by Dani April
The food at the diner was even better than advertised. Rebecca ordered a huge lunch of country fried steak smothered in homemade gravy, a large helping of mashed potatoes, and on the side, green beans, carrots, and coleslaw. She asked for a pot of coffee to be set on the table and also ordered a pitcher of milk to pour in the coffee. Also, she promised the waitress she would save room for the apple pie à la mode they were serving for dessert.
She was making a pig out of herself, and both men teased her about this being the way all successful, big-city journalists ate. Normally she watched what she ate because she was a health and fitness nut, and never allowed herself to overeat at the table because she had vigorous workouts at the gym four or five times a week that partaking of a heavy diet would not have allowed. Today she didn’t care, and she laughed with Tex and Ramos as they chided her over the huge meal. Today she didn’t have a care in the world.
“…so I was working the one to ten shift,” she explained between big mouthfuls of potatoes. Her body was craving the nutrients of the food. No matter how much she stuffed in, it wasn’t enough. “I didn’t own a car yet, and I was walking to work every day.”
“They have you working very hard at your job, Rebecca,” Ramos said. He was seated next to her in the booth, with Tex across from them.
“This was when I first started at the station.” She poured more coffee into her mug. The caffeine went right to her brain the moment she swallowed the bitter liquid. She craved it and needed more. “I rented a one-bedroom apartment downtown. It was great, and I loved it. It was close to everything, including work, but I could barely afford it. I promised myself I would work hard and make them give me a raise so I could keep that apartment.”
“And do you still live there?” Tex asked.
“I’ve lived there ever since.”
“So you got the raise?” Ramos smiled at her, youthful and infectious.
“You bet I did. I even own a car now. But I hardly ever use it because everything I need is within a few blocks of my apartment.”
“I’ve never lived in the city,” Tex commented. “Sounds like it might be fun.”
“It has its advantages, but it’s expensive and there’s more crime than anyone would like. I used to walk home from work after dark. I never got mugged, but I think I came pretty close a few times. Then for a while I dated this guy, and he would pick me up after work and drive me home.” Rebecca laughed at the memories. They were flooding back to her as if everything she spoke of had just happened a minute ago. It must be that fever. God, it had to be pretty high by now. Well, perhaps the big meal would help. Didn’t they always say to feed a fever? Or was that the other way around?
“What was the man you dated like?”
“He was an investment banker at a large firm in the city. The other girls considered him quite the catch. The only problem with him driving me home was that when we got there he always wanted to make love.” Rebecca couldn’t imagine why she felt no inhibitions about this line of conversation, but the truth was the fever was so high she really didn’t care, and in a strange sort of way, that was a liberating feeling. “Of course I let him most nights. He was a good guy, but we never really clicked on the level I hoped we would. After a while, we just stopped seeing each other.”
“Did you feel bad when it was over?”
“No. I felt relieved. Trust me, there was no future there. Just a few nights out on the town, a ride home from work of course, and the occasional sex. Neither one of us were really feeling it by the time we split.”
“Do you miss the sex?”
Rebecca felt like blushing, but her face was already too flushed from the fever to be able to tell the difference. “I didn’t at first,” she answered honestly, no inhibition to hold back her words. “But after a while, a vibrator gets pretty boring, too.”
Tex gave a big good-natured laugh. Ramos cocked his head to one side and looked interested. Rebecca covered her face with her palms and thought she would die. Why had she allowed herself to say that?
“Forgive me, guys. I think that’s my fever talking. I’m not usually this talkative about myself, even around my girlfriends. Me is usually my least favorite subject.”
“Is that fever coming down any?” Ramos asked and placed his hand over her forehead to check for her. “You still feel warm, but I think it will pass soon.”
“You know I’m out here to do a job,” she told them, hoping to bring the conversation back to a more professional standing, although that was not very likely after dropping her guard as much as she already had.
“Was your career really worth coming all the way out here and risking so much for?” Tex was serious when he asked her this.
“I’m only doing an interview with an eccentric billionaire, Tex. It’s hardly as if my producer assigned me to be an Afghan correspondent.”
“Is that all Peter still is to you?”
“Well, I’ve gotten to know him a little better in the past couple of days. But I’ve got to tell you, the more I get to know him, the more eccentric he becomes to me.”
“Do you feel safe out here?”
“Is there some reason I shouldn’t feel safe?” She wondered why Ramos would ask her such a strange question. “You guys will protect me from any danger, right?” She was making light of it. She had never felt better in her life, except of course for that damn fever, but it wasn’t all that bad. She certainly felt safe.
The guys exchanged a glance across the table, but didn’t say anything more on the subject of her safety. “You still have room for that apple pie?” Tex asked her.
Rebecca looked down at her plate. To her surprise, she had finished every last crumb that had been set before her. Where had she found room to put it all? She had probably put on ten pounds from this one meal, and yet it was not enough for her. She still had an appetite and felt embarrassed as she nodded her acquiescence to Tex’s offer of the apple pie.
“That’s good. You need to keep your strength up,” he told her.
There were three flavors of ice cream on top of the apple pie. They tasted delicious. Rebecca drained the last of her coffee mug and discovered she had finished the entire pot. Normally this much caffeine in the middle of the day would make her jumpy, but today she was surrounded by a calm and mellow barrier against the world. There was still another glass left to be poured in the pitcher of milk, and she emptied the contents into her cup. She was hungry enough still to order seconds on the apple pie à la mode, but even in her lowered state of inhibition, she was still too self-conscious to do so with both guys staring at her around the table.
Tex lit a cigarette, handed one over to Ramos, and then took one from the package and offered it to Rebecca. She didn’t smoke and shook her head.
“One’s not going to kill you!”
What the hell, she thought and accepted it from him. He reached across the table and lit it for her. She took a timid inhalation and actually found she didn’t mind it. Since both men were smoking at the table with her, she hated to be the odd one out, so she didn’t put it out right away.
“You need a smoke after finishing that meal. That must have been as strenuous as sex.”
“More so, I think.” She took another puff and settled back against the booth and relaxed. She was enjoying the company of Tex and Ramos. Having lunch with two handsome men who seemed to be concentrating on nothing other than her was a new experience, and a welcome one. They both wore their shirts this afternoon. Thank God or she probably could not have focused on anything being said at the table. Also both of them were so polite and thoughtful, they put her instantly at ease…Or was that just the runaway fever giving her that sentiment?
“Tell me something about Peter?” she asked them. “You’ve both been with him for a couple of years. I suspect you know a lot of juicy little tidbits about him that I could use as background in my story.”
Tex let out a long stream of white smoke between his lips and looked out the window of the diner. He
looked up into the sky. She could have sworn he was looking directly up at the sun.
“I’ll tell you a story about Peter,” he began. “Actually this is a story about me. But you might find it interesting.”
Rebecca became transfixed by his words. She rested her head against Ramos’s shoulder. The younger man was peaceful and unmoving as they both listened to Tex.
“I was driving stock cars for a living. That was the best job I ever had. I was a young spitfire and had delusions of moving up to the NASCAR circuit. I was pulling down pretty decent wages for a guy my age and getting cockier with each race they put me in. I was so sure that I was going to make my first million driving those cars that I began taking out loans from a less-than-reputable establishment. The interest was set at some illegal rate that I couldn’t begin to afford, but I kept getting myself further and further in debt to those guys.”
“Why did you need so much money?”
“I had this girl. She didn’t really care about me. She just cared about how much cash I could get ahold of. She was sexy as hell, and I was a young, hot-blooded male. So one thing led to another, and I got in pretty deep with the loan shark. I finally started gambling to try and pay back my debts. When I lost, I found out I had been gambling against the same loan shark I had been taking out the loans from. Now I even owed him more money.”
“Couldn’t you have gone to the police?”
“Well, it so happened that this big shot loan shark was also the owner of the cars I had been driving. He had me by the balls. But being the stupid, punk kid that I was back then, I still kept partying with my girl, ignoring my debts, and making that loan shark real pissed off at me.”
“Somehow I don’t think I’m going to like the way this story ends.”
“Give me a chance here.” Tex held up his hands. “You’ll find the ending of interest. One night my girl and I were out parked in a field deep in the country somewhere. We laid blankets in the bed of my truck and were doing it right there under the stars. I was getting pretty good at it by that time, and I think maybe she had even started to care about me a little. I had her whimpering and begging me not to stop, and we were both having the fuck of our lives. Then out of nowhere, a tire iron hits me on the back of my head and I’m dragged out of the truck by six big bouncer type dudes employed by my loan shark friend. Two of them held me against the side of my truck and a third gave me a pretty good working over. Let’s just say I saw stars for weeks afterward. The other three slapped the girl into submission, and all six men were going to rape her right in front of me. They told me this was a penalty for missing my weekly payment to the loan shark. They told me how much I owed them the following week and suggested if I didn’t pay, I would be the one getting raped next time. That was the worst moment of my life. I was as helpless as a baby and scared…oh Jesus Christ was I ever scared…”
Rebecca turned her head away. In her weakened condition, she wasn’t able to listen to any more cruelty. She buried her head against Ramos, and that was the first time she became aware that she had been clinging to his body the entire time.
“Wait…That girl didn’t get raped that night, and neither did I.” Tex leaned across the table to tell the climax of his story. “One of the guys who held me down held up my chin so I could get a good look at what they were about to do to my girl. The first guy up to bat already had his pants down. By this time there was blood dripping down my face from my eyes and my nose, and even my ears. When I opened my mouth blood spilled out…”
“We get the point, Tex.” Rebecca couldn’t stand to hear anymore, but she was curious now as to the ending of his story.
“Sorry.” He ran a hand through his unruly hair and continued. “Out of nowhere, a man appeared. He was dressed all in black, and from the serious look on his face, I thought at first he was working with the goons. He told them to let us go. His voice was like a policeman’s. You know, just all full of authority, like no one had ever disobeyed him ever. But the goons just laughed at him and told him to get lost and mind his own business. They told him this was a business matter between them and me and he was safer if he didn’t get himself involved. That was all it took to get the man in black mad at them. He attacked them. I thought he must be crazy. I mean the odds were six to one. I don’t think he got a scratch on him, and when it was over, those six guys were beat up worse than I was. I won’t even try and describe what they looked like.”
“Peter…” Rebecca recognized at once who Tex was talking about.
“He made sure the girl got home. I never saw her again after that, and it was just as well really. She had brought me nothing but trouble. Then he came back for me. He told me I wouldn’t have to worry about the loan shark anymore, that he had absolved my debts for me. He had a place out in the country that he let me stay in while I recovered from my injuries. Of course, I knew I wasn’t ever going to drive cars again for a living. I didn’t have a penny to my name, and I didn’t have any place to stay. I asked him if I could stay on with him. He told me I could work for him if I wanted. The pay he offered me was really good, and of course I got a free place to live.”
“What did Peter want you to do for him?”
“He wanted me to protect him in the daylight when he couldn’t protect himself.”
Chapter Nine
“Didn’t we park back there?” Rebecca asked as they walked across the gravel-strewn parking lot of the roadside diner, their shoes sounding in cadence as they moved.
“We thought you could use a walk after that big lunch,” Tex told her as they made their way further down the nearly empty parking area.
A small plane came soaring overhead and touched down for a landing at the Yucca Flat airfield across the highway. Rebecca found herself relieved to see the plane and the sign of civilization it represented. It reminded her she was still walking on the face of the earth and not meandering through a dream.
“That was quite a story you had about Peter back there,” Rebecca told Tex as they walked. “Only thing is, I don’t know if I should believe you or not.”
“You can believe every word. I might exaggerate sometimes, but not about that.”
“What do you think, Ramos?” she asked the younger man.
“I believe it happened just the way he said.”
The wind blew in their faces, but for Rebecca it only stoked the fires of her fever. She knew she would start sweating again soon. She looked out at the desolation beyond the parking lot. This was certainly an inopportune place to get sick.
“I want to tell you how I met Peter,” Ramos said.
“Let me guess, someone was trying to kill you?”
“No. My experience was far different from Tex.” Ramos put his hand gently along the small of her back and led her forward. The contact felt good, and she didn’t try to move away. “Peter saved my whole family. He saved my mother and my three sisters. I love Peter for what he did for us. If I live to be one hundred, I will never be able to repay his kindness.”
“How did you meet him?”
“I met him at a hospital.”
“Were you a patient there?”
“No. He was.” A large tractor-trailer truck was pulling in off the highway, and they had to hold up and wait as it rode past them. “After I graduated high school, I passed an exam to become a certified nurse’s assistant. I got a job at a hospital. It was in a small town on the border. I was working nights in the emergency room. One night Peter checked himself in.”
The tractor-trailer drove past them, and they continued with their leisurely walk. Ramos paused for a few moments lost in thought.
“What was wrong with Peter? Why did he have to go to the emergency room?” Rebecca couldn’t keep herself from asking.
“He voluntarily admitted himself. He already knew more than the doctor on call did about what was wrong with him. He looked into the doctor’s eyes and made the doctor believe his story. He said he was suffering from a rare blood condition that required him to get an imme
diate transfusion or he would die. At first the doctor thought he was a lunatic, but Peter had him convinced in just a few minutes. I was in the room with them when the doctor spoke to Peter. The doctor ordered me to prepare the transfusion for him and assist him through the process.”
“Peter was really sick then?”
“Yes. His skin was deathly pale. When I first saw him that night, I was certain he would be dead before morning. I thought he would die on the table where we administered the transfusion. His voice was weak and his movements were slow, as if he was an old man, and not the strong young man we know today.”
“So he spent time in the hospital and you were one of his caregivers?”
“No. As soon as the blood from the transfusion started flowing in his veins, he regained his strength. By the time it was finished, he sat up from the table and ripped the needle from his arm. He left the hospital, and I thought I would never see him again. I think the doctor was about to have a heart attack himself he was so shocked at Peter’s quick recovery.”
Rebecca thought back on her nightmare from the night before. It was starting to come back to her. Something about blood supplies from the hospital and these two men and Peter. She couldn’t quite bring it all into focus. The sweat started pouring down her face.
