Tiffany Scandal - Jigsaw Youth

A youngish man in a baseball cap approached the booth, and sat down beside me. I scooted closer to the wall, not liking being boxed in, and not wanting to feel his body against mine. He smelled like axle grease. Ira and I exchanged what the fuck stares.

“You girls ain’t staying long, are ya?” Toothpick dangling from his mouth.

“What’s it matter,” Ira said.

“You ain’t normal folk is all.” His eyes drifting between our tits. “People around here get nervous real easy. You get me?”

I had a fork in my hand, gripped tight, preparing to use if I had to.

“So can we help you?” I asked.

He set his arm up on the booth, twisting the toothpick around with his tongue.

“Just trying to be helpful is all.”

“We don’t need any help, thanks.”

“I don’t know. It’s not so safe out here for your kind.” He muttered “Hell with it” and got up and left.

“Our kind?” Ira got out of the booth. “What the fuck’s that mean?”

A heavier set man, the size of a mountain, oozed off his stool and stomped with great difficulty toward us. His eyes locked on us.

Ira saw this.

“How much you wanna bet that guy is also going to ask us if we’re lost?” I asked her.

We grabbed our things and tossed a few dollars on the table, trying to walk as casually as possible to the doors of the restaurant.

Ira pushed through the door first. As we walked out, a loud voice bellowed from behind us. “Hey!”

We looked back and the mountain of a man was standing right there, glaring at us through the glass doors.

“What the fuck is his problem?”

We turned around and almost crash into another mountain-sized man. Just above his grizzly beard, his beady eyes squinted at us. They were cold and uninviting.

“You girls lost?”

We both stopped in our tracks and smiled.

“Nope. Not at all. Just passing through.”

We shimmied past him and pick up our pace toward the car. Patrons of the truck stop flocking at the entrance, staring at us.

Ira fumbled with the keys and dropped them on the ground. I looked around. I saw the Original Douchebag walking toward us again. His hands in fists at his side.

“Fuck!” Ira frustrated that her hands were shaking too much to grab the keys.

My heart pumped fiercely in my chest. I scooped up the keys and ran to unlock the passenger door for Ira.

Passenger door open, I raced around the car to get to the driver’s seat and checked my hip against the corner of the car. The force from the impact sent me spinning toward the ground as a sharp, hot pain shot through my hip. I got back up, and quickly limped to the door.

Doors slammed shut, I turned the key in the ignition and felt incredibly grateful that the car started on the first try. I turned and saw Original Douchebag just outside the car. I took the car out of park and floored the gas pedal. Something hit the back of the car. We didn’t look back to see what. I imagined it was the guy’s fist. Better him hitting the metal than smashing one of the windows.

I looked in the rearview mirror and felt comfort seeing the lights fade in the distance.

“That was like a scene out of a horror movie.”

“Totally.”

And then the image of someone sitting in the backseat of the car popped into my head.

We both got really quiet. And as if Ira and I had had the same exact thought, she quickly turned her head to check. Nothing.

She let out a sigh of relief. “Thank fuck.”`

We both start laughing, but I didn’t admit that my heart was racing at the possibility of someone being in the backseat. I dried my clammy hands on my jeans one at a time.

It wasn’t long before we approached Golden Arches. “Still want that salad?”

Ira was typing a manifesto into her phone. “Hmm. No.”

“How about some of those fries that never decompose.”

“You know it.”

“They might have orange juice, too.”

“Okay, okay.”

I took the off-ramp.

We’d met Red during a photo shoot. In Portland, it seemed to be tradition to invite the local ladies to hang out whenever Suicide Girls flew in from another city. As a group, we’d help out with makeup, hair, wardrobe, and make jokes while we hung around in our underwear. Great for bonding and building honest friendships with like-minded women.

I knew I liked Red instantly when she asked the photographer to hold on a second while she ripped ass. Without shame or apology. “Now I’m comfortable around you.”

We kept in contact. Nothing regular, but enough to still regard each other as friends. While on our drive, Ira and I remembered that she lived in Joplin. We hit her up, found out she was around, and went to see her. Red had offered us a space to crash, shower, and unwind from car life.

I smelled coffee. I stirred and felt every part of my body aching. I sat up on the blue velvet couch I’d passed out on, and looked around a living room that looked a lot like the bedroom I had when I was in high school. Posters, glitter skulls, taxidermy, plants with zombie finger puppets hiding in them. I felt at home.

“. .so I told him fuck yeah I know how to drive this. Got in the car and gave him the finger and sped off.”

Ira put her head down on the kitchen table and laughed.

I leaned on the doorframe and admired the view. A gorgeous, freckled red head swearing and talking about fast cars, and my best friend seeming incredibly happy. Polaroids of women in various states of undress worked as the centerpiece of the table where she sat.

Red looked at me. “Sleeping beauty finally decided to join us. Would you like some coffee, love?”

Red poured a cup before I could answer. Her pale legs went on for days under a faded White Zombie shirt. It was from an early ‘90s tour with Anthrax. I’d had the same shirt, once. She handed me the cup and winked.

“So what’d you dream about?”

“Wait that fast car conversation was about a dream?”

“Duh. I’d have the biggest lady boner if I had a vintage Challenger. But, no, I try to keep it real with a ‘92 Toyota Tercel . In sea foam green mothafucka!” Red made the raise-the-roof gesture, which I hadn’t seen anyone do in years. White and black polka dot underwear showing under her shirt.

I sipped the coffee. It was hot and gritty. Perfect.

“I dreamed I really had to pee. But the only toilet I could find was a public sidewalk with heavy foot traffic.”

Red laughed and hacked, coughing. Coffee down the wrong pipe.

“So I sit down on the toilet, pants and underwear around my ankles, and all I can do is fart. ”

“Are we talking little farts, or the kind that sound like a horn section?”

“The latter.”

“I fucking love you guys.”

Sitting around the kitchen table, a charming 1950s teal tabletop with silver border and legs, Red traced her fingertips in circles across the surface.

“I found it at a garage sale for five bucks. People here have no clue what cool is.”

“So what brought you to Buttfuck Nowhere? You’re from New York, right?”

“Came out here to be with a dude.” So it was. Red looked around the apartment. “As you can tell, it worked out sooooo well.

“I met him when I was living in LA. I was sitting at a diner after the worst date I’d ever been on. I wanted to treat myself right, by getting the biggest burger on the menu. I’m stuffing my mouth, sauce and onions dripping onto the table from my mouth, I’m sure. When I’m finished, I ask the waiter for the check, and he tells me it’s been taken care of. He motions at a guy sitting across the diner, also alone. The guy holds up a milkshake in salute and turns back to his meal. I walk over and thank him. He says the best thank you would be if I went out on a date with him. I thought he was cute enough, maybe not my type, but he seemed nice, and I really needed nice in my life. Anyway, we dated for a while. He kept saying he hated my job. That he wanted nothing more than to take me some place far away where we could start a life together. He wanted to take care of me.”