When he passes, blinking his lights, she follows. He signals right without moving out of his lane, and she signals, too, but stays behind him. When he actually does exit at a sign that reads REST STOP, Ilka is close behind. The moon is so full and bright she sees every bush, every rock, almost every blade of grass as she follows him up a winding road that ends at the top of a hill in a circle of picnic tables beside a lighted building nearly as big as a house, with two entrances, one for women and one for men. Two men come out of the men’s entrance, one behind the other, and stroll into the bushes behind the building.

She passes the restrooms and parks beside the light blue van, where her pursuer sits staring straight ahead, one arm resting on his steering wheel. The arm looks heavier than his neck and shoulders, but she can’t see it clearly because it’s hidden by his loose jacket. She gets out and walks around her car to the open window of the van. At first she thinks he has no legs, then realizes his bare feet, with their clean, stubby toes, are his hands, his heavy muscular legs his arms. He sits in a padded, velvet-covered seat, with one of his legs resting on the open window, the knee crooked like an elbow, while his neatly manicured toes drum the steering wheel.

He laughs as she gasps. He wears bell-bottomed denim pants and a dark blue shirt whose short sleeves flap loosely. With his free foot he pulls a lever on a dashboard that has lights and buttons like an airplane cockpit, and his seat tilts back. He raises his legs straight up above his head, lacing the toes together like fingers as he watches her, then stretches, with a thrust of his pelvis, and puts his feet back down on the floor where they belong. She backs away one step.

“Why have you been following me?” she asks. With one kick she could knock him out of his van. She can’t imagine an attack he might win.

He smiles at her and shrugs; without arms, the shrug seems to originate in his groin. “I could ask you why you followed me up here. What’s your name, anyway?”

“Ilka,” she says.

His eyes are dark in the moonlight. “Where’re you from?” he asks. “Isn’t that a German accent?”

“Originally Berne. In Switzerland,” she answers before she can stop herself. This is more information than she usually gives the guys she picks up on the road. Her heart beats faster.

“Come for a ride with me, Ilka.” The door on the other side of the van pops open when he pulls a lever.