“They’re muscle r’laxers, ‘plenny legit,” the hitchhiker answers the unasked question. “Want one?”

The hitchhiker doesn’t wait for an answer, which isn’t coming anyway, before popping two into his mouth and chasing it with a swig of beer from a spare bottle. He slides the last one back into his pocket, along with a tangle of gold necklace that fell out in the process. It looks like the hitchhiker couldn’t leave such an abode as opulent as Miss Meriwether’s without claiming a few keepsakes. The driver doesn’t notice. He’s concentrating hard on something ahead, but not necessarily in his field of vision. He waits a long while before breaking the silence that had settled over them once again. It’s not that he wishes to know more of the hitchhiker’s deplorable hijinks. It’s just that the buzzing……hhhhhhhrrnnnnnnzzzzzzzz…………….it’s growing louder, and closer, yet coming from nowhere.

He manages to force out, “She’d been drinkin’ too?” The driver may not be able to recognize muscle relaxers when they’re melting in a sweaty palm, but he knows plenty about drinking, and when it can become lethal. His first introduction to drinking was through his father and his father’s friends, a good number of whom had gone blind or become paralyzed from a bad batch of bootleg.

“Aha. There in-lies our problem.”

The way the hitchhiker gleefully draws out “our” tells the driver that his albatross of a passenger actually considers himself free from fault. The driver grits his lips against his front teeth. Staying awake is going to mean suffering through more of the hitchhiker’s excruciating bullshit.

“Funny how ya can take one perfectly legal enjoyment, let’s say run-a-the-mill, doc-ordered muscle relaxer, and mix it wi’another wholesome pursuit: our true American pass-time, drinkin. Who’da thought the result could be so disas-ter-ous? I ask ya, who?”

Words like “funny” and “who’da thought”, innocently runoff by the hitchhiker, cannot mask the ill intention that lights a particularly malicious fire beneath his particular recounting. He either killed or nearly killed a woman back at that party. She may have been disgustingly wealthy and self-absorbed, like everybody else in that humongous house, but it seems awfully presumptuous –maybe just as conceited- of the hitchhiker to play judge and executioner. In this moment, the driver knows the hitchhiker has killed before. He doesn’t sense it, so much as sees it: a flash of Paula, lying there, the blood rushing from her body, a man walking away not-too-fast. He recalls the way the hitchhiker had first moseyed up to the pickup, as if there were nothing at all strange about flagging down a ride by jumping out in front of it.

“J’ya catch a name?”

“Lilith some-thin r’other. I dunno. We were busy gettin ta other things.”

Suddenly, the driver is reluctant to continue the conversation that gave him such a warm sense of complicity just seconds ago. It’s not because he’s afraid of what the hitchhiker might say. He has nothing to counter with, no exploit of how he managed to seduce an unsuspecting starlet. The thought of Heather, those lips gushing over that slime-ball, Tilly, and his glamorized criminality, is enough to make the driver wish for the return of silence and the continuation of the sourceless drone that had been busy digging into his skull.

“S’at what got ya n’trouble?”

“Not s’actly.” The hitchhiker says this with a smirk. The driver could tell he had been waiting for this moment, and he doesn’t even have to turn to the hitchhiker to see him gloating. He can feel the radiance of the victor pouring off him. The air inside the car is hot and noxious with it, as if an exhaust pipe has just burst.

“It was these, to be precise.”

The hitchhiker makes a show of slipping his hand down his front pocket. It returns with three powdery white pills. The driver can’t begin to imagine what they are. The hitchhiker picks up on the driver’s perplexity, though the latter has done a fine job of hiding it, and is eager to let him in on the secret. He continues to wait for the driver to take a questioning glance in his direction, maybe shoot the pills a quizzical look. The driver does not relent. He continues to stare ahead, dousing the windshield with a look made stern with exhaustion. It’s the hitchhiker’s turn to give in.

Hmmmmmmmmmmzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

He has to find a way to speak, to get the energy from some hidden reserve, or else he will go deaf from the delirious buzzing.

“Well, you wanna tell me hw’appened back there, g’zactly. I mean, if yer gonna be gettin my sideviews blown off n’all…”

The hitchhiker snots. It’s a wet raspberry between tightened lips. He tries to hold back laughter but it comes out as a quaking fit.

“Ghaaahaaahaha.”

“Was’so funny?” The driver can’t be that annoyed, now that he’s gotten the hitchhiker to respond.

“The girl.”

“H’wat? Wha’girl?”

“I dunno. The one back there, at th’party.”

“H’yeah, thir were lotsa girls. Red’eads, brunettes, pritty ones, reeeeeal pritty ones…”

“Jeez. I guess it was a darkish blond, wi’a lil bit a red thrown in…”

“Ha, ha. Well that clears it up nice.” The driver sinks back and turns quickly to glance at the hitchhiker. He wants to take in this rare moment of brotherly jibing, without appearing to enjoy it too much. His tiredness has retreated for now.

“W’she one a tha lookers?”

“Sure, sure. Famous n’all that.”

Little Creek, Arizona

Whatever adrenaline the driver has been running on, it has congealed into a heavy sludge, making his arms and eyelids too heavy to support for much longer. In all their excitement -a high coming on as fast as a ’41 Chevrolet half-ton pickup will go- the driver and the hitchhiker hadn’t exchanged a single word. The passing of the enormous bottle, back and forth, substituted for conversation; until it was emptied once they rejoined the paved highway running the northeast corner of Nevada. Then, the bottle met with a quick, but appropriately musical, smash against a roadside boulder as the pickup sailed past.

The driver isn’t curious as to exactly what was at the root of the commotion, undoubtedly provoked by the hitchhiker, back at Indian Hill. If he imagines the worst, he would probably not be too far off.

The driver’s body begins to drain, and he feels that unless he can somehow revive the rush that came with such a narrow escape –it had previously turned his body into a molten flow of alertness- he’s going to stop the car and not be able to start if for a really long time. The exhaustion of the past day –day and a half, counting the double-shift on the ranch two nights prior- threatens to derail his whole plan.

“Michigan, killer, killed her, kill her….” The driver looks at the hitchhiker, who is wired. Soaked in perspiration, there are rivers of sweat finding their way down the passenger’s forehead and neck.

“You ok, buddy?”

The hitchhiker’s eyes, wide in their sockets, are almost big enough to reflect the entirety of the early morning gloom before them. He says nothing.

“So where’ma takin’ you enways?”

The hitchhiker stares straight ahead, eyes enormous but unfocused. An electric hum seems to take over the car. It either emanates from the electric current pulsing though the hitchhiker’s sweat glands, and causing them to go wild, or it’s the drone of exhaustion spinning itself out behind the driver’s eyes. His vision dims, the hum grows louder. The driver’s head lurches forward.

Made an accomplice by proximity for the second time in one night, the driver has to wonder if there is any other way to exit a place with this guy other than with an angry mob at their heels. This time, it is for a transgression that isn’t readily apparent –the hitchhiker stormed out from the house with only one of those giant Champagne bottles, not an armful of money- but obviously warrants their blood all the same. This time, the driver can’t help but hope that the hitchhiker’s affront was really good; meaning something from which these beautiful, rich faces always believed themselves to be protected.

The hitchhiker has an elated though frantic look; not just on his face, but it’s also in the way he gives a full leg up to every hedge and rock on their climb to the front of the house -or its winding driveway, to be exact. He wields the outsized Champagne bottle with surprising grace, like a runner in a baton relay. A fountain of foam adorns their trail.

The uphill climb is brutal, as they ascend at a diagonal in order to skirt the perimeter of the house. The first dazzle of a polished windshield appears and tells them that they have reached the front drive. Angry shouts meet them from on high. The pickup is already in view by the first intelligible words, or screams, escape from the crowd.

“Get them! They tried to kill her! They tried to poison our sweet Lilly!”

There is no fumbling of keys, just the smooth belch of ignition. It briefly blocks out the rising cries for vengeance.

The pickup is facing an unfortunate angle, half-turned off the driveway. The front tire peers over a ditch and there are a number of low shrubs blocking the way. The driver releases the brake and gravity does the rest. They are jostled over every furrow and upturned root on the way down to the main road below. The various parts of the pickup rattle against each other, and it feels as if each will go its separate way on the next bump.

The outrage of the crowd gathered high atop the hill is overcome by a screeching fury, kicked up by the rear tires of the pickup as they leave behind the muddy driveway. The battered vehicle is on its way, doing the top speed the unpaved path will allow. There comes a crack of thunder. The only indication that the two have become a target, that the sudden explosion of shrapnel and glass was meant for them, is that the side mirror of the pickup snaps away in a few shards: gunshot.

The pickup finds, or lurches into, the main road and continues in the same direction that had originally brought them out to Indian Hill, away from Las Vegas. The horizon is overlaid with the night just turning purple: the promise of daybreak, still a good hour off.

Water continues to rush over the numerous outdoor tiers, staggered and stacked one atop another. Its uninterrupted flow through the massive formations of carved stone at the very bottom makes any other activity seem frivolous. The calls from inside the house are washed over by the gush of waterfalls, until they sound like the static-filled fragments of a radio serial. The driver imagines the party’s guests gathered around a shiny Motorola cabinet, idly taking in the broadcast as it unfolds through large, over-heated vacuum tubes. A figure comes lurching through the entryway, bottle in hand, and the driver’s daydream is irretrievably broken.

He doesn’t have to wait for the face to come into the light to know it is the hitchhiker. There is nowhere to go except off to the side, over the railing, and into an enormous shrub. The spines running along the edge of its thick leaves makes it seem none-too-comfortable, while its broomstick-thin branches speak doubts as to its sturdiness.

The driver doesn’t have time to weigh his options, whatever they may be. The hitchhiker has spotted the driver and yelled out for him to follow. The driver needs no better an example of the point where bravery and stupidity become two names for the same act, than to watch the hitchhiker dive over the railing and into the bush, without so much as a peek at what might be waiting below.

The driver is less daring, but doesn’t wait for the crowd to catch up before leaping from the platform and into the waiting arms of the giant hemlock. Behind him grows the angry baritone of Tilly and the excited “oooohs” of Heather, or any other of the interchangeable beauties adorning the party.

Tilly peers down to where the base of the shrub meets the hillside in shadow. The hitchhiker and the driver hit the dirt and roll. Tilly won’t take the plunge and risk ruining his custom-made suit. The two escapees have a few seconds jump on the mob gathered at the rear veranda, peering over its balcony into the dark hillside below, before it rematerializes at the front of the house.

“He split bout forty mints ago…”

“What the hell you sayin, ‘he split’?! You mean he took off?”

“Ah’dn know. Ah’ven seen ‘im. V’been out here…” -“..wi’da purty lady,” his exaggerated accent almost veered off into saying.

Tilly takes a good long look at Heather, up and down. She’s been lost in total submission, mesmerized by the way his brow collects fiercely over his eyes; even the way the spit pools at the clef in the middle of his large, purple bottom lip.

He wants to growl “watch you lookin at?” but can only come up with a low, “hmmmph. I’m gonna find that cheatin mothafucka and he’s gonna pay me my money.”

Tilly threatens the driver with a sharp finger to his sternum. The driver doesn’t flinch. He also doesn’t care what happens to either the hitchhiker or this goon. Let one waste of human life worry about another, he thinks satisfactorily to himself. The driver doesn’t bother to glance at Heather before turning towards the entrance leading back inside. He manages two steps through the open glass doors when the night erupts in a deathly, high-pitched scream. The sound immediately brings to mind a wild animal. Perhaps it has snuck into the house and attacked a guest.

The driver cannot see specific figures, but can sense that there is a great commotion inside. He hesitates to come any closer, knowing that the hitchhiker –his de facto companion- and not a stray desert creature is probably the cause for such a deathly shriek.

Sure enough, voices –those of several authoritative men and the gasps of one breathless woman- follow upon the waves of turmoil. They float through the veranda doors much like the light chatter moments before. It’s strange how the calm of the night manages to deaden their urgency. Clips of “oh my God, she’s not breathing” and “where is dat sonnofabitch”, the latter in a more familiar black patois, are neutralized by the desert stillness.

“Tell me, was it hard, y’know, for a guy like you, to get set up in Tilly’s crowd?” She smiles into his eyes, and takes his momentary confusion for modesty.

The driver sputters, “I…well…um…”, while his interior loop is incredulous and spiraling, like a film strip spun of its reel. “How can this overpaid, over-hyped pinup mistake me for one of ‘em scummbags, these asslickers of that jambo cocksucker….”

His mind is all over the place. The driver thinks back to his amazement when neither he, nor the hitchhiker, nor even their black teenage guide, were given a second look as they strolled through the party undisturbed. “I can’t believe ‘em rich assholes actually fear, r’worse yet, actually r’spect, this so-called Tilly an’ his measly band a garillas. An ta think, this ‘ere Heather tart was gearin up ta jump me right here an now ‘cause of it….”

To the driver, that is as worse an indictment of Hollywood as any he could have derived from off the top of his head. His mouth wants to spit out the delicious odor from that cigarette. He wants to find the hitchhiker -or better still, not find him- and get the hell out of there. The driver should be chiding himself for how long he has allowed himself to stray into this party: no more than a horrid instance of fame’s celebration of nothing but itself.

The driver is gathering his disgust and turning it into momentum, so that he can storm off and leave all of this behind him for good, when Tilly rushes him, forcing his back against the railing.

“Where is that shittin’ cracka friend a yours?”

The driver answers with a take-no-shit stare.

“I aint playin with you honkey. You betta start talkin.”

Heather, standing next to them, puts her delicate hands to her mouth to feign fright, but inside she is lit with something else entirely. Tilly, confronting what she believes to be one of his own guys, has unleashed the greenhouse thermostat upon her poor, sensitive, tiny flower down below. It is aglow with moisture, but the pressure growing against the walls of its stamen is too great. If the two men -Tilly and his supposed henchman- end up coming to blows, she knows the thrill will be too much for her and her soft underbrush, aflame with desire, and she will have to run off. She also knows she won’t be able to, and is afraid of what will happen then.

There’s a tone in the woman’s voice, where everything she says is not a definitive statement, but an invitation to participate. How badly the driver wants to participate. He doesn’t know what’s stopping him.

Rather he does, but he can’t feel it. He knows it’s there –his heart palpitates the letters, P-A-U…- but it might as well not. That’s how alone he feels with this woman. Not even his insides feel like companions, just electrical conductors. Here stands the driver, helpless, but also blissfully given over to this, his inadequacy before pure, distilled beauty. The driver stands alone with a Name, but she hasn’t said -or at least he didn’t catch- which Name.

“I’m Heather.”

She produces a delicate bird of a hand and it flutters between three or four of the driver’s fingers before flying off. He is so afraid of breaking it, of shattering its neat, symmetrical bones, that he hardly dares to grasp; just a little bit of pressure to say…he can’t think of what to say.

She throws off a first name, like he’s being introduced to the wife of a guy from the ranch. “Oh hiya, Heth. Jim sure has told me lots bout ya.” Not likely. Even the driver has heard of Heather Sinclair, though he wouldn’t have been able to pick her out from a lineup among other svelte brunette starlets. The driver hates Hollywood; and he’s only ever gotten as close as that descent from the starlit hills over Los Angeles, however many months ago.

Now he stands face to face with it, or at least one of its most defining faces of the past twenty years. Heather is looking at him expectantly. A slight breath escapes from her lips. The driver searches for words. A noncommittal “Yeahr,” is all he can come up with. It’s not even an interested, tell-me-more-about-it ‘yeah?’; just a plain old ya-got-that-right kind of ‘yeah’. It makes Heather smile all the same and a delicate talon of tanned fingers lands on his arm.