A fish-faced hooker knocked on my window with a gloved hand and psoriasis, a big straw hat that covered her dyed red hair. Her neck smelled of semen and cigar smoke, and she had a body that hadn’t quit hamburgers and fries. Twenty years of that shit'll really effect business, I thought. But, she brought whiskey, in a thick-necked flask that matched her hips to scale. So, I fucked her and tossed my crooked halo—a sweat-rimmed mesh hat—over my head as the light from outside was dulled by my eyelid lambchops.
It was 3:16PM when I looked at the clock. I had been driving for fourteen hours; I was outside the Steel city on 70, heading to Buffalo to deliver my supply of communion wafers and the blood of Christ to the convent. And not unlike those business-class assholes, time holds me down too. I had to make it there by seven, so that Father Detrick would be able to serve his congregation at the early mass. There was nothing I could do about it; distance is the cheese, and we truckers are the glue that holds society together. I can only do my best and if my best ain’t good enough, I’m fucked.
So, around four, I smoked a cigarette and adjusted the rearview. The hooker’s body in the back rolled around; lines of crimson speckled over the floor. I’d toss her body in the Monongahela at the next stop. And though I noticed she had a wedding band when she was giving me a bad handjob (you notice those things when you’re getting a bad handjob); I figured that if her husband didn’t know she was sucking dick at 2 A.M, I doubted that he’d notice her gone. Maybe her pimp would, but those small time deals in West Virginia had only a .22 and maybe a hunting knife. Nothing like those New York motherfuckers. They’d hunt your ass down and make you pay out something awful.
It was still early when I found the next truck-stop. Everything went smoothly, tossing the whore out into the river with two cement blocks roped around her ankles. She'd float vertical at the bottom of the river for a few weeks, at least. I wiped the blood off the cardboard boxes. Nothing had seeped in.
Around five, I was hungry. I ate eggs, over-easy, and drank a Miller Light. I waited for the bill, but the old waitress took too long to come back from her smoke break.
I tossed a twenty on the table and left; I didn't have time to get to the St. Anthony’s as it was.