2

It wasn’t much of a ride, but it was a ride nonetheless.
Sapphire opened the door and grabbed a glance in at the driver. He was kind of ugly and looked pretty stupid. There were bags under his eyes and little dots of lint speckled his curly mop.
She momentarily lost herself staring at the five hairs hovering around his upper lip, each quivering from the beads of sweat rolling down them into gravity.
Sapphire stared into his eyes.
He seemed harmless and she slid into the car.
She took an inventory of her surroundings in case she had to jump out and call the police.
Dust covered most of the sun-cracked dashboard. White goo crusted all around the buttons on the radio and that was stuck on a lame Top 40 station. A moldy stench roared out from the backseat and slapped her face as she pulled the seatbelt down across her shoulder. She wondered how much this was going to suck and closed the passenger door.
As soon as she slammed the door shut, the car sped back out into traffic. Sapphire held her breath until the car started up the highway ramp, then heaved the contents of her lungs out with a loud sigh. Weezebaggin it, she sucked in another gulp of putrid air. Her whole body twitched in violent slow motion, the veins in her neck bulging out in an agonizing navy blue, as she gagged back the barf that was erupting up her puke tube. She cracked her window to get some air and a whirlwind screamed into the car louder than a freight train. Five Hairs turned to the noise and stared at her like she had just taken the last cupcake at his birthday party. She smiled back, pushing her index finger against the button to close the window and then turned her unimpressed stare out at the world that was passing her by.
The afternoon sky was blood red with sailors delight. Sapphire almost cried as the grenadine sundrops dripped slowly into the tequila horizon, mixing the perfect drink of her escape. She was happy to leave it all behind. Sure, she was a scared. She had no idea what the future had in store for her, no clue where her foot was going to land on her next step. Sapphire didn’t care. What ever was going to happen, was going to happen and she would embrace it. It had to be better than the shit pile she was running from. It just had to be.
She knew it.
Still, nobody knows the unknown.
Still, you know..
Anyway,
The stink from whatever was rotting in the back seat starting poking back up her nose, grinding the Lifetime movie soundtrack to a halt and shoved her back into reality. She pushed her pupils to the outskirts of her eye socket, trying to sneak a peak at the creep without moving her head. It was useless. Her nose was blocking one eye and the other eye was more interested in the unusually long eyelash jutting out from her upper eyelid. Sapphire wanted to look over at him and start up a conversation, but decided against it.
It was easier just to feign sleep. It fenced off any benign conversations about the weather, loneliness, and how cool it would be if she were a Klingon or a Wookie.
She was neither a Wookie nor a Kligon and had no desire to be.
She choked down the puke and rolled her shoulders away from five hairs. She let in the slumber but kept one eye open.
It didn’t take many miles before Johnny and his five hairs maneuvered past his shoulder belt and attempted to put his arm around Sapphire by way of some old trick and tried to lick the lips of one Sapphire Holycross.
Sapphire made a quick lunge away as far as the seatbelt would let her and shot him a look that made it clear he wasn’t getting any.
She had been there before.
It was very early in her adventure through life when she learned about the price you had to pay for the ride.
At first, they were sternly blocked, but then curiosity got the better of Sapphire and things changed. She occasionally let the all too eager teenage hand grope aimlessly for her breast, her silver dollar alveoli still encased in their under-wired cotton cage.
With nipples barely erect in want, she kicked back and those hands quickly found themselves back gripping the wheel at 10 and 2.
It was no surprise that she found herself just as quickly looking for another ride.
Life got bigger and bolder.
So did she.
She had little regrets about those fog filled nights when middle-aged fingers, squeezed purple with guilt by tiny gold bands, probed for the wetness she couldn’t hide, but she never gave up the prize.
That was hers to keep.
She would never leave it in a gas station bathroom, forget it at some drunken and fucked up night out, or misplace it a friend’s house, next to the “I Always Loved You” shattered male ego nightstand. And most definitely, she would never give it away as a door prize for a ride to the next town.
She learned to tease, please and put at ease, the sweaty nervousness known as man and get a little bit of peace and quiet for the rest of the ride.
But Johnny was different.
Not in a good way, and not really in a bad way either, just different.
Maybe it was the five hairs poking out randomly under his nose like a genetic afterthought. Maybe it was his lazy eye that always seemed to be looking for the phantom fly buzzing around his head.
Maybe it was his tooth.
It was crooked and brown and looked like it had never been brushed, but it was fascinating. It screamed “Look at me! I’m the tooth that hygiene forgot.” and that was all she could do.
It was huge.
It was ugly.
It even gave off its own unique stench, a blend of sour milk and old people. It wasn’t a smell that filled the room and overpowered you, but it was there. It just dribbled over all the air molecules and if you breathed through your mouth you could taste it
It just sat there in his pie hole, dangling from his gums like a candy corn he forgot to swallow.
It even winked at her.
She didn’t know why, but Sapphire felt a little twinge in her heart. It was like the time she sobbed hysterically when she watched baby platypuses busting out of their shells on the Discovery Channel.
That tooth, so marvelous in its ugliness, jutted out from its putrid periodontal roost in tartar covered splendor. An incisor that was a shade lighter than pewter, it glowed with a dreary opaque dullness. It wiggled with every tongue vibration and glistened slightly with spittle. About 25 degrees from perpendicular, it caused his upper lip to fold forward in a rapper’s snarl. The five hairs didn’t mind, as it let them be featured more prominently on Johnny’s decidedly unattractive facade.
Sapphire stole several quick glances, twisting her left eyeball and pushing her pupil deeper into the corner of her eye than was humanly possible. Her inner thigh began to quiver. Somewhere in her vena cava, a zealous blood cell riled up the troops and led a full frontal assault, storming past the atrium and landing full flush on Cheek Bone Hill.
Pupils dilated and the time between breaths abbreviated.
Somewhere in her perineum a nerve ending sent an “All Hands on Deck” call to her clitoris. Rationale had to step out of her office and scream “Don’t make me come down there and spank you!” at which, clitoris just giggled.
Sapphire cracked the window again to cool down the flush.
Johnny didn’t even look over this time.
He felt the heat too.