Battle Mountain

(George Simhoni - Gallery Stock - )

"I need a smoke. You ran off with the lighter."

Holly reached into a pocket of her suede jacket and passed my brass Zippo through the window. I flicked it, lit up a Merit Light, inhaled a couple of times, lit another one and handed it out to her. A heavy-duty Dodge Ram pickup whose bed was filled with hooded laborers slowed down across from us in the passing lane, and someone yelled something in Spanish that didn't sound obscene and may have even been a greeting. Holly waved, and one of the fellows raised a liquor bottle while another gave her a thumbs up.

"I like it out here. It feels like me. Go on ahead. I have both sandals. I'm good."

"Against the rules of breakups during road trips." In truth I was starting to think she might be fine, though, and wondering if I might be fine, too. No matter what happened to her once I abandoned her, chances were I'd never get the news, and this inching along on the shoulder was getting tedious, especially with cold beer up ahead. Plus, I had secret money in my pocket -- enough to win back what I'd lost in Reno and then some. Or to rip it up in a cathouse for a night, the one with the signs that read "Dancing and Diddling" in shivering pink neon. I'd practically lived at the place the month I turned 21 and left with a cracked rib. Blond girl named Heidi. The full Bavarian act. Pigtails. Leather shorts. Blue eyes. A screamer.

Holly seemed to sense my reckless impulse. She waved me ahead like she meant it, which you can tell with girls, even the flighty, dramatic types -- that instant when nothing you do is going to work with them because you're invisible now, you're history, and they've basically left the body you found them in and beamed their spirit to another one that you'll never get to touch.

"I'll drive you to town and get us separate rooms and won't even knock in the morning. I'll just head off." My voice had taken on a tone of compromise, of nobly doing the right thing.

"I'd rather not take the risk."

"This isn't risky, what you're doing now?"

"The risk is getting back in the way I always do. With you, with the guys before you, with everyone. I'm sick of it," she said. "And so are you. The games. Admit it. Admit that sometimes you just wish I'd eat your dust."

"And leave you in a shallow grave? He'll cut off your finger for that ring, you know. That's how they do it. They love to use their tools."

Holly shrugged, and the flush of passion I felt shocked me. To truly be willing to die to leave a man was as sexy, I realized, as a woman can get. And this was no ordinary dark stretch of road; this was I-80, 10 miles west of Elko, the traditional sacred hunting ground of middle-aged Caucasian maniacs. Plus, Holly was wearing the tightest jeans she owned, so smooth across the thighs and butt that even a nearsighted creep with lousy headlights could tell the moment he slowed to under 60 that she wasn't packing a can of pepper spray, let alone a serious weapon.

"Goodbye, Chris," she said through the window.