She looked up, over her right shoulder, shading her eyes against the glare of the slanting morning sun. All she saw were wraparound shades, the brim of a cap, chiseled cheeks, and a stubbly jaw leaning out the driver’s window. “I don’t care to walk,” she said. “I’m just going over yonder to the truck stop. Thanks anyhow.”
“You fixing to get some breakfast? Come on, I’ll buy.” He took off the sunglasses so she could see his eyes. He was looking at her face, not her tits. She appreciated that, though she knew he’d already had plenty of time to check her out as he pulled up behind her and then drew even. Hell, he’d probably seen her naked not more than twenty minutes before, dancing on the peep-show stage.
She noticed a chrome silhouette of a nude woman on the truck’s mud flaps, as well as a bumper sticker on the sleeper cab, just below the door handle: I ? LOT LIZARDS. She had mixed feelings about the sticker. On the one hand, it meant he was willing to pay for sex. On the other hand, it showed that he considered the truck-stop prostitutes he bought it from—“lot lizards,” in trucker slang—to be less than human.
Crystal’s head was pounding and she was seriously pissed off; she’d worked all night for seventeen dollars in tips, and that bastard Bobby T had given her an “attitude adjustment”—a one-week suspension—for sassing a customer who’d looked and groped but never did tip. She’d wanted to sass Bobby T, too—to say, “Hey, man, you try dancing bare-assed all night for a bunch of fat guys with BO and grabby hands, see how chirpy you feel.” But she’d bitten it back, because this was her second attitude adjustment, and she knew Bobby T had a strict three-strikes-and-you’re-out policy. “They’s plenty other crack-whores to take your place in here, princess,” he’d told the last girl he sent packing. Sad truth was, he was right. Seventeen bucks wouldn’t go far, but zero bucks went nowhere. And the night before last had been all right, thirty-something in tips, plus two quick twenty-dollar blow jobs in the parking lot out back. “Sorry; what?” she said, realizing that the trucker had said something to her and was waiting for an answer.
“I said business looked kinda slow in there.” She shrugged by way of a noncommittal acknowledgment. “Wondering if you might like to make a little extra on the side.”
On the side, hell, she thought. On my ass, you mean. But what she said was, “Might. Depends on what you’re lookin’ for. And what you’re offering.” Careful not to say what she’d do, and careful not to ask outright about the money. She’d never heard of an undercover cop driving a semi, but you couldn’t be too careful.
“The no-frills, good old-fashioned way, forty bucks,” he said. “Take me around the world, I could go sixty. Show me something I’ve never seen before, might be worth a hundred.”
She didn’t much like feeling pressured, but she definitely liked the prospect of making a hundred first thing in the morning. Maybe he’d even spring for a room in the Comfort Inn, which would give her a chance to shower and nap before traipsing home to the trailer. “Well then,” she said. “All aboard, I reckon.”
He grinned down at her. “That’s the ticket. Come on around. You need help getting up?”
“Nah, I can manage. I’ve done it once or twice before.”
“Ha. I bet you have, babycakes. I bet you have.”
She walked around the long, looming prow of the truck, the top of the hood a foot higher than her head, the windshield blocked from view by the mammoth engine. When she got to the side, the passenger door swung open for her. Planting her left foot on the thigh-high step, she grabbed the chrome bar running up the side of the cab and swung her right leg up to the floorboard, almost as if she were climbing onto a horse.
“Oh yeah, I’d say you’ve done this once or twice,” he said, grinning.
He was younger than most truck drivers. Better looking, too—good muscles, no gut. Well, that would change soon enough, if he ate and drank and sat on his ass all the time, like every other truck driver she’d ever known. Once she was in, he eased out the clutch and the truck rumbled forward. “Name’s Jake. As in ‘jake brakes.’ What’s yours?”
“Crystal,” she said. It wasn’t her real name—or at least, it didn’t use to be—but maybe by now she’d turned into Crystal. Didn’t matter anyhow. Plus she was pretty sure his name wasn’t really Jake.
“Crystal. Pretty. So how’s about we work up a little more appetite before breakfast, Crystal?”
She was already starving, but she figured she’d best reel him in while she had him on the hook. “Whatever you want. You’re in the driver’s seat.”
He smiled, putting the shades back on. The truck rumbled up to the stop sign where Old Kentucky Road intersected I-75. He turned left, toward the underpass and the Pilot, but then he cut the wheel to the right, turning onto the interstate’s northbound on-ramp instead of heading for the truck stop.
“Hey,” she said, turning in her seat. “What the hell you doing?”