Nothing Like Kirsten.

Nothing like Kirsten.

It was 11:30 on a starless Saturday night when Tony Migliori decided to pull his big rig into the well-lit truck stop. Four hours of non-stop driving in sparse night traffic brought his senses to a dull languor. He needed a break and he needed it now. The listless solitude he had been feeling during this long drawn-out trip to Cleveland was just too overwhelming.

One would think that after driving trucks for over seventeen years, Tony would be used to the road and all of the discomfort it brings. Most of his trips up East were uneventful, and seemed to go by rather quickly. Not this time. An odd atmosphere of disconnect and an almost imperceptible apprehension just made it feel different.

Once and for all, Kirsten had told him, "It's over!" She even warned him, "Don't call or come around here no more." All of this because of some stupid mistake he made a few months ago. Aren't we all human? Why couldn't she just get over it? I'm over it, the weary driver thought.

He wasn't. He'd gotten over nothing but a thousand miles of lonely highway. Her touch, her voice, her hair, her proclamations of eternal love — he missed it all with a depth of pain that he couldn't shake. What a fool I was on the long-haul to Tacoma last autumn. To fall for that floozy! She was nothing like Kirsten.

It turned Tony's stomach to think that he lost it all when he embraced that roadie barfly with the bleached-dyed hair, the tight black dress, and the lace v-neck. Yes! She did it! She seduced him and he followed her into the dark. Taste, smell, pleasure, release — when he finally slipped away from her spell, he was none the better. Only his conscience and the insane desire to confess made it worse.

The guilt overcame him. Within a week, driven by shame, he broke down and told Kirsten everything. She sat there on the maroon leather love seat in her living room, patiently waiting for him to finish his sordid confession. When he was done, like a leading lady from one of the black-and-white film noir movies she so much liked to watch, she stood up and slapped him right across the cheek, then walked out of the house in a proud state of spurned womanhood.

She was devastated. She was disgusted. She chose to wash her hands of him. That was it. Three years of dating and three years of marriage. Ending. Just like that.

Tony was looking for a way to ease his mind. He kept going back and forth, not getting any relief. In a near hypnotic state, he sought refuge in the familiar, another truck run on the open road. Maybe the incessant roar of the diesel, the bite of the wind, the rattling of the big rig might drown out the noises bouncing in his head like mortar rounds exploding on the desert floor. It didn't seem to be working at all. The truck that once brought him peace and comfort was now like a prison, or worse yet, like a coffin. Tony couldn't snap out of the depression that gripped him. He had to get out of the confinement of his rig. He had to talk to somebody.

Maybe I'm going insane, he thought when he saw the sign: "Sundusky 17 miles." Tony didn't think he could make it another five miles, let alone seventeen. He felt like he was going to dissolve into nothingness. He sought desperately to tune out the chatter in his mind. Like the machine he was driving, he was void of emotion and feeling. He drove straight on into the foggy, black night. Tony was on the verge of losing his sanity when, at last, he saw the bright lights of the truck stop in the distance. He almost did not believe it when the glowing sign appeared in the gloom, beckoning to him like an oasis in the middle of a parched desert. "Come, come away. Revive your weary soul."

As he attempted to maneuver his big rig around a muddy Chevy pickup and a battered old Toyota on the pitted asphalt lot, he noticed that a few truckers had already pulled off to the side of the yard, faced their trucks towards the light of the diesel pumps, and turned in for the night. Although he had come here to escape his loneliness, it seemed to increase. Something just wasn't right. His longing for conversation, no matter how trivial and meaningless, swelled-up like one big dry lump in middle of his throat.

He pulled to a stop and shut down the big engine. Beside him stood a huge, bright yellow truck, whose color faded away when he turned off his lights. Now, that same yellow truck, once a tenacious and fiery yellow, vanished and blended in with the night — the long and obtuse shadows of that night, the night he stepped into.

He paused to look toward the roadhouse, searching, but didn't see a living soul inside. No, there in the shadows of the café, was it a figure? The human form was barely discernable. Yes, a middle-aged, gray-headed woman. Was it despair he detected on her long, emaciated face? Where is everyone? Man, I'm not up to flapping the breeze with that old hag!

His heart beat fitfully in the sudden dread. His hope was to find a cacophony of sounds ranging from non-directional chatter to raucous bursts of laughter. He was accustomed to boisterous greetings and roaring, long-winded good-byes. These are the sounds of real truckers, the sounds of hard working, 'ain't-had-no-sleep-in-two-days' working men. Here in the dark of Sundusky, in the unexpected quiet, his hopes were dashed.

There would be no unruly laughter tonight, no earsplitting music, no gossiping voices, none of the familiar kinds of noise you don't really pay attention to until they're absent. He needed the sounds of truck-stop society. They were necessary to rid himself of the blues, those real deep dark blues.

Tony walked with a quickened pace towards the roadhouse. He was anxious to put the darkness and the solitude behind him for a while. The smell of gasoline permeated the air. The cool chill of the autumn evening was reviving his spirits. Maybe that was all he needed — a blast of fresh night air. He stepped onto the dilapidated sidewalk leading to the front door. He all but fell on his rear end when he stumbled over a piece of loose cement. Tony noticed that the light just outside the door of the café was dim and flickering. It appeared that at any second the light would go out, leaving Tony almost completely in the dark.

God, what is up with this creepy joint, he thought. Sidewalks falling to pieces, light bulbs about to burn out. Is this for real?

As desperate as he was to talk to someone, Tony hesitated for a few moments before deciding to pass through the doorway and have his cup of coffee. The desire for company overcame a gnawing reluctance. It doesn't seem right, he thought, but.... Just as he grabbed the door handle, the frail woman with the long face opened the door. "Come on in, honey," she said with a dispassionate, smart-ass sneer.

Any port in a storm, he chucked to himself. It won't hurt to try. He was determined to spend at least a few minutes with some human being other than himself. The woman led him inside. On auto pilot, he looked at her in all the usual places, but the lifeless shift she wore and the absolute gracelessness of her movements presented nothing that interested him.

Almost instantly Tony was hit by the stench of old, stale cigarette smoke. The odor of day-old urine floated in the air. What is this, one big bathroom? I thought this was a café. Old discomforts flooded upon him, remembered foul smells; dirty, sweaty clothes from men in desert fatigues, who hadn't showered in days; the musty odor of soured fruit and grease traps that hadn't been cleaned for year.

Still determined to have that chat, Tony let the door shut behind him and headed towards the counter. He felt his brand new snakeskin boots stick to patches of something slick and gooey on the floor. He didn't dare look down for fear the sight of it would make him vomit. Instead, he kept his eyes on the old gal and inched his way straight ahead. All he could think about was stench and filth. The short walk from the roadhouse door to the dining counter seemed like a long-haul journey, all uphill on a winding, unpaved road. Tony, who usually walks with an attitude and style, was forced to creep to the counter. An onlooker — but there were none! — would have thought he had sipped one too many.

If only the floor and the odors were the worst of it.

Tony tried to remain aloof to the horror show he had unwittingly entered, but he couldn't. It was too awesome in its strangeness and unexpected mystery. When he saw the counter, full of dirty dishes, and scattered with dry french fries and mustard-covered pickles, slivers of greasy onions and crumbs of buns, half-eaten sugar cookies and some things he couldn't decipher — and all of it covered with flies — he heaved. Should I clean it up? What the heck, he thought. Who would notice?

His wide-eyed look of disbelief and disgust must have caught the attention of the woman, or maybe it was the sound of his puking guts; whatever it was, she turned toward him and snapped out of her trance, put on a smile, and positioned herself to attend to him.

He wanted to turn and run, but he simply asked for a cup of coffee "to go". He fumbled in his coat pocket for his wallet. He wanted to pay and get out of the place before he caught some rare truck-stop disease.

Suddenly, like a flash of light, like a vision, a younger version of the old hag, younger and so much more alluring, sweet smelling and dripping with promise — she entered the gloom. "I'm sorry, mama. I'm here now. I'm here now."

The young thing looked at Tony and smiled, "Just ignore this horrible mess. It usually isn't this way. We had a big party tonight, and I just haven't gotten around to cleaning up yet, ok?"

Tony smiled back, took his coffee, and walked with his customary swagger to one of the tables. The old hag frowned, rolled her eyes, and walked back to the counter. "I thought you wanted to go," she muttered under her breath.

The angel, that's what she was, an angel — she grabbed a wet dishrag, and glided over to Tony's table to wipe it down. The shift she wore was bright, shapely. It demanded his full attention. Tony enjoyed her efforts to serve him — however shallow they might be — because, at last, images of Kirsten were being washed away.

"Aren't you going to eat anything with that cup of coffee?" Her voice, the movement of her lips as she spoke to him, her bright round eyes pleased him. Of course he was going to order something.... Sure.... What about a piece of pie? He would order the entire menu to keep her coming back to him with that beaming smile and those fine movements.

The angel girl dashed off to the kitchen. Tony watched her all the way.

Suddenly remembering the rules of the game, Tony decided to change his tone a bit. Wasn't I too obvious, he thought. He feigned disinterest in her, but it wasn't easy. When she returns with the pie, I'll be aloof and curt. I'll play hard to get, but I'll flirt just enough to keep her interest. To encourage the fleeting, playful dance of emotion, to keep alive the first blush of contact — that was his goal. Now he was excited. The insane loneliness and regret he carried into the roadhouse had fled.

The budding of any relationship is filled with excitement and anticipation. You have yet to discover her bad habits. You search for what makes her tick. You're still in the dark about her morning demeanor, what it's like to wake up beside her, or how many times you have to say 'I'm sorry' before she really believes you. He's racing ahead of the first blush now; already he has begun to project the inevitable fall, but in this early state of little knowledge, he is clueless about the last straw, how it might arrive; blind to the act that will make her want to leave him, forget him, no longer need him.

Tony sat in the roadhouse at the lonely table in the dark of night, lost in thought. He couldn't wait for the pretty little thing to come back.

Much to his surprise, instead of the angel, the hag arrived with his slab of pie. She arrived without a soul. She arrived emotionless and cold, like his silent truck on the pitted asphalt lot. She turned away without notice and ambled around the room with a vestige of the forlorn on her acerbic face. He watched in stunned indifference as she finally settled down into an armless chair next to a window, turning this way and that like an old dog settling onto a bed of leaves. She stared into the night. She stared as if she were searching, as if something were out there, something waiting, something to tell her what to do next, what to say now, who to be when the sun rises.

Tony couldn't stand to watch the old gal. He was obsessed with fresh memories of the young princess, the angel, the hot star of the night who had fled. Tony was certain that she wanted him. He was ready to lose himself in the 'newness' of her body, her spirit, her flesh and blood.

Five minutes passed, then twenty, then thirty. His coffee grew cold and bitter. He was determined to wait for her return, her delivery of the comfort and reassurance he desperately needed. He stood up at last and walked slowly to the side of the old woman.

"Where is your daughter?"

"She's gone home."

"Left so soon? What about all of this mess?"

"What's it to you? She'll come back early in the morning to help me clean up."

"How far away does she live?"

"Look, fellow," the woman said in triumph. "My daughter just came in here to check you out. She saw what she needed to see. Now she's gone home. What do you want from us?"

"Just to check me out?"

There was nothing more to say. He mumbled a zombie-like word of thanks for the coffee, words which tumbled from his parched lips without meaning. He tossed a ten-dollar bill on the table, maneuvered his way through the mess, pushed open the door with his shoulder, stumbled again on the broken concrete, and jumped into his truck.

He pulled off into the pitch dark of the night. All his thoughts went back to his lost love. He assured himself that the young thing at the truck stop would have been nothing like his beautiful Kirsten. Nothing like Kirsten.

EDITOR'S NOTE: Todd
can be reached by E-mail at
toddm@mail.uca.edu