“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.