Summer Song

3.

The nearest town, it turned out, was about a twenty-five minute drive. Gabby, whose high was just about gone, found her talkative, goofy nature recede a little. She'd thought she'd spend the time talking to Dex. Getting her story. Inside the cab of the truck, which was indeed an incredible machine, Gabby found herself shy, something she almost never felt. Outside of a few glances and more Tattoo counting she barely said a word for the whole drive. Every now and then she would cast a glance Dex's way, however, and find the driver looking back at her, causing both of them to quickly return their eyes to the road. It was 25 minutes of silence that was somehow both awkward and, interestingly to Gabby, charged.

Eventually the truck turned into the Lonely Valley auto shop that was advertised on the truck's side and Dex brought it to a stop in the middle of a small lot in front of the garage. The garage, much like the truck, seemed like an appealing blend of old and new. There were a few old, junky looking cars in the lot, including a black one that immediately caught Gabby's eyes as seeming cool.

"Well, here it is." Dex said, finally breaking the silence. Gabby nodded and got out of the truck, shutting the door behind her just as she saw Fin get out of the Fritz. Dex got out too and Gabby walked around to be on the same side of the two of them.

"So," Dex said, "I figured I'll leave the car here for now and Dougie can look at it in the morning and let you know the deal."

"Fine," Fin said, "But you should know that I only spent like, a thousand on the car in the first place. If it's as bad as you say I don't think it makes sense to pay to fix it."

Gabby nodded. She knew that made sense even if the idea of Fritz dying filled her with a deep sadness.

Dex shrugged.

"Fine, by me. If that's your call there's a bus station in town." Dex said.

Gabby looked over at Fin, hoping to look reassuring. After all, wasn't this what they wanted? Adventure? A trip that wasn't just staying at some resort, safe from anything interesting? Fin, however, looked as annoyed as he had since the car started to sputter and die along the side of the highway.

"Fine," he said, "At least tell me there's a motel in town."

Dex nodded

"Yeah, the Valley Inn, over on route 4."

"OK, fine," Fin said, "Can you drive us?"

Dex shook her head.

"No, I can give you the name of a cab that will though." Dex said, looking over at Gabby. "But I don't think she should go with you."

"Excuse me?" Gabby asked, unsure of what she meant.

"Yeah, excuse you?" Fin repeated, sounding a little surer.

"Look, it's stupid, I know," Dex said with a shrug, "But this is pretty conservative country and I know it sounds crazy but the owner there is this crazy Bible-y dude and he doesn't rent rooms to unmarried couples."

"What?" Fin exclaimed

"Seriously," Gabby added, "Is it 1958?"

"Hey, don't look at me," Dex, said, her hands raised in a union of frustration, "My first night in town he got one look at me and wouldn't even rent me a single."

"Fine," Fin said, clearly too tired to contest the point "We'll just get two rooms."

"Two rooms?" Gabby said, looking back at Fin. Truth was she didn't have nearly as much money saved as Fin did for the trip and didn't like spending it all on Motel rooms. Even splitting them with Fin was eating into what she had, she didn't like the idea of getting one herself.

"I'll pay for it Gabby," he said

"Fin, I don't want this trip to be about you paying for everything," Gabby protested, "It's as much my adventure as yours and..."

"And even if that did work out money wise," Dex interjected, "The guy's not stupid. If you came in and put two rooms on your credit card he'd get what was up."

"So what should we do?" Gabby asked

"We could say we're married," Fin suggested,

Gabby frowned at the idea for a couple reasons. She decided to go with the more pressing one.

"Fin, you know I don't like lying," Gabby said. She didn't. If this motel owner wouldn't rent her the room honestly, she wouldn't demean herself and force the issue.

Dex looked back at Gabby.

"Look, I'm going to make a suggestion and it may not be a lovebird's paradise situation but I think it'll work work." Dex said confidently,

"You", she said, pointing to Fin, "Go call the cab and get a motel room."

Fin nodded, looking skeptical.

"And you," Dex continued, pointing at Gabby, "Come with me and crash on my couch for the night. In the morning the both of you meet up back here and either the car is fixed and you go on your merry way or it's not and you can head over to the bus station."

Gabby smiled. That actually sounded good. She'd been in motel rooms for days and while she was used to a certain level of living rough, she did like the idea of sleeping in a real place where people lived. Plus, she was relieved that Dex seemed cool enough with her to make the offer. The awkwardness of the drive over had planted some doubts about whether or not Dex liked her although, Gabby thought, that was probably still some of the come down from the joint.

"Oh my god, do you have a real shower?" Gabby said, "Because I hate motel showers."

Gabby said that with conviction. She was discovering she very much hated motel showers. And her last two showers had both been motel showers, one of which was interrupted by a cockroach the size of her thumb.

"Good water pressure, big tank." Dex nodded, "Put in the shower head myself"

"Oh my god, I love you," Gabby said, practically feeling the shower already. However she found herself feeling a little embarrassed by her exclamation.

"Bullshit," Fin interjected Clearly, Gabby thought, he was less enthused with the plan.

"Why bullshit?" Dex asked, sounding surprised.

Gabby looked over at Fin who looked a little lost for a reason as to why it was, in his words, bullshit. Eventually, though he seemed to settle on something.

"How come she can crash with you and I can't" he said, sounding like a hurt kid who wasn't invited to a birthday party.

"Clearly, bro," Dex said, emphasizing the masculine, "You've never been a woman before. Inviting strange dudes you just met into your house is sketchy at the best of times. I don't know, you might beat me up or something."

"And strange women is fine?" Fin continued, pointing at Gabby.

"Well, it is more my forte" Dex said with a knowing smile before pointing her hand in Gabby's direction, "Besides, she's what? A hundred and fifteen pounds? I think I'll be OK."

Gabby didn't know why but she felt strangely insulted by that. The idea that she was incapable of doing serious harm to strangers due to her size seemed oddly demeaning. She felt an urge to stick up for her potential for danger.

"You don't know..." Gabby said defiantly, "I could be a Ninja."

Dex laughed. But it was an amused laugh, not a mean one. Gabby smiled.

"I'll take my chances, Shinobi."

Fin, however, seemed less amused and pointed his finger right into Dex's chest. Something Dex seemed very amused by.

"Look, if you think I'm going to let her go home with you..."

Now it was Gabby's turn to be upset.

"Let me?" Gabby said, feeling the very unusual feeling of anger rise inside her, "Fin, it's not your place 'let' me do anything and, quite frankly, I think maybe you spending the night alone would give you time to think on where you got that shit."

Fin looked at Gabby and, apparently got the message, as his expression softened, then he looked over at Dex and looked worried again. Then he threw his hands up in surrender.

"Fine. Spend the night at her place and we'll meet back up here at 10."

"Eleven." Dex said, "I tend to sleep in."

"Fine, eleven." Fin said, clearly not willing to put up a fight on anything anymore.

After an exchange of relevant numbers with Dex, Fin called his cab and the three waited, still standing by the truck. After a while Gabby realized something very strange and concerning. Fin hadn't gotten his bag out of the back of their car and there was, Gabby remembered, a lot of drugs in it. Gabby didn't know exactly how much Fin had with him but she knew it was a lot. He was usually just a small time dealer, selling quarters to college kids and such, but he'd sold his car to invest heavily in a lot of stuff for the trip to sell. Gabby had protested at first, citing the risk involved but Fin had guaranteed her it would be fine. Gabby, however, had felt vindicated by how paranoid Fin seemed to be every time they passed a cop car.

So when Gabby saw Fin walk off without getting his bag, she knew she should say something. She didn't like the idea of Fin being terrified of being busted himself but letting someone else shoulder that risk.

"Fin, don't you think you should get your clothes from the back?" Gabby said, hoping her emphasizing the word clothes the way she did would indicate she actually meant the drugs.

Fin looked at her, then back at the car and then back at her.

"The car will be safe here, right?" he said, looking at Dex.

Dex gestured upwards, pointing towards the eight foot chain link fence topped with razor wire that surrounded the repair shop lot. Finn nodded and smiled.

"Then nah, I think I'll wear these clothes tomorrow." Fin said, "Rather than, you know, risk carrying around all of those...clothes."

"Fin," Gabby said, her tone getting firm "I really think that the nice people here, who are doing us a big favor, would not want to be responsible if someone found your...clothes."

Gabby's words hung in the air as Fin looked at her. Clearly Fin thought his risk in carrying the drugs around outweighed the jeopardy of leaving them in someone else's unknowing hands.

"Hey, Alan Turing and the Bletchley Circle," Dex said sarcastically after a few seconds of silence "Kudos on the impenetrable code and everything but if you've got some pot or something in the car don't worry about it, it'll be safe."

"Really?" Gabby said, surprised at Dex's ready insistence to commit what amounted to a felony.

"No," Fin said, opening the trunk and lifting his suitcase out, "I think I'll take my bag after all. Could use the fresh clothes."

Gabby thought about that a second.

"Clothes doesn't mean drugs any more, right?" she asked Fin in a low whisper. Fin nodded impatiently.

Before there was a chance to answer a four-door sedan pulled up outside of the lot and a short, dark-skinned latino man emerged from it.

"Hey Luis," Dex shouted from across the lot, "You sober enough to take this nice gentleman out to the motel."

"Soy más sobrio de lo que nunca has estado, gringa." the man said. Gabby didn't speak Spanish, however, so it was lost on her.

"Well, it's not saying much," Dex shrugged "But it'll do."

"Alright, call me if anything goes wrong," Fin said, leaning down to kiss Gabby on the cheek before turning once more to stare daggers at Dex, "Don't let anything happen to her. We're leaving here in the morning. Together."

"Don't worry," Dex said with a smile, "She'll be in good hands."

Fin frowned at that.

"Also," he said "Remember to tell your cousin not to fix it if it'll cost anything real."

"OK," Dex nodded.

"And even though I've got the...clothes, tell him not to, you know, touch anything else in the trunk. Gabby's stuff is still in there."

Gabby smiled a little at that. After a day of pretty solidly acting like an asshole, Gabby thought there was a degree of chivalry in caring about her stuff. Gabby wasn't carrying much, a few changes of clothes, her meager savings and some personal items but there was a gold locket her grandfather had given her that meant a lot. It was nice, Gabby thought, to be reminded that Fin wasn't a total asshole.

"Fine I'll tell him, now, vamanos. Luis doesn't have all night." Dex said and, as if prompted, the cab's horn honked.

Fin nodded and Gabby watched as he walked across the lot. Annoyed that he kept looking over his shoulder back at her, she made a waving motion as if to beckon him onward. Eventually he threw his bag onto the back seat of the cab before getting in himself.

"Your boyfriend is kind of an asshole," Dex said, watching the cab drive away.

"He's not my boyfriend," Gabby said.

"No?" Dex said, sounding intrigued,

"Well, I mean, he is and he isn't," Gabby said, "I mean we're together but I don't like labels like that. I had a really good metaphor about him and traveling earlier but I can't remember it."

Dex nodded, clearly not entirely sure of what Gabby meant.

"Well, he's an asshole anyway."

Gabby nodded.

"I mean, okay I see how you'd think that right now but...not usually though." she said, feeling a need to stick up for him somewhat even as she admitted that, from everything Dex had seen of him, there was no real cause for the dark-haired girl to think anything else.

"Sure," Dex nodded without much conviction, "Want to grab your bag and we'll split?"

Gabby shook her head.

"Nah. I'll leave it here if it's all the same."

"You don't need clean clothes?" Dex asked, "And, remember I don't have access to the Enigma machine so I just mean clothes."

Gabby nodded. She didn't get the reference.

"No, my clothes are all dirty anyway." she said, "I probably need to hit up a laundromat before we split tomorrow."

Dex nodded and slapped the tow truck.

"Wanna split?" she said,

Gabby nodded, a little thrilled at the idea of spending more time with the pretty punk chick, resolving not to let the next ride be so silent.

"It's a great truck, by the way," Gabby said as she watched Dex unhook Fritz the Car from the tow.

"Yeah, it's OK. My cousin Doug built it." Dex shrugged

"What's its name?" Gabby asked absentmindedly.

"Name?" Dex asked, looking confused.

"Yeah, don't you name your cars?" Gabby wondered as if it were the most natural thing in the world.

Dex let the question hang in the air for a second. Staring at Gabby like she was trying to solve an invisible puzzle written on Gabby's forehead. Gabby cringed a little inside. She didn't want to come off as too much of a space cadet, especially not to someone who seemed as smart and cool as Dex was.

"You're a little bit weird, huh?" Dex said, still in that same wry, above-it-all tone she seemed to use for everything. Gabby nodded.

"That's what people tell me," she said, wishing very much she could go back in time a few minutes. Dex, however, seemed to notice that and shook her head with a laugh.

"Nah, it's cool," she said reassuringly, "I like weird."

Gabby couldn't help it. She beamed.

4.

For the second time that day, Gabby found herself alone in the cab of the tow truck with the mysterious dark haired girl. Again, there was a charged energy. Gabby had thought that, maybe, it had originally simply been her mind playing a trick on her. That the pot had triggered the sort of hyper-awareness in her that it occasionally did.

But when she and Dex had gotten into the truck the second time Gabby had been in the process of putting her seat belt on when she realized she couldn't find where it connected.

"Oh yeah, it falls beneath the seat sometimes," Dex said, noticing the problem. The punk-y girl had reached over and gently placed her hand on Gabby's left hip to nudge her momentarily aside. Gabby, who was no longer stoned, couldn't mistake the charge she felt when Dex's long fingers had just brushed her hip. There was definitely something going on. Something that Gabby didn't want to think about too much or define just in case it was, even if real, entirely one-sided. Dex had pulled the missing piece of plastic free and Gabby had done up her belt and had begun talking. Yammering really. She couldn't stop. She felt like she couldn't bear the silence of the first ride again and so she filled it with rapid, nervous talk. Mainly about her philosophy and how it had gotten her to that side of road on the desert.

"...so, yeah, you know everyone I went to college with it was all the same. You'd think they'd relax a little bit and take some time to find themselves once they'd gotten into a good school but everyone was all like, 'I have to get the right major and get great grades and be in the right sorority and the right grad school otherwise I might be poor when I graduate and there's nothing worse than being poor, right?' and, like, nobody ever even took a class that maybe would have expanded their horizons or maybe shown them they didn't want to be a doctor or a lawyer or whatever. Even when they partied it was all like, just some steam valve letting off pressure, you know? Just really ugly stuff where they'd drink way too much and take drugs for all the wrong reasons and have completely impersonal sex with random people and, I don't know, I just wasn't like that. You know?"

Dex looked over at her with a raised eyebrow. It was only then that Gabby realized she'd been talking for about five minutes straight.

"Yeah, I've seen college kids before. But what I asked you was why you were on this trip in the first place."

Gabby nodded. She'd heard the question and thought she'd answered it but, realized, she'd really just gotten to the preamble.

"I just, I just didn't want to fit into that, I guess. Everybody had everything so planned and they were so concerned with starting their careers right away and I just wanted to get out there, you know? Take a step without knowing where I'd end up. I've never traveled before really and I guess I just wanted to have a ton of experiences before I settled anywhere. I want to dance in New Orleans and cross the Mississippi and finally swim in the Atlantic and see an Alligator and get really stoned and eat Ben and Jerry's right from the factory and, you know?"

Dex laughed. Gabby was used to people laughing at her when she got going and was concerned at once that Dex thought she was dumb or weird but it wasn't a mean laugh. It was, Gabby thought, a delighted one. A laugh Gabby liked a lot.

"Alright, I asked," Dex said, "So it raises the question, though, I mean your boyfriend-"

"He's not my-"

"Right, right," Dex corrected herself, "Your traveling companion doesn't seem to be quite on that same sort of hippy spirit journey thing."

Gabby nodded. She understood, given what Dex had seen of Fin, to not understand why the two of them were together. Well, not together together, Gabby thought. But together.

"Yeah, Fin, I mean Fin was different when I met him. He was really laid back and fun and he's an amazing guitar player." Gabby said, not sure if she was defending Fin or her choice in that regard, "We'd sometimes just go into these woods near school with a picnic and he'd have his guitar and we'd just chill or make love or hang out. He didn't seem to be faking anything just to get into my pants. He wasn't like everyone else then."

"And now?" Dex asked

"I don't know," Gabby said, "More and more I'm thinking that Fin, the Fin I really liked, that he was just someone who thought those things were distractions. That being cool like that and even I was just a temporary thing. Like he knew he was eventually going to be like everyone else but he figured, you know, because his Dad was already so rich then rather than panic and stress out about being rich one day he could goof off until it was time to just go have it given to him."

Gabby let that hang in the air for a second. If she was defending Fin, she realized, she wasn't doing much of a job of it.

"But, you know, he did come with me." Gabby said, redoubling her efforts, "And he even sold this incredible car his dad bought him so he could finance the trip and he does want to take care of me, which is nice even though I can take care of myself."

Gabby decided to change the subject. The truth was the difference between Good Fin and Bad Fin was something that bummed her out.