Stan checks the rearview mirror again even though he hasn't seen another vehicle for almost an hour. Interstate 10 stretches back across Texas like a scar. A ghostly image of his gray, stubbled chin hovers inside the mirror. If he presses the small black tab on the back of the mirror, adjusting it down, the real image will appear and he can grimace at the liver spots on his leathery neck. Instead he punches the Chevy's AC button. The vents groan and begin to stir the pickup's stagnant desert air.
Ahead of him—far off in the distance—a mountain range rises defiantly against the monotonous hardpan.
The girl wipes moisture from her brow. "So does your AC work or what?"
"Not really, but I keep trying," is all he can think to say.
"So what'd you say your name was again?" Her breathing is slowing and she relaxes back into her seat. At the very edge of his vision he can see her knees peeking out from her skirt. She can’t be any older than 20.
"Stan."
"Stan. I had an uncle named Stan. He died a couple years back." She roots in her purse and pulls out a silver cigarette case. The desert sun hits it, glinting brilliantly for a second, and then she pops it open. Stan smells weed—earthy and sweet. "Mind if I smoke?"
"That's alright, go ahead."
"Want one?" she asks, holding a cigarette out for him to take. Stan feels his stomach sink fast, in the familiar way it has lately, at her question. He makes an effort to swallow.
"No thanks." He pretends to swipe at a bug flying around his head, "I quit." She looks at him a few seconds longer and then slips the cigarette between her full and beautiful lips.
She doesn't know it, of course, but somewhere behind them—back along that asphalt scar—Stan has killed a man and buried his body a few hundred yards from the freeway, out where coyotes will find it before the authorities. Even with the distance of the desert he can feel the pull of the body, like some giant magnet. He imagines the corpse settling further into the sand, traversed perhaps by a wandering stink beetle, farting its final gases into the parched Texan soil.
It's better to think about those legs of hers. The way she wraps her lips around that cigarette and sucks. It's better to think about her sweat and her spit, her body underneath that dusty jeans skirt and black tank top. Or maybe, even more so, it's better to think about those mountains up ahead—rising abruptly from the flat, who-gives-a-shit death of Texas.
