It was raining and chilly.
He pulled the tinny rental car off the highway into a rest stop for a break and a stretch, checking his suit hanging in the back window and thinking about the gun case in the trunk. Reflexively he picked up the gaudy throwaway phone on the passenger seat and looked at the screen. There was, of course, nothing.
He'd lost his company phone. He'd had to stop in the middle of nowhere at a truck stop and buy a cheap prepaid unit. It pissed him off. The loss of control, the loss of what he considered his privacy and private numbers unnerved and angered him.
The rest stop was deserted. He got out and walked to the trunk, dug through his bags, and pulled out the black, chunky automatic pistol in it's holster and clipped it onto his belt. He looked through his wallet and checked his permit, then closed the trunk and looked around. He stood under a mercury light and regarded an empty parking lot.
The gun made him feel powerful, and he stood straight up, turning in a full circle, then walked away from the tin can car and toward the state building. He wandered randomly, almost dancing in the parking lot, then crossing the blacktop and approaching the low brick structure. He swept his coat aside in a self-conscious dramatic way and put his hand on the black pistol, and entered, almost pretending something important could happen. He opened the entry door and made a show of going in, knowing no-one was watching, then making a show of relaxing and shuffling through the building, taking his time, looking at the vending machines and tourist brochures.
He strolled into the bathroom, then decided to put on a show. He backed out, tiptoeing, then grabbed the gun and stormed into the bathroom, like a cop, the cop he'd never be. There was a reflection in the hardened mirrors over the sinks, and he pointed the gun at his own image, smirking, feeling powerful and dramatic.
Then he holstered the gun and took a piss. After that, he wandered the building, half-assedly patrolling, watching, turning corners and furtively searching the interior.
When he felt bored he went outside and looked at the boxes of free papers. In a fit of cynicism he picked out the 'adult services' paper out of a nondescript metal cube. When he got back to the tin can of a rental he opened up the paper and made a half-hearted attempt to get it up. He went so far as to pluck his cock out his pants and look over the salacious pictures of trashy women, reproduced in bad black and white pixelation. Then he got angry and threw the paper out the window, at the same time slamming the car into gear and racing out of the lot.
The gun was still clipped to his belt.
About an hour later, in a rainy dusk, ugly lights glowed in the mist, and he saw what had to be the semblance of suburban civilization. He pulled off again, thinking of getting a hotel. Directly off the exit ramp he passed a dirty-looking, low building, a half burned out sign announcing 'Low Weekly Rates' and "Color TV.' On another savage whim he whipped around through the lanes, did a U-turn, and drove into the lot.
He got a room from an nondescript man behind bullet-resistant glass. They didn't lie: it was cheap. He didn't bother moving the car, instead walking to the room through a puddle-strewn parking lot, sticking the key in and glancing at the interior. It was crummy, dirty, and dark, and it smelled like bleach and Lysol. He slammed the door and walked back to the car.
On the road, he passed a series of signs announcing a large hospital center in the area; likely the employer of the place and the reason for all the lame glitz. He continued on, passing dumb chain things, some he recognized, some more regional and unfamiliar. He got stopped at a light, and on the right side was a workout center with large glass windows. He could see women on treadmills, and lazily, he studied a few of them, watching youthful bodies, taut and tight. The light changed and he moved on.
He went to casting around for somewhere to go, maybe walk around, maybe sit and look out over the dreary 'burb-scape. The places he went in his many travels were all the same: shiny, contrived signs, newish, nearly identical cars, blacktop and cultivated shrubbery.
He had a sudden urge to just turn around and floor it on the manicured, four lane 'business loop' in another nondescript corner of America and head for the hills and open country, away from the strip malls and chain restaurants, the extended-stay hotels and corrupt business-dinner steak joints. There had to be a wildness on the other side of all the artifice. He pushed down on the gas pedal, speeding up, then sighed deeply and stopped at a suspended light array.
When the light changed he drove into the lot of a chain coffee shop. He could suck it up and live with his middle class existence of credit reports, car repairs, tax dodges and golf games, diets and furniture shopping. Everything in his life was designed to steal his manhood, and he cursed under his breath.
He said, in the confines of his plastic, subdued-colored rolling prison, "It's what I am." He fingered the gun, then let it go.
He sat in the car after he turned it off, watching his breath on the glass. When the car started really fogging up he got out, put on the suit coat. and walked slowly in the chilly drizzle, in no real rush to get into yet more falsehood. His suit collected a coating of tiny droplets beading up on the tight wool weave, and he stopped momentarily, looking at his distorted reflection in a puddle. He stepped deliberately into the very center of the water-filled depression, eliminating his own image, and headed for the entrance.
He was halfway across the parking lot when a peach-colored car skidded in front of him, coming dangerously close, and rocked into a handicapped space. A woman bounced out and strode to the door, weirdly holding a magazine over her hair. She was blonde, young, and even in the brief glimpse he got of her back it was obvious she had an amazing body. He trudged to the door. He walked in just in time to see the woman dump her magazine into a trash can and approach the counter.
The coffee shop was dead empty, and had low lamps. There seemed to be one staff member, a pimply boy likely paying the way through a nondescript community college, working shifts at a coffee shop in a strip mall. The shop's light was dim and reflected off the inner glass.
He avoided looking at himself, and took his mind away from the world. He casually studied the blonde parking-space criminal. Snapping into a descriptive thinking, he wondered how he would describe her to a police officer, a real one. He thought, "Five-six, blonde hair with dark streaks, slender, medium tan skin, mid-twenties." He couldn't see her eyes, and, he thought, she seemed like the kind of person to wear colored contacts on occasion out of vanity. Vain. She was vain.
She looked stupid. She didn't look badly dressed, in the sense of like a clown, or wearing stupid clothes, but her facial expression, body language, and demeanor screamed, "I'm not too bright and not very pleasant." She looked around vaguely, more or less blankly, glancing over her surroundings without much interest, in the way selfish people gauge their environments, exuding an undercurrent of, "What's in this place that serves me and my wants? If insufficient for my desires, I'll throw a petty fit at a person I deem below my social station." She placed the coffee drink order, arching in a Spandex vesty-style top and gray yoga pants, showing off a fantastic ass and back, dipping her chin and uttering some string of small and pointless decrees regarding her special beverage. The blondish hair on her head, streaked with dark and light highlights, bounced and flounced as she issued the commands to the skinny kid behind the counter. She paid for the drink with a proprietary card, sneering when the barista asked if she wanted a receipt. When she turned, the vest top, tinged pink and sparkling, showed off a pair of perky, very lovely-looking breasts, hovering over a flat, toned belly. He realized she was wearing 'workout wear' while fairly obviously not working out. The look was a statement, her broadcast to the world concerning her appearance, a studied sexiness that came across as plastic and mannered. He wondered what she was like during sex. Probably obnoxious. A sudden thought popped into his head, and almost made him laugh out loud: he had the image of simply slapping her around and fucking her, and the incongruous urge amused him immensely. The beginnings of a resolution formed: he wanted to do exactly that, slap her around and stick his dick in that undoubtedly carefully-trimmed pussy. He wanted the peach like ass in the air, blond hair down, hands held; he wanted some screaming and breathless shock. He couldn't help it, and smirked, then chuckled, unable to suppress the desire to simply fuck the snotty attitude out of this obviously nasty woman, and the recognition of the ridiculous want made him laugh. He decided to sit down and roll with the fantasy, and after getting a simple cup of coffee, he followed at a discreet distance when the woman made for a table, sitting down himself in a good spot for watching her. A sound system turned on, playing nondescript, cheaply-licensed jazz. It was too loud for the space. The blonde placed herself at a table with concentrated attitude, first inspecting the chair with sour concern, then folding her body at the waist. She placed her perfect bottom on the bent plywood of the chair with carefully studied motion. As soon as her cup hit the table's surface her hand was in her pocket retrieving a phone, and without even looking around once she was texting with both thumbs. Her face dropped into a likely constant sort-of frown, and she worked her lips around, smacking shiny lipstick together as she busied herself. She crossed her legs, bit her lip, then uncrossed them and splayed her thighs apart like a plumber at a bar, exposing her crotch to the world in general. After a minute of that, she crossed her legs again and snapped the phone shut, glaring out at society with an expression of impatient disdain. She reached for the coffee drink and took a sip with movements that, he realized, reminded him of a mime faking an actual physical act. Fake. She was probably fake in bed, too, but that was okay. He watched, and she looked out on the street, mouth turned in a jagged line of distaste; then her phone rang. She answered it with a bizarre flourish, flicking the device open and tossing one side of her hair aside to position it at her ear. She then began making hand-waving and head bobbing motions, like a seagull acting out a mating ritual on a beach. She talked animatedly, mouth opening wide, with laughter from time to time, but it was exaggerated laughter, and again (and maybe because he couldn't hear her voice) the scene reminded him overwhelmingly of miming. The carefully controlled hand movements, the body language, the soundless laughing, it all added up to not so much an actual life, the spark of a human being, but a piece of ongoing performance art that couldn't be stopped, as the performer was unaware they were, in fact, performing at all.
