“Let me tell you something right now — these charges against me are bullshit. I picked her up hitchhiking, no panties, and her skirt was so short you could tell she kept it shaved down there. She told me she wanted it, so I pulled off the road and gave her one. Tell you the truth, it was the easiest piece of ass I ever got.”
Her mother was sitting next to him staring at her hands gripping her coffee cup. Her husband snapped his fingers and she jumped, coffee spilling a little into the saucer, lit a cigarette for him, and handed it over. Pilot packed a bag that night. She was sixteen, with a fake ID and enough money saved for a bus ticket.
Pilot pushes those thoughts away, hard. She ditches her jeans and a torn Sepultura T-shirt, changes into the slut clothes, and walks back out into the bar. Charlotte has put a beer mat over the top of her glass. Pilot takes another sip, thinking the beer tasted better when she was dressed more like herself.
Charlotte raises her eyebrows at Pilot’s wardrobe change, but a big group has come in and they’re too slammed for her to comment. Pilot doesn’t notice the time pass until she’s nearly late.
“Shit, mind if I ditch out a little early?”
Charlotte waves her off. “Yeah, I got this.” She takes Pilot’s hand. “Be careful, okay? I really need you to cover that shift. Hey!” She’s raised her voice and glares at a table sitting close to the bar that’s started to get a little rowdy. They turn around, see her, and immediately quiet down.
Pilot heads out the door, pushing past a clot of smokers. She’s glad someone like Charlotte has her back.
Pilot hustles down Hastings Street; her slut skirt keeps riding up and she’s worried that she’ll be late. She pulls out her phone and checks the time. There’s a new text from her boss at one of the other bars she works at: The ceiling over the bar collapsed. And part of the floor. Don’t come to work this week. No point in asking for an advance on her check then.
There’s a mailbox on the corner and she wants to knock it over and stomp it flat, or pick it up and throw it through a car window. She counts to twenty instead, spaces the numbers out by muttering Motherfucker under her breath. Her footsteps could crack the pavement by the time she reaches the meeting spot, where she lights a cigarette, takes deep, starving drags.
She leans against the shuttered window of a paint store. A white two-seater Porsche convertible with the top down slows in front of her. She’s about to yell at the driver to move on when she realizes he isn’t looking at her, but at the storefront. Regardless, she gives him the finger and he speeds away. Another property developer wearing sunglasses at night, rolling down Hastings Street, probably touching himself while looking at vacant buildings.
She’s just ground out her cigarette when a car pulls up to the curb. The driver lowers the passenger window and asks her if she does Greek. She can’t remember what she’s supposed to say to him so she opens with a joke.
Now, he’s trembling slightly under the full moon, kneeling in water gas-slicked by the tankers floating offshore.
The plastic wraps her up tight, but her face is exposed, head pointed toward the water. Pilot can’t resist it anymore and opens her eyes.
She thinks that if he was really going to kill her, he probably would have done it by now, and she unclenches her fists a little. She rolls her eyes back and looks across her forehead at him. A wave hits him with enough force to splash his face; water flies into his open mouth and he chokes a little. Pilot almost laughs and closes her eyes before he catches her. She doesn’t mind this location. The sand is more comfortable than being laid out across tree roots in Stanley Park, or against a stinking dumpster in an alley. She can’t remember the last time she went to the beach.
Pilot doesn’t know if it’s some ritual he’s actually thought through or it’s just a pantomime of what he thinks he should be doing. Whatever it is, it’s taking forever. After he grabbed her throat, he ranted at her about how she’s just another sheeple. She recognized some of what he was saying from Fight Club. Some of it he must have thought of himself, which was only a little bit worse.
Finally, she hears a little splash as he gets up and walks over. Pilot has worked up a sweat under all this plastic. She’s starting to feel cold and her tattoo itches like mad. She doesn’t fidget — he might get mad if she spoils the fantasy so close to the end. She can hear the jingle of change in his pockets and it sounds like he’s messing with his belt. She swears she’s going to demand extra if he’s standing there jerking off while she’s freezing amongst the sand fleas and half-buried cigarette butts.
“You can open your eyes now.”
She does, and is relieved to see it’s still in his pants.
He tears at the duct tape that’s holding her cocoon together. She wriggles free and stands, pulls her skirt down, brushes sand off her knees. She’s only wearing one of her stilettos, on her foot that has a razor blade taped to the bottom of it. She’s painted one edge of it with rubber cement so she can grip it easily.
He crumples the plastic sheeting, shuffles his feet, avoiding eye contact. All the bravado seems to have spewed out of him. Pilot flamingoes on one leg, slips off her shoe, then tears the razor free and palms it, just in case.
“Can I drive you somewhere?”
“You expect me to call a cab?”
His stammering small talk starts up while she searches through his car and pretends to listen. She finds her other shoe behind the passenger seat along with her purse. Pilot digs her cigarettes out as the car rolls past grain silos, old warehouses, and new microbreweries. The Volvo is spotless and well maintained but old enough to still have a cigarette lighter in the dash. Pilot enjoys the novelty of lighting up that way.
“I’d prefer you didn’t smoke in my car.”
Pilot rolls the window down. “You should do something that frightens you every day, Rob.”
The wind is bringing the scent of rancid chicken fat from the rendering plant toward them and she blows smoke out her nostrils to cover up the smell. Rob turns up the volume on the stereo, the one modern thing in the car. Pilot doesn’t know the band but it’s statement music, banjos and smugly clever lyrics about an ex-girlfriend. She snaps the volume down.
He turns onto Hastings Street a little too hard and she’s pulled a little closer to him. He takes one hand off the steering wheel and she thinks he’s reaching toward her. Pilot can still feel his hands around her neck, can still smell him on her. She reaches for the razor blade she’s tucked between her thigh and the car seat but grabs the wrong edge and slices open her thumb. She barely feels it cut her, but it’s deep and the volume of blood is substantial. Drops splash onto the ugly tan seats.
Rob pulls his hand away when he sees the blood, clears his throat. “Sorry, I was just reaching for the volume! I hope you don’t think... I mean, I would never have really...”
“You owe me three hundred dollars.”
He’s already got it in the pocket of his coat, wrapped up with a rubber band.
“When can I see you again?” Rob looks at her so earnestly she wants to leave a bloody handprint on his face.
She drops the razor in her purse, grabs a pack of tissues, and wads a few of them around her thumb. She reaches to tamp out her smoke but the ashtray is full of loose change so she drops the butt out the window.
“I’ll text you,” she says as she gets out.
There’s a prowl car approaching and Rob’s already rolling before Pilot has the door shut.