A smoky golden eye. Green flashes sidelong, blazing. Shocks of bright blonde flying forward, and curls of chocolate tumble from under straw. Like clouds under sun. A warning: things are not always just what they seem. Are they?
Ensconced in shiny black, nestled in leather, giving it the gas. A satisfied purring powers down the highway with a soft growl; it knows the way home.
It’s a real hot day. A/C cranked to 60 and fan full blast with every vent pointed straight at a body part; even the back seat ducts angle for an armpit. Feels good, like drinking ice water too fast, for the brainfreeze. Gooseflesh, at 98 deg. outside.
Still, she leaves the windows down and reaches up, opening the sunroof. Yeah, the best of both worlds, and she don’t care if it defeats the purpose.
Noise, wind, scorching sun. Waves of hot and cold air weave together.
The phone rings and she ignores it. A bill collector, or someone complaining about someone…what was there to say?
Life was like this feeling once.
Roaring rushing heat and wind through a fast moving truck; this moment, just this moment she’ll forget there was ever any other. Life is good, and maybe it was always this easy.
Doesn’t matter that she’s almost forgotten, doesn’t even want to remember, days on days of walking with her toes in the sand.
Hot, so hot you willingly run into ice cold water and throw yourself at its mercy. Again and again. Just to walk, lay, play in the scorching sun until driven to enter the sea once more. Crashing, tumbling waves spraying brine and separating hair into snakes, seahorses, braids, all painted and bleached with streaks of summer and salt. Warmed to the core, never really cold at all. It gets in your flesh, that warmth, just like cold does into your bones.
She almost doesn’t remember that it’s so much like being on a bike, one that rattles your pelvis and your soul while it takes you through the wind. A hot day, but wrapped in leather to the bite of that wind. Just you and that wind and that rattle of bones and soul.
She’s almost forgotten the kind of hot and cold this is like, almost another lifetime.
A smoky golden eye. Green flashes sidelong, blazing. Flying hair. A deeper growl, a faster powering on the highway, a chase. Instinctively, reflexively, forgotten yes but still ingrained, the survivor that she is takes the grip. And there is a warrior girl at the wheel with sticks and stones in her mouth and at her feet, and her hands are ready for anything.
A voice calling, yelling, and it is for her. Relief comes when it is no stranger who follows, no random menace. And then that moment comes where the brains eye knows it recognizes before it knows what or who it sees and it brings a smile, a welcome and a nod and an open hand. And before that hand closes to a fist it already knows it’s mistake and that it fell asleep at it’s post, but there’s nothing now to do but maybe stop smiling, or smile anyway. But between the gas and the brake she is kicking herself, one foot kicking the other foot, each one and both at fault because one didn’t use the gas more, the other didn’t stop and turn left. Damn. And after all, there is nothing more to do but just smile, and just drive. She remembers who she used to be, who she isn’t. She remembers the rattle, and the mark on her soul.
Along side, keeping pace, a large brown dog hangs as far as he can from the back of a Jeep, and stares intently at her. What does he know. And why is he staring? And his driver smiles ear to ear and shouts “I saw you.”
She smiles, doesn’t smile, looks forward.
“You’re still beautiful.”
The dog appears to lean further from the Jeep, peer closer at her, as though wanting to say something too. And just before she leaves off the gas to be left behind, the driver throws his voice into the wind;
“I always did love a beautiful girl in a truck.”
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