by Dennis Mahagin
(03/03/10)
"I
fear," he said to her, as they drove, "for the rest of our rest stops."
She, who held their Thermos, began shaking it, swishing the dregs that
answered, maraca-like: "shhhhhhh...shhhhhh...shhhhhhh... "
This, plus all the insatiable No-Scenery-of-Night, rushing by.
"Like ghostly pickets?" she said. "In a David Lynch flick?"
"Hey I'm serious," he said, synchronous with blinkers,
and changing lanes. "Remember? We came out of Ruidoso, and that lippy guy on Talk Radio,
like...saying how all the rest areas are in big trouble. Budget cuts...mortgage
backed securities...stimulus...infrastructure. Some such--"
"Bad luck?" she murmured, stroking his thigh while staring into the white
lines on the freeway, the sickeningly slithery, corporeal parallax, in the dead-center
of the road. "What's happening to the rest of our rest stops?"
"Basically," he said, "yah."
An instant later a logging truck roared by, on the right side,
its air horn going off for seven full seconds. Slivers of gravel
ticked their windshield in a sheen of slush and strobe; he quickly
switched the wipers on high, and the fog lights; then his low beams.
"JESUS, FUCK!" he cried.
"Sheesh, you really oughta watch it, baby," she said, but also now nestling,
up close in the seat, stabbing her tongue into his ear.
"Try not to lose your...focus."
"Just like that," he said, snapping his fingers as he took one hand off
the wheel, gesticulating. "Happening, all the time. Bermuda big bang, baby!
I am talking wholesale obliterations!"
He could smell her Chanel perfume, the bubble gum and Starbucks
coffee on her breath; and now she was slipping a slender, warm hand
deep between his thighs.
He said, "Nah, nah nah, I got it...it's under control...just some basic fears,
that's all. For how the night is so long...and for the rest of all our fucking rest
stops."
More talk radio came on; she put her mouth against his cheek stubble, blowing a
hot elliptical raspberry.
"I'm serious as an aneurysm, Pamela!" he answered. "We need them...those fucking A
rest arias...sometimes, it's so wonderful, even in winter, to lie down on a
grassy hilltop in a rest stop, breathing in the frosty oxygen, under a cold array
of stars."
"Did you know," she purred, "horny starlings can make love, on the fly,
locked up at seventy miles per?"
Now she began to undo his belt buckle, as he shifted into overdrive, and
clicked on the cruise control. A rock steady fifty five.
"Just a little time...at a quality stop," he said, "and a sapped man is back..."
"On the stick," she whispered.
He wriggled his hips, in an effort to assist her patient sliding of his tight jeans,
all the way down to the super-heated floorboards.
"I mean, my god!" he murmured. "The coffee urns and chocolate chips!
Space heaters and jumper cables for totally reasonable fees."
"Shhhhhhhhhh," said she.
"All the friendly...I mean real energy, the campsite folk,
standing tall at clean marble counters. Ready to help, with maps under glass...Trail mix.
Dixie Cups!"
"Sometimes a body needs a long dirty break," she said, before saying no more.
"Unnnnnhhhh....mmmmmmm," he replied; then, relaxing at last, as another semi
truck came blasting by, this time from the left, blaring a voyeur's horn:
Seven short but sustained basso toots.
As he arrived, closer and closer upon the apex of their steamy drive,
he imagined: silver-plated satyr-headed dildos; a bevy of princely pandas,
in pirouette, under the December Venice moonlight.
Bridal trains a mile long, spitting deep-orange campfire coals as re-heated
Thermos dregs...stratospheric re-entry. Writhing bronzed bodies...in a welter of
spilt milk and moans.
So tricky, he thought: To tend to the rest of his Rest Stop Fears, while
taken up in the arms, tongue, and hands, of a proper lover. He bit his lip
and wrenched the wheel where it was bound, from the beginning, to go.
"FUUUUUCK, right?" he cried.
And she who held him kept assenting, as they rode along the endangered shoulder
of the road.
