As I approached the on-ramp to the highway from seemingly out of nowhere a flash of blue light pierced my rear window. I was dead meat. If I ran then a swarm of police cruisers would corral me. If I pulled over then I would be going away in handcuffs. But at least by pulling over, I thought, Sarah would not be harmed. I cruised to the berm and I took a deep breath before reaching into my pocket and finding my wallet missing. I had packed it in the bag in the rear seat. Not wanting any shooting to get started I waited for the grim- reaper of law-and-order to tap at my window before I rolled it down. The officer wore the traditional grey collared shirt of the highway patrol along with a wide-rimmed ranger’s hat. She had her back hand on her revolver and she stood behind me so that my only view of her was through the side-view mirror. She wore a stern expression and compensated for her small stature with a deep raspy voice.

“License and registration.”

“I…I seem to have misplaced my wallet. My driver license is in it.”

She drew a deep sigh, “I’m going to have to ask you to step out of the car sir.” Her voice broke and I could tell that she was a little nervous.

I lifted the handle on the door and started to open it.

“Is that your wallet sir?” She pointed with her flashlight to a brown leather billfold on the passenger-side floor. It was the wallet of the black bearded Arab who had shot at me. I froze for a moment, and then I reached down and retrieved the wallet and handed it to the officer.

“Please remove your license.”

I opened the wallet and handed the drivers license to her. She shined her flashlight into my face and I shielded my eyes. She then shined the flashlight down at the license.

“It says that you wear corrective lenses. Where are your glasses?”

I reached into my pocket and removed the pair of reading glasses I had purchased and I put them on, “I’m sorry, I forgot to put them on after I left the rest stop.” I feigned the least hint of an Arab accent that I was sure she would find unconvincing. I looked up at her to read her face to see if she was actually buying that I was this Arab fellow. I had died my hair and beard black but my beard was just beginning to grow in. It wasn’t much more than stubble. “I’m sorry; I won’t let it happen again.” And just for good measure I added, “Was I speeding? I didn’t think that I was going very fast.”

“Where are you coming from?” “Cleveland. I just went there to pick up this car. I bought it on line from a Mr. Bonjiovoni.”

She shined the flashlight at Sarah. “Please, he is sleeping.”

She handed me back my driver’s license and broke her first smile of the affair, “I have a boy about that age. I’m sure he’s sleeping too. You have a nice day Mr. Assad.”

And just like that I was free again.

We drove all morning, afternoon and into the evening stopping only for gasoline and fast-food. The few police cars I saw watched me pass uneventfully and I started to relax the least bit as I listened to jazz music on the radio to calm my nerves. What I really needed was a tall scotch, but I settled for the soothing jazz music of Herbie Hancock and Johnny Legend and Nora Jones; the snappy beat of the drums leading the soothing pluck of the guitars the haunting wail of the horns and the soulful plunk of the ivories and the raspy vocal chords of their voices.

When we got to within a mile of St. Louis Amber finally called my cell phone. I exited the freeway and found a gas station with a pay-phone and I fueled the car while I called Amber.

“Charlie knows.” Amber said with a bit of a southern pout.

“What does he know?”

“He knows that you and I have a relationship…that we have phone sex.” She sighed, “I think he already knew even before the police talked to him. They suggested that we had spent a lot of time on the phone together. They asked him if I had taken any trips lately, as if he’d give me enough money to come see you!”

“Amber,” I paused, trying to gather my thoughts, “what exactly did you tell him.”

“I got mad when he started getting all holier-than-thou on me, so I just told him everything, how we would get all steamy on the phone and how we would, you know…fuck!”

I desperately needed Amber’s help and I was grieving at the thought that she might have royally mucked things up, and the last thing I could afford was for her husband to follow her around and have her lead him to me. He’d do everything he could to get me thrown into the hoosegow. But I also needed to be sympathetic to her or she would break off what can only be considered a loose connection, given that we had never actually met; however, I also didn’t want to be saddled with her if her husband was about to throw her out on the street. I had my hands full taking care of Sarah and I certainly didn’t need another mouth to feed.

“Amber, where does that leave you? Are you getting a divorce?”

“Oh no! We talked things out last night and afterwards we went to bed and he asked me to talk dirty to him, like I did with you, and we balled like newlyweds until four in the morning. That’s why I didn’t call you until now. I slept all day. I was exhausted.”

“I’m glad to hear that you got a good thrashing. Really, I am. But I’m going to need your help. I need you to find me a place to stay…somewhere not too close to you, at least a half hour away. Farther would be better though. I just can’t put anything in my name.”

“How soon do you need it?” “Tomorrow.” I said dejectedly.

“I can find you a house to rent out by my sisters. She lives in Wichita. I’ve heard of people getting lost in Wichita and never being found.”

“That would be swell.”

“But it’ll take more than a day.” I sighed. “How long?”

“I have an idea. I’ll have a place for you to stay by Thursday. Will that work?”

“Sure. I’ll get us a hotel in the meantime. What did your husband say about you talking to me?”

“Well, I’m not allowed to talk to you anymore, of course silly,” her southern accent made the word course a two syllable word, “but not being allowed never stopped me before. And now that I might get to finally meet you,” her voice got low and raspy, “and feel you…inside of me, I’ve got goose-bumps all over just thinking about it. So I finally get to meet you lover?”

“I can’t wait.”

* * *

We stayed on Interstate sixty-four all the way to St. Louis Missouri taking leave of the mountains of Kentucky and the hills of Indiana, behind us now forever, for the vast flat brown and beige plains with endless fields of tobacco and corn and wheat and acres of

Holsteins and Herefords and the occasional longhorn. The wind on the open plain seemed to have sandblasted the color from the landscape and it was as if we had been transported to the screen of a black and white movie except for the pastel of cars traveling the highway. Everything that wasn’t a shade of beige was grey or black or white. But what the panorama lacked in color it made up for with the rich smells of flowering wheat and the sweat of tobacco being dried in large weathered drying bins and the perfume of wildflowers mixed with the fermenting dung left behind by farm animals. The air was warmer and no longer smelled of autumn.

In St. Louis I cruised to the outskirts of the city before finding a motel in a great enough state of disrepair that I could expect to forgo the identification dilemma. I could have used Mr. Assad’s driver license, and his credit card for that matter, but I knew that that would leave a trail which would eventually have been followed. The Motel Trafalgar, a dump with a Spanish ambiance, was much like the motel in Kentucky in its maintenance and upkeep; however, it was a popular place as cars seemed to be coming and going as though it were a fast-food restaurant. The clerk, a goateed weasel of a man dressed in a silk shirt and designer jeans looked at me with a puzzled stare when I asked for twin beds.