NIGHT CRUISING Read Free

That was
plain insulting and, by God, she was getting steamed at how everyone
insulted her. Even if she didn't want to hook, even if it scared the
living daylights out of her, she still hated being treated like some
innocent numb-nut kid. "I'm okay. I can handle it." She
squared her shoulders and stared defiantly into the other girl's
eyes.
    The girl shrugged and
chewed her gum. She glanced idly around the parking area and over to
the side where the massive trucks pulled up for fueling. "It's
your choice, kid. There's plenty of men to service tonight and JoJean
ain't showed up yet. You got rubbers?"
    Molly nodded, then
blushed. Did this dimwit think she'd be selling herself raw? She
didn't want AIDS, for chrissakes, end up dying before she could get
out of her teens. Not to mention the garden variety venereal diseases
some people walked around with. She wasn't totally without a brain.
In her carryall bag she had a box of lubricated Trojans. She didn't
know how she was going to get the guys to use them, but if they
didn't, she meant to hightail it, leave them gawking.
    The girl had sneaked a
look from the corner of her mascara-laden eyes at how Molly nodded to
answer the question. "Okay, go on. No skin off'n my ass. Go
around back and just bang on the door of a cab' till one of 'em
opens. I always take the Peterbilts and the Western Stars so stay
away from those, but anything else, you go for it big as you can go."
    Again Molly nodded,
accepting the rules, and left the girl's side. She skirted red muddy
puddles behind the building to reach the dozing, idling trucks. She
gathered her courage and climbed to the driver's door of the first
truck she came to, a moving van company truck, and balling her
knuckly fist, she started in. After sixty seconds of steady banging
she was about to hop down to try another cab when a face showed in
the closed window. He was old. Maybe Sixty. Bald. Probably didn't
know what an erection was anymore, Molly thought with some despair.
She couldn't do this. She'd never be able to give herself to some old
grubby man. She bit her lower lip, leaned out of the way so he could
open the door.
    "Have you been
baptized?" he asked.
    Molly wondered briefly
if he was using another language or if he meant something to do with
being clean. The longer she took to answer and the longer she
scrutinized his face for clues, the more it came to her that he meant
baptized in the regular religious sense. She'd had the awful luck of
knocking on the door of a Bible Thumper. Never mind that she was
scared to death, that she was about to go against everything she had
been brought up to value, she had to face the guilt this stranger
meant to heap upon her head.
    "I'm going,"
she said, beginning to clamber down. She didn't need this. Couldn't
take it.
    "Child, you're
living a life of sin. Christ died on the cross for people like you.
Won't you be washed in the blood of the lamb?"
    "I'm gone,"
she said, hitting dirt and stalking away. Behind her she heard him
above the roar of a dozen rumbling engines.
    "Your soul is in
high peril! Go immediately to a church and ask them to pray for you!"
    Sheez. Mama, if she'd
had a mama, would have told her there'd be days like this. The warped
hayseed who picked her up in Mobile and dumped her at Gene Ray's had
groped her for twenty miles before he got to the point and asked if
she'd piss on his back if he could find a place to pull over. She had
told him in no unequivocal terms that she wasn't into kinky, and no,
she would not piss on his fool back, but she'd knock out his fool
teeth if he didn't get her to the next exit before she puked. Now a
Bible Thumper was laying down God's law to a potential sinner. It was
too much.
    Sheez.
    Molly was so incensed,
she forgot all about having nubs for breasts and was stomping across
the lot looking for a likely cab to bang on, her shoulders back,
hands fisted at her sides. Her small carrying bag of clothes and
toiletries swung out behind her as she