Lot Lizards Read Free

that his tape deck was gone. So was the small television he kept in the passenger seat.  
    "Son of a bitch," he slurred, clutching the seat to hold himself up. He threw open the door on the driver's side and started to step down cautiously, but the black pavement below flew up to meet him, striking him with the sound of thunder. The throbbing in his head worsened as he rose up on all fours, groaning. The sounds of the lot—once so familiar that he hardly noticed them—now drilled into his ears with barbed steel bits. Barechested, he hunkered on the pavement and looked around through bleary aching eyes.  
    Truck engines purred all around him like giant cats and the air was thick with diesel exhaust mixed with the smell of cow shit; the truck parked beside his held a trailer full of cattle. Headlights blinded him as they flashed by and he could feel the movement of the great rolling tires through the pavement beneath his bare hands.  
    He fell on his side and curled his knees up to his chest. Something was wrong, terribly wrong... he was sick, seriously ill...he needed help, he needed—  
    His stomach clenched and he began to retch. The meal he'd eaten in the restaurant earlier rolled up from his stomach in thick gobs and landed on the pavement, undigested and reeking.  
    When the tremors in his gut had stopped, Bill sat up and stared through watery eyes across the aisle between the rows of parked trucks to the next row facing him. One of the trucks was idling loudly. Its headlights were on and Bill squinted against the painful glare, but he did not close his eyes because...something was moving in the light...someone...  
    He sat up weakly, his chest heaving.
    A slender figure stopped in front of one of the headlights, silhouetted against the glow. The figure hunched to light a cigarette; the head leaned back to exhale smoke and—  
    —a fist clenched in Bill's chest. His back straightened and his head craned forward as—
    —the figure became more familiar, its identity given away by the curves outlined in the light, by the careless posture and the stringy hair that fell from the back of the head...  
    "C'mon!" a male voice called. "Whatta y'waitin' for, huh? Y'think I got all night?"
    "I'm coming, okay?" the figure shouted back.
    Bill scrambled to his feet, trying to ignore the dizziness that sent the lot spinning in all directions beneath him and stumbled toward the girl standing before the idling truck.  
    "Hey!" he called as he staggered toward the facing row of trucks, his voice thick. "Huh-hey, you! You !"  
    The figure stiffened, turned toward him, then hurried out of sight.
    Bill fell to his knees on the pavement between the rows of dormant trucks, trying to follow the girl with his eyes, but a bright flash of white blinded him and the bellow of a truck's horn filled the night; Bill crawled frantically over the pavement, saw the enormous tires of a truck roll by just inches away from him and crawled desperately toward the lighted truck, his nails clawing the tarmac, until his head butted into a thick, stiff leg.  
    He looked up.
    A man, fists on hips, grey-shirted belly hanging over his belt, looked down at Bill with frowning eyes. "The hell you doin'?"
    "I was—I'm just—there's a—"
    The man kicked his left leg out and growled, "Get the hell outta here, y'fuckin' drrrunk !"  
    The man's foot caught Bill's shoulder and sent him backward onto the pavement, but he sat up immediately, just in time to see the man's back as he walked the length of his truck and disappeared behind it.  
    Clutching the truck's bumper, Bill lifted himself to his feet and followed the man, leaning against the trailer all the way. As he neared the back of the truck, he heard the man's voice:  
    "...many times've I told you, Goddammit, I ain't got all fuckin' night to wait for you! I don't care what you're—"  
    Bill rounded the corner and saw the man facing the trailer's open door, shouting into its yawning blackness.