ready-made

No one’s expecting him any time soon. He’s alert enough to drive, but the rain and the road and the dark like oil have got him in a daze — and for miles and miles there’s nothing and nobody and nothing but dark, no hot needle burrowing into his brain. It’s peaceful. He’s not so sick that he can’t be alone with himself. And then this man. Thinking about it the way he’d tell it: then there’s this guy, this guy’s standing around trying to thumb a ride in the rain, and from there it’s just a whim. Just a moment’s choice to slow down instead of speeding up, and let a stranger in. Hasn’t anybody ever told this guy it’s dangerous to hitch a ride? Anything could happen to you out there. It’s worth it just to have a little company. The two of them have made it this far.

“Didn’t your mother ever tell you not to do this? Thumb a ride?”

It must sound funny, coming from Jim. Jim, who nobody’s ever been scared of. The guy’s just looking at him like he’s waiting for some cue, stoned or just stupid, and his eyes are so blue — electric in the low light, with big pupils like a slow summer reptile’s. Blue eyes in a rough face, thin and worn, and his jacket collar is turned up. No answer.

This is it. It’s too good, almost. It’s too much of what he’s wanted since before he can remember. Jim can’t keep from looking at him — his eyes skipping sideways with the road peeling out in front of them. No one is expecting him any time soon. No one is waiting for this man, wherever this man is trying to go. The opportunity is too good. It’s choking him. He wanted this some way, but not right now, not in somebody else’s borrowed car, not —

Isn’t this what everybody wants? Somebody to spend time with.

No one will see them together, no one will remember their faces or the number on the license plate of the car Jim is driving. No one will miss this man, alone on the road in the early morning. He’s bigger than Jim, maybe older, and there’s something familiar in the shadowy lines of his face in between lightning-flashes — he’s not even bad looking. He smells like Texas rains.

This is it. This is it. He can’t put it off any longer. Foot off the gas, easy on the brake.

Jim is stronger than he looks. He could wrap his hands around this guy’s throat and squeeze, but it would be hard, harder than it looks in the movies — Jim’s felt his own throat, he’s gripped his own windpipe and he knows the different ways to put a guy under, but knowing isn’t doing. He’s wearing a belt; he could use that too. Just slip the leather back through the buckle and pull. Feel him buck and jerk underneath, with Jim’s knees planted on his chest. Watch the blood surge into his face and fade out of it.

There is a living, breathing man in the passenger seat of Jim’s car, dripping rainwater, smiling vaguely as he pulls back into the seat. All he wants to do is touch him.