“I promise. Just let me put my clothes on before the rest of the world sees me like this.”
“Of course,” Val said. He helped the girl to her feet, trying to hold the towel in place to save what little dignity she had left, but it was useless. She gave up on the panties, kicking them off her leg, and tried to slip back into the black dress she’d thought she looked so pretty in a few hours ago. She started to cry again.
“Can you help me?”
“Yes, ma’am.” Val helped her slide the dress up and over her shoulders, and it enveloped her like a shadow. She turned and lifted her hair, and Val secured the straps behind her neck. When she turned around to face him, she looked up and took the rag from her face.
“How bad do I look?” she said.
Val wiped the tears from the undamaged side of her face. “You are a beautiful girl,” he said, and tucked the fold of cash into the girl’s hand. She lowered her eyes and pressed the rag back to her face.
“You’re not a very good liar,” she said, and still holding her shoes, limped her way toward the stairs. She knew she would never be beautiful again.
CHAPTER
12
BRACKEN LEEK
2015
1.
“Can I bum a smoke?”
“Can I bang your wife?”
Moe thought about that and tugged on the soul patch sprouting under his bottom lip. “If I say yes, then can I bum a smoke?”
Tilmon reached back into the stash under the steering wheel, grabbed his pack of Camel Lights, and shook one out for his partner. Moe lit up and went back to studying their route on a laminated map. The piece-of-shit GPS never worked this far out in the sticks. Tilmon watched Moe smoke from the corner of his eye. “How long we been doing this?” he said.
Moe looked up from the map and took a drag, tapping his ashes on the floorboard. “Doing what? Riding Highway 27?” He looked at his watch. “About two hours.”
“No, I mean, how long we been riding together?”
Moe looked at his watch again, as if he’d set a timer at the beginning of their partnership. “Shit, man. I don’t know. Almost two years, I think.”
“Almost two years.”
“Yeah, about that. Why?”
“I’m just curious.”
Moe smoked his cigarette down to the filter and tossed the butt out the window. They burned up another mile of interstate before he bit. “Curious about what? The map? I like looking at the map.”
“You can look at the map all you want. That doesn’t bother me.”
“Then what’s up with the cryptic line of questioning?”
“What line? I asked you one thing.”
Moe’s ears started to burn. “For real, why?”
Tilmon slid his sunglasses up his forehead and pinched the oil off his nose with his thumb and forefinger. “Okay,” he said, “I’ll tell you. Two years we been riding together and in all that time I can’t think of one time you brought enough smokes to make the trip.”
Moe stared at him blankly. “Are you being serious right now?”
“Yeah, I’m being serious. Can you think of one time in two years you didn’t have to bum off me sometime during the route? Just name one time.”
“Go fuck yourself, Tilmon.”
“Don’t do that. Don’t get all shitty about it. I’m just pointing something out. We both patched in about the same time, so I know we make about the same money, but not really, ’cause I got to carry your habit as well as my own. That shit adds up, man. If you think about it, it’s kind of a shitty thing to do to a partner of almost two years.”
“How much, Tilmon? How much you want?” Moe lifted his ass off the seat and pulled his wallet from his back pocket. “I got seventy . . . seventy-three dollars. Will that cover it?”
“Put your money away, Moe. I’m just trying to make a point. Look . . . we’re losing Romeo.”
Moe looked out the window at the large sideview mirror and saw the black ’66 shovelhead Harley that had been tailing them pull over next to exit 118 to Broadwater Campground. Moe stuffed his wallet back in his pants and grabbed the radio handset.
“Romeo, what’s going on back there, bro?”
Static.
“I gotta take a leak. Keep on truckin’ and I’ll catch up.”
“Copy that. Bracken, you hear that?”
The voice of Bracken Leek, riding the Heritage Classic in front of Tilmon and Moe’s box truck, came over the radio. “Yeah, I got it. Do what you gotta do, Romeo, and get your ass back in gear.”
“Nothing to it but to do it,” Romeo said.
Tilmon reached for his smokes. “Bro?”
“Huh?”
“A second ago, you called Romeo ‘bro.’ You can’t stand that guy.”
“Yeah, well, he don’t hold two-year grudges over fuckin’ cigarettes.”
Tilmon rolled his eyes. “Jesus, I’m sorry I said anything.” He held the pack out to his partner.
“Shove those up your ass, Tilmon.”