Albuquerque

by Ron Paul Salutsky

Kiera hikes a leg up onto the chair and cups her big bush. “What, you like little girls?” and the trucker says, “No, no, I like women, none of that kid stuff.” He’s sweating in the orange lamplight that darkens Kiera’s olive skin except where tan lines lash her little tits and hips. We drove out of Ohio one July night, away from our exes and our families, our misshapen futures, anything with our names on it. Without the extra weight and nowhere to live, we’re forced to fool around in public, often get caught, that’s how we meet the trucker, in a Super 8 parking lot north of I-40 running through Albuquerque. He asks us for directions, to the restaurant for coffee, to his room for showers and a couple lines of crank, to fuck in front of him for twenty bucks. Kiera takes the twenty in one hand and her sweetness in the other. Then we’re in bed and she’s on me, hair dripping, still gripping the twenty in a fist she pushes into my chest as the rhythm picks up. I watch the trucker watch us, circling the bed. He gets on his knees, lays his cheek down on the sheets. He could kill us here, drive off in our Civic. We never saw his truck. He probably drifted up here from a trailer park in Socorro where people from L.A. go when they need to disappear. He stands up. I wish he’d go ahead and take that buck knife out of his belt pouch, but he just keeps circling the bed. “May I touch?” he says, and there’s nothing more to outrun.