dirt back road. The sun was just going down by the time he'd sweet-talked Melanie into the back seat. He was wrestling with her double-hook D-cup when she suddenly tensed underneath him.
'Joo hear that?' she whispered. J.D. heard only crickets and the slight squeaking of leaf springs.
'Hear what?'
'A scratching, like. On metal.'
J.D. looked up. He always parked away from the trees out on these country roads. Damned branches would claw the hell out of a custom paint job. He saw nothing but the gangly shadows of the far underbrush.
'I don't hear nothing, babe. Now, where were we?'
'There it went again. Sounds like it's coming from the trunk.'
'Bullshit.'
'Sounds like a squirrel running around in there.'
J.D. strained his ears. He heard the faint rattle of tools. Then, fingernails on metal.
He sat up suddenly.
'What the hell, J.D.?'
'Nothing. Better get you back to town, is all.'
Melanie whimpered. She was as good at whimpering as she was at pouting.
'But J.D., I thought-'
'Not tonight, I got… work to do.'
She whined all the way back into town, but J.D. didn't hear her. All he could hear were the low moans coming from the trunk and the sound of fists banging like rubber mallets off the trunk lid.
After J.D. dropped off Melanie, he pulled out behind Floyd's garage and looked around the auto graveyard. Here was where Detroit's mistakes came to die. Pontiacs draped over Plymouths while Chryslers sagged on cinder blocks. A school bus slept in its bed of briars. A couple of Studebakers decayed beside the high wooden fence, and a dozen junk jeeps were lined in rows like dead soldiers awaiting body bags. The few unbroken headlights were like watching eyes, but they would be the only witnesses.
Back here, Miss American Mincemeat Pie could rust in peace.
He stepped out among the bones of cars, gang-raped engines, and jagged chassis. The moon was glaring down, all of last night's clouds now long-hauled to the east. J.D. gripped the trunk key between his sweaty fingers.
'Open it, J.D.,' said the voice. It was a young, hollow voice, with the kind of drawn-out accent a country girl might have. The long syllables reverberated inside the tin can of the trunk space.
J.D. looked around the junkyard.
'Stick it in, muscleboy,' the voice taunted. 'You know you want to.'
He unlatched the trunk and it opened with a rush of foul air.
She sat up and arched her back.
'Cramped in here,' she said. The moon shone fully on her, like a spotlight. The raw flesh of her face was tinged green, and her eyes were ringed with black. She reached up to smooth her hair and her arm hung like a broken clutch-spring.
'You… y-you're dead.' But that was dumb. He knew machines didn't die, they only got rebuilt.
'Now, do I look dead?'
J.D. didn't know what to say. It wasn't the kind of thing he could look up in the troubleshooting section of his owner's manual.
'Still got a few miles left on me,' she said, tugging at the strap of her dress that had slipped too low over her mottled chest. Her eyes were wide but as dull as Volkswagen hubcaps. 'Besides, all I need is a little body work and I'll be good as new.'
'What's the big idea, screwing up my date like that?' J.D. angled his head so he could look at her out of the corners of his eyes.
'Your cheating days are over, rough rider. You've only got room in your heart for one girl now.'
'Whatchoo talking about? And why did you dump over my toolbox?' J.D. couldn’t be sure, but it looked like radiator fluid was leaking from her eyes.
'A lady's always in search of that one good tool. What say we get it on?'
'No. I'm going to stuff you behind the seat of that Suburban over there, and you're going to stay until you're both a collector's item.'
'J.D., is that any way to treat a lady?'
'Well, you ought to be glad I think enough of you to leave you in a Chevy. There's plenty of Datsuns out here.'
She shook her head, and tattered meat swung below her face. 'I don't think so, muscleboy.'
Her finger flexed like a carb linkage as she beckoned him closer.
J.D. couldn't help himself. He was as captivated as he'd been by his first Hot Rod magazine. She smelled of gasoline and grave dirt, hot grease and raw sex. She'd oozed out all over the spare tire. He'd never get his trunk clean.
'I think we're ready for a midnight run.' She slid her mangled tongue over her teeth.
He leaned over the back bumper. He felt a cold limp hand slide behind his Mark Martin belt buckle. She put the mashed blackberries of her lips to his ear.
'And from now on, I ride up front,' she whispered, and her words came out with no breath.
Three months, and J.D. was dragging.
The summer heat was wearing on him, and he'd lost twenty of his hundred-and-forty pounds. But it was even worse for her. She had gone from pink to green to gray and still the meat clung stubbornly to her bones.
He hid her during the day, in a self-storage garage he rented. Floyd had given him hell at first, asking him why he walked all the time these days, was he afraid of putting another dent in Cammie or what. But lately Floyd had quit the ribbing. This morning Floyd said J.D. looked like he'd been run all night by the hounds of hell.
'Something like that,' J.D. wanted to say, but he'd promised to keep the affair a secret.
And that evening, as he'd done every night since he'd picked up his new passenger, he carried a five-gallon can of gas to the garage and filled up the Camaro.
And when the sun slid behind the flat Midwestern horizon and midnight raised its oil-soaked rags, he backed the car out and pointed it toward the street.
'Where to tonight, Cammie?' he asked, as if he had to ask.
She grinned at him. She was always grinning, now that her face was mostly skull. 'The usual, muscleboy.'
He drove out to that three-mile stretch of open black road and idled. Oblivion beckoned beyond the yellow cones of the headlights.
'One-sixty-five tonight,' she said.
He gulped and nodded. One-sixty-five. He could do it. Probably.
Not that he had any choice. He could damage her flesh, but couldn't break the timing chains of love.
'Okay, Cammie,' he said to her.
As J.D. stomped the accelerator and jerked his foot off the clutch, he wondered if this would be the night of consummation. Would she let him release the steering wheel as he wound into fifth gear, making them truly one, all blood and twisted metal and spare parts?
He glanced at her. There was no sign of requited love in the dim holes of her skull. She was as cold as a machine, unforgiving, more metal than bone, more petroleum than blood.
She was going to ride shotgun forever, as the odometer racked up miles and miles of endless highway.
If only he could please her. But he was afraid that he was nothing to her, just a vapor in the combustion chambers of her heart.
He shifted into fourth.
DOG PERSON
