The Highway Kind(73)

“Bastard,” she swore, throwing a punch at his face, which he evaded. Her knuckles scraped against gravel and he gut-punched her, which made her wince. Waid rolled, leveraging her body off of his. Like he was swimming across the gravel, Waid went toward his gun. But the woman had recovered quickly and scrambled as well, then straddled his back.

“What are you doing, Scotty?” she seethed, landing a solid blow to the back of his head. Exhaling, he puffed gravel dust.

“Get the fuck off me, Sandra.” This time instead of turning his body he got on all fours and bucked like a stallion. She got her arms around his neck. But Waid was tall, muscular in the shoulders and chest, and got to his feet with her attached. He tried to straighten but she reared back; they toppled against the car and slid part of the way down.

“Hey, Pebbles, what going on?” a new voice rang out. “I’m guessing this ain’t what you and your friend here call foreplay.”

“Shit,” Waid said while simultaneously flipping his ex over his shoulder like a GI Joe in those cartoons he watched as a kid.

It was her turn to exhale hard as she landed on her butt on the gravel.

Waid had the gun again, an old-fashioned snub-nose, and showed it to the newcomer, a blond man, also a surfer, with a goatee and in swim trunks despite the chilly morning. Hastings sat on the ground, making a face at her former squeeze.

“Sorry, but it be’s like that sometimes.” He got in the Falcon station wagon and rolled down the window, keeping the gun pointed at the two while he jammed his pick into the ignition switch. Two cranks, and the rebuilt, retrofitted small-block V-8 caught and purred like a sewing machine. He put the three-speed clutch in reverse and backed up. He then righted the car and drove off as the sun got warmer.

The blond surfer, Joaquin Ryan, helped Hastings to her feet. “What was that all about?”

“Fuck if I know but I damn sure intend to find out,” she vowed.

1997

She was heavy in the hips and this only increased his ardor. He had a tumbler of scotch in one hand and his erect member in the other, flagpole proper sticking out of his boxers. As he sipped, slowly working his shaft as well, the woman in lacy underwear swayed closer. Over the JVC boom box, Biggie Smalls’s singsong voice rapped “Mo Money, Mo Problems.”

“We gonna party good, baby,” she said, legs apart, working her hand inside her leopard-spotted panties and fingering herself.

“That’s right,” he said, careful not to drink too much. No misfiring for him today, no sir.

She stopped in front of where he sat in the corduroy-covered recliner with its thinning armrests. He rocked gently on the chair’s squeaky ball bearings, mesmerized by the considerable breasts before his face. It seemed to him they were barely restrained by the sheer material of her bra. She replaced her hand for his around his stiffening johnson and with her other hand stuck her moist index finger in his mouth. He suckled it joyously and murmured with pleasure and she smiled knowingly. Behind him the shades had been pulled down to half-mast. The second-story windows overlooked a street in harsh afternoon sun of similar modest dingbat apartments like this one in Lennox. Those panes made their own humming as a jet approached Los Angeles International Airport not too far away. The shadow of the plane moved across his Falcon station wagon parked at the curb. The car’s body had several dents, the fake wood trim was badly faded, and a slab of roughly sanded Bondo was smeared across a rear panel.

The woman unhooked her bra and twirled it around her head, gyrating her substantial hips.

“Yee-hah,” he enthused, wetting his lips and watching her freed breasts jiggle and shake.

She then flung the garment onto the floor where the man had placed his drink.

“Give me those titties, girl,” he implored. The man reached up and caressed her breasts and playfully bit on her wonderful, large, erect brown nipples as she leaned over him. He put his head between those marvelous sweaty mounds and worked it back and forth while she took them in hand and pressed the flesh on the sides of his face.

He sat back, gasping. She went to her knees, pushing his farther apart. “I’m going to suck you dry,” she promised and he was as giddy as a mosquito in a nudist colony. The man closed his eyes as she expertly worked her tongue on his tip.

“Oh, good sweet God.” Jimmy Moore shuddered, causing the recliner to wobble. Underneath the chair, he’d tucked away his badge clipped to his belt holster with his gun in it.

She took him deeper in her mouth, building a rhythm matching the new song’s bass beats as Biggie rapped, “Dress up like ladies and burn them with dirty three-eighties” on “Niggas Bleed” on the CD. There was also a cassette tape in the machine. It was not engaged. Later today she would turn it on once she got him coked up and bragging like he liked to do. Then she would have the recording function turned on, but of course only she would be aware of this.

Present

“No, haven’t seen him around, Pebbles. Fact, haven’t seen Scotty for months, really.”

“Well, okay, thanks, Carlos.”

“I thought you two were quits anyway.”

“We are. But something’s come up.” She realized that made it sound like she just found out she had an STD or was pregnant but whatever. Through a gap of the rear sliding door, she could see part of the tarp covering Carlos’s classic customized Honda Civic. He was a gearhead, a tuner, who street-raced his whip for money and prestige. She turned and started walking out of Furutani and Sons body shop on Marine in Gardena, a city in what was called the South Bay of LA County. She’d leaned her bike against the wall near the archway leading inside. She put on her helmet, checked her watch, and biked over to El Camino College, where she was a part-time tech in the environmental biology lab on campus. Today was grunt-work day, which included cleaning the lizard habitat and recalibrating instruments such as the atomic absorption spectrometer. This suited her just fine as she could do this work from muscle memory and ponder where to find Scott Waid. She’d gleefully pictured beating him with the aluminum bat she used on her softball team until he told her why he’d stolen her ride.