NIGHT CRUISING (12 page)

After a short pause he
heard her draw a deep breath and twist in her seat until she faced
him. "Well, I guess it wouldn't matter, really. We'll be back on
the road for California in a day or so, you said. And you were right,
I'm not on a schedule or anything. I don't actually have any pressing
plans or people waiting for me."

Cruise rose up in the
seat and leaning over, patted her folded hands that lay like cold
rocks in her lap. "That's great. I knew you'd want to come. Now
how's 'bout we get a little shut eye? It's going to be dawn soon. Too
soon."

He switched off the CB
and silence intruded on them like the boom of an ocean wave until
their ears adjusted to the lack of squeal and crackle. Cruise draped
the towel over his eyes. "Tomorrow we'll get a shower," he
said.

"A real shower?"

"Absolutely. With
soap and water, the whole shooting match. Even real towels."

"God, that'd be
good."

He heard her seat
reclining. His smile stretched grotesquely behind the cover of the
kitchen towel. He amused himself with an image of her naked, wet,
slick hair plastered

to her head. He would
like to stand her out in the desert beneath that sickle moon poised
over El Paso's corruption, stand her naked there and dump a few
gallons of purified water over her head until she shivered and
trembled with new-found fear at what he might do to her. He'd like to
see her turn and run, like to chase her like a jackrabbit across the
desert floor, see her fall helpless, begging mercy.

Sleep came to muffle
the edge of his imagination. It turned his dream into nightmare where
the naked girl was armed with an Indian's spear tipped with flint,
feathers dangling from a leather throng attached to the end. She
menaced him, laughed at how small his knife was, how it disappeared
in the thickness of his great hand. She threw the spear. It sliced
through the air, singing
tum, tum, tum
, a death song, narrowly
missed him, stuck quivering in the hard-packed ground. When he turned
back to her, she had a bow, an arrow tautly strung, and meant to end
his days. His nights! The arrow released even as he screamed for her
not to kill him, and it sang on the wind,
tum, tum, tum, tum,
a death song that meant to end his days...his nights...

#

Molly lay in the
reclining car seat with her eyes closed, heart bumping heavy and
slow. She experienced the mental equivalent of gnawing at a pesky
hangnail.
Mexico
. She had

acquiesced to Cruise's
wishes, but even now her thoughts turned over a fiery pit of protest.
Somewhere deep inside, she knew she should not go. Going with
Cruise--still a

virtual
stranger to her despite the stories he had told about his life--gave
over to him her freedom. She would have no one to turn to in a
foreign country if for some reason she wished to escape his company.
She could not speak Spanish. She didn't know the customs or what was
expected of her in Mexico. Did she need a passport, a visa? God, she
was still so stupid, but at least she knew it. And she might be
dumber yet to put herself into Cruise's hands, dependent upon him to
protect her. She was not yet convinced she should.

In the States she could
always walk away from Cruise, get another ride in a truck stop or
service station. Or she could appeal to someone for help if something
went wrong between them. But in Mexico, helpless, disadvantaged, she
must rely on his good intentions. The worry stemmed from that. For
she didn't know for sure what his intentions were.

Oh, he had not made any
untoward move and he had not said a word to intentionally frighten
her--just the opposite--yet...yet... It was risky, wasn't it, to give
herself into his total care? She liked him. She was attracted to him,
who wouldn't be? But still...

It was all academic
now. She had agreed to go. She must go. To refuse at this point would
create a fracas, and she didn't want to alienate him. She did like
him, found him intriguing and strange. He exerted a pull on her she
couldn't deny. It wasn't sexual, not exactly, not all the time,
although that worked into the equation. It was more as if she had
fallen under a spell, charmed as a cobra in a basket lured into the
sunlight by the notes from a haunting flute.

Cruise was teaching her
about a world she had never known existed. It was an underground
night world where people behaved impulsively, and in ways they might
not

behave
during the day. Truckers and Lot Lizards and travelers who
crisscrossed the country, they were all bound together in a neon-lit
world that hummed while the rest of

humanity
slept unaware in their beds. They had different agendas. They lived
so unconventionally.

She liked it. It was
nothing at all like her life in Dania, Florida. This new world opened
doors and led down dark passages she didn't know were there. She
wanted to see it, to walk with the night people and be one of them.
It was like being in a dark, serious novel, something from
Dostoyevsky or Tennessee Williams. She had read those authors in high
school and the worlds they wrote about felt alluring.

The things she had
witnessed in the Metro Truck Stop ignited her curiosity even further.
The voices clamoring on the CB sparked her prurient interest. Now
this truck stop wasn't either Dostoyevsky or Williams. It was like a
voyage through a science fiction movie filmed in sepia tones. These
were humans engaged in activities normally done during the day,
except for the sex, activities like eating, laundry, bathing,
driving. It was an upside-down world, an Alice in Wonderland place
where the unexpected experience waited around the next corner.

If she wished to
prolong her contact with that world, she must accompany Cruise across
the border. It might be a harmless trip, full of exciting characters
and revelations, but it also involved chance; there might be danger
there.

Her father would
hate
to hear she was thinking of leaving the country--for
any
reason. She loved her father, she just didn't like him
very much. She really missed her mother...

She squirmed in the
seat, her spine aching, her shoulders pinched in the confines of the
seat back. So tired. Sleepy.

Wished she had a bed to
rest in.

Oh, well, it was
pointless to wish for what she didn't have. Pointless to indulge in
self-recrimination now. She had said she would go. She had sealed her
fate. She must

continue
trusting Cruise, and rid herself of the nagging warning voice that
argued against the risk. Hadn't she already broken ties with normal
society by leaving home? She'd dropped out of school, turned her back
on her father and his rules, accepted the idea, however much it
scared her, that she would sell herself in order to survive. Could a
side

trip
into Mexico be such a bad thing?

It was just that...just
that she didn't know what to expect. How to behave. What might happen
to her.

Or why it was important
to Cruise to leave the country right at this time. As if pursued by
something invisible, something threatening at his back. She didn't
know why she felt this way, but it was her impression that Cruise
identified with the night world for more reason than that the light
hurt his eyes, as he claimed. There had to be more to it than that.

To calm herself, Molly
imagined a lovely time shopping for sombreros and serapes, eating
exotic foods, watching the sun set over a foreign horizon while
sipping a cold, imported bottle of Coca Cola on a veranda surrounded
by flowering plants.

It would be all
right
. She would, have a glorious time.

She was about to become
a world traveler, thanks to Cruise. He wouldn't let anything bad
happen to her.

Anything
bad
.
Happen to her.

#

The evening crept over
El Paso with chill stealth. Cruise stirred in the car seat, eyelids
fluttering. Like a predator that does its hunting at night, his
consciousness returned as the sun left blood-red streaks west behind
the mountains. He came fully awake and rubbed down his bare arms. He
and Molly had left the windows partially open for fresh air that now
had turned cool without the sun's rays to heat it.

Cruise needed a
sweater. He looked at Molly where she slept scrunched up into an
uncomfortable fetal position, knees pulled to her chest. She was cold
too. Tonight he would rent rooms so they could get the kink out of
their abused bodies. At least a room would protect them from
tomorrow's nippy-aired dusk. A mattress to sleep on would feel like a
cloud.

"Molly?"

Her knees slid to the
floorboard and she stretched, eyes still closed tightly. He could see
the outline of her bra through her white blouse.
Small. Sweet.

"Molly, wake up.
It's time for breakfast and a shower."

That woke her
completely. She blinked at him and licked her lips. She cleared her
throat, wrapped her arms around herself. "Cold." More a
statement of fact than a complaint.

"Do you have a
jacket or a sweater?"

Molly shook her head.
"Forgot. It's never very cold in Florida. I just forgot.
California's supposed to be warm too."

"I'll buy you one
in Mexico. Ready to go inside?"

She sat and depressed
the lever so her seat was upright."I need my blue bag if I'm
going to take a shower."

Cruise was already out
of the car. He reached around the doorpost to unlock the back door of
the Chrysler. He drew out the carrying bag, locked, and slammed shut
the door. He walked to the front of the car and handed it to her.
"Wait for me inside at the restaurant. I've got to get my gear."

Molly took her bag and
walked off slowly toward the truck stop complex. Cruise waited until
she was a good distance away before inserting the trunk key and
giving it a twist. He didn't want her to see the case of bottled
water, the stack of towels. There was no way he could explain it to
her.

He took out a brown
leather-and-cloth satchel and closed the trunk. Inside the Metro he
found Molly at one of the booths near the restaurant entrance. She
sat hunched like a derelict over a cup of coffee. Her hair was wild
and needed combing. Her clothes were rumpled from having been slept
in. There were pale blue circles marring the skin beneath her fine
gray eyes. The trip was taking its toll. As used as he was to travel
and living on the road, he sometimes looked as bad or worse than she
did now. He felt a camaraderie, a closeness born of shared
circumstance. He always identified with the kids when they were weary
and beaten. They needed him more than they knew. They were after all
just kids. Gullible, trusting, thinking themselves worldly wise, but
lacking nearly all the proper survival instincts. He kept them up
nights disrupting their steep patterns until finally they were
vulnerable, fully under his power, easily persuaded, effortlessly
duped. But he shared their fatigue, an old friend he knew well.

Cruise ordered big
breakfasts for them. Eggs, hash browns, bacon, sausage, biscuits. The
food--wasn't as great as it should have been for the price, but it
filled and warmed them. Molly was incommunicado until after she'd
eaten. Once the blood flowed back into the lightly freckled skin of
her face, she was able to smile, to talk to him.

"We're still going
to Mexico?" she asked.

He knew she'd already
committed herself and probably would not back out now. "You're
going to like it, I promise. I'll get a hotel tonight so you can rest
up."

He saw a look of
concern cross her face before she was able to mask it.

"Don't worry"'
he said, giving the impression that he had read her mind. "You'll
have your own room. Alone."

She ducked her head and
stared down at her hands. "Thanks. I don't know how I can repay
you for all these meals and a room and all."

"No problem. You
don't owe me."
You do
, he thought, but I'm not supposed
to say it.

"C'mon, let's go
hit the showers. I've got half a week's worth of dirt to wash off.'"
He swung his bag from where he had dropped it on the seat beside him.
Molly followed to

the cash register,
stood idly looking around while he paid. At another desk he anted up
a twenty-dollar deposit for the keys to two shower rooms. They each
carried a bundle of towels, washcloths, small wrapped bars of soap.
He showed Molly to her cubicle, handed over the key and left her.
"Meet You in the lobby later."

Once locked inside the
small bathroom, Cruise shed his clothes quickly. Nakedness felt
delicious. He had worn his clothes so long, riding in them, sleeping
in them, that it was like shedding a hard shell to find new skin
beneath.

He carefully detached
the knife from the Velcro and placed it on the counter. For some
seconds he gazed down at the glittering stainless-steel blade. It
felt odd to have this extension of him separated from his flesh. If
he touched it now he'd feel the warmth of body temperature. Once the
metal cooled it stopped being a part of him and returned to its real
state as a deadly weapon. He wrenched his gaze from it, feeling time
passing too swiftly.

He squinted in
anticipation as he ripped off the patch painfully from the short hair
growing back on his scalp. He stood leaning on his hands at the sink,
staring into green eyes the color of spring grass.

"You need money,"
he told his reflection. "Do it here or do it in Mexico, but do
it."

He nodded at himself,
confirming his resolve. He'd do it. When he had first started this
life, he had sometimes waited too long, waited until all his money
was gone and he was destitute. That narrowed his choices. He had to
hit anyone at hand just to make sure he could survive. These days he
did not wait so long unless there was a witness like Molly along,
someone he had in training and could not afford to frighten too early
in the game. He knew now how much money was left. He'd noticed when
he paid the breakfast bill. Thirty-five dollars. That was enough for
gas and Cokes, nothing more.