Free Fist of the Spider Woman by Amber Dawn Page A

carefully made up, you can tell at close range, so that she’ll look natural from a distance. Clever.
    â€œWhy d’ya cover up your freckles?” I say.
    â€œWhat?” She laughs self-consciously.
    â€œNo, serious. I love freckles. They’re sexy.”
    She flushes, pleased with the compliment packed carefully in a crate of criticism. I’m on the make. She’s sipping juice from a bottle, offers me some, and I swig it back. She’s saying something about the juice, but I’m swallowing so I can’t hear. She lifts her hand in protest, squawks out loud, but I drain the bottle in one long gulp and toss it away, into the street. I’m taking her for every thing she’s got. She giggles.
    We get to the car and, whaddayaknow, the “thing” she’s looking for isn’t there! I say, “How sad I won’t get to see this city while I’m here.” She looks at me sideways in that profound, fateful moment when she makes her decision, and voila, we’re in her brand-new, candy-apple red Honda Civic hatchback that Daddy gave her. The tinted windows whirl down, the music blares, and we’re off. She gives me a tour of her favourite American-owned coffee retailers, the shopping mall where she bought her ridiculous outfit, her hairstylists’ shop (“He’s really cool and sooo sweet”). She points out the CN Tower with its rotating restaurant in the fat bulge of it, the glass elevators on the side sliding up, sliding down. She claims it’s the tallest in the city, in the country, in the world, practically. I shrug.
    She rests her hand on my knee at a stoplight. She leans toward me. “You and me, we’re going to fuck tonight.”
    I smile wide and the knot inside tightens. I say, “Is that so?” and she nods her head yes. She’s got that terrible smugness about her, like the way cowards ego-bloat when they’re high on cocaine. She tells me I’m hot.
    Someone honks. The light is already green, and she stalls the car. More honks. Her tires squeal. She drives nervously, hopping from one lane to another, making bad decisions, going nowhere.
    She speeds up to make a yellow light then slams on the breaks, sliding us halfway into the intersection, and I think I might not even get a chance to kill this bitch, she might do us both in first!
    â€œSmoke?” I offer her a joint. She refuses, saying she usually likes coke or speed or crystal meth or like any club drug, really, but definitely not pot ’cause it makes her all … “Paranoid?” I say quietly.
    â€œUm, yeah. I guess.” She asks, “Wanna see the lake?” and I say, “Sure, why not. I like nature. Water.”
    Her hand is back on my thigh now, she’s scratching at me with her long manicured nails. She says, “Just looking at you gets me wet,” and I think, how original, you stupid, boring broad. She says something about some fantasy on the beach. The one where a stranger takes her down and frees her from herself; she lets loose, wild and dirty, leaves her endless petty hang-ups behind.
    I’m thinking how easy it’d be to stash her body, take the car, hit the highway. And then she’s swinging sharply to the left, careening across three lanes of traffic, narrowly making it to the onramp for a decrepit express lane going in a completely different direction.
    â€œYou seem a little wired,” I say, clutching my seatbelt, snapping it into place, knocking her hand off of me.
    â€œYeah,” she hiccups. “The pills I took are kinda kicking in.”
    She laughs; there’s a maniacal twinge to her face now, and it looks eerie in the silver lights along the highway.
    I lick my lips. “Why don’t we pull over right now?” I say, like I’ve said to a million other creeps who have driven me around. “Ever done it on the side of the road?”
    She giggles. She’s undoing her shirt