C4 antho - Chamber Four

~158~ The Chamber Four Fiction Anthology
had dropped into his lap on a double-date road trip to Thermopolis.
Dawnell had played all her cards at once―tinted
contacts and tight jeans, a gauzy red bra under her thin white
T-shirt. She laughed at his jokes, ran crimson nails across his
thigh. Along the way, a cold drizzle gave way to heavy snow.
Simms’s date, using her mother’s credit card, booked them
all into a room with a fireplace and two beds. Simms took a
look outside, yanked off his clothes, and led them, whooping
and naked, across the deck to a steaming outdoor tub.
Dawnell floated toward Wyatt in the dark, letting her
nipples brush his thighs. “I won’t tell if you won’t,” she whispered.
Wyatt tipped back a jug of lukewarm chablis and then
held it to Dawnell’s lips.
“The snow’s piling up on your head,” he said.
“That’s good,” she replied, her hands busy under the
water. “Otherwise, I’d be naked.”
Two months later they married, embryonic Amy tagging
along on the honeymoon.
* * * *
Wyatt turns on his cell phone and pecks out a number.
“Simms, you wild man!” he says. “I’m on my way. Get your
ass to Swede’s tonight and buy me a beer.”
Wyatt slaps himself to sharpen his wits. A night on the
town might lift his spirits. But the sun’s still high overhead
and already he’s wearing down. He pulls off the interstate at
a truck stop, heaps two cold donuts onto a napkin and fills a
quart-sized soft-drink cup full of coffee. He leaves the busy
freeway, crosses the shallow Platte, and turns east onto the
Lincoln Highway. The old two-lane runs parallel to the interstate,
threading tiny heartland towns, alongside barns