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  ‘She thinks the area is the greatest place on earth. She grew up on a ranch in Washoe Valley. Her folks were cattle people, but then her dad got on at a machine shop and they sold their place and moved into town. I don’t think she’s ever left except for spending a summer with her aunt in Chicago and traveling around with me when I was on long haul. I’m from Tacoma, Washington. Some of my family still live up there, but I got a job in Reno after I got out of the army. Then I met my wife and we got married and lived in the city for a few years. Then we bought a house ten miles away in the town of Verdi. On the foothills of the Sierras. I’m not a hundred yards from the Truckee River. We got a little place with a yard full of pinyon pines.’

  ‘Sounds beautiful.’

  ‘You should visit sometime. My wife would enjoy the company. She enjoys young people. You ever listen to Art Bell on the radio?’

  ‘The guy that talks about aliens and space ships?’

  ‘That’s him.’

  ‘My sister listens to him at night sometimes. In the mornings she’ll tell me about what he says. She loves all that sorta thing. Star Wars and The X-Files, Lord of the Rings, all the Star Treks.’

  ‘I don’t know any of those shows.’

  ‘You’d like The X-Files. It’s a TV show. If you like Art Bell then you’d really like it. It’s full of extra terrestrial stuff. Weird things happen. It’s about these two FBI agents who track down aliens. One of the agents believes in it all and everyone thinks he’s crazy. So the bosses at the FBI assign him a partner who’s a scientist. She’s skeptical all the time and really smart and really beautiful and they’re always almost falling in love with each other. My sister reads books about that sorta thing. There’s that one about getting abducted she just read. It starts with a C, I think.’

  ‘You mean Communion?’

  ‘Yeah,’ Allison said. ‘I think that’s the one.’

  ‘My wife read that to me.’

  ‘That stuff freaks me out, but my sister Evelyn, she loves it.’

  ‘The reason I asked is Art Bell’s show is going to start in a couple minutes, and I promised the wife I’d listen to it. She has a hard time sleeping at night, so she listens to him, and she likes it when I do too. She takes little notes on it, keeps a pad by the bed and turns on the light when he says something good and pencils it down. Then when I call we can talk about it.’

  ‘Have you ever seen a UFO?’

  ‘No,’ he said and laughed.

  ‘I haven’t either,’ she said. Some time passed and then the girl started crying again, quietly.

  ‘It’ll be all right,’ the old man said. ‘Once you face it, it’ll be all right. You got a baby to think about now. Once you admit that, you’ll know what to do.’

  Chapter 11

  Flying J Flying J

  T. J. Watson gave her twenty dollars and his home address before he said good-bye. They were standing in the parking lot of the Flying J. She hugged the old man and thanked him for the ride. She made him a list of television shows she thought he might like on a blank log page he gave her to write on. He took the note, put it in his wallet, and thanked her. Then slowly he walked towards the motel. He walked with a slight limp and with the soreness of a tired old man. She watched until he went through the doors of the motel and disappeared.

  Chapter 12

  Sunday

  She went to the fuel counter and asked if they had a bus or a shuttle that ran into Las Vegas. The woman at the counter turned and asked the shift manager, who told her they didn’t. She bought a People magazine and a small notebook from the trucker’s store and went into the restaurant. She sat at the counter and ordered a waffle with bacon and coffee. It was near dawn and she was meant to be at work in an hour, but in her heart she knew then that she’d never go back there.

  The waitress came with the food and set it on the table.

  ‘Do you know how I could get back to Vegas?’

  The waitress was a short, pale, fifty-year-old woman with gray hair.

  ‘You stuck out here?’

  ‘I am,’ Allison said.

  ‘I wouldn’t recommend riding with any of them truckers. I have to see them all day. I think I’d rather walk. We’re about to do a shift change. I know a couple of the boys in the kitchen who live near the city. I’ll see what they say – other than that I don’t know.’

  The woman left and the girl began eating.

  ‘Justin, one of our cooks, lives in the city,’ the waitress said when she returned. ‘He told me he’s off in twenty minutes and would give you a ride, and he’s good enough for that. I’d let him give me a ride home, I guess,’ she said, and filled the girl’s coffee. ‘How did you get stuck all the way out here?’

  ‘My boyfriend,’ she said.

  ‘Always is,’ the woman said and walked away.

  The girl finished her meal, then took the new pad of paper from her purse, and began writing.

  Monday

  I swear I swear I swear I’ll quit drinking. I have to call Mary at work. Why have I waited so long? Should I get an abortion? Maybe the reason I keep waiting is hoping that Jimmy will be different. Or that maybe he’ll disappear. Maybe he’ll just die. Maybe he died last night. Am I horrible for wishing that? But Jesus, if he’s alive I’m not staying. ’cause soon enough he’ll know and then I’m really stuck. I have three hundred dollars in my account plus my check from work. I should leave today before Jimmy comes back . . . I could have them mail my check to wherever I end up. I’ll get my clothes and junk like that and then . . . You’re in an awful wreck now, Allison Johnson. You’re a horrible horrible person, and you deserve what you’re gonna get. You really do. You deserve it.

  Chapter 13

  The Eldorado

  The man, the line cook who said he would give her a ride, was called Justin Hardgrove. She quit writing and looked up. He was standing behind the counter. She tore the paper from the small pad, crumpled it, and put it in her purse. He put out his hand and she shook it.

  ‘It’s a beater,’ he said as he led her outside and towards the parking lot. ‘A 1979 Eldorado. I hope you don’t mind.’

  ‘I don’t even have a car,’ she said.

  ‘I guess I kind of figured,’ he said. He was thirty years old with a mustache and black hair. His arms were covered in home-made tattoos. The skin on them was pocked with grease marks. He carried a paper sack.

  She followed him to the car and got in the passenger side. The floor boards were filled with garbage, MD 20/20 bottles, fast food bags, used oil containers, a couple old newspapers, and brake parts.

  ‘What part of town you need a ride to?’ he asked and lit a Marlboro.

  ‘Any part’s okay. I can take the bus from wherever you stop.’

  ‘The bus is for drunks and old ladies. I’ll take you where you got to go. I just need to know where.’

  ‘Anywhere near North Las Vegas, I guess.’

  He backed the car out of the space and headed towards the highway.

  ‘This ain’t the best place to be stuck at. There’s not a thing out here.’

  ‘I know.’ She looked out the window into the desert.

  ‘Somebody kick you out of their rig?’

  ‘Just got left here.’

  ‘Must have gotten in a fight or something,’ he said and put them on the highway.

  ‘Kind of.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘What?’ she said. There were no door handles on the passenger side. She looked on the ground and saw a Hustler magazine underneath a Burger King bag.

  ‘I don’t like fighting.’

  ‘I hate to fight, too,’ she said uncertainly. ‘I hate it more than anything.’

  ‘Women always say that – “I hate to fight. I hate yelling.” I mean no offense to you, but if you ask me it’s the ladies that always do the yelling.’

  ‘Maybe,’ she said.

  He reached into the paper sack that sat between him and the girl and took out a bottle of red wine he’d bought fro
m the truck stop store.

  ‘I never usually drink in the mornings, but with a guest I thought, what the hell, I’m gonna buy a good bottle of wine. I’m off until Wednesday night. I figured you being stuck all the way out here, you might need a drink.’ He handed the bottle to her. ‘I don’t know if it’s got a cork in it, but if it’s that kind I got a corkscrew on my pocket knife that’s in the glove box. Could you open it for me?’

  She looked at the bottle, saw it had a cork, put the bottle between her legs, and opened the glove box. Inside there was a roll of duct tape, extra fuses and bulbs for the car, a spool of wire. She found the pocket knife.

  ‘You want me to open it right now?’

  ‘No time like yesterday,’ he said. He turned on the radio and pushed in a CD.

  ‘You like music?’

  ‘Yeah,’ she said and tried to use the corkscrew. But she was beginning to get nervous. Her hands shook a little and she had trouble getting it started.

  ‘Yeah, me too,’ he said and threw his cigarette out the window and looked over at her.

  ‘Having trouble with it?’

  ‘I’ll get it,’ she said. ‘The cork might fall apart, but I’ll get it.’

  ‘Don’t worry, I never re-cork,’ he said and laughed.

  He had them in the right lane. The sun was beginning to rise across the desert. The road was nearly empty, just a few tractor-trailers, and the odd car or two passing in the other direction.

  ‘The only good thing is the sunrise. About my job, I mean. Every morning it’s like this. No traffic, no stop lights. The heat hasn’t started up.’

  She opened the bottle and handed it to him. She took the broken cork from the corkscrew, and put it on the dash. From the corner of her eye she could see him drink from it, and while he did, she put the pocket knife down between the passenger side door and her seat, and then she shut the glove box.

  He was almost half way through the bottle when she began to hyperventilate.

  ‘What’s wrong?’ he said. He slowed the car.

  ‘Nothing,’ she could barely say. Tears were leaking down her face.

  ‘Are you going to have some sort of fit?’

  ‘No.”

  ‘Are you gonna have a seizure? You want me to take you to a hospital?’

  She remained silent and closed her eyes. She tried to breathe but it was hard. Her hands were balled into fists, she tried to open them but couldn’t.

  She began to bite the inside of her cheek, hoping it would ease her anxiety. Her heart raced so fast that she suddenly couldn’t breathe, and finally she bit as hard as she could and the taste of blood filled her mouth, and with the pain and the blood she finally began to calm. She opened her fists and tried to take deep breaths. She swallowed the blood and tried to focus on Paul Newman, but it was hard to get there. The man was sitting next to her and they were in the middle of nowhere.

  But she kept her eyes closed and concentrated, and then suddenly he was there. She was Paul Newman’s nurse, rolling him around in a wheelchair, talking to him. He was young, not old, and it was warm out, sunny, and trees surrounded them. She was dressed in a white uniform.

  He spoke to her.

  ‘Let me tell you, when I get out of this wheelchair I’m taking you with me.’

  ‘I bet,’ she said and wheeled him towards the lawn.

  ‘You remember when I was in Cool Hand Luke?’

  ‘Of course I remember. You weren’t too smart in that one.’

  ‘If I’d met you then, I wouldn’t have cut the tops off all those parking meters in the first place.’

  ‘Did you really eat those fifty eggs?’

  ‘Of course I did. You don’t think I’m a fraud, do you?’

  ‘Well, you sure were in The Sting.’

  ‘Yeah, but that’s what I’m trying to tell you, with the money I made pulling off that job, I’m loaded. That’s why I’m trying to get you out of here. That’s why I want you with me.’

  ‘I thought you looked amazing in The Sting.’

  ‘I still have those suits. I could wear one for you.’

  ‘I’ll have to buy new clothes then.’

  ‘We’ll go shopping once I get the hell out of this hospital.’

  ‘So what did you really do with the money you made off that job you pulled?’

  ‘That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you. About twenty miles from here there’s a big old house. It’s near a lake. There’s a pier that you can sit on. You can jump off it and go swimming. I bought that place ’cause of you. I know that’s the sorta place you’d like to live in. I want us to live there together.’

  ‘I bet.’

  ‘I’m serious,’ Paul said.

  ‘What about snakes?’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘In the lake, are there snakes?’

  ‘There aren’t any snakes. If you’re swimming I let the snakes know it’s time to take a vacation.’

  ‘Do you promise?’

  ‘Of course I promise. Remember me in Where The Money Is? I get you away from that bum husband of yours, and then I get us out of that jam, don’t I?’

  ‘You got a point there,’ she said and they stopped on the lawn and looked out among the grass and the trees.

  ‘It’s a beautiful lawn, don’t you think?’

  ‘It’d be a bitch to mow, though,’ he said.

  ‘When have you ever mowed a lawn?’

  ‘Remember Nobody’s Fool? I mowed a lot of lawns in that one.’

  ‘But it was winter in that one. You must have had to shovel a lot of snow to get down to the grass.’

  ‘It’s a bitch mowing the lawn in the winter. Let me tell you that. Anyway, more importantly, can you bake a pie?’

  ‘I could learn.’

  ‘What I’m thinking is peach pie. Peach pie and a good old cup of joe.’

  ‘You just get me out of here and I’ll bake you one a week.’

  ‘This kid is a strange bird, I’ll give you that.’

  ‘He scares the hell out of me.’

  ‘That shit heel boyfriend of yours. He’s the one to be scared of. He sure hasn’t shown much, has he?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘And he knocked you up.’

  ‘I should have been more careful.’

  ‘That would have been the best thing.’

  ‘Why I am so pathetic?’

  ‘You aren’t. You just been dealt a rough hand, and I’m sorry to say you don’t make the best decisions when you do get a break. We really got to work on your decision-making skills.’

  ‘I want to do better.’

  ‘Good. You know you’re a good looking broad. I’ve never seen a girl look so good in a nurse’s outfit. Those blue eyes of yours. They’re something else.’

  ‘I’m sorry I don’t have much in the way of breasts.’

  ‘Listen, when I give you a compliment you can’t turn it around and hit yourself. That ain’t gonna fly with me. Come to think of it, a comment like that gets me two pies a week. I might invite my old friend the Sundance Kid to share a piece. That boy can sure eat pie.’

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘Look, first things first. Have this wine drinking pervert drop you off. A little walk wouldn’t hurt you. And listen, you gotta lay off the bottle. And no caffeine. You can’t drink or smoke or have caffeine. You’re going to have a baby, comprende?”

  ‘I’ll be better.’

  ‘You promise?’

  ‘I promise.’

  ‘My recommendation is to start new. Get the hell out of Dodge, as they say, and most of all, kid, buck up. This ain’t the right time to cave in.’

  ‘I’m all right,’ she said finally and opened her eyes and looked out to the road passing underneath them.

  The man took a drink from the bottle.

  ‘As long as you’re all right,’ he said. He took the pack of cigarettes he had off the dash. ‘You almost scared the shit out of me. You want a smoke?’

  She wiped her eyes. �
��I’m trying to quit.’

  ‘I’ve quit fifteen, maybe twenty times. Longest I’ve lasted is seven months. Then five of my best breeding ferrets died, and I fell off the wagon. My A/C went out in the dead of the summer.’

  ‘You breed ferrets?’

  ‘You like them?’

  ‘I’ve never seen one except in a pet store.’

  ‘I raise them. They’re a good pet. Next to a dog, I’d say a ferret is the best. A lot of people don’t think so, but I know. The magazines go back and forth on it. They’re good especially if you live in an apartment or duplex that don’t allow dogs. They got a scent, though. A lot of people don’t like that. But they love to be petted. At least mine do. Crazy thing is they’re related to the wolverine, in the same family. The wolverine is a mean son of a bitch. Ferrets can get tough, but they don’t usually get mean. You can teach them a lot, too. They’re smart. I have forty-one right now. I usually sell off ten at a time. Sell them to a couple pet stores I know.’

  ‘You make a lot of money?’

  ‘Some. I just like ferrets more than anything. It takes a lot of work. More work than money.’

  She found a stick of gum in her purse and put it into her mouth to kill the taste of blood.

  ‘I’ve been raising them seven, almost eight years. At one time I had over ninety, but my neighbor called the Humane Society and I had to sell off most. I moved after that. But before I did I saw my neighbor smoking pot on his porch. He had a big old bong. He was growing weed in his attic. I called the cops, which I hated doing, but people should mind their own goddamn business.’

  She could see the outskirts of the city in the distance. The sun was up now, moving across the sky. They came to a suburb and stopped at a light. He put them in the right lane and turned onto a side street.

  ‘Where we going?’ she asked.

  ‘I just got to make a quick stop.’

  ‘You can drop me off here then.’

  ‘Listen,’ he said, ‘you’re still ten miles from where you want to be. You don’t want to be stuck on the bus all day, do you? I’ll only be a minute.’

  ‘Okay,’ she said finally. ‘But then you’ll take me into town?’