He shrugged, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. "I don't go looking to offend people. You ready to go?"
She was driving this time. She had decided that last night while trying to sleep, listening to his breathing in the bed beside her. She went to the car and got in the driver's seat while he put his duffel bag in the trunk. While she waited for him she got Cathy's letter out of her purse and looked at it again.
Leo
Pete left me. I'm in trouble, and I don't know what to do about the baby when it comes. Please, Leo, could you send me the money to come home? Send it to Poste Restante here in La Paz. I'll do whatever you want if you get me out of this mess. I'll even go back to school.
Cathy
Joe settled in the passenger seat. Still looking at the letter, Dinah asked, "How many people are there in La Paz?"
"Hundred and eighty thousand."
Too many. She sighed. "Do you—Joe, do you have any idea how I could go about looking for a Canadian girl there? I—I don't know her last name, or her address. I just know she—she was in La Paz."
"How do you know that?"
She handed him the letter. He frowned as he read it and she saw another Joe, a man who could be troubled by the plight of a young girl alone in a strange country. She hadn't expected that.
He said slowly, "February. She was in La Paz in February." His frown encompassed her. If he was going to tell her she was a fool, that she should go home, this would be the moment for the words. Her fingers clenched until she could feel the nails digging painfully into her palms. "That's the last you know? La Paz in February. She could be anywhere by now."
She swallowed. "I know. I—there was nothing else I could do except come and try to find her." He was staring at her and she said defensively, "She wrote for help."
He lifted the thin piece of paper. "She wrote to a guy named Leo." He didn't say it as if he were arguing.
"It's the same thing." She closed her eyes and saw Leo's face as it had looked when he’d opened the car door for her that night. She had telephoned, frightened and alone, and he had come. "Leo would help her if he could, so I've got to."
The paper fluttered down. His face had closed down and that other Joe was gone. "Who is Leo? Why should you—No, don't answer that!" His voice was sharp, like a weapon. "How the hell did I get into this?" He closed his eyes and she could feel the anger in him, could not understand it but knew it was real as he gritted out, "How did I luck out and end up taking you on in the middle of the Baja?"
She blinked, unprepared for his attack or for the crazy way it cut her somewhere deep inside. He glared at her. "What are you, Dinah? Are you going to be the albatross around my neck?"
"Get out!" She should have known that he would not help. Another test, but this time she felt a sick pain. She hadn't wanted Joe to fail, but should have known he would. Warren she hadn't cared about, but somehow she had believed in Joe despite his drifter's eyes.
She took the letter from his fingers, shoved it into her purse. Then she got her fingers around the steering wheel, gripped hard and stared ahead. "Get out of here!" She swallowed. "I didn't ask for you. I certainly don't want you to be a traitor to your wonderful life of drifting through the world like some ghost that doesn't belong."
She heard his breath drawn in, as if she had scored a painful hit. She held tighter onto the steering wheel. "Just go away, would you, and find someone else to drive you down this Godawful desert! Use that key you've still got in your pocket, my car key, and get your damned bag out of my trunk!"
She turned and faced him, their eyes meeting for the first time since she had handed him Cathy's letter. His eyes were hard and the blue was like ice. For one incredible instant she thought he was going to kiss her and she wondered what kind of kiss it could be with the terrible cold in his eyes. She had the crazy conviction that their words had nothing to do with the argument, that they were fighting over something much deeper than Cathy and whether a drifter would help.
When he got out, she forced herself not to look back, not even in the mirror. His face had showed nothing and she made sure that her expression was a mirror of his. She felt the car shift when he slammed the trunk down, then the keys fell into her lap. She could feel him standing there outside her door.
"Don't use the air conditioning." His voice was toneless. "Shift into second gear when you're going up the hills. If it starts pinging, turn on the heater."
She swallowed, couldn’t answer. She was behaving like an idiot and she knew it. She watched him walk away, the duffel bag over his shoulder. On the other side of the street he turned and started walking towards the highway. A truck came up behind him and he shifted the bag to stick his thumb out.
The truck stopped.
She wasn't even sure what had happened. She'd picked up a hitchhiker, and now she'd kicked him out and she felt a gray barrenness like the time when she woke up in hospital and they told her that her parents were gone. Why? Joe was no one, just a man who was admittedly attractive, who somehow stirred her dormant sensuality—
Dormant? She grimaced, admitting that he'd stirred desires she really hadn't known she possessed. She'd decided years ago that sex was very overrated, that she for one could do without it. Leo said she had a hang-up about men, but she didn't. She'd worked all that out in her mind and she was probably as normal as the next woman, or at least as normal as any other woman with a low sex drive. From everything she had read, that didn't necessarily put her in the minority.
So maybe she'd miscalculated. Maybe there was something there after all. She'd been staring at a man's hairy feet and getting turned on, for goodness sake! Maybe she was a late bloomer, although surely twenty-six was a bit much for delayed blooming! Whatever the cause, her reaction to Joe showed she was irrational. He'd been irrational too, as if her search for Cathy threatened his equilibrium. “Albatross around his neck!” She hadn't asked for anything, just information!
She made a production of putting her spare key back into the magnetic holder, fixing the holder back under the bumper. Three brown-skinned boys watched the whole process curiously. She hoped she wasn't teaching them where to look for keys to strangers' cars.
It didn't matter that Joe was gone. Really, she was relieved that he'd left. Maybe she had been thinking about a relationship, but not with him. She wouldn't be crazy enough to get involved with a man like that, would she? No roots, no job. A drifter, the kind of man who could make a girl forget she had her own home, her own place in the world.
She got into the car and made sure all the windows were down. She had her hand on the key when she thought to wonder how much water was in the radiator. The rad was cold now, and she wasn't going to get into the position of having to open it hot if she could help it. Joe's maneuver with the newspaper yesterday had looked dangerous enough that she did not want to try it.
It took a half-gallon before it was full. Two liters, she corrected, thinking of Joe's criticism about her poor conversion to metric. She put the cap back on and felt a little better, more like the Dinah Collins who had started out on this journey. Efficient. Self-confident.
She found a store that was open and purchased two more gallons of distilled water. Two gallons ... eight liters—whatever the two containers were, they were water and she had a good reserve if she had to stop. She wasn't going to do Joe's stunt with the newspaper. If she had to stop again, she'd sit there and drink pop and wait for things to cool off enough to touch. That reminded her to buy some Coke, too, although she knew it wouldn't stay cold in the car. As soon as that sun got high enough, it would be a scorcher!
By the time she did start the engine and put the Olds into gear, she was pretty sure the truck that had given Joe a lift would be long gone. She waved at the two boys and they grinned and said good-bye in English. She still didn't know the name of the village. She didn't see any sign on her way out.
Joe was at the highway, standing at the side of the road with his thumb out. The truck must have dropped him t
here, must have been travelling north. She pulled onto the highway. His head turned when her wheels crunched, and his thumb dropped the instant he recognized the car. He didn't want a ride from her. She almost stalled the car, hitting the brakes instead of the gas, but then she got it going and got herself past him. He was staring at her all the way, and for miles she could feel his eyes boring into her back.
The car behaved nicely all through the morning. By noon she had decided that everything would be OK if she left the air conditioning off. She drank three bottles of her soft drinks, each one warmer than the last. She didn't want to stop, didn't want Joe to pass and see her. She wanted to do better without him than with him, to prove she didn't need him.
Of course she didn't need him!
She stopped briefly in a village to buy more supplies, deciding that she would eat lunch on the road, without stopping. For some reason most of these villages weren't even on her map of the Baja, and she never seemed to see any sign announcing their names. This one was a collection of a hundred or so houses and a small grocery store. She went in and found that all the cheeses were white and strange to her. She used sign language to persuade the clerk to give her a taste of one cheese. It was very good and she bought a small piece. Tortillas, too, and cold soft drinks. In this heat she found herself constantly thirsty. By the time she left the store, she had her arms full.
Her best purchase was a small cooler and some ice! Now her soft drinks would stay cool. She drove through the village and back to the highway, waving to the uniformed policeman directing traffic at the one busy intersection, and getting a wide grin in return.
It was the hottest part of the day, early afternoon. She began climbing another mountain, perhaps the highest of them all. Somewhere on the winding slope she realized she could smell steam inside the car. She turned the heater on, taking turns with her feet and trying not to get burned by the hot air blasting her throttle foot.
The Olds crawled slowly towards the peak of the world and she had an incredible view of the ocean—at least, she thought it was the ocean—but she hadn’t reached the top of the mountain yet. She went up and up, one eye on the place where the temperature light would come on, hoping she could make it to a turn-off without having to repeat yesterday's fiasco.
As usual, there were no shoulders on the road, nowhere to stop. Finally, she reached a plateau and found a side road to turn off on.
The temperature light went on just as she left the highway. All right, so she would stop here a while. If Joe passed, she was far enough off the road that he and his ride might just drive on by and never know.
She raised the hood. Of course there was no shade, only cacti, but eventually things would cool off. She stared at the radiator for a while but that was futile, waiting for it to cool. She may as well relax, resign herself to an hour or two sitting beside the highway.
She walked through the cacti, away from the road. There were quite a few different green things growing here, but they were all unfamiliar to her. Some of the cacti rose to the height of apple trees. A good lunch stop.
She got a blanket from the trunk and sat on the ground on the shady side of the car, breaking out the tortillas and cheese. They tasted wonderful, although she should have thought to get something in the way of fruits or vegetables to go with her lunch. She'd been bewildered by the assortment of fruits in the little store. The bananas she had recognized, but they’d been black and distasteful. The other fruits were exotic and mostly far too large for one person. She had been tempted to buy a pineapple, but she had no knife to cut it with.
The cooler and ice cubes had been her best buy! The Coke was cool and delicious.
She closed her eyes and shifted her skirt up to expose her legs to the slight breeze, swallowing and delighting in the sensuous ecstasy of cheese and Mexican tortillas, the hot sun beating on her skin. When she felt dry, she lifted the Coke without opening her eyes and swallowed a long cool drink of liquid.
"Enjoying yourself?"
She jerked, her eyes flying open. He was blocking out the sky, standing in front of her, his thumbs hooked in his belt. His voice sounded friendly, easy, not angry at all.
"Hi, Joe." She found herself smiling at him and wondered if she hadn't been expecting him, waiting for him. She asked, "You got a ride?"
He hunched down beside her and she remembered her skirt and pulled it over her legs. He was smiling. "More comfortable than the jeans? Cooler, I'd bet."
"Much." She'd missed him. Of course he was a drifter, but he had been good company and she would like him back, sharing the Baja with her. "You need a ride?" His eyes sheared off to the open hood and she said, "In a while. When things cool off. I don't think I'm going to get to La Paz today. Maybe tomorrow."
If he said yes, there would be another hotel tonight. Her insides shuddered at the thought. She was playing with fire and she wasn't sure if she wanted to step back. Here today and gone tomorrow. That was the kind of man he was. Their eyes held and she thought wildly that perhaps that was best. This crazy wildness would be too much to let into her life for anything more than a … a night.
"Do you want a tortilla? And a Coke?" Oh, Lord! Her voice sounded as if she were inviting him into her bed ... into herself.
"Yes to the Coke. No food, though. I had lunch in Santa Rosalia." He opened her little cooler and helped himself to a tin of the cool soft drink. "This cooler was a good idea," he said when he'd downed half the tin of liquid in one long swallow.
"Wonderful idea." She grinned. "I'm starting to talk like you, leaving off the little words. I bought it in a little town back there somewhere. Maybe it was Santa Rosalia. I didn't see a sign. How did you get here?"
He drained the tin, then reached for one of the tortillas he had refused a minute ago. She held out the cheese and he brought out a pocketknife and sliced himself a piece. "Rancherito," he said, swallowing his first bite. "That's local cheese. My favorite."
She felt a crazy glow of pleasure. "Mine too, now." Her conversation was the height of trivia, but inside she felt good. She hugged to herself the knowledge that he must have told his ride to stop and let him out here. He had seen her car and had stopped. "I'm glad you're here."
He didn't say anything, but his eyes found the line of her dress above her breasts. She hoped he couldn't see her heart slamming into her ribcage. He looked away, studied a big cactus. "How's the car behaving?"
"Hot." That wasn't a bad description for how her body was behaving, what with the sun overhead and the man crouched down on his heels in front of her. "It'll cool off." The car would, but would she? "I don't think it's as bad this time. I had the heater on and I was pulling off the highway when the light came on, so I don't need help."
He was here. She supposed he had stopped because she might be stranded, not because she made his heart race. She pushed down the thoughts that shouldn't be racing wildly around, the fantasy of passionate lovemaking here under the sun.
She said nervously, "If you want to do your stunt with the newspaper and the rad cap, I could get under way a bit quicker. And I'd like company on the drive. It's a long way."
"OK." He stood up and went to look under the hood. "Let's leave it a bit longer to cool off. There's a lot more mountain up ahead of us. We'll explore while we wait."
He made her lock her purse in the trunk with his bag before they went walking. They took two more soft drinks out of the cooler and shut up the car, leaving the hood up and the windows open an inch on the top. Then they went off through the cacti, sipping on their drinks. Joe led her, following the track she thought a goat might have made. He made sure she kept clear of the little scrub bushes.
"I don't know if there are rattlesnakes around here or not," he told her, "but the country's got that look, so we'll just walk in the open and avoid trouble."
She smiled at his back, echoing his words. "Walk in the open and avoid trouble. Is that your motto, Joe?" How old was he? Thirty-five?
"Could be." He had reached the top of a sm
all rise and he turned back to watch her climb up the slope. "What's your motto?"
"I'm not sure." She reached his side and turned to look back. "Oh, it's beautiful!" They were high enough to look down over rolling mountain peaks, on and on to the straight blue line that was the ocean. "It's water, isn't it?"
He nodded. "The Sea of Cortez. More recently called the Gulf of California. It's good cruising ground."
"Is that where you take your boat?" From what she could see, it was a pretty big body of water. "Geography's not exactly my strong point, but it looks pretty wide."
"Anywhere from one to three hundred miles, and six hundred miles long. The water's warm and the conditions are pretty benign most of the time. I've been cruising here for a couple of years now. Good fishing. Friendly people. Easy living."
She frowned, staring at the blue. "It sounds like a holiday from life. Is that enough?"
"I'll be moving on soon, heading for the South Pacific." That wasn't an answer, and the South Pacific was a pretty vague destination.
"Do you ever think about going back?" She turned to see his face and found it a little too carefully blank. She was treading on thin ice here, asking forbidden questions.
His eyes focused on her and this time there didn't seem to be any anger in them. He said simply, "What makes you think there's a place to go back to?"
She thought of herself all those years ago, running up to the road from that beach, crying and knowing there was nowhere to go back to, no one who wanted her. "There's always a place you can start," she said quietly, thinking of Leo, swallowing because Leo's going was an empty place in her life that could not easily be filled.
She turned away from the memories and focused on Joe's face. There was something there, a window on a world he had walked away from. "I don't know what you're running from," she said softly. "But I don't think you're the kind of man who can be satisfied with a life that doesn't contribute anything. Don't you think it's time you came back from your holiday?" She smiled, trying to take the sting out of her words. "I've been working for my boss two years. I get three weeks holiday every year. How long have you been on holiday?"
So Much for Dreams Page 6
