I-40-Arizona


Like all well-brought-up Southern boys, Jimmy Joe Starr had been taught to respect both automobiles and good women. So when the lady in the shiny new silver-gray Lexus cut in front of him in the entrance to the Giant truck stop that was clearly marked Trucks Only, he didn’t give her a blast from his airhorn or push his Kenworth’s blue “anteater” nose up on her bumper to teach her a lesson, like some drivers he knew would have done.

But he did shake his head and smile to himself. Oh, yeah. She was a looker, no doubt about that. Just as sleek and fine and pretty a sight as you would ever want to see. And the woman behind the wheel wasn’t bad, either.

Jimmy Joe wasn’t generally all that attracted to redheads, but hers was a real nice color, a rich, glowing auburn. And she had a self-confident, bordering-on-arrogant tilt to her head that appealed to him-which was something else that set him apart from most Southern men of his acquaintance. Having been raised by a mama with pure applejack running through her veins, he was pretty well adjusted to uppity women.

There were a couple of other reasons why Jimmy Joe was inclined to be in an easygoing and forgiving mood. For one thing, that was just pretty much his basic nature. For another, it was the 23rd of December and he’d just dropped off a load of textiles in the garment district of downtown L.A. and picked up a shipment of piece goods destined for an after-holiday sale in Little Rock, after which he was going to be headin’ for Georgia, where a little boy named J.J. was waiting for his daddy to bring Christmas home with him. The Good Lord willin’ and the creek don’t rise, Jimmy Joe expected to be rolling into his mama’s front yard just in time for turkey and all the trimmings.

So that was why, when the redhead finally got herself sorted out and the silver Lexus pointed toward the four-wheeler parking lot, he just chuckled to himself and said, “Well, Merry Christmas, darlin’.” She crossed right in front of him with a saucy little flip of her sleek auburn head, and he caught a glimpse of a California license plate.

“Figures,” he muttered.


“You will never in a million years guess where I’m calling you from,” Mirabella Waskowitz said to her friend Charly Phelps, in an ambiguous tone somewhere between chagrin and glee.

“Sounds like a truck stop,” said Charly, much to Mirabella’s disappointment. She loved Charly dearly, but the woman had no respect for a punchline.

“How did you know?”

“I can hear the loudspeaker in the background. They just called some driver for something-or-other up to the fuel desk.”

“Oh,” said Mirabella, who hadn’t been paying attention. In her experience, voices on loudspeakers seldom had anything to say that concerned her.

“You would not believe this place,” she continued after a moment, her enthusiasm undaunted. “For one thing, it’s huge. Acres and acres of trucks. I’ve never seen anything like it. It’s kind of awesome, actually. Oh-and they don’t call them truck stops anymore. They’re called ’travel stops’ now-I guess so they’ll appeal more to the Winnebago set. It’s like a mini-mall in here. They have all sorts of stores, a post office, a couple of fast-food places, and a regular restaurant that actually has a salad bar, can you believe that? And get this-the phones are on the tables! At this very moment I am sitting in a comfy booth, one that actually has enough room to accommodate my stomach, with my decaf and a fairly decent turkey club on whole wheat in front of me.”

“What?” said Charly drolly, “no sushi?”

“Mock if you must, but the rest rooms are clean. Oh-and Charly, you’d love the gift shop. What an eclectic mix. They have some lovely signed Acoma Indian pottery sitting right next to key chains made out of honest-to-God rattlesnake heads and license-plate holders that say Honk If You’re Horny. Oh-and my personal favorite-there’s this little bald fat-guy doll, and when you squeeze a bulb he drops his pants and moons you. I think you’re supposed to put him in the back window of your car. I’m thinking of getting one for my Lexus.”

Charly, who was originally from Alabama, laughed and said, “Get used to it. You know the place you’re heading for is the world capital of tacky.”

“I thought that was Venice Beach.”

“No, no, no, darlin’-Florida! Birthplace of the pink plastic lawn flamingo. Need I say more?”

A gasp cut short Mirabella’s chuckle of appreciation. She added, “Ouch…damn,” and as she leaned abruptly back in the booth, her gaze collided with that of a young man, obviously a trucker, who was sitting in a booth identical to hers, just catercorner across the dining room. He was on the phone, too, but not talking, and as he listened, for some reason he seemed to be frowning right at Mirabella.

“What’s the matter?” Charly demanded. “The little tyke giving you problems?”

Hearing the alarm in her friend’s voice and knowing Charly wasn’t above doing something rash, like putting in a call to the highway patrol, Mirabella hastened to reassure her. And while she was at it, she put a dazzling smile on her face for the benefit of the nosy trucker across the way.

“Oh, you know,” she said through the smile, “it’s just these darn pressure pains. Seems like they’ve been getting worse the last couple of days.” She lost the smile, though, as she shifted to find a comfortable position for her legs while a lump the size of a small grapefruit was slowly blossoming on the right side of her abdomen. She rested one hand on the lump and rubbed it with a gentle circling motion as she said through held breath and clenched teeth, “Right now it feels like the little rascal’s doing push-ups on the nerves in my groin. I get these shooting pains that go all the way down to my toes. There wasn’t anything about this in the books, I can tell you that.”

“Bella, you’re crazy to be doing this-you know that, don’t you?”

“Hey, I’m fine.” The young trucker had finished his phone call and was now drinking coffee and watching her intently through its steam.

Cute guy, said a voice way in the back of her mind. And then, My God, he’s young.

It was a purely objective observation; Mirabella considered hrself something of a connoisseur when it came to masculine physical attributes, having recently done some extensive research on that subject. This one was tall, lean, tan and blond-some of her very favorite flavors. In fact, if she could pick-

She gasped, gulped cold decaf and nearly choked on it.

“Bella?” said Charly’s voice in her ear. “You okay?”

“Fine-I’m fine.” Mirabella mopped her bulging front with her napkin. “Spilled my coffee, dammit. Look, of course I’d rather have flown-and I don’t see why they make such a fuss about it, for God’s sake, my due date’s still four weeks off, and anyway you’d think nobody’d ever had a baby in a plane before-but on top of that, it’s the holidays, and there just wasn’t anything available. It’s not like I had much choice.”

“That’s not what I mean, and you know it.”

“Charly…”

The sigh that drifted across the wire was suddenly contrite. “I know, I know. I’m sorry. How’s your dad doing, by the way? Have you talked to your mom?”

“I talked to her this morning. He’s doing better, actually.” She took a deep breath to calm the fear that always rippled through her when she thought about her father, and about the utterly unthinkable possibility of his dying. Pop, die? No. Not for-oh, at least twenty or thirty years, yet.

Pop, you’d better get well, and stay that way. I need you, dammit! Because, aside from the fact that she couldn’t even begin to imagine a world without her dad in it, she just hadn’t counted on raising this child without Pop Waskowitz for a grandpa.

Especially, she thought with a twinge of guilt she tried to ignore, if he couldn’t have a dad of his own.

And with some mysterious homing instinct, like birds returning to a favorite nesting place, her eyes found the long, slender form of the young trucker in the booth across the way. Incredible, she thought. Uncanny.

“They’re calling this heart attack a warning,” she said to Charly in a tone bright with false optimism. “Mom said it looks like they’ll let him go home for Christmas, but then after the holidays they’re going to want to run tests. You know how it goes-see if he’s going to need surgery.”

“He’ll be okay, Bella. Bypass surgery’s not even a big deal nowadays.”

“Yeah,” said Mirabella on an exhalation, not in the least convinced. “I know.”

“He know you’re coming?”

“He doesn’t know I’m driving. Mom didn’t want to tell him. She’s sure he’d only have another heart attack worrying about me.”

“So, you’re gonna be his Christmas present.”

“Let’s hope,” said Mirabella. “So far I’ve only made it as far as New Mexico.”

“New Mexico! Is that all? My God, it’s been two days.”

“I can’t help it. The problem,” said Mirabella defensively, “is that I keep having to stop all the time to go to the bathroom.”

“And you’re still going to make it by Christmas?”

“Uh…Christmas Day, yeah, hopefully. I should be able to.” But she had to shut out the little voices of self-doubt that were starting to kick up a fuss in the back of her mind, and her natural bent toward honesty made her add, “If I can make it as far as Texas by tonight. Which reminds me, if I’m going to do that, I’d better say goodbye and get on my way. What about it, Charly, shall I get you a souvenir? That Acoma pottery’s nice.”

“You sure you’ve got room? If I know you, that Lexus is probably packed to the roof with presents already.”

“Just the trunk,” said Mirabella with a guilty smile. “I did try to behave myself this year.”

“Well, if you insist,” said Charly, “I’d rather have the license-plate holder. Listen, you take it easy now, okay? Your mom and dad want you to get there in one piece. And I do mean one.”