A Stranger in This World by Kevin Canty Read Free Book Online Page A

fat and regal, fumbling a Merit out of the crumpled pack on the dash. The inside of his car is like an ashtray with chairs.
OVER THE RIVER AND THROUGH THE WOODS
    Tina eases the Monte Carlo into reverse and the cars uncouple. The metal of the bumpers grinds and squeals but Bobby’s Volvo doesn’t look any worse than before, really, and Lyle’s car seems to be running fine, though one of the headlights is pointed up into the night. As they idle out of town with Bobby following, the crazy headlight hits the sensors on the streetlight poles and they all switch off, so that a curtain of darkness follows behind them.
    “About four miles out, straight down this road,” Lyle says. “I’ll show you before the turn. What’d you do there?” He aims his cigarette at her forearms in their braces.
    “It’s a work thing,” Tina says. “Repetitive motion disorder.”
    (Between the big, important parts of the machine are wear zones, parts designed to absorb the vibration or the pounding of the engines. Without these cheap, replaceable parts, the big machines would have to take the punishment themselves. They would rattle themselves to bits. This is just the waythings work, Tina knows, though it’s strange to feel worn-out at twenty-four.)
    “I thought it was something kinky,” Lyle says, blinking at her bound wrists. “You look like you’re capable of it.”
    Tina stiffens her grip on the wheel, startled out of her self-pity into a strange present.
    “I mean that as a compliment,” Lyle says.
    The night is running by outside the windows of the car, beach pines and surprised-looking oaks in the glare of the crazy headlight. The yellow centerline runs under the car like Morse code: W-e h-a-v-e a m-e-s-s-a-g-e f-o-r T-i-n-a, W-e h-a-v-e a m-e-s-s-a-g-e f-o-r T-i-n-a, W-e h-a-v-e a m-e-s-s-a-g-e f-o-r T-i-n-a … 
Take me away
, she replies,
get me out of here
. Bobby’s Volvo seems like an island of safety, bobbing down the broken road behind them, connected by nothing more solid than the beams of his headlights. She longs to sit beside him on the taped-up seat. She imagines herself driving home at four in the morning while he sleeps beside her. The smell of the sea is all around them, soft muck of the tideflats and the stench of rotting clams.
    Lyle leans toward her and traces a line with his finger from the base of her throat, between her breasts and down the center of her belly, stopping below her navel, letting his hand rest there. At first this seems unreal. She can’t quite bring herself to reaction, and then it comes to her: that is his hand, this is my body.
    “Get the fuck off me,” Tina says.
    Lyle complies, in no particular hurry. “I didn’t think you’d mind,” he says.
    “Do you want me to stop the car?” She sounds like a substitute teacher, even to her own ears.
    “Suit yourself,” Lyle says, “but I don’t think your boyfriend would be too happy about that, do you? We’re talking about three hundred dollars here, three hundred dollars of my money.”
    He reaches for a cigarette but the pack is empty. When he opens the glove compartment for a fresh pack, Tina sees (or thinks she sees, in the dim light of the glove-box bulb, in the corner of her eye, in the moment before he slams the compartment shut again) a thing that scares her dry-mouthed and upright, a bright blue electrical surge.
    “He is your boyfriend, isn’t he?” Lyle asks, fumbling with the cellophane. “Reason I ask is, he looks like a faggot, sort of.”
    “Just shut up, OK?”
    “I’m just making conversation, to pass the time. I don’t mean anything by it, you know, I don’t have anything against faggots even. I just like to know where I stand.”
    “Please,” Tina says, and she hears herself begging, and she knows he hears it, too. “Please, just for a minute, don’t talk.”
    She can still feel, as if it were drawn in red paint or in blood, the line his finger traced down the center of her body.
    She can still see,