Chapter 3

Ed and Maria drove up to the air station without any problems. Maria had chosen to ride in the back seat of his car at first, and had been sitting hunched down in the seat so as not to be easily seen or recognized. Once they were out on the road heading up the mountain, Maria climbed over the console opening and sat in front.

"Sitting in the back makes me car sick. How far is this base we're going to?"

"At the top of this hill, maybe another seven or eight miles. I'm going to go straight to the orderly room and try to get everything taken care of from there. If things all go right, we should be able to drive back through San Jose and head south from there."

"San Jose is where this all happened. I can't be seen in San Jose. Can you leave by a different way?"

"I can use a back road I know about. It won't be as fast, but we won't end up in the city that way. How come you haven't asked me where we're going?"

"As long as it takes us away from here, it doesn't matter that much where you're taking me. After you drop me off, I can get a bus to anywhere I decide to go. I might go to New York, or maybe to Florida. I haven't decided where I want to go yet."

Ed left her in the car while he went into the orderly room to apply for leave. The clerk wasn't busy, so he wrote up Ed's leave request and carried it right in for the first sergeant and the squadron commander to both sign off with their approval. Thirty days leave was granted after no more than a ten minute delay. The clerk even let him sign out on the first line of the next day's sign out log, so that his leave didn't officially start until the next day. Ed left the address and phone number of his aunt back in Illinois as the place where he could be reached in an emergency. That was also his military home of record, since he'd been living with his aunt when he'd first enlisted.

When he came out of the orderly room, Maria had attracted two younger airmen to her side of the car, and the three of them were involved in an animated discussion. As soon as Maria spotted Ed coming back to the car though, she said something to the two G.I.'s and they looked over at Ed and said their goodbye's rather quickly before walking away from Ed's car.

"What was that all about?" Ed wasn't pleased with the idea of Maria possibly soliciting those two guys for paid sex. The last thing he needed was to come back to the base and have people thinking he had been bringing Maria up to the base in order to pimp her out to the other G.I.'s.

"I was just sitting here like you told me to. They came over and started asking me some questions. I told them I was waiting for my boyfriend. They said they recognized your car, and they didn't believe that you were really my boyfriend."

"I'm not. You weren't flirting with them or trying to set up some kind of a date for money, nothing like that?"

"They were only there for like four or five minutes. I'm through with that life anyway. Whoring isn't any fun after you've done enough of it. I've got enough money now that I don't have to do that any more."

Ed took it nice and carefully as he drove down the winding road back towards Almaden. He'd never cared for that stretch of curvy, single lane, two way traffic. Too many young airmen liked to see how fast they could make it up or down the mountain, relying on their quick reflexes to save them in case of sudden oncoming traffic. Ed wasn't someone who cared to be made an innocent victim of another's reckless folly.

From Almaden he drove straight through, heading east until he joined Highway 101 over by the IBM off ramp. He drove south on highway 101, until reaching state highway 152, where he headed southeast again until getting to highway 99 which would take him into Bakersfield.

From Bakersfield, he planned to take the 58 into Barstow, before catching interstate 15 right into Las Vegas. He figured he could make the whole trip in seven or eight hours. He planned to refuel in Bakersfield.

"How come you don't want to do anything with me? Don't you think I'm pretty enough?"

They'd been driving in near total silence for more than an hour. Ed had gotten himself into the near trance state he liked to be in when driving for any long distance. It made the time and the distance go by more quickly for him. Her speaking to him had disturbed this comfortable state of non-attention.

"I'm sorry. Did you just say something to me?"

"I asked you why you don't want to do anything with me."

"Well, in the first place, you're fourteen, and..."

"Fifteen, my birthday was last Wednesday."

"Sorry, fifteen. Still, I'm thirty two years old, and if anyone found out I did anything with you, they'd throw my butt in jail and then throw away the key. I could get twenty years for doing that."

"You don't act like you'd want to, even if I wasn't jailbait."

"That's true too. I guess I'm old fashioned that way. I'd need to have it be with a woman that I liked a great deal, someone I had a real relationship with. Sex just for the hell of it, that has no appeal for me."

"You expect me to swallow that line? How dumb do you think I am? I know guys, and you're a guy. If you weren't so afraid, you'd be after me, just like all the others. You're timid. My mother thought you were such a nice guy, letting us leave like you did from Ted's pad that day. You were just afraid you'd get in trouble too, that's what I think."

"Have it your way. It doesn't matter to me what you think. We both know who's the one in trouble now though."