NIGHT CRUISING (11 page)

"Largest city
between Houston and Albuquerque. By the time you get to El Paso
you're starved for a city and after you leave it, you starve a long
while more until you reach another of any size. It's the last
outpost. On trail drives back in the heyday of the Old West, El Paso
must have seemed like paradise to the cowboys. The last stop for
hundreds of miles in any direction. It still is."

Cruise took an exit.
Molly grew more interested in her surroundings, craning her head to
look out the window.

Cruise turned left on
an overpass. Not far from the freeway he pointed to the Metro sign.
"That's it," he said.

"Jesus. It looks
like a shopping mall."

Cruise grinned. "That's
kind of what it is. Wait till you see." He knew he sounded like
a carnival barker trying to get the unsuspecting to come into the
geek house, talk the innocents into watching a boy with strong teeth
bite off the head of a chicken. And that was exactly what he was
doing too. Luring Molly into his world where the lights burned all
night, bartering for sex rampant and quite evident, liaisons being
made everywhere you turned. Beneath the lights and the clean rest
rooms and the aisles of polished glass

cases,
there was a lurid, steamy world where you could buy anything your
heart desired--women, boys, radio and CB equipment, hot merchandise
off the trucks, drugs, or a

combination
of any sort of entertainment you might want. Or need. This outpost
town with its Old West flavor offered the unwary danger, the innocent
an education, and the jaded a whole raft of all new thrills.

Cruise loved it. He
reveled in it. Where anything goes, Cruise felt unbound. Life here
came with a promise of an eternal playground, and the advertisement
wasn't a lie. If you couldn't find satisfaction in El Paso, it wasn't
to be had.

Cruise parked to the
side of the restaurant area, not far from where the big rigs lined up
ten deep and twenty long. Trucks pulled in and out, behemoths
lumbering slowly and

making
exquisitely precise turns or backing-up maneuvers. That was just one
parking lot. The entire complex had three more. Across a fence west
of the restaurant he saw a couple

of
small sleazy trailer houses and billboards announcing ADULT VIDEOS,
MAGAZINES, BOOKS.

"Come on inside, I
want you to see this place." Although he didn't tell her, he
also wanted to find a Lot Lizard who went by the name of Chloe. He
really needed a couple of hours with a woman other than his young
witness.

He waited in front of
the grill of the car for Molly. She bounced along beside him like a
young athlete limbering up for a race. He could feel her energy like
an aura that touched his skin and made it hum in tune to her
high-pitched current. He grinned all the way inside the glass doors
of the Metro.

Once inside what
appeared to be a busy lobby, Cruise guided Molly to the right toward
the restaurant. Though it was three o'clock in the morning, the
tables and booths were full of truckers and travelers. Sounds rang
from the busy kitchen to mingle with dozens of conversations, phone
calls going on at the booths, waitresses taking orders, busboys
clearing tables. Cruise looked around the room for Chloe, but she
wasn't there.

Sitting at a counter,
Cruise ordered two coffees, swirled on his seat to grin at Molly.
"What do you think so far?"

"Does no one sleep
around here?"

"Oh, they sleep,
out in their cabs, but these are the men who just got into town or
they're getting ready to leave it. You can walk in here anytime of
day or night and find it this way." He gazed around at the
commotion, drinking it in, letting it revive him after his own long
haul of driving. It was like getting an electrical charge. His
weariness receded,

his brain woke to the
various sounds, sights, and smells.

There was the scent of
cinnamon rolls, coffee brewed fresh, the early morning smell of bacon
and fried eggs. Now if he could just spend a short time doing the Big
Nasty with

Chloe everything would
be perfect.

"I think I'm going
to need this." Molly used both hands to steady the cup of coffee
at her lips. "This place is hopping."

"Drink up and
we'll go explore the rest of it."

Outside the restaurant
after paying their bill, Cruise took Molly across the lobby to the
travel store. They saw Indian blankets and headdresses, pottery,
Navajo turquoise jewelry, tapes, video movies, books, souvenirs.
Cruise bought a hair comb made of an abalone shell. He waited as
Molly thanked him and used it to hold one side of her red hair

from
her face.

"Now let's see
what else they have," he said, hustling her into the open lobby
area once more.

With a proprietary air
he pointed out the ice cream shop, the barber, the shoe shine stand,
the full-size theater, the TV room, the knife shop, rest rooms,
showers, a game room, and a laundry. One area was unlike any he had
found in other truck stops across the Southwest. There was a
glass-enclosed room with a sign on the door that said simply, THE
QUIET ROOM. Inside were pastel flowered sofas and comfortable chairs,
a long polished table with more chairs pushed around it, plants, bare
walls, magazines scattered around. In there a trucker could relax and
pretend he was in his own living room at home, all sounds from
outside masked, dampened, set at a distance. There was no TV there,
nothing to infringe on the feeling of womb-like isolation.

In each shop and room
he and Molly looked, Cruise watched for the short black cap of hair
that made Chloe stand out from other women. She was like a shadow,
sometimes here, sometimes there, always on the move. He doubted he
could find her, but he wished he could; he hoped desperately to see
her in every female face he saw.

His testicles tightened
at the thought of her paper-white skin, her shiny black hair and
eyes. She was one girl he never felt the urge to kill. He saw her as
seldom as once a year on his travels, but their coming together
stayed with him for months afterward. She knew tricks no one else had
even thought of yet.

Behind a jewelry
counter selling silver necklaces, he showed Molly the four clocks on
the wall that gave all standard U.S. time zones. There were people
milling everywhere. Men getting their boots shined, buying jewelry
trinkets, doing laundry, watching television, playing games, eating
ice cream cones. Some of them just sat on the benches placed
throughout the lobby, watching the traffic ebb and flow. Some stood
talking in an open line of phone booths to their dispatchers or their
wives at home. But nowhere did he see the woman he really needed. She
was probably in some dark sleeper in a rumbling cab, showing a
trucker the time of his life.

"Seen enough?"
The tour had taken them half an hour. He was tired of playing the
guide.

"This is
incredible," Molly said, staring open-mouthed as she tried to
assimilate all the strange goings-on happening simultaneously within
the truck stop complex. "This sure isn't like the White Elephant
Cafe," she added. "This isn't like anything I've ever seen
before."

Cruise was as pleased
as he would have been had he created the place from scratch for her
amusement. At the double entrance doors leading outside again, they
passed two young couples talking together in an animated fashion.
Cruise touched Molly's arm lightly and nodded toward them.

"What?" Molly
asked.

Once outside Cruise
said, "Lot Lizards and their dates."

"Really?" She
turned entirely around and gazed back.

"But those girls
look like college students or something. How do you know?"

"I overheard them
discussing price. El Paso, I told you, is a wide-open kind of town.
It has equal parts of rawness and sophistication. Not all Lizards
look like your regular street hookers. Those girls probably do go to
college. But they can make enough out here at the truck stop on one
weekend to pay their tuitions.
And you should see Chloe
, he
thought.
She looks like a senator's wife on vacation
.

"Well, they fooled
the hell out of me."

Cruise laughed. "If
you had any hell in you you'd have recognized what they were."

Molly frowned, sore at
being caught out. "I know enough. I'm not a total dweeb."

"No one said you
were, kid. But the world is wider and stranger than you would ever
believe. There's more goes on in it than you can possibly imagine."

"I'll agree with
you on that. I mean that one girl wore glasses and preppy clothes.
And she's a Lot Lizard. I'd never have guessed that in a million
years."

"Come on, and
let's listen to the CB. The girls are all over the channels."
Since there was no chance of finding Chloe, he might as well continue
being Molly's host into the underworld of the night.

Installed inside the
car, Molly adjusted her seat to a half recline, her gray eyes closed
to slits. She watched Cruise. He turned up the volume on channel
nineteen, the trucker's

channel.
The voice traffic was a horrendous mishmash. Cruise turned down the
squelch control. They listened.

"What about a guy
with twenty-five in his pocket? Anybody else for commercial company?"
The voice was a woman's, slightly accented.

"Mexican,"
Cruise said.

"Where you at,
Baby Doll? Come on over here to the 76."

"Can't do it. 76
has security. Meet me in the bar parking lot next to the Metro."

"You pretty
clean?"

There was a pause as if
the woman was trying to decide how to answer that. "Yeah,"
she said finally. "I just got here."

"You ain't gonna
give me anything to take home to my ole lady she wouldn't want to
have, are you?"

"That's a
negatory. What's your handle?" the woman asked.

"Call me Sugar."

"Back?"

"They call me
Sugar
."

Another male voice
overrode Sugar's. He said, "Spend the night with me?"

The same woman replied,
"Come over here, we'll talk about it, okay?"

"Let's talk it
over now."

"Come on down to
ten, one-oh. This is Melody. If you want a good massage, get all your
muscles relieved, come down to ten, we'll talk."

Cruise reached out and
clicked the channel tuner to ten. Melody's voice came on immediately.
"That all-nighter, are you there? Come back."

"Hey, baby, what
you want for all night with Big Hooch here?"

"Back?"

"l want you all
night. I want you to sleep with me."

"That'll be a
hundred twenty-five."

"Does that include
everything?"

"Whole body
massage. It's well worth it. You'll be relaxed, not tired."

"I'll see you in a
few minutes then. I gotta fix my radio first."

"Call me back on
ten when you're ready."

The channel went
silent. Cruise flicked back to channel nineteen. Melody and another
girl calling herself Candy put out their calls. "Anybody else
for commercial company, come on."

One man said, "Any
ladies out there want to go to Shakey's?"

Someone answered, "Who
the hell, male or female, wants to go to Shakey's?" He sounded
incredulous.

Another man remarked,
"Sounds like a goddamned parched monkey to me."

A third man said, "Best
soap opera I heard all week."

Another voice cut in,
"Anybody need any electronic work done on their radio, come back
to the Electronic Man."

While Cruise and Molly
listened in, they heard handles like Hannibal, Top Dollar, Shaker,
Yankee Doodle, and of course, Sugar and Big Hooch, the fellow who
wanted

Melody for the night
and the full body massage.

"They're
everywhere," Molly said, sitting up in the seat to peer out the
windshield as if she'd find truckers and the Lot Lizards strolling
the paved parking area. Except for diners going to and from the
restaurant, she was disappointed.

"You won't see
them out there. All the action's here on the CB. You heard Melody.
They have to go to a specific place to meet her. These guys are in
their cabs setting up

the times, the prices,
what they want to get."

"There must have
been a hundred guys talking on there."

"At least,"
Cruise said.

"How many of them
do you think one of those girls takes, uh, care of?"

"Who knows? Ten,
twenty a night. No telling." Cruise turned down the CB volume
and reclined his seat back. He lay like that a full minute before
speaking again. "Did you

see that sign inside
the truck stop for the guided tours?"

"No."

"For ten bucks
they'll pick you up here and take you over the border shopping in
Juarez, then bring you back. Quite a bargain."

"I didn't see it,"
she repeated.

"Not that we'd
want to go on a guided tour. I know more about life south of the
border than they do, probably. Want to go with me down there when it
gets night again?"

"Uh...I don't
know."

"Just for one
night. I'll take you to a place I know. The natives are friendly. You
can eat real Mexican food, see the sights. You liked this truck stop,
wait till you see Mexico."

He thought that might
convince her.

"You don't really
need company down in Mexico," she said carefully. "Maybe I
should see about another ride ..."

Cruise nearly lost his
temper and said something unforgivable. Like what a snot-nosed kid
she was. Like hadn't he taken care of her this far? Hadn't made a
pass, hadn't asked anything from her, hadn't tried to scare her. Like
who did she think she was trying to ruin his plans? She was his
witness. She was his. And until he cut her goddamned throat she'd
stay his.

But he said none of
this. He just lay back quietly in the seat waiting for her to come
around. Because if she didn't, she'd be going to Mexico anyway, but
she'd be bound hand and foot, lying on the floorboard with a rag
stuck in her mouth.