18. 1980s
She got out of a Trans Am.
The Pontiac sped past Jason’s Panhead into the truck stop diner’s parking lot, spinning and skidding, barely slowing down as she spilled out.
Her disheveled hair blazed, dark-red flames in the first rays of sunshine.
With a crazed gleam in her eyes, she screamed enough cusswords to make a sailor blush and slammed the passenger door.
Jason watched the muscle car speed back out in a spray of tiny rocks and heavy metal music as the woman flipped the bird after it in the dusty cloud.
Jason was smiling. He couldn’t help it. It was the funniest show he’d ever seen at five in the morning, and she was beautiful, even in her fury. Especially in her fury.
He followed her into the Springfield Sip and sat in his usual booth near the waitresses’ station with a clear view behind the counter and through the pass-through window to the kitchen. Maisie, a squat brunette with eyes only for her steady boyfriend, brought over a pot of coffee.
Jason covered his ceramic mug with his palm.
“Who’s the redhead?” he asked.
“You never cease to amaze, Jay,” Maisie said.
“She new?”
“Too new to know your tricks. Are you going to let me pour this coffee or not?”
He shrugged with a smirk and she rolled her eyes, heading back to the kitchen. He heard arguing before the redhead from the Trans Am burst through the swinging doors to the dining room, tying on her apron. She grabbed the coffeepot Maisie had set on the burner and brought it to his table.
Jason sat back and let her fill his cup.
“You want to hear the specials?” she asked without looking at him.
“No, thanks, I already know what I want.”
She whipped the notepad from her apron and snapped it open. “Okay, what’ll it be?”
“Slow down…Carrie.” He eyed her name tag. The Carrie he knew was a bottle-blond and at least five inches taller than the Carrie standing in front of him. “I’m just waking up.”
She glanced down at the name tag, then at Jason. “Thought you said you knew what you wanted?”
“You look tired. Why don’t you take a load off and join me for a cup?”
You look tired? Idiot.
“You know you’re beautiful,” he said quickly. “But those circles under your eyes? It looks like you’ve been up all night.”
She set one hand on his table and stuck out her hip. “You saw what happened out there, did you?”
He sat up a little straighter. “Uh-huh.”
“Then you already know I’m having a bad morning.”
“I do.”
“You also know I’m not available.”
“Now, that is open for interpretation.”
“It’s really not. What can I get for you, besides a new waitress?”
He paused. “I’ll have eggs over easy, rye toast, and four strips of bacon, extra crispy.”
“Wonderful,” she said, snapping the notepad shut without writing down his order.
He reached for her wrist. “I mean extra crispy. I don’t want any soggy, floppy shit.”
“You got it.”
Carrie yanked her wrist out of his callused grip and offered a curt wave.
She smelled good walking away. It was a soft smell he couldn’t place, not the usual heavy-handed perfume.
Up close, her hair was more auburn than red.
And the rest of her? Arresting. If she looked that good after a blowout fight with the dipshit in the Trans Am, she’d be a knockout on the back of his bike or after a couple hours in bed.
He slugged down his coffee fast enough to singe his throat, knowing she’d have to come back and fill it, but Carrie didn’t show her face again until she had his breakfast in one hand and the coffeepot in the other.
He decided to try a new tactic, since the usual light flirting wasn’t going to crack this woman, who was probably a six or even a five on the difficulty scale.
Normally he wouldn’t bother putting in that kind of work before breakfast, but everything about this five, from her fight with the Trans Am to her actual name was a mystery he felt like solving.
She set his food down and refilled his cup. “Can I get you anything else?”
He shook his head, concentrating on unwrapping the napkin from around a set of silverware. Ignoring her was a risk. When she didn’t walk away, he knew it paid off.
“You’re not from around here.”
He looked up from cutting his eggs. “Sorry?”
“What are you, a drifter?” she asked. He liked the way she brushed the hair out of her eyes to get a better look at him.
“Why do you say that?”
“A guy like you on a bike.”
“A guy like me?” He chuckled. “What do you know about guys like me?”
“You’re in here at sunrise, probably from the motel across the road. No wedding ring. Not even the dent of one.” She shrugged, frowning. “It’s not hard to figure out.”
Jason flipped over the second, unused coffee mug and set it in front of her. “Have a seat.”
“I should get back.”
Jason peered at the empty booths and the two truckers at the counter finishing their steak and eggs, chatting with a dimpled Maisie.
“They can spare you for a coffee,” he said. “You’re right, I am drifter, and I’d rather not eat alone today.”
Glancing at the kitchen, she sat across from him and poured herself a coffee with two sugars and two creams. The five was becoming a six, maybe even a seven. Putty in his hands.
“Where are you coming from?” she asked.
“Tennessee.”
“Where are you headed?”
“Don’t know yet. Maybe here.”
“You’d be wasting your time.”
He grinned. “Come on, Carrie. A guy’s gotta try.”
She shifted in the booth and looked out the window at the parking lot. “It’s Theresa. I borrowed the name tag.”
“Thought so.”
“Why?”
“You don’t look like a Carrie. I’m Jason, by the way.”
“Is Jason a family name?”
“Wouldn’t know. Don’t have any family.”
“None?”
“Just my mama.”
“Are you going to eat your eggs?”
“In a minute. You going to tell me what’s so special about the prick in the Pontiac that you’re not available?”
“No,” she said.
“You’ve got me figured out after five minutes. Can I take a crack at you?”
She sipped her coffee. “Sure, knock yourself out.”
“You’re a local, and after you exhausted all the local options—metalheads, gearheads, gas-pump jockeys—you expanded your radius to guys from Dayton or Columbus.
The Trans Am’s some loser from Beavercreek who never goes five minutes from the center of town, and he thinks he hit the jackpot the first time you smile at him when you’re slumming it at his favorite dive.
He might be fun for a night or a ride in his car, and he’s a good kisser, or maybe he knows how to use his tongue, so one night becomes two, and before you know it a couple weeks have gone by and you’re still sleeping in his bed. ”
Theresa sat back and smoothed the front of her pink-striped uniform.
“Now it’s been a few months,” Jason went on.
“And he’s not looking at you like he’s won the jackpot anymore.
In fact, he’s not looking at you at all.
He spends all his time under the hood of his car—too much to notice you’re not happy.
You think you should leave, but you’re afraid he won’t even notice you’re gone until he hollers for a Bud and you’re not there to bring him one. ”
The tears in her eyes suggested he might’ve gone too far, but he couldn’t skip the big finish.
Jason picked up his fork and said, “By then it’s too late.
You’ve already fallen head over heels for some drifter who charmed you over a cup of coffee and a plate of eggs early one morning when you were tired and not wearing any makeup and still so goddamn beautiful it hurt the poor drifter’s eyes to look. Like staring at the sun or…”
She set her cup down and stood. He managed to take ahold of her hand before she walked away.
“Am I close?”
She didn’t want him to see her cry, and he knew it, so he let her go. Another risk. She’d either come back and melt into his arms after she dabbed her eyes or send another waitress with his check. Typical for sixes and fives…he never knew if his best work would send them up or down the scale.
He finished his food with one eye on the swinging doors to the kitchen.
He should’ve been watching the parking lot.
Jason knew it was Nikki coming in for her shift by the smell of cigarettes and hair spray trailing her on all sides.
She popped a bubble with her gum as she passed his table and winked.
Nikki was Ann’s best friend, and he’d been with Ann until she headed home at about two this morning to sleep before her afternoon shift. He didn’t want Nikki back there with Theresa.
It took less than a minute for Theresa to blow out the kitchen doors, slap his bill on the table, and say, “Tell Ann I say hi.”