She sat close to me in the car, her hands touching me. We left town and went out into the country and rolled the windows down. She dug in her purse and held up a twisted length of grass in a pink paper and I nodded and smiled. After that the music never sounded better. We rode nearly to the end of the county and I stopped on a bridge and got us another beer out of the trunk and she sat in the car while I stood near the rear fender taking a leak. The night was clear, all the stars out, summer on its way. I got back in the car and she was all over me, hands, mouth, I don’t know how long it went on right in the middle of the bridge. Finally I pulled away and told her that we had to go someplace else. She asked me if I knew of such a place. I said yes I did.

It wasn’t too for from there, up a winding old road with gravel, an old house place with just the chimney sticking up among the stars when we pulled up. I pushed the lights off. Everything was slow and clear because of the grass. When I killed the motor I could hear everything. Bullfrogs sounding in a pond down in the woods. Whippoorwills calling in the trees. The sound of cars somewhere, far off. She came to me and I held her and she put my hands on the places they wanted to be. When I kissed her she went back on the seat and pulled me down on top of her. She was more than eager. She seemed desperate. And I was the same way.

She was tight, so much that it hurt both of us for a while. I even asked her if she was a virgin but she said no. She was smooth and fine and her skin was silky and warm under my hands. Then a car drove up. I saw the lights in the tops of the trees, raised up and saw two headlights coming slowly around a curve. We had to try and find our underwear in the floorboard and our pants and the car kept coming while we jerked things on and then it stopped and just sat there with its lights shining on us. I had one sock on and no shirt. I don’t know what she had on.

“I thought you said this place was safe,” she said. “I thought it was. Hell. I don’t know who this is.”

The car sat there. I went ahead and put on my shirt and pants.

“Shit,” I said. I cranked the car and turned it around and pulled up beside whoever it was. The car kept sitting there. I couldn’t see anybody inside. It was like nobody was driving it. Then we went on past it and out of sight.