Fortune Teller

Can they smell it on us? Women, I mean. Can they smell a man's pain, loneliness, that diluted droplet of despair? Is it a pheromone thing? How does it work?

I heard her talking to the cook in the kitchen, telling the cook about "Ryan."

"When I was a senior, he was just this little guy, nothing to look at, but I saw him the other day, and he's got so big..."

Well, that places her at about -- what, 19? 20? Not more than 22, anyway, no one older would be dating things from their "senior" year. Yeah, looks about right.

She spotted me as I settled into a table, leather creaking, the only customer in this early, at least a half-hour before whatever passed for lunch rush here. She came across the cafe and glanced around.

"All alone today?" she asked, smiling.

"Yeah. I always ride alone," I said, picking up the menu, ignoring her exactly the same way I ignore over-friendly passengers in planes, reading the menu like it was Tolstoy.

"Well, that's pretty cool," she said. "So where you going?"

"Nowhere in particular," I answered. I glanced up at her, trying to decide whether to be annoyed. She wasn't particularly pretty. I mean, don't get me wrong, she was nice to look at. Just no raving beauty. Black wife-beater-style tank top, pink bra straps. White short-shorts. Do they still call them that? I dunno. White anyhow. White flip-flops decorated with a small pink plastic flower between the toes of each foot. Great legs, nice little tits.

Yeah, I noticed. Sue me.

So, anyhow, she was smiling, but I could see the barest tinge of sadness, the very earliest signs that she already knew the life she was going to lead, the years in the cafe talking with the cook about Ryan between stretches of unemployment, local boyfriend, a couple of husbands, a couple of kids, drunken Saturday nights and scraping by by the skin of her teeth as a lifestyle. In twenty years, maybe less, she would be the waitress in the North Star Cafe in "Fear And Loathing In Las Vegas." And she knew it.

Lot to read into a smile. But it was all there.

Ellen Barkin As The Waitress At The North Star Cafe -- My Waitress In 20 Years

She went to bring me my unsweet tea, and I saw her glance out the front window of the cafe, looking, as she did a hundred times every day, at her future wrote large in her distorted half-reflection overlaid on the dusty streets of the small-unto-nonexistent town that was her universe.

"Nice bike," she said, nodding toward the window when she brought me my drink.

"Thanks, I like it," I said, stirring a packet of pink stuff into the tea. Swirling ice...

"So, what's that one?" she said, reaching down and touching a patch on my vest. I held my temper. Easier with her than it usually is. She was only a girl, after all, and didn't know any better, wasn't trying to be disrespectful. I grabbed her wrist gently, but firmly.

"Don't touch," I said without heat, "it's rude."

She didn't jerk away, but stood there for a moment, her wrist completely buried in my fist, looking at me, surprised. Light brown. Her eyes were light brown. I saw her pupils dilate, and for a moment I thought it was fear. But she bit her lip and said, "Oh, I'm so sorry. I didn't mean anything. I just like looking at all the stuff you guys have on those vests." She smiled again. "So what's that one about?"

I let go of her arm and told her that it was a patch in honor of a brother who'd died in a gunfight in Dallas.

"Your brother?" she asked.

"Some brothers are brothers but don't share blood," I told her. She didn't understand, but then, she'd long since accepted that she didn't understand a lot of things, so it didn't unduly disturb her. She seemed to suddenly realize where she was, and efficiently wrote my order on her notepad. She recommended the lunch special, a BBQ brisket sandwich and fries, and I agreed.

I was writing a few lines about her nice tits in my notebook when she came back after turning my order in. I noticed the cheap ring she'd been wearing was gone. It was one of those "promise ring" kind of things that kids give each other. Funny, I hadn't noticed it at all when it was there -- but noticed its absence. I glanced up at her.

"Slow day, today," she said, indicating in some general shrug the entire empty cafe. "Boring. Y'know, sometimes I wish I could just take off, too, get on a motorcycle and go anywhere except this dump. Not much to do here."

"Yeah, I know what you mean," I said. "Look, you don't have to stand there. Sit down, take a load off your feet. There's no one here but me anyway."

She smiled gratefully and, after a guilty glance toward the kitchen, sat across from me. No, not a raving beauty. But not bad at all. I could feel stirring in deep places I hadn't in a long time. She chattered along for awhile about the patches and pins on my vest, and I explained them -- Vietnam, the artillery cannons, the SP qualification pins, the winged skull with the words "My Word -- My Bond" on it, the BACA pins...

She asked me about the patch under the Texas flag, and I told her it was my name, about a million years ago when I was with a crew. She said she didn't like it. Then she asked about the yellow ribbon tied and braided into the leather laces.

"Just a girl I knew once," I told her. "She died." She started to apologize, and I cut her off. "It was a long time ago."

"And the leather bracelet? And the stone? What are those?"

"Other girls," I said.

"Where are they?" she asked.

"Kinda nosy, aren't you?" I said, sharper than I meant to, suddenly running out of patience.

She was hurt. But just for a second.

"And now you ride alone all the time?"

"Yeah," I said. "I do."

"So you're alone and I'm stuck here," she said. "Bet I could leave and no one would even notice, but I got nowhere to go. Too bad. I like riding on a motorcycle. I've never been on a big one like yours, but I'll bet it would be fun." She smiled, daring me to notice the broad hint.

"Yeah, too bad. Problem is that I got a bunch of luggage on the rear seat, and you wouldn't fit."

She laughed. "I'm pretty skinny. Bet I could fit somewhere."

In a sudden flash I saw the future, whipsaw sharp. Twenty, twenty-five miles downrange, this would end in a bargain-rate truck-stop motel room, probably that place at the crossroads up in Waurika, with her naked and piled up in cheap, tangled sheets, sleeping exhausted in the afternoon heat, breathing deep and slow, almost snoring. No, not a raving beauty, but still...I run my hand over the curve of her hips and buttocks. Great legs. She rolls away from me in her sleep, trying to find a cool spot in the sheets.

I stand dripping sweat and lukewarm water, the coldest I could get out of the filthy shower, the fan from the half-assed window-unit air-conditioner on "high" playing across my naked body. I stare across the shimmering parking lot, trying, WILLING myself to air-dry in the suffocating heat of the day. She still has my black "Support Your Local Outlaws" shirt wrapped and knotted around one of her arms, her head resting on it. I've already written it off. I just need to get dry enough to pull levis and boots and vest on, going commando -- wondering whether I can do it and get out of the room without waking her at all. I feel bad for her. Disgusted with myself. And I just need to get back out onto the purity of the road and let it wash the taste of it all away.

"Hey, where did you go?" she said from across the table, jerking me back to now. I looked at her.

"Yeah, you're pretty skinny, but I got a lot of stuff. You'd wind up holding a bunch of it in your lap, so that won't work. I mean, if you were really going with me."

She smiled again, and again things stirred.

"I don't mind," she said. "I'll bet it would work..."

"Order Up!" the cook yelled. Still smiling, she stood and turned to go get my meal. I thought about yellow ribbons and leather bracelets and stones.

"Hey," I said. She stopped and half-turned back to me, still smiling, the perfect pose for great legs and nice little tits. "Nothing personal, and nothing you can do about it. But you're not who I want with me."

When she returned, she practically threw the plate at me, and stalked away.

Good brisket. BBQ sauce was a little too sweet. I dropped a $5.00 tip on the $6.50 ticket. I mean, it wasn't her fault, right? Her life or mine.