J. Jance - Desert Heat

“I hope you don’t mind,” the driver said apogetically. “This is a truck stop. It’s called the Triple T, and it’s the last decent place for a long ways. I usually stop here for a slice of deep-dish apple pie and to get my thermos filled. Care for a cup of coffee?”

Weak with relief, Angie Kellogg burst out laughing. “I’d love a cup of coffee.”

When she climbed down from the cab, the desert air was chilly on her bare arms. She shivered and Dayton Smith noticed. “Don’t have a jacket or sweater?” he asked.

She shook her head. “I left all my clothes back at the hotel.”

Smith climbed back into the cab, rummaged and the seat, and emerged holding a blue nylon jacket with the United Van Lines logo and Dayton Smith’s name emblazoned on the front.

“Here,” he said, “put this on. It may be five sizes too big, but it’ll be warm.”

Inside the truck stop, they were ushered into front section reserved for professional drivers. Several of the other truckers seemed to recognize Dayton Smith. Seeing Angie with him, they greeted him with knowing winks and conspiratorial nods, all of which made Dayton blush to the roots of his receding hair-line.

“Where are you going, really?” he asked.

Angie had been thinking about the map she had looked at in her room hours earlier. The vague outlines of a plan were beginning to take shape in her head.

“How far is Bisbee from here?”

Smith shrugged his shoulders. “A hundred miles, give or take. What’s in Bisbee?”

The waitress brought coffee. Dayton and Angie sat for a few moments, studying each other across the counter top. For her part, Angie was evaluating Dayton Smith according to the only scale she knew-the scale of how to get men to do what she wanted. There was money in her bag, but she never even considered offering to pay him with that. Angie was accustomed to dealing with the world with only one form of currency-her body. Old habits are hard to break.

She figured Dayton Smith would be easy pickings. Men like him were usually duck soup in the hands of a real professional. They usually wanted whores to do the things their uptight wives at home wouldn’t agree to on a bet, and Angie Kellogg didn’t mind kinky up to a point. She knew instinctively, that there was no way Dayton Smith would be as physically mean to her as Tony Vargas had been, but there was always a certain risk with strait-laced, upright men. They could be unpredictable at times. More than one prostitute had had her brains bashed in by fine, upstanding men caught in the throes of unreasoning remorse after happily screwing their brains out.

Then, too, there was always the possibility t Dayton Smith wasn’t at all what he seemed. Maybe he was really a cutthroat in guise, one who would strangle her with his bare hands and disappear with the contents of beach bag.

“Why Bisbee?” he prodded a second time.

Angie fought her way out of her reverie. “I’ve friends there,” she said. “They’d probably me stay with them.”

“Call ‘em up,” Dayton Smith said. “Have ‘em meet us in Benson. That’s on my way and only fifty miles or so from Bisbee.”

“I can’t call,” she lied. “They don’t have a phone.”

“Oh,” he said.

His pie came, topped with a scoop of vanilla cream. He cleaned his plate enthusiastically while the gold band on his wedding ring winked at Angie in the warm fluorescent light. “You’re sure you’re not hungry?” he asked. I’d he glad to buy if you’re short of cash.”

“I’m not hungry,” she said. “Thanks.” When he finished eating and after the waitress brought his filled thermos, they headed out into the parking lot. There were dozens of other trucks scattered throughout the lot, and Angie realized at once that now was the time to act. If Dayton Smith went bad on her afterward, at least here she’d have a chance to call for help.

He took her hand and helped her up into the tall cab where she settled in the middle of the seat instead of staying on the far side. When Dayton climbed into the cab beside her, she didn’t move away. Instead, she reached out and put one suggestive hand on his upper thigh.

“Would you give me a ride to Bisbee, even if it’s out of your way?” she asked. “I could make it worth your while.”

He reached down and took her hand. Firmly, he removed it from his leg and placed it back in her lap. “Move on over,” he ordered. “You’re in the way of the gearshift.”

For the first time in all the years since she left home, Angie Kellogg felt herself blushing. His turn down had made her feel like the two-bit whore she was.

“You mean you don’t want me?” she asked incredulously. “I’m good. I’m real good.”

Dayton Smith slammed the truck into gear. “I’ll just bet you are,” he muttered.

“Let me out then,” she squawked at him.

“I’ll go back and find someone else, someone who does want me. I’m going to Bisbee, dam-m i t, and I’m going there tonight.”

“Settle down,” he barked. “I didn’t say I wouldn’t take you, did I? Hell, girl, you don’t have to fuck me just to get a ride. It’s not that far, only fifty miles or so out of my way.”

Angie Kellogg wasn’t used to openhanded kindness. She blinked in surprise. “You mean you’ll take me for nothing?”

“Not for nothing,” he countered. “I like your company, and you look like you could a little help. I’ve got a daughter of my own who’s about your age. So sit back and relax. Next stop is Bisbee, okay?”

Grateful and mystified both, Angie Kellogg settled back into the seat while the huge truck rumbled swiftly through the starlit desert night.

“What’s your name?” Dayton Smith asked eventually.

“Tammy Sue Ferris,” Angie said without sing a beat.

“Well, Tammy Sue,” Dayton Smith said, set-g back into the driver’s seat. “Tell me where you’re from.”

“ California.”

“How old are you?”

“Twenty-three.”

His face had an otherworldly glow in the greenish reflected light from the dashboard. As Angie answered his question, she felt almost as though he weren’t real, as though she was talking to some kind of ghost.

“And what do you do for a living?”

Somehow she no longer felt like lying. “Do you really want to know?”

“Yes. ”

“I’m a whore,” she said unexpectedly, surprising herself. “I have been for ten years.” If she thought her answer would shock him, it didn’t.

“And this Tony character was your pimp?”

“More or less,” she replied. “Tony doesn’t fit into any definite categories.”

“You’re away from him now,” Dayton Smith said forcefully. “Stay that way. Get a job, get married, have children. In other words, have a real life.”

“I don’t know how,” she said in a small voice. “I don’t know how to do anything else.”

“I wasn’t born driving this truck, honey,” he told her. “I took lessons, got myself a license. That’s what you’re gonna have to do, too. Go back to school and learn typing or shorthand or whatever it is they teach girls nowadays. Maybe even computers, but at twenty-three, you’ve got your whole life to live. Don’t screw it up.”

After that, they didn’t talk much more. At o’clock, Dayton Smith helped Tammy Sue Farris check into the last available room in Bisbee’s Copper Queen Hotel. When she stepped away from the desk, Dayton was standing halfway across the lobby with both hands stuffed in his hip pockets. He smiled at her.

“You’ll do fine,” he said. “I’m sure of it.” He reached out, took one of her hands in both his, and shook it warmly. “You be careful the people you meet and keep the jacket. You need it worse than I do. If you ever turn in Dallas give me a call. I’m in the book. The wife and I would like to have you over for dinner. She cooks a mean fried chicken.” With that, Dayton Smith turned and shambled out the door, leaving Angie Kellogg alone .Riding up to the third floor in the creaking elevator, she found herself wiping tears her eyes. Dayton Smith was probably the nicest man she had ever met, but she couldn’t uderstand why watching him walk out the door and down the steps had made her cry.