“Nobody’s here,” said the curvier one.
“Could they be in the kitchen, Mom?”
So that was it: mother and daughter. Though if they didn’t look so alike, I’d think one had adopted the other. Maybe become her stepmother after marrying a much older man.
“Something I can do for you?”
The two women jumped. Seeing that flutter of movement go through their figures was as refreshing as the Coke had been.
“You startled me!” the younger one gasped.
“Sorry.”
The mother stepped in front of her daughter. “We should apologize for overlooking you. And you being so big…”
I parsed her innuendo and gave it right back to her: “Anything I can do for you ladies?”
“Yes, we need cold drinks and a ladies’ room.”
“There’s an old man past the curtain who can help you with the first. The bathroom is back there too. You take a right and it’s the door that doesn’t go outside.”
“You think he’d mind if I just helped myself?” the daughter asked, jerking her head towards the old man I’d implied.
“Probably not. But if you ditch, he’s taking those seventy-five cents out of my hide.”
“We wouldn’t want anything happening to your hide,” the mother said, sounding like she appreciated my skin almost as much as I did.
The daughter got her drink from the refrigerator and went to sit in a booth. It was the other one on the side of the building that I was on, and she sat so that she was facing me. Her on the left seat of the booth, closest to where that museum exhibit had been, and me on the right seat of the other booth, closest to the counter. We could look at each other, which made me feel like maybe she wanted a look at me, but it was also as far away from me as she could sit. Well, without sitting on the other side of the building; there was that.
While the mother did her business, I realized my money was still out on the table, minus the old man’s suggested donation. I unfanned the cash into a pile, folded it over, put it in my pocket. Too late to pretend to be a big spender, but at least our relationship would be honest.
The mother came back. She got her own Coke from the refrigerator and then went to her daughter’s booth. She didn’t sit down. She leaned against the divider between the daughter’s booth and mine. Stretching to her full height. Spreading her toes in her open-toed sandals. Undoing all the strain of sitting in a car seat all day. I approved. Especially with how she was doing it in front of me.
“Where are you ladies headed?” I asked.
“California,” the daughter answered for her mother.
“Lia!” her mother chided.
“What?”
“Nothing…”
“I didn’t mean to pry,” I said apologetically.
“It’s not you,” the mother assured me. “Lia just needs to learn not to be so…”
While she searched for the word, Lia folded her arms on the table and rested her chin there. Like this was an old lecture she didn’t think bore repeating.
The woman abandoned her train of thought. “Where are you headed?”
“Anyplace that will have me.”
I registered Lia’s eyes going excitedly to her mother. The woman spoke: “Do you need a ride?”
I held back a little. “Are you going towards Brunville?”
The woman weaved her shoulders a little, being cagey. “Are you not?”
“I’ve seen all the rocks on the way here. I don’t want to see them from the other direction.”
“Yes, they weren’t that picturesque the first time,” the woman agreed, and sat down in the booth, facing her daughter.
Lia leaned across the top of the table. Her mother leaned in to listen to her. I heard them whispering. I saw the mother shrug.
Lia popped out of the booth and came over to mine, resting her weight on the table with an outstretched hand of pretty pink fingernails. “I… that is, we… we’d like to know if you would like to drive with us?”
I nodded carefully, trying not to seem too excited. “I’d like that very much. Most appreciated.”
Lia lit up with a smile. “Good. Great! I thought Mommy would say no. That she’d think you were a bank robber on the run or something?”
“Who would ever run here?” I replied.
The mother laughed. She’d been listening in. “Then as long as you don’t tie us up and leave us on the side of the road—”
“Believe me, the last thing I’d want is to get away from you two.”
But then, when I said that, I only barely knew them.
I took a dollar from my bankroll. “The least I can do is pay for your drinks. No tip, though. Lousy service.”
I left my dollar on the counter and went to get the door for the girls, my long legs carrying me to it before they could get there. Lia savored having something gentlemanly done for her as she walked out. The mother slowed to look me over, this man she’d invited into her car. I tried to look unworthy of second thoughts.
“Ma’am,” I said to her.
“My name’s Lucy,” she said. Then her voice lowered. “And remember, if you tie me up… there’s more interesting things to do than drive off on us.”
She swept away, leaving me nothing to do but follow after and let the door swing closed.
Lucy popped the passengerside door, but it was for her daughter. “In,” she ordered, and Lia dutifully climbed in. She got into the driver’s seat, which left the backseat for me. I stretched out. Why is it that a car seat feels so much better than sitting for any length of time in a diner?
Lucy put on a pair of sunglasses and turned the key. We peeled out, peeling scabs of dust from the bare earth between the blacktop and the parking lot. I looked back at the diner as it became background and then became nothing. I wouldn’t say good riddance to a nice, peaceful spot like that—but the kind of quiet that old man had had, he could keep all to himself.
The heat had passed through me and out of me and couldn’t get a foothold on me now. I was immunized. And without the sweat, I could feel the aching from the beating I’d taken. The skin turning purple under my clothes. Maybe a little blood making its way to my kidneys, waiting to put in an appearance next time I urinated.
But I felt good, for all that. The desert was streaming by without getting one little taste of my shoes. And even if neither of the women I was with wanted to do anything but tease me, it made my day just to look at them.
“So I’m Lucy, this is Lia, what’s your name?”
“Vasey. Roy.”
“Nice to meet you, Roy.”
“Nice to be met.”
I looked in the rearview mirror. I saw Lucy looking at me. Her eyes were dark, thoughtful. They didn’t look away, even when they met mine.
“Now, say you did tie us up and leave us on the side of the road…” Lucy began.
“Mom!” Lia hit her arm.
“Where would you take this fine automobile?” she concluded.
“Well, the desert seems to agree with me, but I think it could use a beach. So I thought I’d try for California.”
“Mom!” Lia cried. “He could go all the way with us!”
I looked in the rearview again. Made eye contact with Lucy again.
“That’d be alright with me,” Lucy said. “He hasn’t brought us any bad luck so far.”
“I’d appreciate that.”
“How much would you appreciate it?”
Lucy asked the question in a husky voice and I had to wonder what Lia made of it, being right there while her mom flirted with me. She looked old enough to only get carded one time out of four—she couldn’t be naïve enough not to know what Lucy was implying.
“I’d appreciate it for a long time,” I said, keeping my tone cool, but looking in the rearview and letting her see what was in my eyes.
If she could read what was in my head, it would either make her blush or make her wet.
She had a heavy foot on the gas pedal. I didn’t mind speed—we hadn’t seen another car for miles and miles, and I doubted a camel would wander into the road—but these lonely stretches of highways where were the pigs loved to put a speed-trap.
“You in a hurry to get somewhere?”
“You a backseat driver?” Lucy shot back.
“Only when I’m in the backseat.”
“And when you’re driving?”
“One way to find out,” I said suggestively. Or more suggestively than I was already being with her.
“Trying to wear the pants already?”
“He is wearing pants,” Lia said innocently. So innocently that I had to wonder how much of an act it was.
“Still?” Lucy asked, casting a teasing eye back through the rearview.
Funny how I kept finding it looking into me, looking deep into my eyes until there seemed like nothing but flyspecked glass between me and her.