Route 66 Pt. 01

I just found this file that I started several years ago on an old hard drive, and got inspired to finish it. It's based on a couple of real people, and a couple of the events here really happened. I'll let you guess which ones.

This will be a short series, no more than four installments, and I'll roll them out in short order. More happens in parts two and three. Thanks for reading.

Carl was sitting on the steps of his trailer in the little mobile home park behind the motel, smoking a Marlboro and drinking a beer, when he saw the figure walking up the path. No question, it was the stunning statuesque brunette in Room 8. Aurora.

He had been thinking about her all evening, ever since she and the man she was with had checked in, but especially since she had wandered back into the office alone a bit later, wearing a blindingly white bikini and a floral print sarong tied low on one delicious hip, and chatted idly with him for a half an hour.

He had tried to put together her relationship with the older guy she was with, the guy driving the classic convertible, the guy with the Ray-bans and the linen shirt and the collar-length salt-and-pepper hair. She wasn't wearing a ring; and she had deflected his mild probing about the guy by saying he wasn't "exactly" her boyfriend. Sugar daddy, then, he figured. He disliked the guy already. He resented guys who fell or connived their way into lives of ease, living off of other people's work, the guys always on vacation with sweet rides and sweeter women.

But the woman. She was like nothing he had ever seen before. He knew a couple of big-boned gals who were over six feet tall, who looked like professional wrestlers who had lost more bouts than they won. This Aurora was the most beautiful tall woman, and the tallest beautiful woman, he had ever met.

And now she was coming toward him through the darkness, again in those wedge sandals that made her almost six and a half feet tall, this time with the knee-length hem of a yellow sundress swirling around her shapely legs with each step.

"Hey there, pretty lady," he drawled, as she moved into the scant light from his picture window.

"Hey cowboy," she replied, running a hand through her hair, then nodding her head toward the beer on the step beside him. "You got any more of those?"

"Sure enough," he replied, and stood up, offering her his rough-hewn hand to help her up the three steps to his front door. She accepted his gesture and let him open the door.

As the young woman stepped through the entrance, Carl quickly glanced around the dark little living room, with its worn furniture and tired faux-walnut paneling. He was long past worrying about trying to impress anyone with his quarters, but he was glad he hadn't left any underwear lying around.

This certainly wasn't the first time that some bored or curious female traveler had left a road-weary husband or boyfriend or father and wandered into his lair to scratch an itch or tick a fantasy off their bucket list. Save a horse, ride a cowboy. Carl figured that song alone had gotten him laid a dozen times over the past few years. He wasn't picky. But this woman, tonight... well, she was definitely the hottest woman to ever step into this cluttered little dump.

He went to his fridge and got out two more Lone Stars. He twisted the top off one bottle and handed it to her. "So, where's your friend?"

"He had a long day. He's gone to bed. And I'm..." she paused, the end of her sentence drifting off to the limitless horizon.

"Restless," Carl suggested.

Aurora took a slug from her bottle. "Yeah, 'restless.'"

"Well, mi casa, su casa," he said. "Have a seat." He gestured to a chair that was nicer than his beat-up sofa, then took a seat himself on the latter.

It had been thrift-store furniture when he bought it; now broken down even more, it made him sink into it so that his head felt barely higher than his knees.

The chair did the same thing to her when she sat down opposite him. She crossed her legs. When she flexed her ankle, the distance from her toe to her knee had to be two feet.

"So, what do you do for a living?" he asked.

"I'm... I'm actually a college student," she said.

He raised an eyebrow. He had taken her for older than that.

"College student again, I should say," she continued. "I bummed around Europe for a few years."

That's more like it, he thought, reassured that his judgment was sound. Plus that... well, college girls were nice to look at, but he would take a more experienced woman any day.

"So, your friend," he asked, prying a bit. "He one of your professors?"

"No," she said. "Just a... friend."

Carl took a slug of beer. Women in their mid to late twenties don't usually travel with men twice their age, which is what he judged the guy in Room 8 to be.

"You like older men?" he asked.

"I like confident men," she replied.

He grinned. He liked confident women. He figured she was here because she was used to going after what she wanted. Maybe all she wanted tonight was a beer and some company. Maybe more. He would find out soon enough.

"So... Is your boyfriend... your guy, the jealous type?"

"Well... he's a jealous type."

"The type who shoots first and asks questions later?"

"No, he's not that type of jealous type."

"Well... as long as he's not packing heat... I imagine I could take him."

"Hmmm," she commented, with a touch of something like approval in her voice. "No doubt." She stood up again, towering over him now. Her weight on one hip, so the leg extending to the other side went on forever.

"So... see anything else you think you might be able to take?"

He felt like he should give her a warning. "You're tauntin' the bull, darlin'."

She arched an eyebrow, and replied, "Ole."

***

Six hours earlier:

I glanced down at the odometer to calculate how far we were from the New Mexico state line. Still three or four miles to go, it seemed.

I looked back up to confirm that the endless black highway in front of me was still

empty, and then I turned my head to my right to drink in another view of the beautiful woman who was sleeping beside me in the front seat of the '61 Ford Galaxy Sunliner convertible.

I still don't really understand the physics of why people's hair blows

forward in the front seat of a convertible; but I knew that that's how it worked; so between the fact that her face was obscured by two feet of luxurious brown curls, and that I knew she was wearing a pair of Wayfarer sunglasses beneath that, I didn't expect to be able make eye contact.

Still, I couldn't help but smile, especially as I let my eyes scan down over her delightful body, clad in a simple tank top and a pair of athletic shorts, and then all the way down her endless legs, to where her sneakered feet were resting on the dashboard in front of my steering wheel.

"Hey, babe," I said. "You want to say goodbye to Texas?"

"Hmmm?" she replied; then she raised her left hand and swept her hair back so that as she turned toward me, I could see her lovely heart-shaped face.

"We're almost to New Mexico," I told her.

She nodded and looked off to her right, across an infinite landscape of withered soybeans. Then she turned back. "Looks just like Oklahoma."

I laughed and said, "Yep, and I imagine the next three hours will look just the same."

"So, this still feel like a fantasy?" She asked.

"Yes," I agreed. It still didn't feel real. Being on a cross-country road trip on Route 66, the Mother Road, in a classic convertible, with this lovely young woman by my side.

Let alone the part where she had used magic, or a time machine, or a Jedi mind trick to put us in 1964.

"I don't know," she countered. "I don't think the scenery would be this boring in an actual fantasy."

I had turned my gaze back to the road ahead, but when I glanced over again, she was still grinning at me, her eyes hidden but no doubt sparkling behind her sunglasses. "What?" she asked.

I just smiled.

"WHAT!??" she demanded.

"I just... looking at you always makes me smile," I told her, once again.

"Yeah," she replied, "but I always know you're also thinking something else."

I looked up at a sign on the horizon: Welcome to New Mexico. I pointed at it, and Aurora laughed out loud.

"Leaving Texas," I said.

"Good riddance," she retorted. Then she rearranged herself, so that instead of leaning against the door, she was positioned across the wide bench seat of our classic ride, leaning up against me. I raised my right arm so she could snuggle beneath it, then gently wrapped it around her sunburned shoulders.

Within a few minutes, Aurora had dozed off again; and with my right arm wrapped around her, I couldn't do anything with the radio. For the next hour, I didn't hear anything that I really enjoyed. Until finally, the opening chords of Link Ray's "Rumble" crashed through the tinny speakers. Damn it, maybe it really was 1964.

***

Three weeks earlier:

Taking a road trip across the old Route 66 had been a long-time fantasy of mine. I had no particular desire to end up in Los Angeles; it had always been more of a "it's the journey, not the destination" thing. There was a romanticism to the idea, partly because the Interstates had overwritten the Original Experience before I was old enough to drive, let alone afford the time and money to do it right. But, the mythology, the mid-century modern architecture, the casual "New Frontier/Mad Men" elegance in the period magazine ads... these were the images from my childhood.

I don't know why the idea appealed so much to Aurora. She wasn't even born until 1985.

Yeah, do the math. It's not really 1964, that's just the game we're playing on this trip. It's 2013. I'm almost fifty-five years old. Aurora is 28. You want more? She's a stripper. She's a lot more than that, though. She's also six foot two inches tall. She's a former athlete, and she's a "late bloomer" college student, having recently come back to school after a few years backpacking and odd-jobbing around Europe. She's a film studies major. Not one of my students. I do a lot of consulting work on campus and I've cultivated something of an academic "look," but I'm not currently teaching.

I don't know if the school would fire me, if I was on faculty, just for going to a strip club, or even for having one of my students gyrating half-naked on my lap. And Aurora can gyrate. Yet another of the many advantages of being my own boss.

Like deciding on short notice to take that road trip that lots of people talk about but no one ever gets around to doing. And if what you're going for is a once-in-a-lifetime fantasy, why not go with the twenty-something, six-foot stripper?

It had been a Friday afternoon in late July, the kind of still, sweltering afternoon that lent itself perfectly to sitting in a dimly-lit air-conditioned showclub. I had come in shortly after it was open, and today I was done for the day, so I didn't need to pretend this was just a long, late lunch.

Aurora was seated in the low chair next to mine, turned sideways, her long legs draped over mine. I had already watched her first set, gone up to the rail to tip her, and then gone back to a private room for three songs' worth of lap dances. $100 with tip, the usual.

Now we were relaxing together, as we occasionally were able to do. The place wasn't busy. All the other customers were occupied with other girls. Each time one of them got up to take her turn on the pole, I gave Aurora a few singles to go tip her colleague. I liked watching Aurora and her friends put on a show for me and everyone else, the dancers parting their legs or arching their backs, undulating, thrusting their pelvises toward Aurora's lithe, feline body leaning over the edge of the stage, the alpha lioness in a room full of predators, teasing them, getting closer to their bodies than any of the men were allowed, at least out here in the main room.

"So, you have any plans for the semester break?" She was asking me. She was toying with the drawstring of the little red hooded sweatshirt that was part of today's unusual outfit. Hoodie, g-string, and six-inch stripper heels. And nothing else except the barbells through her nipples, which were currently covered up.

"Not really," I replied, allowing my hand to move slightly from her shin to her knee.

"I've been thinking about just doing a road trip." And then, after she prompted me with what seemed like genuine interest, I told her about Route 66.

"That sounds great," she responded. "I'm jealous."

"Come with me," I suggested, knowing she would laugh.

"Okay," she said.

I twitched with surprise. My neck, and my cock. "That would be... excellent." I said.

"I'm serious," she insisted. "You know, unless you've got someone else you're planning to ask."

Well, I hadn't really been seriously planning this trip. But it did only take me a few seconds to realize that none of the women I had recently dated, or flirted with, or slept with, seemed like a remotely good idea. There was Maureen, from the Life Sciences department. She was good in bed, but if I asked her to go on vacation with me she'd be ordering wedding china.

I was getting ahead of myself. Aurora was a professional when it came to teasing me. Literally. I cleared my throat. "It's a haul," I told her. "Several days, if you're actually going to follow the old two-lane roads where all the cool old sights are."

"I can spare the time," she pushed. "It's dead around here those two weeks anyway. You driving all the way to LA and back?" she asked.

"Actually," I replied, the wheels in my head turning, "I've always thought about renting a car, one way, and then flying back."

"It's got to be a convertible," she stated.

"Uh huh. Like Woody Harrelson drove in Natural Born Killers?" I teased her back.

She flashed a smile with the tip of her tongue between her teeth, dimples flashing.

"Better than whatever it was that Henry Fonda drove in The Grapes of Wrath," she countered. "Nah, I can picture what you need. Something long and low... like in Thelma and Louise."

"With a happier ending," I laughed, while tracing my finger tips down her calves, longer and lower and more sleek than the fenders on any Thunderbird. "Yeah, that would be great."

"That's what I want," she said. "Find one, and I'll go with you."

I felt myself... rising to the challenge. She smirked. She was no stranger to feeling my erection through my pants. "That's going to be a trick," I sighed.

She was playing with the buttons on my oxford shirt now. "Not so hard if we had a time machine."

Well, fuck, we're back to fantasy, I thought. I was halfway starting to believe she was serious.

"A time machine," I repeated.

"Uh huh. If we went back to, like, 1964, then all those cool roadside diners and motels would still be new and shiny. And, you know, we wouldn't even have to worry about how long we were gone. We could always just come back to the same day we left. Not even have to worry about feeding the cat."

"Sounds like a plan," I grinned.

"Uh huh. And best of all, what happens in 1964, stays in 1964."

"Okay. So all I've got to do is find a time machine."

"You get the car, and let me take care of the time machine."

I shook my head and leaned back and closed my eyes. I really could spend all day with this playful young woman. Or six days straight.

But not this day. A few more customers had come in. Aurora looked around the room and gave my hair a tousle.

"Better go make some money," she told me. Reluctantly, I helped her up. I stayed seated, but held my arm stiff to give her something to push off of as she stood.

I hate it when Aurora has to leave, but I love to watch her walk away. When she's in six-inch heels and I'm sitting in one of these low-slung chairs, her magnificent ass is a foot above eye level. And with each step she takes, each globe tilts like the earth on its axis. Making the rockin' world go round...

I was still enjoying the crazy little fantasy she had been teasing me with, but that one began to evaporate as I saw her approach a stocky young Hispanic man who had taken a seat on the other side of the stage. She bent at the waist to talk to him over the pulsing music, giving me a delicious and agonizing view from a distance.

The dancer on stage was putting on a show, but my eyes stayed fixed on Aurora. The guy was making her work for it. After a couple of minutes, she switched to a crouch beside his chair. Forearms crossed on the arm of the chair, chin on her wrists, letting him tilt his head back and look down on her. As if he was in control.

As if.

I loved, and hated, watching her work a room. I especially hated it when she scored.

To be continued...