“I will not go in there today,” I said. “Or ever.”
“Fine, I guess I’ll have to make the extra effort to make our marriage work by myself,” he said. His guilt trip was not going to work. I stayed put, crossing my arms across my chest to make sure he knew I was serious. The tiniest gestures would work on him.
He opened the car door.
“I’m going,” he said.
“Go,” I said. “And leave me the keys.”
“Why do you want me to leave you the keys?”
“Because I want to listen to the radio. Because it is hot and I want to keep the AC going. And because I cannot believe I let you drag me all the way out here, that is how come I want the keys.” As soon as I said all that, I felt better. I was hoping I would soon find all of this funny, though I had not yet.
Thomas slid the keys into the ignition and turned on the car, and looked straight ahead out the window, paused, and then said, “You’re not going to leave me here, are you?”
“Like I would leave anyone I love in a place like this,” I said.
“I’m just going to take a peek,” he said.
“Go on, then,” I said.
I watched him after he got out of the car and headed to the dirty magazine store, kicking dust and gravel behind him as he walked. I slid over to the edge of my seat and fiddled with the radio until I hit an all-news channel. A famous zoologist had died. He was filming a TV show, something about deep-sea diving, and had bumped into a stingray in the middle of the ocean. The stingray stung him in the chest. Pierced directly into his heart. He died almost instantly. He left behind a wife and child. I remembered I shivered as I listened to this. It was hard not to imagine how that hurt, even if I did not have a child. I did not ever want to be left alone. I turned down the AC and wrapped my arms around myself.
There was a knock at the window, one of the truckers, a red-faced man with small nervous welts around his neck. His eyes were blue in the center, but yellow and red where the white should be. He asked me to roll down the window. I rolled it down just a tiny bit. His scent was so strong it made it through even just the inch of air between us. I pulled back away from him and started breathing through my mouth.
“Are you working?” he said.
“Working?” I said. “On what?”
“Don’t worry,” he said. He winked. “I’m not a cop.”
I was willing to take crap from my husband, but not strangers who smell like whiskey before noon.
“I do not know what you are implying, but my husband went inside to use the restroom, and he is ginormous and will kick your ass if you do not step away from this car right now, and I will scream, I will . . .” I just kept rattling things off until he mumbled, “My mistake,” and drifted off slowly at first toward the hub of rigs, and then he turned and looked at me, at my fierce and determined face, and then he began to hustle toward his truck. He rolled out of the parking lot in less than a minute. Filthy man.
But could I blame him? What was I doing sitting in the parking lot of an adult bookstore on a Tuesday morning? I was going to kill my husband. I rolled up the window and blasted the radio. I pulled a shiny tin package of gum out of my purse, popped a piece in my mouth, and started chewing. I pulled on my jaw like it was the lever of a machine. My knee started twitching up and down. I crossed my arms. A few minutes later another trucker knocked on the window. I stared straight ahead. He knocked again, so I slammed the back of my hand up against the window, middle finger up in the air. He cursed me, then walked away.
That is it, I thought. I am a married, respectable woman. I will not be cursed by truckers. I put my hand on the horn, and I started pressing it, alternating between long spurts, and short little beats. I did this until the front door of the bookstore opened. A lean man in a white and black striped dress shirt walked out toward our car, loping with his long legs and black cowboy boots. He walked with a purpose, that purpose being to stop me from beeping and destroying his business. He tapped on the window. I rolled it down, again just a short distance. He did not look angry.
“Hon, is there a problem? Are you okay?” He smiled. His teeth were gigantic. There were three wavy lines indented into his forehead. They were so distinct, it seemed like they had been drawn there, like a caveman’s drawing on a wall. The symbol for fire, or a river, or the slaughter of an animal.
“Can you send my husband out?” I said. I was chewing my gum really fast. “I really want to go home.”
“Who’s your husband?”