KARINA LUTZ

★ ★ ★ ★

FLASH FICTION

Image by Vista Wei

‘Who thought this was a date?’

No flirting, no one got dressed up, no dinner. We were friends through work, both married to other people. Still, I’m the affectionate kind, and he drove me to some loner’s idea of lovers’ lane, and drove the long way. I asked where we were, and he said we were going to a beautiful place he knew.

It was the desert, near dark. I think there was a sunset involved. We got out and walked a little.

I absolutely did not expect to be kissed … and that is what it was: completely transitive. I was acted upon, so I say, “to be kissed,” not “to kiss.” That too can be a surprise, and might even be unpleasant. But this was a no way. He did not let go at the first, second, or third objection. After lots of words from me, kind but firm, he agreed to go back to the car. For some reason, which escapes me like the sunset, he thought I’d walked too much already so he went to get the car and come back for me. Maybe he thought I’d be freaked out by being abandoned in the desert at night so far from any town that the stars were twice as close as usual, and then would do anything he wanted in the car.

It was the late ’80s: before cell phones, after the emergence of AIDS. An era when a married hetero man, even one with bad intentions, was unlikely to be carrying a condom. For the first time, the long scar along the side of his face came into focus. And the ditches that ran the two sides of the long, straight two-lane road.

After his car was out of view, I walked for a ways towards town, towards him, eyes peeled, and then scrambled down into the dry ditch. It was a trench that caught tumbleweeds and apparently collected enough rainwater in winter to grow some vascular plants, which by now were all full grown and dry, some as tall as me. Having grown up a tom-boy paid off: I wasn’t afraid of the prickers and burrs and barbed foxtail grass seeds. Annoyed, maybe, but not afraid.

From the ditch, I watched his headlights run up and down the road for 15 minutes or so, going far past where he’d used his tongue like a muscle, and I guess he realized he didn’t know which direction I’d run. Then a long time, no lights.

I got up and started walking, pulling off the seeds who were using me for their own dispersal, and tossing them back in the ditch, where they’d have a chance come spring. Every ten minutes or so a pair of headlights would appear and I’d jump back into the ditch. By then I was pretty sure the cars contained other people.

Then streetlights’ cold and concerned eyes shone at me like stern grandmothers’, and the ditch turned into a sidewalk.

Finally, there was a phone booth.