"You can count on it," he said, and took my hand and pressed it against his erection.

I squeezed his c.o.c.k too hard on purpose and rolled over on top of him.

"Hey, mean girl, cut it out," he said, grinding against me. The neon light cut up and down across my Who dat? t.i.ts. I took off the T-shirt and bent down to his ear.

"You are a funky worm, Joey Baloney," I said. We sealed his promise with our tongues all tied up.

The Master Freight Agreement

I cut my last period, high school Driver's Ed with Mr. Burns. He wouldn't understand that the revolution was not going to wait for me to take his stop-signal exam. Instead, I grabbed the bus and showed up at Gateway Freight yard right before the start of swing shift, as promised. cut my last period, high school Driver's Ed with Mr. Burns. He wouldn't understand that the revolution was not going to wait for me to take his stop-signal exam. Instead, I grabbed the bus and showed up at Gateway Freight yard right before the start of swing shift, as promised.

I'd changed my clothes, too - I looked like a Teamster girl in tight jeans and a T-shirt, standing in mile-high platforms instead of hippie sandals.

Stan pulled into the parking lot right after me in his Valiant. I wondered how many decades he'd had his driver's license. Temma told me he'd dodged the draft in Canada, married and divorced, and lived underground for five years before he popped up and started running the Seattle branch of our little insurgence. That was a lot of driving.

He handed me a pile of flyers and told me to go to one end of the employee's parking lot while he took the other. The leaflets were an invitation to a meeting of rank and filers that we called Teamsters for a Decent Contract - people getting together to talk about the upcoming contract and what we thought might go down. Not socialism, just this miserable corrupt union and s.h.i.tty job. You had to start somewhere. The expiration of the master freight agreement was a good place to begin - it covered every over-the-road driver in North America.

"Temma said you know how to talk to people," Stan said - apparently my only vote of confidence.

I thought, Did she tell you that in bed? Did she tell you that in bed?

Instead, I was chipper. "Yeah, it'll be fine." I smiled at him like a Girl Scout. "I'm a regular 'Teamster girlfriend,' according to Sister Temma."

"You are?" he asked, picking up a clipboard like he was going to write my answer down.

"Yeah, I'm sorry; what's your excuse for being here?" I said, not wanting to go where he was leading.

"Maybe I'll be a Teamster boyfriend." He flipped his wrists.

That cracked me up. It was going to be okay. Maybe he wasn't such a sn.o.b after all.

We walked to opposite corners. The parking lot was enormous; there must've been more than a hundred cars. No one had come out of work yet. I talked to some taco truck guys who were packing up. They liked my leaflet. I had typed, laid out, and printed this thing on the mimeo machine - it didn't look half bad. I'd put a cartoon I liked at the top: Fitzsimmons and Nixon having a toast together in bed, with their feet sticking out from the sheets at the bottom of the bed.

I went up to each vehicle and tucked a flyer underneath the windshield wiper. I got a rhythm going, singing that Ohio Players vamp to myself: Roller-coaster / Of Love / Say What? / Roller-coaster/ ooo-oooo-ooo-ooo f.u.c.k! Something hard, really hard - like a brick - punched me in the lower back. I fell, sprawling onto my hands and knees in the dirt. I couldn't breathe.

"Hey, girlie!"

I pushed up off my belly, my hands on fire. A squat, muscular guy with a worse grin than a junkyard dog stood above me, a wrench in his hand. I'd been smacked before, but neither my mother nor the nuns had ever smiled at me while they were doing it.

"What's this c.r.a.p you're sellin', girlie? This is private property. You better get your can outta here."

He grabbed the goldenrod flyers in my satchel, which was still hanging from my shoulder. I scrambled to stand up, spilling most of the papers onto the ground. Blood was dripping on everything, but I didn't know where it was coming from. I couldn't feel anything.

The wind picked up the flyers and started sailing them over the cars. I wished I could sail away, too. My mind was leaving the premises. I had missed Driver's Ed for this.

My palms, that's where most of the blood was coming from, like stigmata. The pitbull man held up his wrench again.

"Now look what you've done!" he shouted, like he was personally offended. "You little wh.o.r.e, you're gonna clean up this f.u.c.king lot before I stick my foot up your a.s.s -"

We both heard a loud click, and the little man stopped talking.

There was Stan - right between me and the demon. Instead of just his blue work shirt, Stan was wearing a blue work shirt and a holster. He was holding something, too.

He said two things. "Don't talk to the young woman like that - we're leaving now."

And to me: "Get in the car." He threw me his keys. I caught them without a bounce.

I don't know what else he said. I ran with the keys - ran, ran, ran, like the Gingerbread Man - to Stan's white Valiant, climbed into the back seat, locked the doors, and threw his old-dude basketball sweats over my head. I wanted to crawl in the trunk. It was ninety degrees, but I didn't crack the window. I was freezing, shaking; my clothes were like wet rags. I'd never had a man look at me like that, like he was going to enjoy hurting me. He was a head shorter than I was - even if he was twice as wide - and he'd made me pee in my pants.

"Sue!" I could hear Stan jogging up to the car. I lifted my head up to peek out the window. He didn't look hurt.

I unlocked the door and handed him his keys. He took my one of my cut-up hands in his, like it was a petal. "Are you okay?"

I burst into tears. Finally time for questions, and that's when I fall apart. "Who was that?" I sobbed through my snot. "Was he from the company or the union? What did you do?"

"Hold on ..." Stan got in the driver's seat, started up the engine, and peeled out. "I'm taking you home; this was bulls.h.i.t. You never should've been here."

I cried harder. What did that mean? I'd failed at my a.s.signment because I hadn't kicked that b.a.s.t.a.r.d in the nuts? I was frozen? I was useless, wasn't good enough to pa.s.s out a f.u.c.king flyer?

Stan pulled into the circle driveway in front of his duplex and parked at the door. "Don't move," he said.

He came around to the back door and opened it up, crouching down so he could look me in the eye.

"I'm sorry; I'm okay, I can get out," I said, holding my hands up in front of me. But when I glanced down at my chest, I saw my shirt was ripped open, too. Who had done that? I started gulping air again.

Stan put his arms around me. "Hold on to my neck," he said. He coaxed me out of the car, and once he got me to my feet, he picked me up like a new bride - a bride who couldn't stop sobbing - and carried me through the front door. I don't know how he managed the lock.

He laid me down on the white sofa and went to get one of his extra work shirts for me to change into. I heard him take off the .45 and the holster. No more clicks. He came back with a bottle of Povidine, the shirt, and a steaming wet towel.

I had some b.l.o.o.d.y scratches on me, plus snot and sweat - not as bad as it seemed. The warm towel felt so good.

"What do you drink?" Stan asked. I could hear him opening his kitchen cupboards.

"Ginger ale?"

"Yeah, right," he said, and came back with two jam jars and a bottle of Jack Daniel's. "Drink up," he said, handing me the gla.s.s like it was medicine.

I took a sip. Worse than medicine! It was almost as bad as Nyquil.

I gagged, and he laughed.

"Don't laugh at me; this is horrible."

"The horrible part is over - we're lucky to be alive. You're going to be okay, baby."

Baby.

"You think I shouldn't have been there," I said, "because I can't handle it, because I'm not part of the new macho Teamster campaign and I don't have a six-shooter to wave around, like I'm some freak girlfriend diaper baby."

The Jack was giving me something to talk about.

Stan said no. He said it was his fault. He said Ambrose and Geri and Joe and Michael all thought the world of me; he said he'd been a b.a.s.t.a.r.d. Temma was right; I was sweet as pie.

He tucked me in, found more blankets and a couple of pillows. I slipped on his shirt and kicked off my pants. Was he watching? I didn't care. I pa.s.sed out on his sofa like it was the middle of the night.

I woke up with a start; I had to pee. Had it been hours or minutes? The streetlight poured in through Stan's bamboo blinds. I could see a blue clock in the corner that Ambrose had donated to our new branch organizer's furnishings. Three am. It'd been twelve hours since we'd been in the parking lot.

Stan's apartment was two bedrooms, a living room, and a kitchen. One bedroom was the production room, with the mimeo, ditto machines, and paper supply. I crept into the bathroom next to it, the tile floor icy under my feet. Stan's shirt barely covered my a.s.s. I thought about my warm waterbed back at my dad's house, and our kitty making her nest in the middle of my quilts.

Stan appeared at the doorway.

"I'm sorry, I didn't mean to wake you up," I whispered, from the toilet.

"I'm not asleep," he said. "You say 'sorry' too much. I've been awake the whole time."

"Why?" I grabbed one of his white duck hand towels and wiped my face, getting a glimpse in the medicine cabinet mirror.

He stepped behind me and looked into my reflection. He must have been six feet five. Blue eyes, drooping lids. He braced his arms on the sink's edge, so I was caught in the middle between the sink and his chest. If I moved one inch, I'd be in his arms.

He spoke to me in the looking gla.s.s. "You're driving me crazy, you know that."

He said it, he didn't ask. But I still shook my head. I couldn't breathe.

"Yeah, the way you walk around this place, the way you smell ..."

I could smell myself, too; I could smell him, like gunpowder and Mr. Daniel's - but I couldn't speak. My legs shook a little, my knees still stinging from where the flesh had been sc.r.a.ped off in the parking lot. Stan felt me shiver, too. He put his long hands on my shoulders and turned me around to face him so my bottom was pressed against the sink.

"You know what you're doing to me?" he repeated. He got down on his knees in one motion, parted the shirttail of the chamois I was wearing, and pressed his face right into my c.u.n.t. I grabbed the sink to stop from falling over. He steadied my thighs with his hands. His fingers were like soft sandpaper.

He was crazy; it was like he had to get inside me - he had to get his entire head in me. He was going to cannibalize me from the c.u.n.t out, put my c.o.c.k in his pot and stir it until I screamed. The only way to relieve his ache was to take us both right down the rabbit hole. I could feel myself getting bigger and smaller every second.

"He's a great f.u.c.k ..." Wasn't that Temma's advertis.e.m.e.nt when Stan had first arrived in town? Who was she talking about? Not this man. Not where he was taking me now.

I gasped from holding my breath for so long.

Baby.

I couldn't speak, but he heard me. His tongue was stroking me, and it was all I could hang on to. I doubled over. Stan stood all the way up and lifted me one more time - this man was never going to let my feet touch the floor again.

I hopped onto his waist, hugging my legs and arms around him. He sank into me, like the last piece of a puzzle. My head dropped back. He squeezed my bottom to lift me just an inch off of his c.o.c.k.

He was going to make me wait.

"I'm going to make sweet belly love to you, till you come for me," he said, carrying me across the floor to his bed. His sheets were blue jersey; an Economist Economist lay half-read on the floor. I bit into his shoulder. lay half-read on the floor. I bit into his shoulder.

Who was this man? Xena, Temma - none of them looked desperate when they said his name. Their bellies didn't tremble like mine.

Susie. He called my name over and over.

I pulled all his weight onto me, and he shuddered. The tables turned.

"Are you okay?" I guess that was his big question.

Yeah, I was. Daylight was breaking. He got up to get me another whiskey and a ginger ale. I asked him if I could roll a joint, and he tossed me a baggie from under some Emma Goldman autobiographies on the floor.

"What are you reading her for?" I asked, licking the Zig-Zag.

"I've been reading Emma since I was a draft dodger."

"Yeah, I heard about that. How'd you do it?"

"I wore a dress."

"Like Phil Ochs?" I threw the sheets off. "Or like a Teamster girlfriend singing "The Draft Dodger Rag"?"

"How can you be old enough to know that song?" he asked.

"I'm not."

I started it, and he caught up to me on the second line: Yes, I'm only eighteen, I got a ruptured spleen And I always carry a purse I reached out for him with my scabbed-up hand. "I'm not eighteen, but I know a lot of things," I said. "You underestimated me - I guess I thought you were an a.s.shole, too."

"Yeah, you got that right," Stan said, and took a drag. "How old are you?" He exhaled. "No, don't tell me."

I wouldn't. I couldn't stand to lie apart from him. I was an infant; I wanted him to cradle me and never let my toes touch the ground.

"How can I go off to Detroit and leave without you? s.h.i.t!" I said. I straddled his lap and blew a smoke ring. His blue eyes framed right in the center. His c.o.c.k grew hard again underneath me.

Everyone - everyone but Stan and a couple other comrades - was heading to Michigan for the summer camp. This was the first moment I hadn't craved going away. I never wanted another day to break.

"You're going to be fine," he said. "You gotta go." He took the joint from me. "There's not a man alive who's not an a.s.shole - that's all you need to know - but you're gonna be okay." His hard-on started to soften.

Why'd he have to go and say that? f.u.c.k, Stan. Didn't he get it? I would have told him I loved him right then, but I knew it wasn't cool.

Instead, I moved his hand between my legs again, and the wetness shut him up. Feel how I feel. I leaned down to take his mouth in mine and make all the nonsense stop.

Greyhound to Detroit via Amarillo