NIGHT CRUISING Page 5

  "Cool beans." He laughed. "Yeah."

  "You ever drive trucks?"

  He smiled. "No, not me. I do my cruising in four wheelers."

  "That's why you're called Cruise, right?"

  "Sure. I told you."

  "Like they called you Cruise when you were a kid, huh?"' She knew teasing him might be a mistake, but she couldn't stop her mouth from running. Nervous energy twanged through her until she was drops of water dancing on hot coals.

  "When I was a kid," he said slowly, "I had an awful name."

  "What was it?"

  "Herod."

  "Hmmm." She sucked her thumb to keep from busting out with a derisive laugh.

  "Herod. The king who ordered the murder of all male babies in Jerusalem. He was trying to do away with Christ, remember?"

  She didn't, but she believed him. "Why did your mom name you that then? You Jewish or something?"

  "No. She just had a bad sense of humor, I guess. Or she didn't know her Bible. Probably the latter. She gave us all formal-sounding names. Orson. Hortense. Evelander. We call her Laurie, but my mother didn't approve. Collan, Dorian. It goes on. I had a big family."

  "Well, I like Cruise better. Herod doesn't fit you, you know?"

  "I didn't think so either."

  Molly fell silent, her mind finally slowing a bit, enough for her to seize control of it. The fatigue had made its sluggish way though her body, up her neck, and was now beginning to circle the wagons in her skull. She blinked sleepily.

  "I knew a guy once," Cruise began slowly.

  Molly stretched in her seat. She wondered if it had a lever that let the seat back the way his seat reclined.

  "This guy," Cruise continued, "went to Hollywood to write scripts for the movies."

  Molly's ears perked up. "Did he? Write for the movies?"

  She loved movies and movie stars. Debra Winger. Rutger Hauer. Richard Gere. Cory Haime. Now there was a guy you could sink your teeth into. When he acted he always had his mouth open, even when he was a kid in the movies. Like he was a fly-catcher, unofficially, of course.

  "He wanted to real bad," Cruise said. "He'd gone to one of those fancy colleges out east and he'd studied and he wanted more than anything to write screenplays. I met him in Hollywood. He was sitting in an all-night cafe drinking coffee. We started talking."

  "Yeah? I bet they do that a lot--sit in cafes-- those writers."

  "This one did. See, he had a problem."

  "He couldn't sell any of his scripts."

  "That's right. He was up against the best. And this guy had money. He came from a family with money so it wasn't like be had to make it in Hollywood. But in another way he did. He had stopped taking money from his mother. But she came over to his little apartment all the time, bitching him out, asking him what he thought he was doing wasting himself. He had graduated from Princeton or Harvard or some shit like that. She wanted him to do something else. Be useful, make a real living, have an office and a desk. On top of her nagging, she was always sending over her maid to clean his place. Wouldn't even ask him if he wanted that. She just did it."

  "What an asshole. She was on his case bad, huh?"

  "Every chance she got. And this guy, he was losing it. He was living like a pig and his mind was going. Failure does that to some people. Not getting the dream they think they deserve."

  Molly said thoughtfully, "I can feature that."

  "So this guy starts breaking out. He imagines things."

  "Like what? Winning an academy award?"

  "Nothing that wholesome. He started thinking he had worms and rats in his stomach. He thought they were always coming out. He thought he vomited them."

  "Oh, ga-ross. You mean he told you this? Over coffee?"

  "Yeah, we talked all night. He said he was sure people were going to know soon. About the things in his stomach. He said they moved around, beneath his shirt, and someone was going to see it. Or he'd vomit and they'd know. His mother came over so much, she was going to discover it. He thought maybe someone had given him something, some kind of new biological germ or something."

  "Weirded out."

  "That's what I figured."

  "So what happened to him?"

  "About a month later I came back through Hollywood . I dropped by his apartment to see him. When he let me in it smelled in there. Rancid, nasty. Like vomit. He was carrying around a knife."

  "What for?"

  "For protection, I guess. By then he was suspicious of everybody. I think he was getting ready to kill the rats and worms he thought were coming out of his mouth. I tried to talk him down, but. . ."

  "Why didn't his mom do something?"

  "She was a bitch. She didn't know he was a guy dying like that. She thought he was just being stubborn or something. She thought she could nag him out of it. Turn him into a contributing member of society. Make him into a top executive."

  "Could you help him?"

  "You don't help someone who's carrying around a butcher knife. You don't even try."

  "That's too bad." Molly felt terrible. Rats in the stomach. God.

  "The next time I came through Hollywood, his apartment was empty. He was gone. He had given me his mother's phone number. I called her and she said he'd slit his throat. Over the sink. She didn't know why and she was bawling so hard I hung up. But I know why he did it."

  "Over the sink?"

  "Yeah. When I was there before he told me he always threw up in the kitchen sink so he could flush those things down the disposal. It was the only way he knew to get rid of them. Grind 'em up."

  "Christ."

  Cruise was silent. Molly swallowed hard, the idea of a slit throat squeezing her neck muscles tight.

  "I've met some strange folk," Cruise said finally.

  "I bet. Rats and worms. Ugh."

  "If he'd just sold one script," Cruise said.

  "He might not have gone crazy," Molly supplied.

  "Maybe," Cruise agreed. "Maybe not."

  Molly was no longer sleepy. In fact she might not sleep for a year. She stared wide-eyed out the windshield imagining the desperation it took to make someone commit suicide over the top of a disposal.

  #

  He saw Molly nodding now. She was tired, poor baby. Her waking and sleeping cycles did not yet fit his own. She was still a day person. If he woke her every couple of hours and kept her awake, he'd gradually change the cycles until she too would sleep during the day. He'd let her snooze just a little. Wake her again later.

  He concentrated on the bright lights he approached. The city of Houston. Interstate l0 took him through the heart of the city. He could see it off to his right on the loop, the tall skyline of multiple dark rectangles against the night sky. Two of the buildings were identically wedge-shaped, butted close against each other. Dallas, he knew, was a more spectacular scene at night with buildings outlined in multicolored neon, but Houston wasn't bad. One building had a square of lime green around its roof, a few had white outlines. Streetlights twinkled in straight lines down the canyons. Cars streamed past on the freeway, all of them going ten or twenty miles faster than the speed limit. It was at lease seventy miles across the city from one side to the other. It spread from the NASA complex south of the city all the way to Conroe, Texas, a suburb town to the north.

  Texas was a frightening place. Cruise didn't kill in Texas. The cops were hardasses. Smart. Tough. They were alert.

  What he did not need was a Texas lawman sticking one of those nickel-plated big goddamn .357 Magnums in his face. Some of the highway patrolmen would blow you away as easy as look at you. Uh uh. Driving across Texas always gave him the creeps. He kept to the speed limit, stayed in his lane, and drove on auto pilot until he hit the New

  Mexico line.

  It was a long haul from Houston to the western border. Maybe he'd go down into Juarez, Mexico, outside of El Paso for a spot of relief. He sneaked a glance at his passenger. She was snoring lightly, little mouth open. He thought about her breath<
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  smelling of milk, like a baby, although he knew it wouldn't, if anything it would smell like Coca Cola. He thought about her angular, pubescent body. Tiny breasts budding on her chest. Hips so small he could hold them in the palms of his big hands like slabs of rich steak.

  Oh, boy, did he need relief. He was thinking of her in terms of food, for chrissakes.

  He wondered if she'd dream of the scriptwriter with rats and worms in his stomach. The one with the rich mama and the failed dreams. Even now, somewhere in Hollywood

  there was another guy just like that. They were out there, all those suicides and hucksters and nagging mothers. All those nightmares and paranoiacs. Cruise knew them and their stories. He lived one of the stories himself, the most bizarre of all. He was able to live out the fantasy, live out his dreams others called warped and depraved only because they didn't understand, because they weren't members of the outlaw elite.

  Houston's lights melted into the background as he moved across the huge state of Texas going west. He raced the sun threatening to rise at his back. Every night he raced against the sun. Already his eyes came down into slits against the peril of dawn.

  He'd wake Molly and tell her another story. That always helped to keep the night with him, the sunrise at bay.

  "Molly," he called. "C,mon, wake up, baby."

  "Huh...?What?"

  "We'll stop pretty soon and you can sleep then. Keep

  me company, okay?"

  He heard her clear her throat, saw her straighten from the slump of sleep, trying to come awake and please him.

  "Almost morning?"

  He squinted into the darkness. "Soon."

  "I'm really beat."

  "Talk to me a little bit. I got a long stretch here to drive across Texas. Let me tell you about this guy I knew once...

  Soon he had a tale spinning and Molly wide awake, riveted to her seat where she was turned toward him. What a kid. What a great kid. He just couldn't have found a better traveling partner if he'd tried for a month. Too bad that he'd have to kill her in the end. He was as fond of her as he had been of any of his former witnesses.

  The edge of the sun slipped up behind him as he talked. The landscape changed from gray to pink to molten orange. The land looked wild and desolate painted in vivid Van

  Gogh colors. They were in the dry plains where nothing but mesquite trees and cacti dared to try to make a go of it. It was too open, the sky too big, a maw opening to swallow him. He hated fucking Texas.

  Cruise saw an exit for a truck stop and slowed to take the ramp. He was somewhere between San Antonio and El Paso. He had to drive this goddamn state in chunks. No

  other way to get across the bastard.

  "You can hang out in the store or the restaurant while I sleep," he said, hooking a thumb at the one-story building. "Just don't talk much to the truckers. They'll think you're..."

  "Hooking. I know."

  "Sure. You'll be okay."

  As he parked he heard her yawn. "Sleepy?" he asked.

  "Yeah, I think I'll snooze out if you don't mind. I'm still beat."

  "Pull the lever beside your seat and the back will recline."

  Cruise made his own seat into a half bed, covered his eyes with the towel from the floorboard and sighed with satisfaction.

  Molly was coming around nicely. What a great little kid.

  Car and truck lights washed over the blue Chrysler as vehicles from the interstate pulled into the truckstop for a rest or food or fuel. From the back lot the rhythmic thump

  and drone of the idling truck engines soothed Cruise's ears. It sounded to him like one giant heartbeat. The sound raised and lowered with the pulse in his wrists and in his temples. Through the cracked window the scent of smoke came to his nostrils. In the smoke he could distinguish the aroma of fried foods, diesel exhaust, and a faint hint of tar and rubber. Road smells. The scent of freedom.

  It didn't surprise him to hear, after a bit, Molly's light snore. That soothed him too. He wanted her happy to be with him, feeling easy, unafraid. They had been together two nights. He was closer to enjoying her confidence. He hadn't made a move toward her,nothing threatening. Had said nothing to alarm her. Had made her identify with his way of life, at least a little. At least a part of his life. If she slept until nearly noon, she'd be awake more come night again. She'd be better company to him. She'd get closer to revealing her real self.

  Then he'd take her to Mexico. He had made up his mind. Texas always made him want to run away run completely out of the country. It'd just be a foray, a stopover. They wouldn't have to stay long, thought he could really stay as long as they wanted once he talked Molly into it.

  He knew a town across the border just east of glitzy, westernized Juarez, one owned entirely by Mexican drug lords. They knew him there from his frequent visits. There he was treated kingly. As long as he performed a few chores for the boss. The money from it wasn't bad, either.

  Shit. Always that. He had forgotten his money was running out. He would have to do something to get more, preferably something for Ramirez. With or without Molly knowing about it, though he preferred that she witness whatever he must do to get the cash.

  He yawned big and had to re-drape the towel over his face.

  No use worrying about it. Never had before. If he wanted a Mexican whore, and if he wanted to show Molly the extent of his traveling experience, then he would simply do what he must do, what came naturally.

  Besides, it was time. It had been days, maybe a week, maybe more, since he did the girl in Charlotte, North Carolina. His fingers itched to touch the knife hidden under his hair. Touch and fondle it, renew himself with its power.

  He heard a truck's air horn blast and twitched. It came from the back lot, though, nothing he must get up and see about. Beyond his closed eyelids and the folded towel he could still see the bright wash of car lights swing past the car window though it was almost daylight.

  The world was alive, teeming with night people, many of them winding down now as the dawn slipped catlike over the land. He must be asleep by then. Before the sunrise.

  Before the world was brimming fire and the land revealed its seams and cracks, its underlying ugliness and squalor.

  He replayed the life and death of the doomed Hollywood scriptwriter, and drifted softly into a comforting dream.

  #

  Mark Killany unlocked the door to room 202 at the Holiday Inn just west of Beaumont, Texas. At his back and below him stretched the lobby with the waterfall in its center. Rising high above him on three sides were balconies dripping long green vines. The air was misty and green. A few people in the lobby sat in club chairs watching a big-screen television. It looked like a situation comedy was playing. Two patrons were belly-up to the bar, neither of them giving attention to the other.

  Mark ignored the activity behind him and slipped quickly into his room. He dropped his suitcase near the bed and went into the bath, turned on the shower full force, waited for the temperature to get to the proper degree while he undressed.

  It was turning into a long, lonesome trip. He wasn't used to the melancholy mood that was upon him. It cramped his style, made him lapse into periods of self-pity. All his life he'd been in control of his own destiny. He knew what he wanted out of the military and worked hard to get it: authority, security, respect. He had met Molly's mother after he made lieutenant and knew he wanted her in his life. She never complained about compound housing, official politics, or his dedication to his job. She gave him what he needed. Unconditional love, loyalty, and a beautiful, intelligent daughter. She had given her life, he realized in regret, to bring a child into the world.

  And he had always thought Molly intelligent, that is, until she'd pulled this stunt of running away from home. Now his destiny was uncertain, his life in a chaos not of his making, and evidently beyond his control. Molly had usurped his authority, left him to worry himself sick over her. While he drove sometimes he felt the anger coming like a runaway train. Molly was
a spoiled, selfish creature unfit to be called his daughter. She'd learned nothing from his examples, rejected those values and beliefs he felt she needed most.

  Other times sadness invaded him, that quality of melancholy that filled him like pie in a pastry shell, and he moaned aloud, wishing to be anywhere, in any situation except this one. Dealing with a teenager was turning out to be like defusing a bomb. It took iron will, steady hands, unswerving patience, and skill. All those characteristics he lacked except for the will. And that had been too muscular, not limber enough for the job at hand.

  He stepped into the shower's spray and let it cascade over his bowed head. He closed his eyes and breathed through his mouth.

  He was neither angry nor sad right now. Just beaten. No telling how far ahead she was. She might have changed cars, hitched with another driver. She might have decided not to go to the West Coast, and at this moment was on her way back east or north or even to the Midwest. The United States was a big country, all spread out., thousands of places to hide or get lost in. She might have stopped off in one of the towns along the route he traveled, and was now melting into New Orleans or Lake Charles, vanishing like a wisp of fog.

  It was sheer misery that drove him to continue. He needed rest. A few hours in a bed. But then he'd be on his way again, heading west, asking his questions, showing Molly's picture. He knew no other way to live with himself. Even if he hired private investigators, they might take months and come up with nothing. The agencies looking for runaways were swamped with calls from frantic parents looking for kids. He knew there was little hope in that direction.

  Hell, look at the pictures of missing kids on the sides of milk cartons. It was an epidemic; no one knew what to do. He must go forward and hope Molly headed for California the way she'd told her Florida friends. If she'd lied, if she'd changed her mind, he was shit out of luck. It might be years before he found her. Dammit.

  He washed, shampooed his short, crew-cut hair, rinsed, and stepped from the shower stall. After drying off, shaving, brushing his teeth, donning the bottoms of a pair of plain white pajamas, he threw back the covers on one of the two double beds and flopped onto his back. He had a wake-up call for five-thirty. He should do a few sit-ups--it was harder to stay in shape since his retirement--but sleep pulled him into its silky depths.