Something about the anonymity of a hotel room appealed to Lexi.  Cheap room, expensive room didn’t matter.  A hotel room was faceless; it was hers, but only temporarily.  No need to worry about cleaning up, or making sure everything was in the right place.  There weren’t any uncomfortable memories to stumble across either, except for those she might make.  And yet, even though the maintenance was someone else’s problem, even though she was a guest, she was free to do anything she wanted to.  She could stack the beds up so that she had a monster-bed four mattresses high.  She could throw French fries at the television.  She could masturbate on the floor, if she really felt like it. 

Maybe she would.  Maybe she already had.  The hotel room didn’t care either way, and that was the wonderful thing about it. 

The feeling of aloneness inspired by her unexceptional little Days Inn room in the middle of Missouri was pleasant, too.  Lexi wanted to be alone and unfindable for a while.  She slept wonderfully, and awoke nervous about the Road Associates’ “test,” supposedly to take place at the Minilite Bar, on the Missouri-Arkansas border.  She didn’t want to socialize, but that part of it was unavoidable. 

She repacked, glancing briefly in the mirror to make sure she was more or less presentable (and that there wasn’t too much devilry in her eyes, considering what she’d been up to the previous evening) and checked out quickly. 

Grizzle started easily, and blew a welcome warm breeze from the vents.  The snow on the ground was a few days old, and the air was cold but dry.  She’d encountered a patch of glare ice or two on the way down, but otherwise it was just cold.  It felt good to be driving again.  The relentless mechanical dance of the road trip was a good feeling, full of potential and constant change, and infinitely better than moping about the house for eight months.  If Ian hadn’t kept her all drugged up…oh, but that was past, she wasn’t thinking about that any more.   

What was present was that her big old truck needed washing.  There wasn’t a shiny spot left on the paint job, but she still wanted to get the salt off, to slow down the oxidization of the rest of the truck.  Lexi checked the cheap digital clock Velcroed to the dashboard:  seven-thirty.  Too early for a car wash.  She’d find one before the meeting, then.  The invitation card hadn’t said whether her car ought to be presentable or not.  On one hand, it would be good to show up in a nice, shiny, obviously loved car.  On the other hand, she didn’t have one.  Ian had sold the entire collection, and all she had was Grizzle, some derelict old cars she’d found on her property, and a bunch of unassembled Crane-Packards.   But maybe they’d see that the old ’69 Ford was special, too. They were the same age, and he’d been in her family since he was new.  Shit, she and the truck were all that was left of the Crane family that smiled out of curling Polaroids.

Dammit, she was thinking too much about it.  Lexi found a McDonald’s, and swung into the drive-thru.  Grizzle had a habit of snorting whenever she put the clutch in, and the noise made Lexi smile.  Sometimes she shifted just so the truck would make the noise.  And if the Road Associates were as cool as Glen (and Ren, incidentally) had said they were, they’d appreciate that, and understand why it was cool, and that would be that.  She didn’t need to worry about whether Grizzle was clean or not. 

She ordered a delightfully slimy breakfast and smiled big at the teenager manning the window. 

“Your total’s four sixty-three.  That’s a nice old truck,” he said. 

“Thanks,” she said, counting out change in her hand.  “But don’t call him ‘old, he doesn’t like that.”

The moment of silence that followed suggested that he had no idea what that meant, but wasn’t about to show it.  “Yours?” 

Lexi looked over at the empty passenger seat with an amused giggle. “Whose else would it be?” 

He blushed.  “I dunno, your boyfriend’s or something.  It got the 460?” 

She tilted her head modestly.  “No, just a beat-up old 390.” 

“It sounds mean.  You got a cam in it?” 

Lexi laughed, and pulled away from the window, leaving the kid to figure it out for himself.  Chances were, he wouldn’t have been impressed to hear that Grizzle just had a big hole in his muffler.  “My truck lives to work!” Lexi yelled, pulling back into traffic, such as it was.  There wasn’t much to the urban area she was in; hotel and its captive Shoney’s on one side of the freeway, a string of gas stations and fast food restaurants on the other, and then the two-lane road faded off into what was probably Redneckia in both directions.  Did this even count as a town?  She figured there was probably a cluster of houses and a “historic district” not far off, if she felt like looking for it, but she didn’t really.  There wasn’t time.

Then she saw Danny Packard.

Daniel Packard was Ren’s younger brother.  Lexi had never gotten to know him; he was very much his mother’s son, and had naturally hated Lexi from the start.  He hadn’t even condescended to talk to her since Ren’s death.  Disapproving looks, one of his specialties and more than a little bit creepy coming from a guy his age (a year younger than she was) were all that he bothered to give to Lexi.  It was no great loss.  She didn’t like him either.

It was understandably strange therefore to see him out here in the middle of Missouri, far from the marble-floored, heated-towel racked comfort of the Packard mansion and getting into the rear passenger side of a new Mercedes S-Class at the BP station.  Lexi saw him at the same time that he saw her, and in the moment that their eyes locked she saw that he looked annoyed.  Maybe he’d just had to pump his own gas?  Did he even know how?  She wondered what he saw in her eyes, or if he actually even saw her face.  The way the Packards looked at her, she imagined sometimes that they automatically superimposed some other face over hers.  For all she knew, when they looked at her they saw Imelda Marcos, or Rudolf Hess.

Whatever face his brain registered, Danny looked even angrier when he saw Lexi.  He threw himself into the car, presumably barking orders to the driver as he did so because the Mercedes’ lights snapped on and the car rocketed forward.  Lexi looked in her rear view mirror as she passed, and saw the big sedan bouncing over the curb in her direction.

On an impulse, she turned onto the freeway, westbound. Was Danny following her?  She didn’t think so.  She’d have noticed a cream-colored S-Class if she’d seen it earlier.  So it was probably just a weird coincidence, and she was being paranoid…oh, wait, the Benz was getting on the freeway behind her.  And it was still accelerating.

Lexi let Grizzle run up to the speed limit, passing a semi along the way, then backed off the gas.  Danny Packard’s Mercedes loomed large in her rearview, then set up shop about six inches away from her rear bumper.  “Oh, no you don’t,” Lexi said, and sped up.  She sort of hoped he wouldn’t try to chase her, since there was no way her old Ford pickup was going to outrun an S-Class Benz on the freeway.

No luck.  The Mercedes matched her speed to 75, then 80, then 85, and that was all Grizzle had.  He was out of his depth, with this high-speed travel thing.  She jerked the wheel to the left and stomped on the brake, neatly slipping into the fast lane as Danny’s Mercedes plowed on past.

The driver was good.  He got on the brakes almost as soon as Lexi did, and matched her speed again, barely a car length ahead of her.     

She considered spinning him.  She had learned how, from Ren, and the dirty trick was a huge no-no on the race track but perhaps today might be a good time to practice.  As she started to maneuver into position, the Mercedes sped up, pulling slightly away.  Okay, so he knew that trick too, he’d been to anti-terrorist school.  Lexi backed off.  “This is high school shit!” she yelled as the Mercedes’ brakelights flashed again and she swerved and downshifted to keep from running into the back of them.

She couldn’t run him off the road anyway.  The last thing she needed was another incident involving a Packard.  Lexi lifted off the gas again, giving the Mercedes some room.  A feeling of helplessness began to creep over her, the hateful “you-can’t” feeling that it had taken her the past few months to beat into submission.  But now there really wasn’t anything she could do.  Whatever game Danny Packard was playing–and it was a game at this point, she thought, swerving yet again as the Mercedes feinted toward Grizzle–there wasn’t anything she could do to make him stop.

The Mercedes sped up, then got in front of her and began pacing her.  Did he plan to hassle her all the way to the Minilte Bar, then?  What would the Road Associates think if she showed up with Danny in tow?  Or, in the lead, as it were.

And on top of everything else, her sausage McMuffin was getting cold.  “These things are inedible when they’re cold, you know!” she yelled.

Without warning, Danny’s driver stood on his brakes, bringing the Mercedes almost to a halt.  Grizzle’s drum brakes were no match for modern German engineering, and Lexi got on them hard enough to lock all four tires, lifted off the brakes to regain control, swerved, and still creamed the back of the Mercedes, a hard offset impact.  The bone-jarring thud and sight of the trunklid buckling provoked a flashbulb flashback to the accident that had taken Ren’s life, and then it was gone and she was skidding to a barely-in-control stop in the breakdown lane. 

The Mercedes didn’t stop.  Lexi could see serious body damage on the right rear, a smashed taillight, a crunched trunklid and bumper, but Danny’s driver kept going. 

She sat behind the wheel for a moment, breathing hard, gripping the wheel to keep her hands from shaking.  “You insane fuckball!” she shouted.  That was a good word, fuckball. She had learned it from Nikki.  It fit Danny Packard well. 

The only other vehicle on the road was the orange and blue Roadway semi truck she’d passed, and the driver pulled onto the median a bit beyond her, jogging back.  “Are you okay?” he asked, his breath fogging in the cold morning air.  Lexi’s response was a nod.  She was listening to Grizzle’s idle, which had turned choppy.  The impact had probably played havoc with the automatic choke.  “Sumbitch didn’t even stop.  What an asshole.  Was he tryin’ to hit you?”

She nodded as an answer, experimenting with removing her hands from the wheel.  That went well, so she got out of the truck next.  This part was instinct; she knew what to do now.  Assessing the damage took her to another place in her mind, and the fear and confusion faded into the background.  Grizzle had taken a good shot to the face, lost his left-side headlight and much of the grille, and the front bumper was never going to be the same.  The fender was tweaked, too.  In fact, it looked like the radiator had taken some of the hit; brilliant green antifreeze dripped ominously from beneath the bumper.  The frame wasn’t bent.  Lexi conducted her inspection in silence, only half-listening to the trucker’s monologue. 

“I can radio a cop,” he said as another car shot past on the freeway.  “I hope you got that sumbitch’s license number.  If you didn’t, I’ll get on the radio.  He’ll go by another big truck soon, and we’ll find out who he is.  Ain’t gonna be another busted up white Mar-cedes out on this road, I’m sure.”

Lexi gave him a smile.  “That’s sweet of you,” she said, “but I have to go.  I have someplace to be, and if I let someone like that stop me from getting there, then he wins.  And he’s not going to win.”

The man looked uncertain, but saw something in her eyes that kept him from arguing.  “Long as you’re sure you’re okay, sweetheart.”

“I am.  Thanks for stopping.”  She got back in the pickup, gave the gas an experimental prod.  The idle was still off, but Grizzle smoothed out with higher revs.  Her breakfast sandwich was still warm, too.  Perhaps the day wouldn’t be a total loss after all.