Getting Off

“Me too,” she said. “Real simple.”

She paid for their breakfast in Covington — eggs and grits and link sausage, and coffee that had stayed too long on the hot plate. She gave him twenty dollars for gas, and he took it only after she’d assured him that she was okay for cash. When he dropped her at a Louisville hotel, she still hadn’t told him her name, or learned his.

She dismounted, then remembered the dirty clothes in the saddlebag. He waved a hand dismissively, said he’d toss them once he’d crossed another state line. She wanted to say something, but all she could think of was “Thank you.”

“We’re cool,” he said, and reached out a gloved hand to touch her lightly on the shoulder. Her eyes stayed on him until he and his bike were around the corner and out of sight.

She took a room and paid cash in advance for four days, which was as much time as she figured she needed to spend in Louisville. Two hours later she was back at the hotel with new clothes and a suitcase. She took a long shower and put on some of the clothes she’d just bought, and decided to throw out the ones she’d arrived in.

By now, she thought, he’d probably crossed another state line.

Would she ever see him again? Jesus, would she even recognize him if she did? She didn’t know what he looked like. Except for his nose she hadn’t seen any portion of him that wasn’t covered by goggles or leather or beard.

She could smell his leather jacket. She could feel the touch of his gloved hand on her shoulder.

She couldn’t keep from having fantasies about him. They were full of the physical presence of him, and yet they weren’t specifically sexual. She envisioned the two of them on the bike, crisscrossing the nation together, stopping for gas, stopping for food, then moving on. They barely spoke, even as they’d barely spoken during their time together. You couldn’t talk over the roar of the engine, and the rest of the time there was no need for talk — as there’d been no need for it earlier.

He’d looked so scary. But the look that she’d feared at first glance had turned out to be a comfort. There was an individual beneath the leather, behind the mirrored lenses. There was a person with a history and an outlook and a world of likes and dislikes. But she didn’t get to see any of that, didn’t need to know any of it. There was safety, somehow, in all that impersonality.

I’m just keeping it real simple these days.

An older brother, she thought. A male cousin. Or, oh, a guardian angel, if you believed in that sort of thing.

She stayed in the Louisville hotel for the four nights she’d paid for. Took long walks, went to the movies, watched TV in her room. Ate three meals a day at the Denny’s on the next block. Took two showers a day, sometimes three.

By the time she left — a cab to the airport, a plane to Memphis— she had let go of the memories. They were still there, but they’d lost their edge. The man who would have killed her, the man who got her out of there, were both now just a part of the past.

TWENTY-FOUR

Rita said, “Memphis! Did you see Elvis yet?”

“I was in a restaurant,” she said. “Just a diner, really. And there was an Elvis at one end of the counter and another one in a booth. Those were the only two I’ve seen and I saw them both at once.”

“Elvis impersonators.”

“Well, duh, yeah. I mean, if it was just one, I suppose it might have been the King himself, but with two of them—”

“What I meant was have you been to Graceland.”

“Oh. No, not yet.”

“That would have been my first stop. Kimmie, every time you call you’ve got a new phone.”

“Well, they’re disposable,” she said. “So I tend to dispose of them.”

“Kimmie, you kill me.” Oh, don’t say that. “You know, I thought I saw you the other afternoon. In Seattle, in Pike Place Market?”

“It wasn’t me, Rita.”

“Oh, don’t I know that? I took a good look, and she didn’t really look like you at all.”

“She was a lot prettier.”

“Silly! But you know what I went and did?”

“Picked her up and took her home.”

“Kimmie!”

“And ate her pussy.”

“Kimmie, you’re terrible!”

“Am I?”

“You know you are. But what’s really bad—”

“You thought about it.”

“Yes! I went home and jilled about it.”

“And is that what you’re doing now?”

“Not exactly.”

“Oh?”

“But I’m sort of in the mood.”

“Oh, are you?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Well…”

And a little later:

“So I was out walking one night, and this guy gave me a ride on his motorcycle. I never saw his face. He was all in leather, and he had a beard, and he was wearing these mirrored goggles. And I rode a couple of hundred miles on the back of his motorcycle.”

“You’re making this up, right? It’s okay if you are, because I like it just fine, but I was wondering—”

“No, this is real, Rita. Anyway, nothing happened.”

“Nothing happened? What’s that supposed to mean?”

“There was no sex.”

“Why not? I mean, even if you were having your period—”

“Neither of us wanted it.”

“How come?”

“I don’t know. We just didn’t. So I’m sitting behind him on the big Harley, and we’re zooming through the night, and there’s nothing in the world but the vibration of the bike and the smell of his beat-up leather jacket, and—”

“And you came in your pants.”

“No.”

“You didn’t? I almost did, just from hearing about it. How come you didn’t?”

“I don’t know. I suppose I could have.”

“What stopped you?”

“I just…let it go. Have you ever been, like, out on a cold day, and you’re not dressed for it, and the wind’s like a knife?”

“And that’s like being on a bike and smelling leather?”

“No, let me finish. When that happens, out in the cold, there’s a thing I’ll do sometimes. I let the cold just blow right through me, and I visualize it passing through without affecting me. Have you ever tried that?”

“No.”