Strange Highways

shrugged.
     "For a living, I mean."
     He thought of his hands, wondered how he possibly could have told her about them even if he had been able to talk. He shrugged as if to say, Nothing much.
     She looked around the shabby room. "Panhandling" When he did not respond, she decided that she'd hit on it. "How long can I stay here?"
     By gesture, expression, and pantomime, Ollie made her understand that she could stay as long as she liked.
     When this was clear, she studied him a long moment and finally said, "Could we have less light?"
     He got up and switched off two of the three lamps. When he turned to her again, she was lying nude on top of the covers, her legs slightly spread to receive him.
     "Look," she said, "I figure you didn't bring me here and nurse me back to health for nothing. You know? You expect a ... reward. And you have a right to expect one."
     Confused, frustrated, he got clean sheets from a stack in the corner and, ignoring her offer, proceeded to change the bed under her without once touching her. She stared at him in disbelief, and when he was done, she said that she didn't want to sleep. He insisted. He touched her and put her out for the night.
     In the morning, she ate breakfast with the greedy efficiency that she had shown at dinner the night before, wasting nothing, then asked if she could take a bath. He washed dishes while her sweet voice came through the bathroom door, singing a lovely melodic song that he had never heard before.
     She came out of her bath with clean hair as dark as burnt honey, stood nude at the foot of the bed, and beckoned to him. Already she seemed sleeker, healthier than when he had found her, though she was still leaner than she needed to be.
     She said, "I was so stupid last night. My hair was a dirty mess and my body odor would've turned off a bull. Now I'm soapy-smelling."
     Ollie turned away from her and stared at the few dishes that he still had to dry.
     "What's the matter?" she asked.
     He had no reply.
     "You don't want me?"
     He shook his head - No.
     She drew a sudden deep breath.
     Something struck him painfully on the hip. Turning, he saw that the girl was wielding a heavy glass ashtray. Drawing her lips back from her teeth, she hissed at him as though she were an angry cat. She pounded his shoulders with the ashtray, struck him repeatedly with one tiny balled fist, kicked, and screeched. Then she lost her grip on the ashtray and sagged against him, exhausted, crying.
     He put his arm around her to comfort her, but she had enough energy to twist violently away. She turned, tried to reach the bed, stumbled, fell, and passed out.
     He lifted her and put her to bed.
     He pulled the covers around her, tucked her in, and sat down in his chair to wait for her to regain consciousness.
     When she awakened half an hour later, she was trembling and dizzy. He soothed her, smoothing her hair away from her face, wiping her teary eyes, placing cold compresses on her brow.
     In time, when she could speak, she asked, "Are you impotent or something?"
     He shook his head.
     "Then why? I wanted to repay you. That's how I repay men. I don't have anything else to give."
     He touched her. Held her. With his expression and with his clumsy pantomime he tried to make her understand that she had a great deal to give. She was giving just by being here. Just by being here.
     That afternoon, he went out to buy her pajamas, street clothes, and a newspaper. She was amused by his chaste choice of pajamas: full-sleeved, long-legged flannels. She put them on, then read the newspaper to him - comics and human-interest stories. She seemed to think that he couldn't read, and he was willing to play along with the misconception, since his illiteracy tended to reinforce his cover: Winos didn't collect books.
     Besides, he liked to listen to her read. Her voice was sweet.
     The following morning, Annie dressed in her new blue jeans and sweater to accompany Ollie to the corner grocery store, although he tried to dissuade her. At the register, when he handed a nonexistent twenty-dollar bill to the cashier and collected change, he thought that Annie was looking elsewhere.
     Outside, however, as they walked home, she said, "How'd you do that?"
     He