Daytona
He opened the car door and told me to get in, quick
it was pouring rain so I wasn’t thinking. I can’t say I came from a small town
where everyone knows each other and it’s no big deal to jump into someone’s car
I came from a city on the beach where people just stopped
and offered you a ride when the weather was shitty
because things were just that way there. I didn’t think
when I jumped into the car with the greasy man with the mullet
didn’t think anything weird when he seemed surprised that I actually was
standing on the corner waiting for a bus in the pouring rain
As the conversation started to turn, I mentioned having a baby
a family, a husband waiting for me at home, somehow
that seemed to turn the greasy guy on even more. I kept him driving as close to my house
as I could get, because now that I’d missed my bus
I wasn’t going to backtrack the half-mile in the rain just to get back to where I’d started.
“How much do you charge to touch?” he finally blurted out
interrupted my menial conversation on my shitty day at work
how degrading temp work could be. “Just with your hand, nothing else?”
“I don’t think my husband would appreciate that,” I said
making my voice calm, I wasn’t going to freak out, he was muscular and hairy
he was so much bigger than me.
“How much would you charge just to watch?” he asked,
then sighed, pulled over, said, “Maybe you should just get out here.”
It was about a mile from my house
it was still raining
but I got out and walked just the same.
*
Holly Day’s writing has recently appeared in Analog SF, Earth’s Daughters, and Appalachian Journal, and her recent book publications include Music Composition for Dummies, The Tooth is the Largest Organ in the Human Body, and Bound in Ice. She teaches creative writing at The Loft Literary Center in Minneapolis and Hugo House in Seattle.
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