She crawls out of the bathroom, over Del's cooling body, and fetches her messenger bag from the far side of the bed. Fishing around, she finds what she's looking for, and pulls out a crumpled pack of Marlboro Lights. She taps one out, plugs it between her lips, and lights it.

Miriam exhales smoke, a jet from each nostril. Like steam from a dragon's nose.

The nausea recedes, a septic tide washing the poison back to sea.

"Much better," she says to whoever is listening. Del's ghost, maybe. Or the cockroach.

Then she goes back into the bag to find Item Number Two: a black notebook with a red pen tucked in the spiral. The notebook is almost at its end. Just ten more pages left. Ten blank pages, a great gulf of awful potential: an unwritten future that's already been written.

"Oh, wait," she says. "I'm getting sloppy over here. Can't forget this–"

Miriam goes and grabs Del's pants and digs in for his wallet. Inside, she finds just shy of fifty bucks and a MasterCard. Enough to get her on the road, put a meal in her belly, move her on to the next town.

"Thanks for the donation, Del."

Miriam props up some pillows against the bed's headboard and leans back. She flips open the notebook, and she writes:

Dear Diary:

I did it again.

TWO

Of Scavengers and Predators

I-40. Quarter past one in the morning.

It's just finished raining. The highway glistens.

The air smells of wet asphalt, which is an odor Miriam associates with fat nightcrawlers stretched across moist macadam.

Car tires shoosh and hiss by. Everything is a smear of headlights in one direction and brake lights in the other.

Miriam's been out here now for twenty minutes, and she wonders why this isn't easier. Here she is, tight white T-shirt – a tight, white, wet t-shirt with no bra in sight – and her thumb out for a ride. Prime, Grade-A Road Trash, she thinks. And yet, nobody stops.

A Lexus speeds past.

"You're a dick," she says.

A white SUV rumbles by.

"You're a super-dick."

A rust-fucked pickup approaches, and she thinks, this is it. Whoever's driving this junk-bucket is sure to think he can score with this thin slip of road pussy. The truck slows; the driver wants a looky-loo. But then it speeds up again. The trunk's horn honks. An empty Chick-Fil-A cup pirouettes through open air and narrowly misses her head. Hillbilly guffaws Doppler past.

Miriam turns her hitchhiker's thumb into a middle finger, and she yells out, "Eat a dick and die, fuckpie!"

She expects them to keep going.

But: red flash. Brake lights. The truck stops hard, then reverses onto the shoulder.

"Shit," Miriam says. Just what she needs. She half-expects the identical twin of the dearly departed Del Amico to step out of the truck, scratching his gut through his wife-beater. What she gets instead is a pair of frat boys.

They're grinning.

One's got that fireman's build and a pair of clear, mean eyes beneath a mop of blond. The other's shorter – squat, really. Fat, freckled cheeks. Tarheels cap overlooking a pair of puckered butthole eyes. Clean suburban white-boy clothes.