Page 7 of Open Road

Two instincts, both correct and fighting each other.

Then I look at her.

The hazards throw light in a slow pulse. Each pass gives me a cleaner read. Late twenties, maybe early thirties, dark hair, and a jacket a size too big, worn like armor rather than warmth. The hair on the left side is down and forward. People don’t wear their hair forward on one side by accident.

The light comes again.

Along the left jaw, where the hair isn’t quite covering what it’s meant to cover, there are yellow-green colored bruises that usually go away when they’re about a week old. They are old enough to be fading but recent enough to still be reading.

Something goes quiet in me.

Not the good kind of quiet.

I’ve put my hands on men who leave marks like that. The feeling it gives me isn’t abstract or philosophical… it’s specific. I file it, putting it somewhere internally, and keep my face exactly where it is.

Her hands now. One is on the door handle, the other at her side, not fully fisted but close. She has positioned herself the way someone positions themselves when they want to look like they’re not braced for impact, while being entirely braced for impact. Her body is doing it without instruction, instinct taking over where thought leaves off.

This woman has been afraid for a long time.

Ten feet is the right distance. Ten feet says I’m not advancing, and I haven’t decided anything about this situation except to stand here and let it be what it is.

Keep the voice flat. Keep the distance.

“I can look at your engine,” I say.

She studies me. Whatever she’s looking for, she either finds it or decides she can’t afford to wait any longer, and she steps aside.

Then the rear door clicks open.

The kid hits the asphalt at a run. Thirty-one pounds, a stuffed rabbit dragging from one fist, hair sticking up every which way, and no shoes. She has identified the Softail in the dark, inside a sealed car, and is moving toward it with complete commitment. The woman reaches for her and misses.

The kid stops two feet in front of me and cranes her neck back to get the full picture. “Is that your bike?” Genuine reverence. “It’s big.”

I crouch down so I’m at her eye level.

“It is,” I say.

She looks at the Softail, then back at me, then at the Softail again, running her own assessment. Her version of it is significantly more enthusiastic than her mother’s.

“Can I touch it?”

“Rose.” Her mother’s voice carries a specific kind of tired, not anger, not impatience. It’s the tiredness of a woman who loves this child completely and is running on nothing.

Rose looks back at her mother, then looks back at me… waiting.

I glance up at the woman. She’s watching me, arms crossed, weight still forward, still reading, but she is three feet closer than she was a moment ago, but she doesn’t seem to know it.

I stand and take Rose the two steps to the Softail. She immediately puts both palms flat on the tank, running them along the steel as if she’s reading something written there. I crouch down again so I can see what she is, and watch her see it.

She has a lot of questions…

What does this button do?

Is it fast?

What’s the shiny part called?

Can the engine talk?