The pickup basketball game at the dorm ran late and I had to get out to the polo field lickety-split or I'd miss the start of practice. So, I stripped off my T and used it to dry off my chest and pits, tossed it in the backseat of the trusty vintage T-Bird convertible, and roared off toward the mountains, toward the practice field at the Moss Grove winery in the foothills of the Smokies. My gym bag with my jodhpurs, practice jersey, and riding boots was in the front seat beside me; I'd have to change when I got out to the winery. That would mean letting the winery owner, Chet, get an eyeful. But as I'd fucked him the previous weekend, we were beyond modesty in that realm.
The old T-Bird didn't prove to be that trusty that afternoon, though. Miles out of the university town, where Prussian Road had narrowed down to barely two lanes of broken asphalt, the convertible's engine sputtered and died just as I managed to get it far enough to the right for a car to pass me. I'd been too smart for my own good. I hadn't taken the most-frequented road between town and the winery; I'd taken a little-used road I thought would be a shortcut. The ruts in this old road might have been what the T-Bird couldn't handle. I'd probably knocked something important loose.
Great. I was out here, half naked—in just my jock strap and gym shorts—and with barely enough money in the wallet to pay for dinner, let alone a tow. But I did have my cell phone, and, rummaging through my wallet, I was reminded that Dear Old Dad had signed me up for AAA road service coverage before I left home for the spring university session. So I was saved. Or so I thought.
I rang the number on the AAA card and told them I needed a tow back to Peyton and then I rang the winery and asked Chet to tell the team that they would be one less for practice this afternoon because I was having car trouble. Chet seemed very disappointed, but I promised to see him and do him again in the coming weekend, so he rang off happy enough.
An hour later, I heard the chugging of a heavy-duty engine, and a pretty formidable-looking wrecker with a car flatbed rolled up beside me. The truck was a shiny black and it had red and yellow flames painted on the side with "Almost Heaven" written in blue inside the flames.
A rangy, swarthy, dark-headed, oily-haired guy who I outweighed by about 50 pounds but who looked like solid, ropy muscle and mean business, poked his head and a heavily tattooed arm out of the truck cab window and mumbled through clinched lips, trying to hold a cigarette and conversation at the same time, "You the guy lookin' for a tow?"
Well, duh, I thought. How many other guys would there be out here on the side of the road looking for a tow? Typical lower class mindless banter. But, of course, my immediate future was in his hands—a thought I was soon going to think harder about—so I answered, not altogether without irony, "Yes, that's right. You the AAA tow guy?"
"That would be me," he answered with a big grin and with no indication he had caught onto my little joke. "Well, let's see what we've got here, then. Great ride. Ya don't see too many of these around anymore. Must have set you—or your papa—back a bundle."
I could discern the start of a class war in his voice, but, again, this was his show now, so I held my tongue.
"Yes. It's a '56 T-Bird. I've worked on it a lot. but not quite enough, I guess."
He quickly and efficiently got the T-Bird on the wrecker's platform and lashed it in place. He moved real well. He wasn't fat but not what you'd call thin either, and he'd lifted a lot of weight—probably honestly, through his job, rather than at the gym. Probably another class distinction he could needle me about. He'd stripped off his T to do his work and the tattooing extended all over his torso—in black and blue and green and a faded red. Some sort of Oriental design with a fancy water pattern that moved like the ocean as he worked his muscles. Ships dancing on an ocean. It was a design I found mesmerizing, but he probably had no artistic investment in it. It seemed to be much too sophisticated for him.
When the platform had been raised and T-Bird secured, he hit me with the kicker.
"A tow to Peyton's gonna cost you a hundred bucks. Up front."
I didn't have any hundred bucks on me, beyond the fact that this was an outrageous sum.
"I called AAA," I said, somewhat indignantly. "The tow isn't supposed to go over $25."
"That's just the fact of the tow," he responded with a lazy grin. "It's not including the cost of mileage. This ain't exactly downtown civilization out here. Besides, do you even have the $25?"
He leaned languidly back on the bumped out wheel well, taking a pose—a pose that didn't look half bad—below my cream-colored T-Bird, now being held prisoner on his flatbed.
"Do you take American Express?" I asked, holding my wallet open so he could see that just about all I had, really, was plastic.
He just snorted at me, tossed his spent cigarette aside, dug into the back pocket of his tight, faded, low-slung jeans, and pulled out a crushed pack. He slowly lit up a cigarette with a lighter that had been stashed in the pack, and just leaned back and looked me up and down with that silly half-smile of his. I felt like he was doing more than just looking at me, and I was feeling pretty naked now.
Then he pushed the cigarette pack back in his pocket and dug into a side pocket.
"Of course there are ways of paying and there are ways of paying," he said in a slow drawl that sounded almost like a low growl.
"What does that mean?" I asked. He had my attention now.
He opened his hand and revealed a handful of condom packets. "Well, you could always work it off. Say $25 a used rubber?"
