Notes from the road three

Chapter 3

She was just 15 when she left home. Mummy didn't beat her and Daddy didn't rape her, she wasn't escaping poverty or abuse. She just wanted more than the homespun, applepie lifestyle that everyone else in her class aspired to. She didn't want to be a cheerleader and date the quarterback, she couldn't bake and would always drift off in her Homestudies class.

"High School was all about teaching you to be a good little wifey," she said exhaleling a lungful from another one of my cigarettes."How to make the housekeeping go as far as possible, please your man and be all subservient and demure. Fuck that."

As you can probably tell Madison is anything but demure. Shes a good 5-11 making her tower over most men "which brings out the asshole in most of them", wears faded blue jeans with a dark brown suede jacket. she looks three square meals short of normal but has a softness in her eyes that years of travelling haven't been able to harden. We're occuping a booth in a roadside bar where the lighting is several watts short of 'intimate' and not quite into pitch black.

Bran is distracting himself with the pinball machine in the corner, pumping quarter after quarter into its waiting, glisening maw watching the lights flicker and dance in a morse like pattern of score. The only other occupant is the bar tender who gazes, slack jawed at the images on the bar TV. With the sound turned down the pictures of the war could be part of a gritty war movie. I half expect John Wayne to run into the picture urging his men to "Move your butts, you sons of bitches!" before charging the enemy position with guns in both hands and a knife between his teeth.

You could almost make it a vicious escapist macho fantasy, except for the blood. Hollywood would never use blood like that.

She leans over towards me and I am struck at how perfect her face could be. If she washed her hair and put on some makeup...no. That would ruin everything that was beautiful and unique about her. She'd become another one of these airbrushed women, the spray-on beauty availible at every drug store from here to timbucktoo. Better to stay special, to stay unpredictable.

She leans even closer in. Is she going to kiss me? Panic rises up in my chest. When did I last brush my teeth? Or shave for that matter?

Closer still, I can smell the perfume she used to use, until she grins, grabs another one of my Malboro's from my side of the table and leans back against the booth wall as she strikes a match on the underside of the table and lights the smoke she paid for through flirting.

"So what were we talking about?" she said casually as the match hit the ashtray.

"You were going to tell me a story."I replied Mirroring her relaxed nature trying not to show how affected I was by this woman.

"At least I didn't close my eyes." I thought.

"I was? Oh, yeah of course I was." She said breathing the sentance out through the smoke. I imagined her words mingling, mixing with the nicotene giving them more weight, more gravitas.

Bran walked over to the bar and swapped a twenty dollar bill, I knew he kept in his shirt pocket in case of emergancies, for quarters. Not having the highest score on a pinball table was an emergency he was fully prepared to spend gas money on.

"Well?" I said.

"Well what?"

"The story?"

"You're like a kid before bedtime," she said. "There was once a girl with long blonde golden locks..."

"...Who enjoyed making fun of strange men in bars." I countered.

She smiled with geniune warmth and I felt my chest ache with that strange almost pain we feel when we're falling for someone and with Brans game binging in the background, with all the gore and blood on TV I shared a look with a stranger I can still feel to this day.