“Thomas Ma—” I stopped myself. Maybe I should use a fake name, I thought. Last thing I need is our good name getting out. “Just Thomas. Just say, ‘Thomas, your wife wants to go home. Right now.’”
“Are you sure you don’t want to come in and find him yourself?” he said. He leaned in closer to the window and hooked his fingers over the top of it. “You might find something you like inside.” He was looking at my little denim skirt, my legs, my strappy tank top, and then my face. He did not see it right, though, I could tell. He did not see it as the skirt I bought at my daddy’s Walmart with his employee discount to keep cool in the summer days, but as a short trashy little skirt for a short trashy little girl who hangs out in the parking lot of dirty magazine stores. Even though he did not know anything except that my husband was inside—my husband could be a complete psycho—he still acted as bold as anything. There are certain men who do that, act like it is okay because they are flattering you. It is all in their tone. They think they control the world. They probably do half the time. I am not saying it is right, I am just saying they know how to work things to their advantage.
“Just tell him that his wife is sitting out here waiting for him,” I said. I rolled up the window and he snapped his hands back. He put his fingers to his head and gave me a little salute, and then turned on one foot and marched back to the shop. It made me laugh, even though I knew he was a scumbag.
A minute later, Thomas came hurrying out to the car. He was empty-handed, and looked terrified. He got in the car, put it in drive, and pulled out of that trucker hellhole parking lot and onto the freeway.
He was dead quiet until he hit seventy on the interstate.
“Way to embarrass me, Moonie,” he said.
“What, in front of all your new friends?” I snapped. “What about me? Did you know there were truckers coming up to me thinking I was a hooker? They wanted to pay me. To have sex with them.”
Thomas looked at me, his jaw dropped, his mouth open wide, and I took my hand and pushed his chin up until his lips met. And then came the waterworks.
“How could I have done that to you, Moonie?” One tear, and then it seemed like there were twenty tears all at once, streaming down his face. He sniffled for a few minutes; I let him get it all out.
“Oh, it is all right,” I told him. “There are better ways to spend a Tuesday, but it is not like anything really bad happened.”
“That place wasn’t right anyway,” said Thomas. “I went to hit the can and there was a glory hole in there, swear to God.”
“What’s a glory hole?” It sounded sort of pretty. I pictured a black hole in the night sky with stars twinkling all around it.
“It’s where . . . people put their dicks in them. For sex.”
That sounded like just about the most awful thing someone could do. Sex through a hole, where you could not see the other person? Or touch them or kiss them? I did not get it. I puckered my mouth. “And what happens after?” I said.
“I think it’s maybe gay. I don’t know. Your friend Timber’d probably like it.”
“What are you talking about?” I said.
“Everyone knows he’s gay,” said Thomas.
“He is?” Suddenly I liked Timber a lot more. I did not know why. I guess being gay just made him more i nteresting.
“That’s why he had to leave school. For being gay.”
“They can’t kick you out of college for being gay,” I said. “That’s illegal.”
“They can kick you out if they catch you sucking your professor’s dick.”
“Shut up, Thomas,” I said. “That is just not true. They would just fire the professor. And, anyway, how would you even hear something like that?”
“I don’t know all the exact details, little miss smarty-pants,” said Thomas. “I just know I heard it around.”
I looked out the window. A sign said we were sixty-five miles from Omaha. We still had a long way to go before we got home.
Thomas tapped his fingers on the steering wheel. “It’s sort of funny, huh? All of that with the truckers.”
“Not yet it isn’t,” I said. But eventually it would be something we could laugh about. It was all temporary, a piece of plastic he would have added to himself, so I could temporarily feel him, during a temporary moment, which is all sex was. That was why I did not care that I could not feel him. It was just one part of a lifetime of moments I planned on having with him. And the non-feeling part made me feel more, made me love him more. It was sort of like how a blind person could hear better than someone who could see, or a deaf person might have a really strong sense of smell. It seemed like all of my other senses were more intense to make up for the place I felt nothing. I could never make him see that what was missing was just as important as what was there. That it was one part of our makeup, the way we fitted together.