Clarissa, stunned, looked at the green pile of money and then at Cracker Bandit’s face, etched, one-eyed, and handsome in a John Wayne kind of way. “How do you know I won’t back out and keep this?”
He tapped the tip of her nose. “Well, I don’t think that truck is going nowheres.”
Miss Lossie started laughing. “You got that right. Child, you better take that money and sell him that heap. He’s doing you a mighty favor. Besides, that’s poker winnings; he’s got to do something good with it.”
Clarissa had an urge to hug him, but he stepped away and it was at that moment she knew he was not just a good man, but also a softy, someone who’d been hurt. “Thank you, Crac… Chester. Thank you so much.”
He looked over her head. She could see that he was both pleased and embarrassed. “Ain’t nothing. Been needing a truck like that for a good long while.”
“Like a hole in the head,” Miss Lossie said. The bells on the door jangled and in walked a gaggle of construction workers, all of them complaining about the heat. “You two better get on out of here if you’re going to go car shopping.”
Miss Lossie pecked Clarissa’s cheek, told Cracker Bandit to behave, to which he responded, “Me? Always,” and Clarissa, watching the moth float amid the shadows, thought her ovarian shadow women were chattering again. She couldn’t hear them clearly, but she was pretty sure they were urging her on.
Perched on the back of his Harley (having, at his insistence, donned his helmet—she needed help securing the chinstrap—and an extra pair of sunglasses, and after slinging her purse diagonally across her chest, and then having no choice but to steady herself by placing one hand on his shoulder as she wobbled onto the cycle with all the poise of a three-legged donkey), Clarissa stiffened in both fear and anticipation as Cracker Bandit settled himself onto the bike. He was surprisingly graceful: the Lone Ranger mounting Silver. Except he was nearly naked. And his crack was showing. And he wore a single silver earring: a skull, which she’d noticed only after she’d felt his body heat rush over her.
What, Clarissa fretted, tracking a constellation of freckles on his lower back that resembled the Big Dipper, was proper lady biker etiquette? Was she supposed to use Cracker Bandit as a human handle? Did gravity naturally nail her ass to the seat? Or did the helmet make her top-heavy and therefore vulnerable to flipping over, as if, weight-distribution-wise, she was part Jeep, part road dart?
Cracker Bandit walked the bike into a forward-facing stance. This gave her a full-eyed view of the mystery of his shorts. How did they manage to stay on—not on the bike, but on his butt? Perhaps, rather than prayer, it was hip bones; they acted as hangers. If she wanted to be generous about it—he was being awfully kind to her—his ass crack wasn’t bad as ass cracks went. It was dead-on centered and from this vantage point appeared to be free of rash and hair. He looked over his shoulder. “Ready?”
“I think so,” she said, and with that, a series of bedazzlements ensued: the intimacy involved in being a passenger on a motorcycle; how much she enjoyed the feel of nine hundred pounds of chrome, leather, and steel between her legs; the curious facts that she had said yes to any of this and that except for one brief moment she did not care what reaction her husband would have to her adventure (if she ever bothered to tell him); how she instinctively and almost without shame grabbed Cracker Bandit’s waist, even though gravity did indeed nail her to the seat; that he smelled of cinnamon and something else, something so familiar, something from her garden… aha!… lemon verbena (this delighted her even as she grew embarrassed at how the scent of garbage—despite her attempt at cleaning up in the kitchen—still faintly perfumed her skin); and above all, the unexpected, delicious vibration whistling through her womb into her ovaries, with their shadow women now dressed in chaps, up the storybook ladder of her spine, into the hard knot at the base of her neck, and through the switchbacks of her brain—a brain that glowed the moment Cracker Bandit turned the key and pushed the starter button.
As they sped eastward, Clarissa tightened her grip on Cracker Bandit’s waist and noticed that his head metronomed left and right, left and right, as he steered them to a town named Dead Oak. She assumed the bobbing was a result of his compromised peripheral vision and, swathed in his scent, was grateful that he cut such a confident, assured path.
A half mile down the road, in front of a cell phone tower she had never before noticed, her reptilian brain—fueled by ecstatic nerve endings—segued into an erotic fantasy: she and Cracker Bandit writhing in ecstasy on the back of his bike. Gone were his white crabbing boots and loose shorts, her stinky T-shirt and filthy jeans. They were naked and thrusting, akimbo and bouncing.
Clarissa being Clarissa, however, overcame the reptile, deleted the X-rated images almost as soon as they bloomed, and returned to her cerebral core, contemplating the idea that some people equated riding a motorized bullet called a Harley with freedom. In her sensually battered condition, however, freedom was yoked to a sense of dynamic mortality. Hurtling down the highway on two wheels, she felt death’s presence; not a fallow, one-dimensional, life-robbing death, but a force steeped in smoke and bone, breath and blood, flesh and flower. Duende. Yes, that’s what seized her as she balanced her wild heart on the back of the Harley, inhaling Cracker Bandit’s cinnamon-and-verbena scent: the Spanish notion of a creative force antithetical to the muse—a death dancer spinning a flamenco composed of carnality, sadness, and passion. As the world rushed by, she thought, To hell with the muse; where is my duende?
That Sears Tower tumble ventured again into her mind, and she wondered, Is this what it feels like to jump? The pavement rushing at you, the wind holding you, the speed—the awesome speed—made headier by the imminent possibilities of both life and death?
She closed her eyes and took it all in. The sensation of charging through time and space free of the constraints of seat belts and car doors and passenger compartments led her to venture that angels preferred flight to heaven.
A-One Auto Sales was located on the corner of Main Street and Robber’s Roost Way in Dead Oak. She wanted to ask Cracker Bandit if the location of a used-car lot on Main and Robber’s Roost was intentional, ironic, a warning, or delicious dumb luck but was afraid his answer would take longer than the time they’d spent getting there.
As he pulled up to the intersection and stopped for a red light, over the rumble of the pipes, Clarissa said, “You can just drop me off. No need to stick around. You’ve done too much already.”
He looked over his shoulder. “You sure? I don’t mind hanging out. I know a thing or two about reliable rides.”
“I think I’ve got this one. But thanks.” Clarissa patted his back, enjoying too much, she thought, the physical proximity to a man who was for all intents and purposes a stranger.
Cracker Bandit eased the Harley over to the curb. This time, she acted on her impulse. She slipped her arms around his shoulders and hugged him. “I cannot thank you enough, but I’ve got to do this alone,” she said into his ear.
“All right, then. Do it your way,” he said, shutting down the bike. “You working gals always do.” He dismounted and helped her off. Bugs splattered his bald pate.
Clarissa hit the pavement on legs that felt jelly-filled. She took off the helmet and shook out her hair; her house and the trash truck and the disapproving husband seemed a continent away. She looked at Cracker Bandit, who stood smiling down at her, and she was suddenly overwhelmed by his kindness. She knew what her mother would have said: All of his care and generosity had simply been a ploy to get laid. Clarissa refused to believe it. She handed him the helmet and noticed that on the back it sported a LA-DI-FUCKIN’-DA sticker. This delighted her beyond all measure. “Thanks for your help. I really mean it.”
“It’s nothing, little lady. Just be sure you tell them I sent you. You’ll get a better deal.”
“Chester?”
He cocked his head and seemed to be waiting for a question he knew was coming. His blue eye wa
s patient; his white eye she couldn’t read. “Why haven’t you ever been married?”
He rubbed his hand over his sunburned face. “Well,” he said, “it’s like this.” He stared down at the pavement, then over his shoulder at the traffic whipping by. He made a sucking sound and turned back to her. “Sometimes, we love too damn much. People can’t handle it. And when that’s the case”—he remounted the bike and slipped on the helmet—“it’s best if you just ride solo.” He turned the key and pressed the starter button. The Harley rumbled to life, more beast than machine.
“I’ll see you tomorrow with the truck title,” she yelled.
Cracker Bandit waved in acknowledgment, but his focus was on the road ahead. He shot down Robber’s Roost, never looking back, his butt crack gleaming, leaving Clarissa as she had requested: alone and without transportation in a town full of strangers.
The Dead Oak State Bank’s sign flashed the temperature in digital glory: 106 degrees. Clarissa felt her purse to make sure she had her cell phone. Perhaps she should call Iggy, tell him where she was, how hot it was, what her plans were. Nah. That made about as much sense as playing peekaboo with Bubba the pet rattlesnake. Cars zipped past. The words independent, alone, positive, careened through her head like neon flash cards. She gazed down the street at the jumble of signs: McDonald’s, BP, Dollar Store, First Baptist Church, Hardee’s, Big Top IGA. Dead Oak was a busy little town. No one gave her a second glance. She ran through her options: fall down and cry, hitch a ride home, call the son of a bitch and beg for mercy, buy a car.
It was a no-brainer. She made her way around a boxwood hedge and into the steel-and-chrome world of the car lot. A handsome Latin man—tall, thin, wild curls, and broad almond eyes—wearing jeans, a striped tailored shirt, and a yellow tie appeared instantly, as if by used-car-salesman magic.
He said something to her, but his accent was thick and Clarissa was overwrought. “I’m sorry?”
After shooting a brief suggestion of a smile, he repeated himself.
Clarissa still did not understand. Maybe the heat was baking her brain cells. “I need to buy a car. That’s all.” She noticed his plain gold wedding band. What else was she going to buy at A-One Auto? Idiot, she thought.
“My name is Raul.” He held out his hand, the one without a wedding band.
She shook it. “Clarissa.”
“Hello, Clarissa. You have”—he leaned to the left and looked behind her—“trade-in?”
“No, not really. I’m… well, I have a car, it’s just that it’s… it’s just so screwed up. These kids, they were drinking and, it was really a junk heap before they… but it runs if I get new tires, and I own another car, but sort of. I mean, it’s my husband’s. But it’s in my name…” She drifted off. She realized that she wasn’t speaking English as well as he was.
He appeared to really be listening to her, even though she wasn’t saying anything that a reasonable person would discern as comprehensible.
She tried again. “The truck is a piece of junk. I can’t even get it here. All the tires are flat.”
“Money?”
He certainly had a way of getting to the point.
“Yes,” she said. “Actually, I do have money.”
“Good!” He clapped his hands once. “You want little car? Save gas. Or big bu-bbbbb bu-bbbbb car?”
“I want…” She looked over the small pond of used cars and trucks—this was no acre upon acre of glistening new vehicles, dealer showroom type of place—and started to perk up. She listened to the plastic triangle-shaped flags in all their primary color glory flap and snap in the hellish breeze. This A-One Auto was its own little land of opportunity. Possibilities on four inflated wheels dotted the lot, hither and yon.
She took notice. Being in the middle of farmland, it had a lot of pickups. And old-lady cars that fit the cliché to a T: They had probably been driven only to church and back for thirty years. But surely there was something else… something a little more… she tried to put her writer’s finger on what exactly that itch was: adventuresome.
“I want,” she said, feeling taller than when Cracker Bandit had dropped her off, “something with a little zip. I want to feel jazzed every time I get behind the wheel.”
She closed her eyes and listened to the thick flutter of the plastic flags; she thought that if it got any hotter, they might melt in this wicked wind and then all the cars would need new paint jobs. They would look as if giant birds had pooped on them in Technicolor. She opened her eyes and turned a complete circle, hoping to see the very car that would suit her whim and cure her ills. When she faced Raul again, she said, sensing he would understand, “I’m tired of being bored.”
“Ahhhh!” This time he really smiled. He had nice, white, pearly, straight chompers. “Let me show you something that came in yesterday. It is”—he inhaled as if he were sniffing out the right word, as if each letter of the alphabet had its own special scent—“how you say…” He lifted a slender finger to the wind, paused in thought, and then said, “Cherry!”
“I don’t want a red car.”
“You aren’t going to get a red car,” he said, conviction lighting his fine features, and then he turned and walked away. He had a nice ass. Yes, Clarissa thought, I am an ass gal.
She followed him to a line of cars closest to the building. A Buick Riviera, an F-150, a Jeep Cherokee, a Civic (that would never do), another F-150, a Dodge Ram, a Ford Escort, a Ford Ranger, a GMC Sonoma, an F-350, a Chevy Silverado, a canary yellow El Camino. That’s where he stopped. At the El Camino. It was long. Lean. Beautiful. Spotless. Gleaming. Cherry.
He turned to her, put his hand on the hood, and rubbed it the way, she imagined, he rubbed his wife’s thigh. “Watch you think?”
She felt herself smile. She walked the length of it. The sun glinted off all its surfaces, just like the flash of a bird’s wings. A black roof and two black racing stripes that ran the length of the hood highlighted the yellow paint job. Chrome rails—she supposed for tying stuff down—stretched like long, gleaming hyphens down either side of the bed. El Camino SS. Yes indeed. She did not want to appear eager. Whatever you do, she lectured silently, do not touch the automobile; do not let your hand linger longingly over its yellow hip of a fender.
But Raul, she feared, had the type of instincts all successful salesmen possessed: He could smell her desire. He opened the driver’s-side door. “Go for a ride?”
She shrugged, hoping to sound bored. “Sure.” She caught a whiff of his aftershave as she slid in. Old Spice. Of course he would wear Old Spice: solid, out of fashion, and unapologetic. The car (or was it a truck? she wasn’t sure) had a rearview mirror. And side mirrors. She bet that the gas gauge worked. And brake lights? Oh yeah. The keys were in the ignition. She looked at him.
“I took it out a few minutes ago,” he said, blushing. “This is my kind of car.”
He slid onto the passenger seat. Something other than Old Spice was in the mix: autumn and leather. She wanted to ask what it was but feared that he’d misinterpret the question as a come-on. She turned the key and said, “Whoa!” There was power under that hood.
“Top of the line—1970 Chevy El Camino SS.” His eyes softened as he ran his hand over the dash. “This little beauty,” he said, descending into motorhead-speak, a language Clarissa did not know, “has a 350 V8 engine, Holley 650 double-pump carburetor, Edelbrock duel-plane low-rise intake, Crane Saturday Night Special, solid lifter cam with roller rockers, bored .060 over Dome top 11 55:1 compression pistons, Edelbrock Performer aluminum heads, a four-bolt main with a steel crank, Hooker Headers running into Aero Chamber Mufflers with a three-inch exhaust out the back, a Hughes TH-350 transmission with a 4.11 posi rear end, power front disc brakes, power steering, factory a/c, Alpine AM/FM/CD player, and 46,333 original miles.” He recited the stats as if he were a sports announcer providing the star player’s performance stats. He didn’t miss a single one of his r’s—he rolled them all. Then he shot her that beautiful gr
in, leaned back expansively in his seat, and said, “Cherry, yes?”
“Perhaps,” Clarissa said, hearing the flirt and confidence in her voice, and she laughed. She put the car in drive and glided off the lot, down Robber’s Roost, which became a country road after three blocks, and pressed the accelerator, watching the needle tick higher and higher until it pegged at ninety miles an hour. The windows were down. Her back itched. She wanted to fly. She drove for a good ten minutes, in silence. Raul seemed content to let the hot wind tousle his hair. Finally, she couldn’t help herself.
“How much?” Clarissa asked above the thrum of the engine, the wind, the tires.
“Sixteen two,” he shouted, his fingers dancing along the window’s chrome trim.
Clarissa slowed the car, flipped on the blinker (what a beautiful sound), and turned into an abandoned roadhouse. The gravel crunched like a lover’s sigh as she brought the El Camino to a halt. She wiped a swath of grime off her face, listened to the sweet idle of the motor. She was very aware of Raul’s presence. It was masculine, dominating, nonviolent, patient. This El Camino, she knew, was about a whole lot more than simply securing transportation. “You’re married?”
“Yes.”
“Children?”
“A baby boy, seven months.” He pulled his wallet out of his back pocket and flipped it open.
Clarissa took it from him, stared at the Walmart photo of three humans smiling, the wife with the big-eyed baby on her lap, Raul sitting behind them with one hand on her shoulder and the other on the baby’s leg. Picture-perfect.
“How beautiful!” Clarissa said, her heart aching for the family she did not possess. “Your wife is very pretty.” And she was: petite with black hair that reached her waist.