“You need a ride?” I duck my head down to be seen from the passenger window as I pull over to the right-hand shoulder of the on-ramp. My heartbeat has accelerated from its usual box step rhythm to something more like a lively merengue. I don’t know if it’s obvious to Him but I feel like I’m beginning to pant, like my old dog Hank used to do before a thunderstorm.

Christ, I hope my hands don’t sweat like Hank’s paws did. That dog left a damp trail of prints on our linoleum kitchen floor most days during the summer months when the steamy July and August heat collided with cold in the upper atmosphere to create raucous storms that often left even me wanting to seek the safety of a dog house. I can feel a summertime-kind-of-storm brewing inside of me.

The hitchhiker cocks one blonde brow toward me as he sizes me up and down.

“Yeah, I could use one,” he says slowly with a hint of a drawl. His gentle voice is a bath of tropical waters washing over me. If it had a flavor, I’d say it was key lime, or maybe pina colada. “You sure?”

Am I sure? Hell, no, I would never be sure. But I am positive. That I am. I inhale deeply, a newborn taking the first breath of life, and exhale, savoring the bold new aroma of the unknown.

“Sure as the sun will rise tomorrow. Hop in.” I hit the power unlock button with a cross between trepidation and confidence not borne of any previous experience.

Dear God, I hope the sun’s planning to rise for me tomorrow. I say a little prayer to my namesake Saint Mary--patron saint of, among other things, penitent sinners, glove makers, sexual temptation, reformed prostitutes and pharmacists--for my safe transport. I don’t know that I fit into any of those categories, but I figure it can’t hurt. And it sure would stink if I went out on a limb for once in my goddamned life, only to find myself the gullible victim of some insane serial killer. Hell, if Mary Magdalene’s willing to lend me some moral support, I’ll take what I can get.

For a minute I try to picture what Richard would say to me right now. The storm tide of his constant disapproval flooding my bruised psyche despite his immediate absence from me. Those moods of his are a weather system all their own, and I’ve grown to anticipate them much like an imminent hurricane, battening down all my windows and doors so he can’t penetrate me.

Jesus H. Christ, Mary Kate, he’d say, pounding his fist emphatically, maybe even putting a hole in the hollow door like he’s done twice before. What in blue blazes has gotten into your cotton-picking mind? I thought I’d seen the stupidest out of you already, but this? Hell, this one takes the goddamned cake.

My hitchhiker opens the passenger door, tosses his backpack onto the seat between me and Him, and plunks himself down. The loud thunk of the door closing seems to place emphasis on the magnitude of what’s just transpired.

Breathe deeply, Mary Kate. Breathe deeply, I tell myself. I take a few cleansing breaths--I think that’s what they called them on Oprah one time--and begin to clear my throat. Having never done something like this, and never even played out the possibility in my mind, I am unable to anticipate exactly what I should say to this, my very first hitchhiker. And a handsome one at that. Up close, He looks more and more like a god. Maybe I did mean Him in a religious sense after all, because certainly there are those women who would worship at this man’s feet.

Not me, mind you. Richard has said for years that I’m as frigid as the North Pole. That has always been his excuse to me. If you’d only loosen up, Mary Kate, then maybe I wouldn’t have to look elsewhere, he’d say. Not that I was always that way. Time was, way back when, I could keep up with the rest of them in the sex department. You could say, in fact, that I was hot to trot. That’s what Richard used to say to me before we were married. I don’t know if I really was that way. I hadn’t had much experience when Richard came along. I just thought that I loved him and I wanted to be sure he would keep his eyes only on me, so I made sure he had a reason to, that’s all. And it was fine. I seem to remember liking it back then. Back when things were good with us.

I look over at my passenger and my pulse quicken to an anaerobic salsa beat. For a moment I think I might pass out, whether from elevated blood pressure, sheer terror, holding my breath, or pulse-stopping and long-lost horniness. Why would a man like this be hitchhiking? Someone who looks like this should be, oh, I don’t know, surfing, maybe, or anchoring the news in Malibu, or just sitting around looking good for everyone else’s viewing pleasure. But standing alongside a major interstate junction hoping someone will pick you up and not harbor subsequent plans to chop you into little teeny bits of flesh and bone and feed you into a mulching machine? It makes no sense whatsoever.

“Where ya heading to?” I force the words out. Normally talking just flows naturally, like breathing or hearing or smelling. But I have to work to grasp the right thing to say and then to make sure it comes out of my mouth, rather than lapsing like a mental stutter somewhere between my brain and my lips.

Now I should mention that I have this quirky habit when I get nervous. I can tell you the exact day it began: November 7, 1976. I was in typing class, second period with Mr. Marasti. Mr. Marasti was a hottie. All the girls ogled him. In fact, it’s the only reason I signed up for typing, because it gave me a good long chance to stare at him three times a week under the pretense of paying attention in class while learning a vocational skill.

So there I sat that morning poised behind my IBM Selectric II, a shy junior with a pretty impressive set of breasts, I must say. I was one of the more endowed girls at school, with a cross-my-heart bra whose cups actually contained something more than just silent prayers for fulfillment.

This was something that did not go unnoticed in my small high school, and I had had my share of unsolicited comments from what I now know were merely permanently tumescent puberty-compromised boys who could probably have gotten a hard-on staring at a Barbie doll, so you can imagine their reaction to a daily visual diet of the real McCoy.

Anyhow, I spent a lot of time staring at Mr. Marasti, fantasizing about life as Mrs. Marasti. Imagining combing my fingers through his dirty blond helmet of hair (a haircut of authority). Picturing Mr. Marasti and me, his bride, dressing the little Marasti brood for Sunday church. Me serving three square meals a day to an appreciative Mr. Marasti. Me and Mr. Marasti doing the nasty on the typing desk.

We were learning the V’s on the keyboard. Vigorous Victor and vigilant Virginia were very full of vim and vigor. The idea was that we typed the same sentence over and over again until we knew exactly where that V finger placement was, so that no V mistakes would be made. This would be especially important to those of us who aspired to a career as an administrative assistant, he noted. The problem was that I was too busy mooning over Mr. Marasti and found it far easier to just glance down at the keyboard when letter placement came into question, rather than committing it to digit memory.

Vigorous Victor and vigilant Birg--I began to the clatter of twenty Selectric typewriter balls hammering into our typing paper, clackety-clacking in rhythm. I saw on my paper that I’d hit the B instead of the V and stole a glance down at the keyboard.

“Miss Morris,” Mr. Marasti boomed at me from across the room. The clacking ceased immediately, supplanted by only the subtle hum of the ventilation system and the lonely chorus of buzzing from the idle electric typewriters.

“Yes Mr. Marasti?” I said timidly. You have to know that no teenaged girl with any bosom to speak of likes to be singled out for anything. Certainly not in a class of twenty other people whose sole focus was now on me.

“No more warnings for you, young lady. You cannot cheat in typing and get away with it,” he said sternly. With that, he went to his desk and pulled out a sheet of mimeograph paper and a roll of masking tape. He strode authoritatively back to where I was sitting in the last row--where I was trying so hard to be invisible--and stood behind me, leaning over my head and taking in an expansive bird’s-eye view of my cornucopia of mammary-laden flesh.

He extended his arms in front of me in order to tape that glaring white paper atop my hands, thus obscuring my view of the keyboard and branding me with the scarlet letter of the typing world. In the process, just beneath the typing table, over which I was despondently slumped, he copped himself a healthy little feel of my heretofore virgin breasts.

I’ll never know if anyone saw that part of things. But I do know that I was the laughingstock of the classroom, having been exposed as a fool and a cheat. From then on out, I could no longer peek at the keyboard when need be. Instead, I honestly had to commit the damn thing to memory. After all, while I was more than happy to have a near-naked Mr. Marasti swirling in the vortex of my girlish fantasies, I certainly did not want his meaty man-hands fondling my actual person, at least not under those circumstances, so I had to avoid any more proximity with the man.

Thus began my nervous habit of typing my thoughts out my fingers.

There have been times--when Richard has been yelling his loudest--that I probably get to typing about a hundred and fifty words a minute. Now I don’t know my margin of error, because there is no visible proof of my typing prowess. I can’t correct for errors. Instead, it’s all in my head. And my hands. I remember one particular time when Richard was reprimanding me for not vacuuming the carpet to the nap adequately, I typed the words “Fuck you, asshole” probably forty times in a row, non-stop. A modest little passive-aggressive outlet for my angst, I suppose. And a most impressive word count, no doubt.

Thus I find myself with my hands at ten and two o’clock on my steering wheel, my fingers going a mile a minute typing out my thoughts which are in such a jumble that I don’t know exactly what they are. But I can tell you one thing that I keep typing over and over again onto the vinyl steering wheel. Oh, my God. Oh, my God. Oh, my God. Oh, my God. Including capitals and punctuation, thank you.

“Do you do this often?” He asks me, grinning.

For a minute, I honestly think he’s caught me typing. I can’t believe it, because no one has ever caught me typing. It’s my little secret.

“This?” I ask.

“Yeah, this. Picking up hitchhikers.”

I suppose his question could be construed as just the icebreaker I need. Being that I don’t have a tall gin and tonic nearby to help loosen me up (this being the only way that I can muster up the ability for much interaction with Tricky Dick any more), some witty repartee will have to do.

“Uh, no, actually. N-n-never, in fact,” I stammer as my fingers type fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck. It may surprise you that my typing does not confuse my talking at all and I can be typing something other than what I am speaking. Thank God, as this would not forge a very good first impression. “How about you?”

He shakes his head and his gentle curls followed politely along the trail of his shoulders like an obedient pet. “Actually, never even crossed my mind.”

“So, uh, where ya heading?” Is this the proper protocol for such a conversation?

“I’m not really sure,” he says with a shrug. “How about you?”

Well, considering two minutes earlier I was headed to the dry cleaners, who the hell knows?

“No where special. You want me to drop you somewhere?”

He looks around the car like he’s checking for cops or something. It makes me nervous. Is he up to something?

“I’ll let you know,” he says cryptically. “Clean car, by the way.”

No wife of Richard Dupree could get away with anything but a spotless sedan. I think a forensics specialist would be hard-pressed to find evidence of a crime with the cleanliness of my car. The only thing to indicate to a stranger it hasn’t just been driven right off the lot is the lack of new-car aroma.

“So what’s your name?” The hitchhiker asks me.

This question takes me aback. I think I was expecting relative anonymity in this venture. I didn’t expect he’d want to know a thing about me. And I certainly don’t want to get into why my husband makes me keep my car immaculate.

“Mary Kate,” I say hesitantly. “Mary Kate Dupree.”

“Mary Kate Doooo-preee,” he says in an exaggerated drawl, putting me at ease. His laugh resonates with a sense of supreme comfort, like Santa Claus’. It makes me feel very secure, oddly enough. I wonder for a minute if Ted Bundy had a nice laugh.

“So, Mary Kate Doooo-preeee, what’s a nice girl like you picking up a strange hitchhiker like me?”

I feel oddly emboldened by his light manner, not at all intimidated into silence, which is how I spend a lot of my time with Richard.

“Before I answer that, you need to tell me who you are.”

“Who I am…Who I am…” He stretches his arms, revealing a lovely definition to his biceps. I don’t think I’ve noticed a man’s biceps in, well, ever. “Well, Mary Kate Doooo-preeee. My name is Randy. Randy Cunningham. But everyone calls me Smoothie.” He grins like a dishonest blackjack dealer about to trump the table.

My fingers go to work typing Smoothie Smoothie Smoothie Smoothie.

I can honestly say I never met a man named Smoothie in my life. I’ve drank a few smoothies in my day, for sure. But I couldn’t imagine why someone would be called Smoothie.

“Smoothie? Any reason for that?”

He looks at me and archs his brow suggestively but I’ve never been one to pick up on innuendo of a sexual type, so I completely bypass any subtext that might be there.

“Just a crazy nickname,” he says, and I leave it at that.

Silence ensues for a minute but he keeps staring at me the entire time. Just staring at me.

“Well?” he finally says.

“Well what?”

“You gonna answer my question or not?”

I guess I selectively forgot his question but it comes back to me with this prompt.

“Well, mister, uh, Smoothie,” I begin.

“You can drop the mister,” he offers.

“Right. Smoothie,” I say. “I’m sorry, but do you mind if I call you Randy?”

He shrugs. “You can, I guess. But only my grandmother calls me that. And I don’t particularly like my grandmother.”

Shit. What am I doing here? “No problem. I can call you Smoothie,” I say. “Here’s the deal. The reason I picked you up has to do with Niagara Falls.”

I notice that I’ve already missed my exit to get to the dry cleaners. In fact, in a few short miles, I’ll be out of town altogether.

Smoothie looks intrigued, so I continue.

“You see, Richard--that’s my husband. But I call him Dick. But not to his face. Well, Richard and I went to Niagara Falls when we got married. This was back when I didn’t actually hate him. When we went to that park where you walk over to the Falls, there were these signs posted everywhere--“ I stop for a minute to gather my thoughts.

Meanwhile, my fingers are furiously trying to catch up to me, typing Niagara Falls, Niagara Falls, Niagara Falls and then lip of the falls, lip of the falls, lip of the falls. Vigorous Victor and vigilant Virginia were very full of vim and vigor. Oh, my God, I am losing it.

“Go on,” he says.

“Have you ever been to Niagara Falls, Mr. Cunningham?”

“Uh, that’s my father.”

“Excuse me?” I ask. Mr. Cunningham, Mr. Cunningham, Mr. Cunningham (which, by the way, is pretty tough to type repeatedly).

“Mr. Cunningham. That’s my father.”

“Beg your pardon,” I reach up to smooth a stray piece of hair that’s fallen into my eyes. I reach over my guest’s rock solid thighs and grab my sunglasses from the glove compartment. I’m heading into the mid-day sun and it’s impairing my vision.

“Oh, yeah, sure. Forgive me. Smoothie. Have you?”

“Only seen it in pictures,” he says, sounding disappointed. “Is it more beautiful in person?”

I pause for a minute, remembering the splendor. “It is majestic. It’s the best word I came come up with to describe it. Majestic. One of those things in the world that makes you believe there is a God, because how else could such splendor exist?”

“I’d love to see it some time.”

“You have to. It’s something everyone has to see before they die.”

I pass by a sign for Staunton, Virginia and know I’ve gone much further than expected. I wonder if Richard is wondering yet where his suits are.

“So tell me more about Niagara Falls,” Smoothie prompts me.

I’m beginning to relax a little. I can tell this because my typing is becoming sporadic. No vim. No vigor. Not even a Smoothie. Instead, I type out the words SunTrust. SunTrust, SunTrust, SunTrust. As in bank. As in I am going to divert myself to SunTrust bank. Where I maintained my own savings account. Where I can obtain cash for an emergency. Without Richard ever even realizing it.

I take the next exit off the highway, probably startling my guest. I return to the questioning. “SunTrust--I mean Niagara Falls. It’s amazing. You have to go to the Canadian side. The American side is tacky and dreadful and it’s like a carnival. But in Canada, it’s nature at its best. A lovely park, with sprawling green lawns. Where you can lay down on the grass and think about your life and listen to the water’s thunder and not talk to a soul and--

“The water. The sheer volume of it. You can’t imagine the amount of water, just pummeling down. So powerful. More powerful than God. It’s spectacular. And it curves. And it’s smooth. But rough--“

“My kind of lady,” Smoothie says with a grin.

“Curvy and smooth but rough?”

“Oh, yeah,” he sort of purrs. “Exactly what I like.”

Flustered again, I begin to type in earnest. Curvy, smooth but rough, Curvy, smooth but rough, Curvy, smooth but rough, Curvy smooth but rough. And then I resume my SunTrust Bank train of typing.

“Uh, Mr. Smoothie--“

“Smoothie?” he corrects me yet again. I think if he planned to kill me his patience would have run thin by now merely on my inability to use the man’s chosen name.

“Yes, Smoothie. Do you mind if I swing into the bank?” I suppose that’s not such a great thing to ask a stranger you’ve just picked up along the side of the highway. After all, maybe this was his intention all along. Gain my confidence, and then lure me to the next available ATM machine, coax me into taking out cash, then bludgeon me to death and run off with my life’s savings.

Well, I guess life’s savings aren’t quite possible, as they only allow a couple hundred bucks a day in ATM withdrawals. But that would be enough to buy a day’s worth of crystal meth I’m sure. I take a look at Smoothie, so tanned, and healthy and, well, built, and I know immediately that crystal meth isn’t in his repertoire.

“I’m in no hurry.” He smiles. “So you were telling me about hitchhikers and Nigara Falls?”

“Yes. The connection. So you see these signs. They’re very ominous: big skull and crossbones on them. And they tell you never to look at the lip of the falls.”

“Why the hell not?”

“They say it makes people want to jump in.”

“Wow…” Smoothie glances over at me. His eyes are the turquoise of the falls, just near the lip. “Did it make you want to jump in?”

I look at him like he was crazy. “Of course not!”

“Why not?”

“Because I didn’t stare at it, that’s why,” I say defensively. “They told me not to.”

“Do you always do what people tell you to do?”

Do not stare at the lip, do not stare at the lip, do not stare at the lip. “I think that’s a loaded question,” I respond, staring fleetingly into those mesmerizing aquamarine eyes, feeling a sense of gravitational pull, something that you shouldn’t ever really notice. Usually gravity just happens, doesn’t it?

“Well, I just ask because I would think if a sign told me not to do something like that, that I’d just do it out of sheer curiosity, if not defiance.”

I harrumph--a disagreeable throw-back to my mother, who was a masterful harrumpher.

“So then it’s true?” he asks as I ease my car into the drive-through lane at the bank. I pull up to the window and filled out my withdrawal form. Eight thousand dollars. My nest egg. My rainy day fund. I looked up to the sky, the midday sun beating down, not a cloud to be found. It seems my rainy day has finally arrived. I write the amount on the withdrawal slip in small numbers as if the size of the number will lessen the severity of the action, insert the slip along with my driver’s license in the tube, place it in the holder, and watched it disappear into the mysterious chute.

“So do you always do whatever Big Dick tells you to do?” I hear Smoothie ask me as I methodically enter my withdrawal amount in my savings passbook register.

I laugh without any amusement behind it. My fingers silently spelled out Dick the dick, Dick the dick, Dick the dick as I ponder this question.

I clear my throat. “Let’s just say that Richard has a way about him. It’s easier if I tow the party line.”

I look at Smoothie, whose knowing glance says he understood completely.

“Mrs. Dupree, thank you very much,” I hear the bank teller announce over the loud speaker. With a whoosh my money is delivered through the vacuum tube like a baby through a birth canal.

Quickly I grab the vessel containing my salvation, pull the envelope out and stuffed it in my purse. Normally, I would have counted every last dollar in that envelope; that’s what Richard has trained me to do. You can never trust anyone with your money, Mary Kate, he’d warn me. But I was feeling defiant, plus I didn’t want Smoothie to know I’d done exactly what I just did. Not yet, anyway.