Truck Stop

She stared at his truck but it was impossible to see inside. The engine was running, she had no doubt of that, but the lights were all off except for some amber and white markers on the cab and some strangely intense blue lights that appeared to be on the mirrors. The various lights confused her. Did they mean something? That he was inside the truck, away from the truck, eating, sleeping? She didn't know. The big front windshield was made almost opaque by the truck's inner darkness. It was like a black mirror reflecting the leaves of the big poplar trees at the edge of the lot as they were tossed in the warm and fitful breeze. She sat and watched his truck for a long time, but there was no movement, and at last she pulled her eyes away and let out a long breath.

She needed to focus and come back to reality and forget about him. She needed to go in and use the washroom, get some coffee, and then find someone who could help her make sense of these directions. She stuffed the map and the directions into her bag, opened the door and stepped out onto the tarmac

She knew her ivory blouse must be visible to anyone in the truck even at this distance, so she kept one eye on it as she took just to inhale the warm air and stretch. She held the cuffs of the blouse against her palms as she stretched, throwing her shoulders back and pushing her arms out behind her. It was a trick Joanne had taught her years ago. Holding the sleeves drew the fabric tight against her breasts as she stretched, just in case anyone was watching. But nothing moved as far as she could tell.

She was about to lock the car and walk over to the coffee shop when she paused and reconsidered. The breeze was blowing her skirt and even wafting inside her blouse, The night was romantic, and she felt feminine and free. She opened the car door and reached into the passenger well to retrieve the hot little shoes she'd just bought for Joanne's party, took them out of their tissue-lined box and kicked off her sandals. She slipped the heels onto her feet and stood up.

There. She now stood about two and half inches taller than before, and felt a lot more impressive and confident. She knew exactly what the shoes did for her legs, and Susan had great legs. She picked up the sandals and threw them into the car, then locked the door and headed briskly across the lot for the coffee shop.

She walked briskly but leisurely too. The breeze felt good and so did using her legs and the way her heels made her hips sway against her skirt. She stood up straight but not too straight. She knew how to use the walk, and if he was in the truck, she gave him a good long look.

The coffee shop was brightly lit and icy cold, the air conditioner jacked all the way up. There were some families eating weary dinners and a booth full of youngish-looking women in garish makeup and teased hair laughing and talking too loudly in the far corner, but mostly it was truckers as far as she could tell, in baseball caps and quilted vests, sweatshirts and chained wallets. She stood by the door holding her bag and scanned the place, casually searching for him as she looked for the ladies' room, but she didn't see him, and her disappointment annoyed her even as she brushed it aside. The sign for the restrooms was clear, posted on the back wall, and pointed toward a corridor way back beyond the booth full of girls.

Susan was used to the stares of men and their various permutations and she knew how to handle them, but there was something about the way these truckers stared at her that was a little disconcerting, as if they were really sizing her up. Some of them put down their coffee cups or stopped eating to check her out, a few even leaning out of their booths to get a better look at her legs as she walked by. She felt like she was being openly appraised, and it was a bit unsettling. Even the girls in the booth stopped their chatter and stared at her, and the sisterly smile she gave them was met with palpable coolness.

It was just a creepy place, she decided. Something Twilight Zone-ish about it. The corridor leading to the restrooms was grimy and turned left and then right. Several lights were out and some of the floor tiles were loose, so she was thankful to find the ladies' room fairly clean and well-maintained. She used the toilet then came out and washed her hands, then washed again and splashed cool water in her face, holding her hands there as the water dripped through her fingers. It felt good and seemed to revive her. Suddenly she was tired of this: tired of driving and tired of this silly game she was playing with the trucker. She wanted to get to Joanne's and the hell with all this.

She dried her face and then brushed out her hair, and after freshening her makeup she decided she felt much better. She decided she'd get her coffee to go at the counter, and ask the waitress there for help with the directions. She had no desire to sit in this place and drink coffee and be stared at, the only solo woman. All she had to do now was run the gauntlet and get to the counter, get her coffee and information, and she'd be at the hotel in less than an hour.

She straightened her skirt and fluffed the bow at the throat of her blouse, feeling much better, more like her old self, but when she took her bag and stepped out into the corridor, she found three truckers standing there blocking her way back into the restaurant, and blocking it deliberately. Two of them leaned on the wall and the third stood in the middle of the corridor. They looked like they'd been waiting for her and Susan felt a sick flicker of panic in her stomach.

The man in front wore a hoody sweatshirt and a Texas rangers cap. He touched his fingers to the bill and said, "Evening, honey. You must be new here, huh? I don't believe I've seen you 'round before."

The man behind him was big, professional-wrestler sized, and he pushed the first man away. "You're out of order, Mel! Get out of the way!" He looked apologetically at Susan. "Missy, you don't want anything to do with this buttwipe! I was the one saw you first, soon's you walked in that door, and fair is fair."

Mel turned. "Mind your own manners, Hamilton! This ain't finders-keepers and that's not how it works. And didn't I hear you say you were already three hours overdue and you had no time for dicking around?"

The third man ignored this exchange and peered around Hamilton's bulk, leering at her. He smiled and closed his eyes, then extended an obscenely long tongue and wagged it at her in a way Susan realized was intended to be sexual.

She stood speechless, horrified and afraid. Hamilton and the first guy were arguing, and Susan started backing up, feeling along the wall behind her for the door to the ladies' room, hoping they wouldn't follow her in, when suddenly she felt a hand on her upper arm. She turned, and saw the hand in the fingerless glove wrapped around her upper arm. She turned and saw her trucker, sunglasses off now, his expression soft, yet serious.

"I'm afraid you boys are mistaken," he said. "This lady's a friend of mine and just passing through. She doesn't work here or have anything to do with this place. Just passing through."

The three men looked at him with various expressions of anger and disappointment, but he didn't give them time to reply. He pulled her back down the corridor and away from them, around a corner, and then out through a big glass door that led into the parking lot. But even outside he didn't let go of her, holding her arm tightly and half-pulling her, half-marching her away from the coffee shop and into the darkness and warmth of the night. He carried her along till they'd put a good fifty yards between themselves and the shop, and then he let go of her.

"My God!" Susan gasped. "What was all that about?"

"Don't worry about it," he said. "Just a case of mistaken identity." His answer seemed to please him and he smiled.

Susan, however, only now felt the surge of adrenal fear. She'd been too shocked and surprised while it had been going on, but now she suddenly felt her legs start to grow weak and her ankles wobbled in the new shoes. He took her arm again--her forearm this time--and guided her along, almost lifting her up as she slumped against him.

He nodded down at her feet. "Those your driving shoes?"

"These? No, I..."

He smiled. "You want to watch what you wear in there. Some people get the wrong ideas."

Slowly, as her panic subsided, she understood what he was saying: the seedy truck stop, the shabby motel; lonely, horny men. The garishly-dressed girls with the teased hair. And her walking in in her sexy party clothes and her brand-new wicked heels.

"Oh my God!" she said. "Oh my God I don't believe it! They thought I was a--?"

"You would have been fine. They would have figured out they made some mistake and that would have been it, red faces all around but no harm done. Or not much anyhow."

She felt suddenly weak again, weak and incredibly stupid. She stopped short and he stopped with her, keeping an eye on her and waiting patiently for her shock to pass.

"You're lucky I saw you when you pulled in," he said. "I was in the truck, catching up my log, but you're pretty hard to miss dressed like that. I knew right off you'd draw some attention, and probably not the kind you wanted."

"I can't believe it! They thought I was... working there?"

He took her arm and started them walking again, headed for her car.

"This is a funny place," he said. "A lot of gypsies stop here, and over-limits, illegals, scale-dodgers. They attract a certain kind of crowd. Not that they're bad people, no worse than anyone else and just trying to make a living, but sometimes it can get a little wild west."

"Wow," she said. "I never would have dreamed..."

"No. Why should you? This isn't your world. You're just a tourist. Just passing through. You have to live here to understand."

She snuck a look at him, just to check, and sure enough, her heart did something heart-ish. He was gorgeous and he was dangerous, and he was the closest she'd ever been to the kind of man she dreamt about in her fantasies.

"This is the second time tonight you've saved me," she said.

He looked down and smiled, and his smile, when it came, was disarming: charmingly boyish and a little naughty, as if he knew smiling was against the rules but he was going to do it anyway.

"Yeah," he said, and he put the smile away and looked at her. "That's funny, isn't it? Almost like it means something."

He looked at her and Susan was caught in his gaze. She desperately tried to think of something to say, but nothing would come. Finally she said, "Listen-- I wanted to tell you. About what happened before, at the oasis back there with my tire and everything..."

He shrugged, and that shrug broke her heart, because it wasn't the "aw-shucks-it-weren't-nothing" shrug she'd been expecting. Instead it was a gesture of real indifference, and it meant that the way she'd behaved back there had alienated him to the point where he really didn't care about her. He'd withdrawn and made himself unavailable, and in that instant Susan saw that he stopped to help all sorts of people, and that some people were gracious and warm about it and made him feel good, and others were ungrateful assholes about it and those he just cut off and didn't think about any more. And Susan had planted herself firmly in this latter group.

" Here's your car," he said. He stopped some ten feet away, as if he didn't dare get too close.

Susan didn't know what to do. She almost felt as if she should invite him inside, maybe offer him a ride over to his truck, which was absurd. She had no choice but to walk to her car.

"There's another place around six, seven miles down the road where you can get your coffee and whatever else you need," he said. "It's all legit, all licensed and inspected, and no one's going to give you any trouble. Can you make it that far? You got your keys?"

Susan looked in her bag and suddenly started shaking. Her hands started shaking and she felt a chill, as if in a delayed response to the scene in the coffee shop, but she knew that wasn't it. He'd turned and started walking back to his truck, leaving her alone and she didn't want him to go. She couldn't accept that, though, and she wouldn't, and so her hands were shaking as she fumbled through her bag for her keys, her mind insisting that she find them and leave and her hands refusing to obey.

She finally found them, got the key in the lock and opened the door, then stood there, still unable to get into the car. He was only ten yards away or so, maybe less.

"Wait!" she called. "Wait! I don't even know your name."

He turned around, walking backwards, and she saw the Smile again. " Cropper," he said. "Mark Cropper."

He turned back and kept on walking, and in desperation she yelled, "I'm Susan. Susan Delacourt." As if that would stop him. As if that meant anything to him.

He waved idly over his shoulder but didn't stop, and Susan watched him go. He took his time crossing the empty lot and finally reached his truck, unlocked the door, then pulled himself up and into the cab. The door closed and all was still except for the wind in the trees and the faint rumble of the idling diesels.

Susan sighed and got into the car. She locked the doors, put the key in the ignition, then put her hands on the wheel and sat there, listening to nothing, thinking of nothing, just feeling the low murmur of the parked trucks' engines in her body, like the purring of so many huge, sleeping jungle cats. The wind gusted and buffeted her car and made it rock, but she hardly noticed. The fear was gone now, the fear from the coffee shop, and had been replaced by a familiar, mild sadness. It was what she felt whenever she was alone with nothing to occupy her mind, and it was a feeling she dreaded. It wasn't a pain so much as it was an emptiness that was always there, even under the noise of her other activities and diversions, as if it were her heart's own idling speed.

But it was anger she was aware of now, a softly glowing anger. Anger at the sadness and at the men in the restaurant and at Mark too for leaving her so easily like this, for treating her so casually and dismissively. She knew she should just start the car and get out of here before something else happened, but she couldn't. She was all alone here, sitting parked in this empty lot somewhere off this endless, faceless highway, neither here nor there but some place in between, with nothing but her thoughts and feelings and this idling sadness that was making her angry, and she didn't know what to do.

She stared at his truck. Nothing moved: no lights went on, no change in the hum of the engine, no signs of life. Maybe he was going to sleep in there. Maybe he was finishing his log. Maybe he was in there thinking about her and masturbating. Who knew what he was doing?

Minutes passed with nothing moving but the wind and the shadows from the trees. Another semi pulled into the lot, engine revving, brakes squealing; one pulled out and headed for the highway. A family left. The trees stirred in the late summer wind.

Finally Susan reached into the bag on the seat beside her and took out the package of charcoal gray, seamed, Cuban-heel, thigh-high stockings she'd bought for the party. She punctured the cellophane with her thumb nail and tore it off, unwrapped the stockings and shook them out. They were wicked things, wonderfully lethal when used with the right amount of decorum and finesse. The seams had an almost supernatural ability to arouse and attract men, and the stockings were just high enough to expose a tantalizing glimpse of the intimate thigh-encircling tops when she sat on a barstool with torso and legs arranged just so, perhaps judiciously controlling the amount of skin or stocking revealed through a few innocent and surreptitious adjustments of her skirt as the situation warranted. She had met few, if any, women who were as adept and effective at using stockings and the flesh of the upper thigh to such devastating effect.

She took a stocking now and rolled it up, inserted her foot, then unrolled it along the length of her smooth, tanned leg and smoothed it out, watching her progress with a cool, professional eye. She circled her fingers around her ankle and drew them up over the stocking, snugging it up and drawing it tight till the fit was flawless and the seams impeccably straight. Then she did the other leg, taking her time, enjoying the sensation of her hands on her body as much as she enjoyed the sensual embrace of the stocking on her leg and the slickness of it under her hands.

Putting on stockings always relaxed and aroused her simultaneously, and put her in a place that was as close as she ever expected to get to meditative bliss, calm and energized and sexy and empowered. The experience was always enhanced by the knowledge that she wasn't doing this for herself, but for someone else's pleasure. But she didn't think about that now. Putting on her stockings just seemed like a good idea.

Susan adjusted her skirt and checked her makeup in the mirror, slipped her heels back on and opened the door and stepped out. She took her bag and, despite the tightness she felt in her nipples, deliberately left her coat behind, lying on the back seat. She locked the car, dropped her keys in her bag, and set out toward the dark, idling truck.

She didn't know why she was doing this or what she hoped to accomplish, but she had no doubt she was doing the right thing, and that certainty only increased as the truck got closer and the engine got louder. The breeze lifted her hair and played with her skirt. She was aware of everything.

She got all the way to the truck and still there was no sign of life, no acknowledgement of her approach. It loomed above her like a dark and impregnable fortress, almost arrogant in its size and power. Susan looked up at it, looking for some chink in its armor, and then, not knowing what else to do, she stepped up and knocked on the driver's side door.

She was surprised when the window slid down and she saw him sitting there way high up, bathed in a soft yellowish green glow emanating from the inside of the cab. The light showed only through the open window. All the other windows were black as polished onyx.

He looked down at her for a moment, his face a mask. "Yeah?"

It was like petitioning a dragon. "I need help," she said. "I need help with these directions. Can you let me in?"

"Let you in? The cab?"

She nodded, craning her head back to look at him.

"Can't," he said. "Against regulations. Insurance."

She stood there looking up at him. The breeze ruffled through her thin blouse and lifted her hair. The engine thrummed.

He either sighed or gave a little derisive laugh, she couldn't tell.

"Okay," he said. "Come around the other side and be careful climbing up. Use the grab bars to pull yourself up. The first step's a bitch."

Susan walked around to the passenger side. There was a solid click as he unlocked the door, then it swung open, revealing the hidden secret world of the cab. She saw green lights and yellow lights, orange lights and red lights. Rows of chromed dials with quivering needles. It might have been the inside of a UFO. She took hold of the grab bars and lifted her foot in its ridiculously inappropriate shoe to the bottom rung of the ladder.

He'd been right: the bottom step was high--very high--and she felt her skirt ride up and stretch tight as she raised her leg to reach for it; so high she felt the warm breeze on her bare upper thighs and on a damp spot in her panties she hadn't known was there. He was watching her, looking right at her, and he surely must have seen up her skirt to the tight, bulge of panty-covered flesh between her legs, but what could she do about it? Both hands were on the grab bars and she wasn't about to let go. She hauled herself up and found the other steps easily enough, feeling more foolish for still wearing her heels than for flashing him.