NIGHT CRUISING (2 page)

But she hadn't been
sorry at all, that was the bad part. She thought Molly was a
thirteen-year-old, and she hadn't believed a word Molly said.

Still undefeated, Molly
tried getting work again in Pensacola at a service station off the
freeway. "Do you need a cashier? I saw your sign." She
indicated the HELP WANTED sign in the window.

The paunchy middle-aged
man who ran the place looked over his black-framed glasses at her and
smiled slowly. "You?"

Damn. No, she felt like
saying, I'm standing here alone asking if you'll hire my invisible
rabbit, Harvey. "Yes me. I need a job. And I'm older than I
look." She thought she'd better get that in quickly as possible.

"And how old would
that be?"

Another skeptic.
"Sixteen. I'll be seventeen soon."

He was already shaking
his head. "Nope. Can't use you. Need a big strapping boy to help
run the station." Then he turned his back and waddled away to
sell a quart of oil.

Molly knew then getting
work was beyond possibility. They wouldn't believe she was sixteen,
or else they'd want parental permission. Either way the job market
was a closed world.

So it had come down to
sex. Selling it. As bad as it worried her—her stomach wasn't in
such good shape just thinking about it—as bad as she didn't
want to, she simply couldn't survive any other way. She'd lost her
virginity to an awkward, unsmiling boy back in the summer of her
fourteenth year on a deserted beach in Dania, Florida.
Don't even
think about sex.
Her father's words. How could she not think
about it? Every girl she knew had rid herself of virginity just as
quickly as she could. Though her father didn't know it, an intact
hymen had lost its importance a long time ago. Maybe before she was
born. As for selling sex, though, that was something else again. The
guys could be old, hairy, heavy, and filthy. They were
strangers
.
She didn't know how she'd endure the grunting, sweating ten or
fifteen minutes to get enough money to move on down the line. She
just knew she had to.

She had never tried
scoring at truck stops, never tried scoring
anywhere
yet.
Before she was even out of the pickup that dropped her at Gene Ray's,
a sloe-eyed girl at the corner of the building gave her a long heated
look. Right off Molly knew she was hooking. Everyone, Molly guessed,
knew that. The girl wore shorts short enough to bare her ass when she
stooped over, and a fluorescent green halter top with her breasts
swelling out the top and sides like the white coconut goo found in a
Mound's bar.

It took some courage
for Molly to sidle over and ask advice. She dropped down into what
she thought of as her toughest, most adult-sounding voice. "Is
there enough action for me to work here with you awhile?"

The girl shifted her
weight onto the other leg as if she'd been standing a long time. She
smelled like cigarette smoke, damp sex, and spearmint. Molly saw her
thoughtfully chewing gum, more like a cow chews a cud,
intermittently, and with relish.

You wanna be a Lot
Lizard?"

Molly thought about
that. She didn't really, no, that's not what she'd aspire to given
any choices, but she hadn't a choice so she supposed that yes, for
now, she wanted to be a Lot Lizard. Sounded prehistoric and slimy,
but what could you do.

"If that's what
it's called, yeah."

"These truckers,
honey, they're horny as wild boars. You look a little outta shape to
stand the rigor."

What she meant, Molly
knew, was that she looked either too young or too skinny. That was
plain insulting and, by God, she was getting steamed at how everyone
insulted her. Even if she didn't want to hook, even if it scared the
living daylights out of her, she still hated being treated like some
innocent numb-nut kid. "I'm okay. I can handle it." She
squared her shoulders and stared defiantly into the other girl's
eyes.

The girl shrugged and
chewed her gum. She glanced idly around the parking area and over to
the side where the massive trucks pulled up for fueling. "It's
your choice, kid. There's plenty of men to service tonight and JoJean
ain't showed up yet. You got rubbers?"

Molly nodded, then
blushed. Did this dimwit think she'd be selling herself raw? She
didn't want AIDS, for chrissakes, end up dying before she could get
out of her teens. Not to mention the garden variety venereal diseases
some people walked around with. She wasn't totally without a brain.
In her carryall bag she had a box of lubricated Trojans. She didn't
know how she was going to get the guys to use them, but if they
didn't, she meant to hightail it, leave them gawking.

The girl had sneaked a
look from the corner of her mascara-laden eyes at how Molly nodded to
answer the question. "Okay, go on. No skin off'n my ass. Go
around back and just bang on the door of a cab' till one of 'em
opens. I always take the Peterbilts and the Western Stars so stay
away from those, but anything else, you go for it big as you can go."

Again Molly nodded,
accepting the rules, and left the girl's side. She skirted red muddy
puddles behind the building to reach the dozing, idling trucks. She
gathered her courage and climbed to the driver's door of the first
truck she came to, a moving van company truck, and balling her
knuckly fist, she started in. After sixty seconds of steady banging
she was about to hop down to try another cab when a face showed in
the closed window. He was old. Maybe Sixty. Bald. Probably didn't
know what an erection was anymore, Molly thought with some despair.
She couldn't do this. She'd never be able to give herself to some old
grubby man. She bit her lower lip, leaned out of the way so he could
open the door.

"Have you been
baptized?" he asked.

Molly wondered briefly
if he was using another language or if he meant something to do with
being clean. The longer she took to answer and the longer she
scrutinized his face for clues, the more it came to her that he meant
baptized in the regular religious sense. She'd had the awful luck of
knocking on the door of a Bible Thumper. Never mind that she was
scared to death, that she was about to go against everything she had
been brought up to value, she had to face the guilt this stranger
meant to heap upon her head.

"I'm going,"
she said, beginning to clamber down. She didn't need this. Couldn't
take it.

"Child, you're
living a life of sin. Christ died on the cross for people like you.
Won't you be washed in the blood of the lamb?"

"I'm gone,"
she said, hitting dirt and stalking away. Behind her she heard him
above the roar of a dozen rumbling engines.

"Your soul is in
high peril! Go immediately to a church and ask them to pray for you!"

Sheez. Mama, if she'd
had a mama, would have told her there'd be days like this. The warped
hayseed who picked her up in Mobile and dumped her at Gene Ray's had
groped her for twenty miles before he got to the point and asked if
she'd piss on his back if he could find a place to pull over. She had
told him in no unequivocal terms that she wasn't into kinky, and no,
she would not piss on his fool back, but she'd knock out his fool
teeth if he didn't get her to the next exit before she puked. Now a
Bible Thumper was laying down God's law to a potential sinner. It was
too much.

Sheez.

Molly was so incensed,
she forgot all about having nubs for breasts and was stomping across
the lot looking for a likely cab to bang on, her shoulders back,
hands fisted at her sides. Her small carrying bag of clothes and
toiletries swung out behind her as she walked, bumping her hip as she
went. A movement at the far corner of the building slowed her walk.
She glanced that direction and saw a big guy aimed her way. He threw
a monstrous shadow that leapt before him as he moved forward. He was
way over six feet and sported massive shoulders, narrow hips, long
legs. He wore neat gray tweedy slacks and a pale lemon sport shirt
open at the throat, but God, the guy's hair was longer than hers. And
silkier. But then any hair was silkier than her naturally curly
unruly mop. His hair was brown streaked with silver, straight and
shiny as a horse's mane. A gray beard, not too bushy, but long enough
to touch his chest, covered the lower half of his face. He looked
like a great fallen angel she had seen portrayed in a picture in a
Bible back home. He also looked a little like the guy on the old TV
show who lived in the wilderness with a bear for a friend. Molly
wondered if he was Gene Ray, and if she was about to find her ass in
a sling. Maybe in a holding cell in the Mobile jail. That was about
what she deserved at this point. Jail and a one-way ticket home.

She stopped in her
tracks and hung one arm on her clothes bag. She waited to see what he
wanted. She'd try to talk him out of running her in, if that was the
problem. She could get a ride out of the truck stop in a hot second
if she had to.

He was near enough now
for her to tell he was smiling in all that hair covering his face. He
couldn't be near as old as his graying hair and beard announced.
Maybe it was premature. He was a good-looking guy for someone more
than twenty years--thirty?-- her senior.

He raised a hand in
greeting and she relaxed a little. Maybe he was just a regular guy.
Not a guy on the make, but a nice guy. If he turned out to be a
customer, her
first
customer, she wasn't sure how she'd handle
it. They called them "johns, " didn't they? He was too big
and too hairy, but he looked clean—woodsy, in some way—and
his eyes crinkled as he smiled. She liked that. He looked just like
the TV character he reminded her of, what was his name? Oh, yeah,
Grizzly Adams! That was wild. Maybe he was the actor, and wouldn't
that be cool beans?

"What can I do
you?" she asked when he was within speaking distance. This
shorthand language worked on the road. Men, especially, hated to
waste words. There was no extra time when traveling to play the
sophisticate and talk about the weather. She had decided early on
that she must talk tough no matter how her insides quaked. It was
protective coloration; she blended into the background when she
talked like older, more experienced women. She wasn't as vulnerable.

He walked right up to
her, so close that she felt impelled to move back a step from him. He
wasn't the actor, but he looked just as fine. She saw his eyes were
beautiful green— almost a mint color. Despite all the hair, he
was downright gorgeous, enough to make some girls back in Dania drool
like the dweebs they were. She, of course, wouldn't let on she
thought he was so fine. After all, he was real old. Old as her
father. Ancient.

"Hi there. I saw
you on your way back here when I drove in a few minutes ago. Do you
need a lift somewhere? I'm heading west."

Sounded nice enough.
Like a regular guy. Those green eyes crinkling and glittering like he
knew all her secrets and they didn't bother him a bit.

Molly looked around at
all the trucks, sniffed the hot, diesely air, and decided in a hasty
instant that Lot Lizardry wasn't her specialty. Who wanted to make it
in the sleeper of an eighteen-wheeler anyway? Her first time hooking
had to be done in a better place than this. It must be cramped in one
of those cabs. And smelly. And . . . scary.

She looked carefully at
the man, sizing up the possibilities. Virile. Very goddamn big. Maybe
she could talk him into something other than straight sex where he'd
crush her to death. He had to weigh over two hundred. Maybe he
wouldn't want sex at all. But then there was no use living a fantasy,
lying to herself. He'd want it. When it came time, she'd have to find
a way to steel herself to doing it. There was no other way.

"Sure," she
said finally. "I could use a ride on down the road. Seems
they're having a camp meeting here." She hooked her thumb back
at the Bible Thumper who hadn't given up on her. He was hanging half
out of his cab blabbering inanely about Sin and Retribution.

The big fellow spared
one glance at the hysterical driver and dismissed him with a shake of
his head. "There are too many nuts on the road. You have to be
careful."

"You can say that
again." Molly hitched the bag higher on her shoulder and started
walking beside the big man. "What do you want me to call you?
I'm Molly."

"You can call me
Cruise, Molly. Because that's what I do. I cruise." And then he
laughed.

Molly looked up at him,
but couldn't see his face in the new shadows. Several hairs on the
nape of her neck stood straight up on end just for a second. She
shivered. Too late now. She was taking a ride from the Long Hair and
that's all there was to it. She had never welshed on a deal or backed
out on a decision once it was made. At least not since she left home.

"Okay, Cruise,"
she murmured. "Let's eat some miles."

She waited for him to
unlock the passenger side of an old blue Chrysler, looked over at the
blank plate-glass windows of the cafe, blinked at the Lot Lizard in
the halter top, and slid into the bucket seat while Cruise held the
door for her.

"Buckle up,"
he said when he got into the car. He sounded cheerful, happy to have
her along.

He started the engine,
pulled on the headlights, buckled himself into the seat, shifted into
reverse, then drove slowly from the puddle-covered drive onto the
entrance road to the freeway.

"So where in the
West are you headed?" Molly wanted to be friendly, wanted to
forget the cakewalk her hair made at the back of her neck earlier
when he laughed.

Cruise gave her a
disarming smile. She could see the fleshy part of his lower lip where
it hid in the beard. The rosy soft lip in the gray brush made her
think of a newborn pup lost in a tangle of barbed wire. It was a lip
someone could nibble. She wished he was closer to her age. She could
go for him, if he was. But no matter how handsome, he was still too
old.