Gray worked in the city: 125k a year now, assistant programming director for UniCorp. Not bad for 40. And switching him to 4-to-12s dropped another ten percent in his pocket as a night differential. The adjustment came easy: fewer people in the office, fewer distractions and ringing phones—more time to work. Gray had no wife anymore and had never really cared about a social life; the way he saw it, work was the only way to make anything of himself.
But at times like this, during these incalculable drives, he got to wondering.
But was that really true?
There were other needs.
Four-to-12s had one more perk: no rush hour. Gray left the city at midnight, then took the Route to the interstate. With no traffic, he’d be back to his condo in less than a half hour. State Route 154 was a long winding flood emergency route through the dense woodland of south county. It was a pretty drive, scenic—especially at night, especially during the summer. The low moon followed him through the trees. Crickets and peepers issued their steady, pulsating cacophony, and the stars glimmered like luminous spillage in the sky.
And here she was again. The girl he’d seen hitchhiking several nights in a row. The girl, and that rising need.
Yes, he’d read in the paper that prostitutes often walked the Route, but not like the hookers in the city—they were all drug-addicts, scary in their empty-eyed stares and sleazy getups. These Route girls, he’d heard, were just poor rubes—white trash, for the most part—looking to make a few bucks to take back to their broken farms. And this one here?
Just last night he’d passed her, hadn’t he? She’d been walking just past the bend, and when Gray spotted her, something in his soul seized up. That trampy, hick beauty glared back in the swoosh of halogen highbeams; a freeze-frame locked in his head.
All slim curves and fine lines. Frayed cutoffs satcheled sleek, spread hips. Pert breasts, large for a girl of her delicate frame, swayed braless in the faded orange halter, and between that and her beltline, Gray lost his breath at the image of her tight, sloping abdomen and the tiny slit of bellybutton. Her face seemed to beam bright as the halogens: big brown eyes; a small, robust mouth; a peaches-and-cream complexion.
Hair the color of mature straw danced at her shoulders.
And all these details, yes, he’d managed to assess in the split-second glimpse as his Corvette rounded the bend. But one more detail nicked at him, more persistent than the others, and the detail was this: Her tanned arm extended, her thumb out.
Was that was he was looking for?
The answer must’ve been yes, because a few tenths of a mile later, Gray was pulling a U. His heart seemed to pick up in its beat as he drove, scanning the lit shoulder. But—
When he got back to the bend, another car idled at the line—a nicely refurbed ’68 Camaro, ice-white. It was a small-block, with headers and chambered exhaust. Gray could tell by the healthy
The girl was getting in. A final passing glimpse showed him the driver’s face in the left window, some stubbled, longhaired redneck.
So that was the end of that. Or—
Maybe not.
Here she was again, tonight, hitching along the same shoulder, barefoot, long tan legs stepping backward as she jerked her thumb out.
It was something like a haze in his eyes when he pulled the Corvette right over. A shadow danced in his rearview, and then the passenger door was opening. The shadow slipped in, bringing a faintly musky scent in its wake. The door thunked shut.
“Hi,” Gray said.
“Ha,” she replied. That’s what her redneck dialect turned the word “hi” into. “Wow, this, I say, this is some really nass car.”
“Thanks. So where you headed?”
