NIGHT CRUISING (7 page)

He concentrated on the
bright lights he approached. The city of Houston. Interstate l0 took
him through the heart of the city. He could see it off to his right
on the loop, the tall skyline of multiple dark rectangles against the
night sky. Two of the buildings were identically wedge-shaped, butted
close against each other. Dallas, he knew, was a more spectacular
scene at night with buildings outlined in multicolored neon, but
Houston wasn't bad. One building had a square of lime green around
its roof, a few had white outlines. Streetlights twinkled in straight
lines down the canyons. Cars streamed past on the freeway, all of
them going ten or twenty miles faster than the speed limit. It was at
lease seventy miles across the city from one side to the other. It
spread from the NASA complex south of the city all the way to Conroe,
Texas, a suburb town to the north.

Texas was a frightening
place. Cruise didn't kill in Texas. The cops were hardasses. Smart.
Tough. They were alert.

What he did not need
was a Texas lawman sticking one of those nickel-plated big goddamn
.357 Magnums in his face. Some of the highway patrolmen would blow
you away as easy as look at you. Uh uh. Driving across Texas always
gave him the creeps. He kept to the speed limit, stayed in his lane,
and drove on auto pilot until he hit the New

Mexico line.

It was a long haul from
Houston to the western border. Maybe he'd go down into Juarez,
Mexico, outside of El Paso for a spot of relief. He sneaked a glance
at his passenger. She was snoring lightly, little mouth open. He
thought about her breath

smelling of milk, like
a baby, although he knew it wouldn't, if anything it would smell like
Coca Cola. He thought about her angular, pubescent body. Tiny breasts
budding on her chest. Hips so small he could hold them in the palms
of his big hands like slabs of rich steak.

Oh, boy, did he need
relief. He was thinking of her in terms of food, for chrissakes.

He wondered if she'd
dream of the scriptwriter with rats and worms in his stomach. The one
with the rich mama and the failed dreams. Even now, somewhere in
Hollywood

there was another guy
just like that. They were out there, all those suicides and hucksters
and nagging mothers. All those nightmares and paranoiacs. Cruise knew
them and their stories. He lived one of the stories himself, the most
bizarre of all. He was able to live out the fantasy, live out his
dreams others called warped and depraved only because they didn't
understand, because they weren't members of the outlaw elite.

Houston's lights melted
into the background as he moved across the huge state of Texas going
west. He raced the sun threatening to rise at his back. Every night
he raced against the sun. Already his eyes came down into slits
against the peril of dawn.

He'd wake Molly and
tell her another story. That always helped to keep the night with
him, the sunrise at bay.

"Molly," he
called. "C,mon, wake up, baby."

"Huh...?What?"

"We'll stop pretty
soon and you can sleep then. Keep

me company, okay?"

He heard her clear her
throat, saw her straighten from the slump of sleep, trying to come
awake and please him.

"Almost morning?"

He squinted into the
darkness. "Soon."

"I'm really beat."

"Talk to me a
little bit. I got a long stretch here to drive across Texas. Let me
tell you about this guy I knew once...

Soon he had a tale
spinning and Molly wide awake, riveted to her seat where she was
turned toward him. What a kid. What a great kid. He just couldn't
have found a better traveling partner if he'd tried for a month. Too
bad that he'd have to kill her in the end. He was as fond of her as
he had been of any of his former witnesses.

The edge of the sun
slipped up behind him as he talked. The landscape changed from gray
to pink to molten orange. The land looked wild and desolate painted
in vivid Van

Gogh colors. They were
in the dry plains where nothing but mesquite trees and cacti dared to
try to make a go of it. It was too open, the sky too big, a maw
opening to swallow him. He hated fucking Texas.

Cruise saw an exit for
a truck stop and slowed to take the ramp. He was somewhere between
San Antonio and El Paso. He had to drive this goddamn state in
chunks. No

other way to get across
the bastard.

"You can hang out
in the store or the restaurant while I sleep," he said, hooking
a thumb at the one-story building. "Just don't talk much to the
truckers. They'll think you're..."

"Hooking. I know."

"Sure. You'll be
okay."

As he parked he heard
her yawn. "Sleepy?" he asked.

"Yeah, I think
I'll snooze out if you don't mind. I'm still beat."

"Pull the lever
beside your seat and the back will recline."

Cruise made his own
seat into a half bed, covered his eyes with the towel from the
floorboard and sighed with satisfaction.

Molly was coming around
nicely. What a great little kid.

Car and truck lights
washed over the blue Chrysler as vehicles from the interstate pulled
into the truckstop for a rest or food or fuel. From the back lot the
rhythmic thump

and drone of the idling
truck engines soothed Cruise's ears. It sounded to him like one giant
heartbeat. The sound raised and lowered with the pulse in his wrists
and in his temples. Through the cracked window the scent of smoke
came to his nostrils. In the smoke he could distinguish the aroma of
fried foods, diesel exhaust, and a faint hint of tar and rubber. Road
smells. The scent of freedom.

It didn't surprise him
to hear, after a bit, Molly's light snore. That soothed him too. He
wanted her happy to be with him, feeling easy, unafraid. They had
been together two nights. He was closer to enjoying her confidence.
He hadn't made a move toward her,nothing threatening. Had said
nothing to alarm her. Had made her identify with his way of life, at
least a little. At least a
part
of his life. If she slept
until nearly noon, she'd be awake more come night again. She'd be
better company to him. She'd get closer to revealing her real self.

Then he'd take her to
Mexico. He had made up his mind. Texas always made him want to run
away run completely out of the country. It'd just be a foray, a
stopover. They wouldn't have to stay long, thought he could really
stay as long as they wanted once he talked Molly into it.

He knew a town across
the border just east of glitzy, westernized Juarez, one owned
entirely by Mexican drug lords. They knew him there from his frequent
visits. There he was treated kingly. As long as he performed a few
chores for the boss. The money from it wasn't bad, either.

Shit.
Always
that. He had forgotten his money was running out. He would have to do
something to get more, preferably something for Ramirez. With or
without Molly knowing about it, though he preferred that she witness
whatever he must do to get the cash.

He yawned big and had
to re-drape the towel over his face.

No use worrying about
it. Never had before. If he wanted a Mexican whore, and if he wanted
to show Molly the extent of his traveling experience, then he would
simply do what he must do, what came naturally.

Besides, it was time.
It had been days, maybe a week, maybe more, since he did the girl in
Charlotte, North Carolina. His fingers itched to touch the knife
hidden under his hair. Touch and fondle it, renew himself with its
power.

He heard a truck's air
horn blast and twitched. It came from the back lot, though, nothing
he must get up and see about. Beyond his closed eyelids and the
folded towel he could still see the bright wash of car lights swing
past the car window though it was almost daylight.

The world was alive,
teeming with night people, many of them winding down now as the dawn
slipped catlike over the land. He must be asleep by then. Before the
sunrise.

Before the world was
brimming fire and the land revealed its seams and cracks, its
underlying ugliness and squalor.

He replayed the life
and death of the doomed Hollywood scriptwriter, and drifted softly
into a comforting dream.

#

Mark Killany unlocked
the door to room 202 at the Holiday Inn just west of Beaumont, Texas.
At his back and below him stretched the lobby with the waterfall in
its center. Rising high above him on three sides were balconies
dripping long green vines. The air was misty and green. A few people
in the lobby sat in club chairs watching a big-screen television. It
looked like a situation comedy was playing. Two patrons were belly-up
to the bar, neither of them giving attention to the other.

Mark ignored the
activity behind him and slipped quickly into his room. He dropped his
suitcase near the bed and went into the bath, turned on the shower
full force, waited for the temperature to get to the proper degree
while he undressed.

It was turning into a
long, lonesome trip. He wasn't used to the melancholy mood that was
upon him. It cramped his style, made him lapse into periods of
self-pity. All his life he'd been in control of his own destiny. He
knew what he wanted out of the military and worked hard to get it:
authority, security, respect. He had met Molly's mother after he made
lieutenant and knew he wanted her in his life. She never complained
about compound housing, official politics, or his dedication to his
job. She gave him what he needed. Unconditional love, loyalty, and a
beautiful, intelligent daughter. She had given her life, he realized
in regret, to bring a child into the world.

And he had always
thought Molly intelligent, that is, until she'd pulled this stunt of
running away from home. Now his destiny was uncertain, his life in a
chaos not of his making, and evidently beyond his control. Molly had
usurped his authority, left him to worry himself sick over her. While
he drove sometimes he felt the anger coming like a runaway train.
Molly was a spoiled, selfish creature unfit to be called his
daughter. She'd learned nothing from his examples, rejected those
values and beliefs he felt she needed most.

Other times sadness
invaded him, that quality of melancholy that filled him like pie in a
pastry shell, and he moaned aloud, wishing to be anywhere, in any
situation except this one. Dealing with a teenager was turning out to
be like defusing a bomb. It took iron will, steady hands, unswerving
patience, and skill. All those characteristics he lacked except for
the will. And that had been too muscular, not limber enough for the
job at hand.

He stepped into the
shower's spray and let it cascade over his bowed head. He closed his
eyes and breathed through his mouth.

He was neither angry
nor sad right now. Just beaten. No telling how far ahead she was. She
might have changed cars, hitched with another driver. She might have
decided not to go to the West Coast, and at this moment was on her
way back east or north or even to the Midwest. The United States was
a big country, all spread out., thousands of places to hide or get
lost in. She might have stopped off in one of the towns along the
route he traveled, and was now melting into New Orleans or Lake
Charles, vanishing like a wisp of fog.

It was sheer misery
that drove him to continue. He needed rest. A few hours in a bed. But
then he'd be on his way again, heading west, asking his questions,
showing Molly's picture. He knew no other way to live with himself.
Even if he hired private investigators, they might take months and
come up with nothing. The agencies looking for runaways were swamped
with calls from frantic parents looking for kids. He knew there was
little hope in that direction.

Hell, look at the
pictures of missing kids on the sides of milk cartons. It was an
epidemic; no one knew what to do. He must go forward and hope Molly
headed for California the way she'd told her Florida friends. If
she'd lied, if she'd changed her mind, he was shit out of luck. It
might be years before he found her. Dammit.

He washed, shampooed
his short, crew-cut hair, rinsed, and stepped from the shower stall.
After drying off, shaving, brushing his teeth, donning the bottoms of
a pair of plain white pajamas, he threw back the covers on one of the
two double beds and flopped onto his back. He had a wake-up call for
five-thirty. He should do a few sit-ups--it was harder to stay in
shape since his retirement--but sleep pulled him into its silky
depths.

He slept with the table
lamp on, his mouth open, his hands straight at his sides. He never
moved a limb all night. And if he dreamed, the dreams fell over the
precipice of his subconscious and were lost the way the waterfall in
the lobby fell from its great height and disappeared in the foaming
aquamarine pond at its sculpted base.

THE THIRD NIGHT

Molly floated in a
flushing pink dream of sex. Hormone typhoon, she thought at the edge
of waking.
Stop it
, she thought,
dream something else
.
But the dream was too exciting and blessedly real for her to stop it.
She felt every inch of her body ripe and full to the bursting point
with lustful feelings. Her muscles clenched and unclenched creating a
wave of yearning that washed down through to her core.

She fantasized a lover
with long, silky hair that swung on each side of his face as he moved
above her, his weight familiar, his warmth increasing her own. The
hair of his legs slid along her own bare calves and inner thighs and
she sighed in her sleep, twisting a little to better position herself
to open and receive him.

Then a car door banged
shut nearby and Molly came up from the reclining seat of the Chrysler
like a shot. She was trembling, the heat that had been spreading
outward from