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for you. But surprisingly,
he was acting relaxed and jovial.
    “ Where are we spending the
night?” I asked, watching the lights of the airport disappear in
the side mirrors.
    “ I thought we would camp in
the middle of the desert. I told you we were doing this on the
cheap.”
    I looked out at the
blackness and felt deathly uncomfortable from the fathomless
deserts that it hid. Camping in the desert seemed like a death
wish.
    I tried to look at him as
calmly as possible but I could tell my eyes were raging. He gave me
a sleepy grin.
    “ Relax, stress case. We’ve
got a motel. One we’ll probably be sharing with a bunch of hookers,
but I take it you’re pretty liberal.”
    “ Hardy har har.” I glared at
him, enjoying our sparring. He gave me a wink and turned his
attention back to the road.
    “ So, how are you?” he
asked. The sincerity in his voice made me suspicious.
    “ I’m fine.”
    “ You’re a terrible
liar.”
    I cocked my head at him.
“What? I’m fine. I didn’t say I was great.”
    “ You should be great, Perry.
You should be jazzed as shit. New Mexico, man. Just look at this
place.” He gestured at the darkness then took a quick peek at
me.
    “ Something’s different with
you.”
    I shrugged. “To be fair,
you don’t know me all that well.”
    “ This is true. But there’s
something you’re not telling me.”
    It was my turn to laugh.
“There are many things I’m not telling you.”
    He peered at me, his brown
eyes glinted like black stones. A flicker of intensity ran across
them. “I’ll get to the bottom of you before this is all
over.”
    I held his gaze while an
impulsive smile gently tugged at the corner of my mouth. There was
a current of tension in the car, but of what kind I didn’t know. It
was wishful thinking on my part to think it was sexual in any
way.
    I looked away first and
just in time to see a car parked up ahead in the middle of the
road. We were seconds from colliding with it.
    “ Dex!” I screamed and
thrust my hands out on the dash, bracing for certain
impact.
    The rest was a blur. The
high pitched squeal of brakes filled my ears as Dex slammed on them
and whipped the wheel around. The Jeep slid and lurched beneath us
but thanks to his fancy maneuvering, we came to a stop on the
shoulder, a few yards past the car. The road was dark and devoid of
traffic at that moment, which probably saved our life.
    But alive and well or not,
I could barely breathe and my poor heart was skipping loudly. Dex
was leaning forward, clutching the wheel desperately. He slowly
loosened his grip and looked over at me. He looked absolutely
stunned.
    “ Are you OK?”
    I nodded, trying to regain
my breath.
    He nodded too, as if to say
he was OK. He looked behind us. “What the fuck was
that?”
    I turned around in my seat.
The car was a small compact and was parked at a diagonal across
both lanes of the highway. The lights outside and inside the car
were on and all four doors were open wide. There was no one in the
car at all. It was like they all ran out and vanished into the
darkness. That thought made me very ill and very afraid.
    “ What happened?” I
whispered. He shook his head and then unbuckled his seat belt. I
immediately put my hand on his to stop him.
    “ What are you doing, you
can’t go out there!” I hissed.
    He unbuckled it anyway and
opened the door.
    “ You stay here. People might
be hurt.”
    And with that he shut the
door on me and left me in the car. Fuck that!
    I quickly unbuckled mine,
leaped out of the car and ran over to Dex. I expected him to tell
me to go back but it’s like he knew I would join him
anyway.
    There were still no other
cars around, which I thought was eerie considering we weren’t that
far from the city. The lights from the abandoned car and our Jeep
were the only lights we could see.
    The car wasn’t running. We
saw no tire marks on the road to indicate they had to stop quickly
(unlike our Jeep which left hefty marks in its wake).