Danny is white knuckling the steering wheel when he first sees her, a fleeting flash of blue as his headlights catch the oversized poncho draped over her small frame. She's walking along the shoulder in the middle of the night like she doesn't have a care in the world, like it's not past midnight in the middle of the Arizona desert.
His fingers momentarily unclench the steering wheel and find the knob to the radio, turning up the volume to drown out the voice in his head, that voice that tells him to stop and turn around, to offer her a ride. But the radio is against him, just like everything else in his life, blaring out Neil Young's uniquely nasal voice. When I was a hitchhiker on the road, I had to count on you.
"Are you kidding me?"
His foot finds the brake, and he skids to a stop, tires almost spinning out on the gravel beside the road as he turns around. None of this would be happening if he'd just stayed on the interstate, but the eighteen-wheelers passing him and the mini-vans full of glaring families had begun to make him sweat. When a dump truck darted in front of him, barely squeezing into a tiny gap between Danny's sedan and a motorcycle, his life had flashed before his eyes and he'd found the nearest exit.
Now he's driving in the wrong direction, away from California and a dad he hasn't seen in more than twenty years. And for what? To pick up some clearly deranged hitchhiker? Danny has some doubts about whether or not he'll be murdered in the next twenty minutes, but his conscience won't let him leave a woman alone on the road.
Her figure appears sooner than he expects, head down like she's carefully watching each step instead of the asphalt ahead. She's lucky it's a full moon, or she'd be wandering around blindly. Hell, she's lucky Danny isn't a serial killer looking for his next mark. The thought has him grinding his teeth at her stupidity as he slows down, doing his second illegal u-turn in less than ten minutes.
He slows as he approaches her, flashing his lights before driving ahead to stop, and then he waits, rolling his window down an inch and making sure the doors are locked. As expected, she walks right up to him, tapping her index finger on the window.
He can't really see her that well, and he stifles the urge to ask her to stand in front of his headlights, because that would just be too weird. Instead he squints through the crack in the window. "What are you doing?"
The question comes out all wrong. It's gruff and clipped at the end, no upswing in pitch. It's a question that sounds like a statement.
She seems not to notice, dreamily answering. "Moonbathing." Her shoulder drops down as she leans closer to the car, her lips inches away from the window gap. "What are you doing?"
She doesn't sound miffed, or even sarcastic really, just genuinely curious, and Danny finds himself rolling down the window a bit more to get a look at her.
Her skin is dark, a faint sheen of sweat or maybe lotion reflects the moonlight. The poncho draped over her shoulders looks like one of the dozens he's seen in the gas stations he's stopped at along the road. The breeze catches her long dark hair and sets it to fluttering, and he's struck by the inexplicable impulse to reach out and catch the silken strands.
"I'm picking up an idiot hitchhiker... apparently." The last word comes out in a mumble, more to himself than to her. He jerks his head slightly to the right to indicate that she should get in the car.
She smiles at this, adjusting the bag on her shoulder as she walks around the vehicle, inadvertently giving him the satisfaction of observing her as she passes through his high beams. He can see that she's really embracing this "American southwest" look: a patterned headband holding her hair in place, leather cuffs at her wrists, half a dozen strands of beads looped around her neck. She looks like she just got back from Coachella. All that's missing is a giant flower tucked behind her ear. Danny is already beginning to regret coming back for her.
He presses the unlock button, swallowing hard at the synchronized sound of all four doors unlocking. He's waiting for something, and he can't quite put a finger on what he thinks is going to happen, but it feels big.
Sliding into the passenger seat, she slams the door a little too hard, apologizing half heartedly before reaching for the seatbelt. The car is already back out on the road before she clicks the metal tongue into place.
"Thanks, man. I was starting to get a blister, and I think wailing in pain attracts coyotes."
Danny ignores her, concentrating on the double yellow line in front of him. It's difficult. The floral scent of whatever perfume she's wearing infiltrates his sinuses and makes his head swim. It's not what he expected, having prepared himself for the stench of someone who hadn't had a bath in days, someone who had been hitchhiking in the Arizona heat.
The silence begins to get to him, air thick in the car like an invisible fog. It's strange, because he's normally very good at silence, not someone needs to fill the air with pointless chatter, but he can feel her vibrating next to him like the taut strings of a guitar just waiting to be strummed.
Danny blows out an irritated huff and gives in. "Hitchhiking is illegal, you know."
He's itching for an argument, possibly something to dampen the inexplicable joy he can feel radiating from her. It's making him uncomfortable. She merely shrugs at his statement. "Aren't laws weird though? I mean, when you think about it, they're just words. Words that someone has arbitrarily decided to assign higher value to. Did you know it's illegal for women to wear pants in Tucson?"
Danny blinks. She's taken his statement so far away from where it began that he almost forgets what he was getting at. "Are you stoned?"
The laugh that rings out in the enclosed space is musical. "Not at the moment, but…"
It's something he's suspected since she entered the car, a hint of a familiar sweet smelling aroma underneath the maddening scent of flowers. He feels a sheen of sweat pop up on his brow. Things of an illegal nature always make him uncomfortable. Marijuana in particular doesn't fit into his preferred black and white view of the world, the status changing from state to state. He can't recall what the laws in Arizona are. She's digging around in the bag on her lap now, and he wishes he'd never asked.
She can see him fidgeting in her periphery, and she casts him another amused grin. "Oh my god, you're so uptight. It's not like I killed someone." One of her eyebrows arches upward as she stares at him. He's bathed in the glow of the dashboard, lights from the radio casting a greenish aura over him, his face gleaming with perspiration. "You know, I think I have some indica in here… very mellowing."
Smiling, she fishes out an old Crown Royal bag, the purple velvet and gold rope drawstring look softly worn from many washes. The dusty smell of old incense and something more telling wafts up to him. He tenses up, the muscles in his shoulders bunching as he grasps the steering wheel.
"Look lady-"
She interrupts him. "It's Mindy, and you?"
He loses his train of thought, her name kicking around in the empty space between his ears. Clearing his throat, he says, "Danny."
She frowns, for the first time since he's picked her up, and it surprises him. "I don't picture you as a Danny. You're more of a… Salvatore… or…. Giuseppe... very italianate features."
"What?"
"Just a guess, but.. New York accent, dark hair, dark eyes, regal nose, small stature-"
"I'm of perfectly average stature, thank you very much." She rolls her eyes at him, a juvenile action that makes Danny's stomach do a little dance. It's the strangest thing, and he drags his eyes away from her to focus on the road again. "As I was saying… I'm not putting that poison in my body."
"Whatever. Didn't mean to peer-pressure you, Danny, relax."
He snorts out his derision, slapping the steering wheel in disbelief. "Peers? Ha, right. We're not peers, Mindy."
"Oh really?"
"Yes, really. I'm not some hitchhiking hippie, intent on getting kidnapped, pushing away the reality of my pathetic life with drugs. I'm a rich, successful doctor in New York City. I don't need your help, or anyone else's."
She's taken aback by the acid in his response, smile fading away. Pushing away the instinct to hurl it right back at him, she blinks and really looks at him. He's still gripping the steering wheel like it's a chicken's neck he's intent on wringing, and his shoulders are bunched up, muscles undoubtedly knotted. Sighing, she lets her better nature win out.
"That's strange, because you seem like you're five seconds away from having a nervous breakdown." She points at the sweat stains blooming out beneath his armpits. "You've been trying to strangle the steering wheel since I got in, and I don't think I'm the sole cause for your anxiety."
"I don't have anxiety."
"Mmm hmm, sure." She looks away from him, letting her head fall back against the seat. "Can't rich doctors afford plane tickets to wherever they need to go?"
Danny deflates, feeling caught out. "I, uh… don't like flying."
Maybe it is anxiety, in this particular instance anyway. He doesn't know how to explain the bottomless feeling in his stomach during takeoff, the gut wrenching nausea whenever there's turbulence, which always seems to happen. He hasn't worked so hard to get where he is just to die in a fiery explosion over a cornfield somewhere in the midwest.
"Where are you going anyway?" Her chirpy question interrupts his macabre imaginings.
"Los Angeles."
"For?"
"Why are you so nosy?"
"A man has to have a pretty good reason for driving three thousand miles across the country."
"A man does."