting the towns of the nation to each other and to the world.
Now just a shitty road.
Asphalt busted up; the once crisp lines worn down to grit. It was the freeway that killed the highway. Then it all started to die. The little businesses and homes dried up like plant husks in a drought. Flaking lead paint and rust. The empty buildings rotting like corpses, weeds choking what is left.
The city skyline looms in the rearview mirror. It menaces him.
The road moves on with the river, crossing it now and again. The bridges, too, are rough. Flaking paint and rust. Bound to fail and kill, sooner or later.
He pulls up in a spot overlooking the river, where the truckers that still use the road pull over to rest and do their dirt. The river flows by sluggishly; dirty and sick. Polluted like a dying welfare geriatric smoking in her deathbed. A century serving as an industrial dump, her waters are chemical.
He shuts off the engine and closes his eyes. Listens to her engine clinking as she cools. Listens to the big rig diesels clatter on the other side of the lot.
“I like your car.”
The woman has snuck up on him across the lot. A lot of busted up concrete with dirt and gravel all over. Potholes that will be lakes as soon as it rains. Where’d she come from? The pair of truck rigs, shades draw across the cabs’ windows. She must have been in one of those trucks. Or walking down the road. Either way, she is not up to anything normal.
She has approached the car’s passenger side. Puts her hand on the hood just below the windshield to bend at the hips and drop her face to peer into the car at him. A calculated gesture, allowing a clear look down her black, cutoff, Jack Daniel’s label t-shirt. Her breasts pushed up in a black, lacy bra. The bra has a tiny red ribbon right in the middle, at the intersection of the underwire. The thrust of her left hip in her old blue jeans skirt, over her straight, load-bearing leg, draws the eye to elicit an imagining of the ass on display behind her. A pair of hip dimples above the arch of the small of her back, visible between the ragged hem of her t-shirt and the waistband of her skirt.
A calculated gesture, indeed. All the more so in that she hesitated a little just before laying her hand down on the car’s paint. She noticed the finish, understood what that means to an owner of such an automobile, and put her palm down on it anyway. Like an abrasive salesman opening with a lame joke. Understanding that throwing out a social gambit to illicit irritation is a way of shortcutting to emotional connection. That to weather the storm of the target’s irritation is to be a stranger to them no longer.
Women like this, sitting at the bar, flashing their lingerie, licking their swizzle sticks, and talking shit. Talking shit to men about the drink they are drinking, how fast or slow they are drinking it, and whatever else they think might get a rise. Showing off their claws like a cat on a scratching post. Using red flags as bait.
How long has she been staring at him with him gawking at her in silence?
“I said I like your car.”
Okay, too long, then.
“Oh, you’re one of those, are you?” he finally responds.
“One of those whats?” she laughs in a way that tells him she would be laughing exactly the same regardless of what he said. Like he is some kind of insect that amuses her.
“It doesn’t matter. I’m over it.”
She blinkes at this. “Over what?”
“All of it. I’m over it.”
“Well, that’s good. I’d hate to think you were damaged goods,” she laughs again.
“Whatever. What do you want? I don’t have any money.”
“That’s okay. I do. I told you already. I like your car.”
Ah.
“Ah,” he said. “Well, I don’t know where I’m going.”
“I said I like your car. I didn’t say I needed you to drive me someplace. How’s this thing on gas? It passes everything except the gas station. Am I right?”
“Yeah, I guess you are.”
“Well, let’s go fill’er up, then. It’s on me.”
He stares into her eyes, looking for some kind of clue of what is meant to come next. Then, with her looking right at him, he drops his gaze to look over her breasts in their lacy harness. He takes his time with this. She smiles when he next meets her eye.
“I don’t have any money. I mean none,” he said.
“You said that already. I just want a ride.”
“Where to?”
“Wherever you want, baby. Just show me what it can do,” she says breathlessly as she licks her lips, showing off her pierced tongue. She has marvelous lips. Like a movie starlet in heat.
Okay. That does it. In a cutoff Jack Daniels t-shirt, no less. Dead on the nose.
“Okay, then. Get in.”
He leans across the passenger seat and opens the door for her. She smiles and does a pirouette around the door as it swings by her. Then recoils at the sight of the Bible cradled in the passenger seat. The shiny black vinyl of the Bible’s cover is bright in the old, worn in, black leather of the bucket seat.
“Can you move that, please?” she says, pointing to the Bible like it is a scorpion.
He moves to comply. He drops his hand down to the Bible. Then he changes his mind. Plants his hand in the seat next to the Bible and leans towards her.
“Do it yourself.”
She’s crouched down over the open car door, hand on the roof now. She clicks her ring on the roof, and raises an eyebrow.
“No. I don’t do heavy lifting.”
They stare at each other for a while. She moves. Half entering the car, she puts her knee on the edge of the seat and slides her right hand down the dash towards him, leaning right in. Their faces are close. Her breasts are now suspended just over his arm in the passenger seat. Straining at the lacy edge of the bra, about to spill over.
“Are you gonna move that thing for me, or not? If you do, I’ll be extra special nice to you,” she breathes. Her breath smells good.
She drops lower. Through the Jack Daniels shirt, her breasts brush his arm planted in the passenger seat. She reaches down and gently grasps his forearm, applying pressure to guide his hand to the Bible. Slides her fingers along him. Skin on skin, her warmth is startling.
He folds. Bluff called; he throws the Bible up onto the dash.
She hops into the car and slams the door behind her.
Muse Vassal 