they’re hauling contraband. The boobs aren’t real either.”
He laughed at her unabashed admission. “Last night when your son first suggested I catch a ride to Texas with his mother, I pictured a matron with an SUV or maybe a Crown Vic.”
“And even when he told you I drove a rig, you didn’t expect the Mother Trucker, right?”
“No way,” he admitted.
Ruby pulled a pack of Camel filters from behind the visor and shook one out, then offered the pack to Eli.
“No, thanks.”
“Driving these long stretches gets lonely,” she said, the cigarette wagging between her crimson lips. “If you weren’t here, I’d most likely pick up a hitchhiker. My kid frowns on that.”
“Your son thought I’d keep you out of trouble?”
“Naw, he’s given up. He just likes to minimize it whenever possible.” She slid a CD into the console player and Stevie Ray Vaughan’s screaming guitar zinged through the cab. “Besides, you seem like you might have some trouble of your own.”
“What makes you think that?” he asked.
“Number one, you’re too old to be hitching around the country on a lark. Number two, people who travel by bus are usually poor or elderly, and you seem like a guy who’d drive a sports car. Number three, my son said you paid cash for an expensive dinner last night instead of using a credit card. I figure maybe you’re running from somebody.
Maybe that pretty girl’s husband?”
Her directness and perspicacity surprised him. “Nothing like that.”
“If the law or the mob’s after you, I’d rather know sooner than later.”
“It’s kind of a long story.”
“We’ve got a twelve-hour drive ahead of us.”
Eli shifted in his seat, settling in for the long ride. “Well, then…”
He told her about his job at Meditrina Vineyards, about the fungus that had killed their grapevines, and the research he’d done that showed the disease originated in France.
He explained that for years, French winemakers had been losing ground to the Californians, and that Meditrina was the rising star in the industry, winning awards and market shares that once belonged to the French.
“What’s ‘Meditrina’ mean, by the way?”
“Meditrina was the Roman goddess of wine, health, and longevity.” Wistfully, he thought about the life-sized marble statue of her at the entrance to the vineyard. “Our success turned out to be our downfall. I started spreading the word among California’s wine-growing community and blogging about my suspicions. Then one night about a month ago, somebody trashed my apartment, but the only thing they stole was my computer. A few days later, a French guy tried to knife me in the men’s room of a San Francisco restaurant.”
“How’d you know he was French?”
“His accent. He asked if I was Eli Hart, the vintner. When I said yes, he pulled a knife. I kicked his feet out from under him and slammed his head on the urinal. Another guy tried to grab me in the hall, but I chopped his Adam’s apple and ran.”
Ruby raised an eyebrow and examined him for a moment. “And I thought you were just a pretty boy.”
He shrugged. “I took a few self-defense classes.”
“Do you think they’re still hunting for you?”
“I don’t know, but I’m not taking any chances.”
He explained how he’d dashed into a costume shop near the restaurant and donned a jester suit, then kidnapped Miranda and escaped.
“Some guys will do anything to get a woman,” she said, shaking her red curls.
“I was desperate and scared.” Eli stared out the open window at the mountainous terrain. The wind ruffled his honey-colored hair.
Ruby lit another cigarette and blew smoke shapes, not just rings but stars and trees and elephants. Eli watched for a while, trying to figure out how she did it, then gave up. “So what’s the craziest way you ever got a man?” he asked.
She laughed and her faux ruby necklace bounced on her silicone-augmented breasts. “I had one delivered to me, all wrapped up in a box.”
“You
“I was hauling appliances—washers, dryers, refrigerators and such. When I arrived at my destination and checked my load, I noticed one of the boxes was moving. It was making noise, too. I sliced it open with a box cutter and inside I found a man all bound up with duct tape.”
“What did you do?”
“Well, he was real cute—a young Spanish guy—so I climbed in with him. An immobilized man who couldn’t talk was just too good to pass up. I undid his pants and when he reacted favorably, I fucked him right there in the box.”
It took Eli a while to stop laughing enough to ask, “Why was he in the box?”
“He crossed a couple of bad guys who knocked him out, packaged him, and stashed him on my truck. They meant for him to end up in a warehouse and slowly die from dehydration. Of course, I cut him loose when I was done with him.”
Ruby ejected the Stevie Ray Vaughan CD and inserted one of Janis Joplin.
“Another time, a guy in a Porsche low-bridged my trailer,” she continued. “I was making a turn and the trailer stretched across both lanes of the road. It was night and raining hard. He was driving too fast. Never even saw me. That little car zipped right under my truck. Peeled his roof off, like the lid of a sardine can, but fortunately he didn’t get hurt. He managed to open one door and crawl out. I brought him into the cab while I phoned 911. I couldn’t help noticing his dick was sticking up like the Empire State Building. Turned out his kink was near-death experiences, and I don’t mean the woo-woo kind. We got it on twice before the cops showed up.”
“Driving a truck sounds pretty exciting,” Eli chuckled. “Maybe I should change professions.”
“Most of the time it’s duller than dirt,” she admitted. “But lots of guys find lady truckers hot. It’s all about power and control. A woman who can handle this humungous diesel monster is nobody’s plaything. She’s independent, gutsy, and she knows how to get where she wants to go.”
“You remind me of those pioneer women, driving their horse-drawn wagons across the Wild West.”
She patted the dashboard affectionately. “Yeah, got my five hundred horses right here.”
They drove on for a while without talking, listening to Janis belt out the blues in her raspy, soulful voice.
When the CD ended, Ruby said, “In my youth, I idolized Janis. She and I both came from the Texas coast. We were a lot alike: bad girls into sex, drugs, and rock ’n’ roll. I guess we must’ve been baptized in dirty water.”
“At least you didn’t end up like her.”
“Now we’re back to the subject of power and control. Janis had plenty of power, but she lacked control. That’s where we differed.” She put on a Johnny Winter CD next.
“In case you haven’t noticed, I’m playing all Texas musicians to put you in the right frame of mind.”
“The right frame of mind for what?”
“Hot weather, hot food, and hot women.” She rolled down the elastic waistband of her red stretch pants to reveal vermillion flames tattooed just above her pubic hair.
But when Ruby saw his expression, she laughed. “Well, the fire looked hotter thirty years and sixty pounds ago.”
They stopped for lunch in Roswell, New Mexico, where a UFO supposedly crashed in 1947. The town had never forgotten the incident. Every place Eli looked, he saw pictures of aliens and flying saucers. In a restaurant designed to resemble a spaceship, he ordered a “Martian Meat” sandwich that tasted like an ordinary hamburger and washed it down with a chartreuse “Moonglow Milkshake.”
“Tell me about this winemaker you’re going to see,” Ruby said, taking a bite of her Saturn Salad. Radishes,
