Strangers

blankets. She wanted to wake Ned, smother him with kisses, and pull him atop her.
        Ned was merely a shadowy form in the dark bedroom, breathing deeply, sound asleep. Although she wanted him badly, she did not wake him. There would be plenty of time for lovemaking later in the day.
        She slipped quietly out of bed, into the bathroom, and showered. She made the end of it a cold shower.
        For years she had been uninterested in sex, frigid. Not long ago, the sight of her own nude body had embarrassed her and filled her with shame. Although she did not know the reason for the new feelings that had risen in her lately, she definitely had changed. It had started the summer before last, when sex had suddenly seemed… well, appealing. That sounded silly now. Of course sex was appealing. But prior to that summer, lovemaking had always been a chore to be endured. Her late erotic blossoming was a delightful surprise and an inexplicable mystery.
        Nude, she returned to the shadowy bedroom. She took a sweater and a pair of jeans from the closet, and dressed.
        In the small kitchen, she started to pour orange juice but stopped when stricken by the urge to go for a drive. She left a note for Ned, put on a sheepskin-lined jacket, and went outside to the Ford pickup.
        Sex and driving were the two new passions in her life, and the latter was almost as important to her as the former. That was another funny thing: until the summer before last, she hated going anywhere in the pickup except to work and back, and she seldom drove. She'd not only disliked highway travel but had dreaded it the way some people were afraid of airplanes. But now, other than sex, there was nothing she liked better than to get behind the wheel of the truck and take off journeying on a whim, without a destination, speeding.
        She had always understood why sex repelled her - that had been no mystery. She could blame her father, Horton Purney, for her frigidity. Though she had never known her mother, who had died giving birth, Sandy had known her father far too well. They had lived in a ramshackle house on the outskirts of Barstow, on the edge of the lonely California desert, just the two of them, and Sandy's earliest memories were of sexual abuse. Horton Purney had been a moody, brooding, mean, and dangerous man. Until Sandy escaped from home at fourteen, her father had used her as if she had been an erotic toy.
        Only recently had she realized that her strong dislike for highway travel was also related to something else that her father had done to her. Horton Purney had run a motorcycle repair shop out of a sagging, sun-scorched, unpainted barn on the same property as his house, but he had never made much money from it. Therefore, twice a year, he put Sandy in the car and made the two-and-a-half-hour drive across the desert to Las Vegas, where he knew an enterprising pimp, Samson Cherrik. Cherrik had a list of perverts with a special interest in children, and he was always happy to see Sandy. After a few weeks in Vegas, Sandy's father packed, put Sandy in the car, and drove back to Barstow, his pockets bulging with cash. For Sandy, the long drive to Vegas was a nightmare journey, for she knew what awaited her at their destination. The trip back to Barstow was worse, for it was not an escape from Vegas but a return to the grim life in that ramshackle house and the dark, urgent, insatiable lust of Horton Purney. In either direction, the road had led to hell, and she had learned to loathe the rumble of the car's engine, the hum of tires on the pavement, and the unspooling highway ahead.
        Therefore, the pleasure she now took from driving and sex seemed miraculous. She could not understand where she'd found the strength and will to overcome her horrible past. Since the summer before last, she simply… changed, was still changing. And, oh, it was glorious to feel the chains of self-loathing and the bonds of fear breaking apart, to feel self-respect for the first time in her life, to feel free. , Now, she got into the Ford pickup and started the engine. Their house trailer was set on an unlandscaped half-acre lot at the southern edge of the tiny - almost nonexistent - town of Beowawe, along Route 21, a two-lane blacktop. As Sandy drove away from the trailer, there seemed to be nothing but empty plains, rolling hills, scattered buttes, rocky outcroppings, grass, brush, and waterless arroyos for a thousand