The Invisible Tomboy 2: Road Raging.
By Henspurs    cockscomb@juno.com
A feisty invisible chick gets in a high-octane fight.


Rain, wind, cold. The car doors were shut, but I heard the loud whistle of the
wet breeze over the windows. The weather was getting in, and I was still
naked, unwilling to get dressed in the car with so many people standing around
the gas pumps.

There was a heavy woolen blanket on the floor. That at least kept my feet
warm. I had been walking on cold, hard floors, bare ground pavement all
morning and in addition to being sore, I was suffering from a stubbed toe, all
the while wishing I could just go ahead and wear shoes.

Rory, my "partner" was being a real turd.

Probably because I told him I was in charge.

Him and his dreams of moving to America, becoming a fireman and whatever else
he had planned had gone into the toilet. He'd scrubbed out, blown it, fucked
up. And here he now was back in Ontario with only a few dollars to his name
being led around by a tomboy with way bigger problems than he ever could have
guessed.

He'd gotten careless. I couldn't. Not for a minute.

Hell, I was feeling real shitty myself. My period was coming on and with that
added to all the other crap, I was being a grouch. Rory and me had gone
through our tough times before, but not like this---not with so much cash
involved. I made him go into the convenience store and had him buy me all
kinds of feminine stuff that he doesn't like to touch and talk about.

He came out of the little fluorescent-lit store with a brown paper bag all
folded over so no one else could see what was inside it. Through the window, I
saw him buying beer. Before he came out, he shoved the beer bottles in his
jacket pockets and zipped them up.

He wrestled the driver's side door open.

"Here," Rory grumbled, dropping the bag in the car, "your damn...stuff. So
quit being a bitch, okay?"

I don't know what my life would have been like if I was a boy instead of a
girl, but I do know I would have loved not having periods. They are a pain, I
guess.

Rory had forgotten his good gloves somewhere and his hands were as red as his
face.

All I could see of myself was my breath turning into little vapor clouds as I
huffed impatiently, waiting for him.

Damn, he was slow!

While he thumbed through the cash at the gas station, I looked at road maps
and quickly ducked down out of sight to shimmy into what Rory calls my
"Bumfuck outfit". He tells me there's this place called "Bumfuck" Egypt where
chicks dress like this. So what? There are enough Iranian chicks down in
Toronto who dress pretty much the same. I'm not into Islam or anything, but
there was something nicely practical about dressing up like an Eastern woman
with cloth draping me from head to ankles. I can see out the front through a
little opening, but no one else can see in...and there's nothing for them to
see.

Yeah, I stole it. What the hell.

I tried the windshield wipers while Rory gassed up. The rubber strips were
torn and falling apart, but they could keep the rain off.

Since the old VW faced a window, I tried the lights. Only one headlight.
Looking behind, I saw there was only one taillight.

"Hey!" Rory thumped the car. "Quit messing with shit in there."

"You could get pulled over for having bad lights. The back one is easy to fix,
why don't you take care of it, eh?"

"Ah Jeez, you sure are bitching a lot, you know."

"Some fireman you would have been...Bozo."

There have come times when I've really wanted to fight him, just to see how
good I could hit him. Right in the jaw, right in the nose, right in the eye,
right in the gut. Hard. I wanted to know how much I could dish out in a fair
fight and how much I could take, but I had only wrestled him into doing
things, and he hadn't fought back.

Ever.

The real rain started during the argument and sure enough, it leaked into the
car between the dented, pitted metal roof and the doors. The weather stripping
was rotten and in a few places, completely torn out. Cheap-ass Rory had tried
to fix it up with ordinary window putty, but it didn't do the trick. Rain
dripped in the back onto our stuff, but since it was all in plastic bags, it
would come through.

I can smell police, and sure enough, two cars went by while we were parked.
Watching them disappear into traffic, I counted my blessings.

Fuck, it was getting cold. The heater didn't work, of course and neither did
the defroster. I held a towel the whole trip and swabbed the inside of the
windshield whenever it got too cloudy. But it's great to be able to keep warm
without worrying about looking like I'm missing my whole head or just my
mouth. Ski masks are great, but they cling too much and they have big holes
that people can look into. Underneath the dark costume I wore a sports bra and
sweatpants and some cheap cotton underwear to keep my damned panty-liner more
or less in place. It freaks me out to look down through my abdomen and see my
tampon inside me as if it's floating in midair. Not that Rory gets off on it,
but judging by his reaction, it's pretty raw for him to look at tampons and
pads and stuff moving around without skin and clothes to hide them.

Adjusting his favorite team toque, he snuggled in behind the wheel looking
like a jackass elf in a long green jacket with white trim. He roared away from
the gas station, tires screeching and slipping on the wet street. He
immediately switched on the radio and dialed around until he hit a hockey game
and that seemed to pep him up, but I still didn't like his eyes.

The VW let out an ominous groan as he shifted gears and battled gravity going
up the onramp. Ottawa. The road sign spelled out how many kilometers, but in
the rain, the distance was magnified.

Looking back, I should have cooked up something smart and tried to take care
of the driving chores myself. Instead, I settled back into my seat, shivering
and adjusting the woolen blanket.

Rory looked tired. And then he yawned.

I clapped his shoulder good and hard. "Don't fucking fall asleep, Bozo...."

That dumb fucker, I tell you. Rory had sneaked those beers while I had drifted
off to sleep, but I woke up first. Not even the blaring hockey game on the
radio could keep his eyes open or the honking of horns on the highway. I
grabbed the steering wheel out his hands. An empty beer bottle rolled off the
ledge under the windshield into my lap. I was steering the VW, but Rory's foot
was down on the accelerator, holding it close to the floor, pushing the needle
up to (what counted for the old VW) breakneck speed. I couldn't do much else
except reach over and knock his leg away from the gas pedal and hope that both
woke him up and inspired him to step on the brake instead.

"ASSHOLE! Wake up!" I screamed under the veil. "SHIT!"

"Wha-what? Hmmmmmmm?"

He opened his eyes, but it took him a long time to register that we were
moving. How we ever got over to the shoulder of the road without hitting two
trucks on the way there I won't ever guess.

The VW spun in the mud when it left the pavement and tore up grass and
splashed brownish water on the windows. 70 Km to go. And we'd just about
crashed and died.

That's when I hit him. Both bottles were empty. I hit him in the side of the
head with one of them, finding myself with not enough space to bring it down
on his damned skull.

"Get out of the car---GET THE FUCK OUT!"

"Awww, jeez...settle down, will you---"

Moving several times faster than Rory for being panicked, I kicked my door
open, almost forgetting to undo my seatbelt. Still looking like a retarded elf
with his red stocking cap crumpled on his head from where I had hit him, Rory
stumbled half-asleep into a solid punch. My knuckles slid on his rain-wet face
and I threw another punch with that same hand, all the while dressed in the
baggy Eastern costume which was now getting drenched.

He wasn't hitting back. I guess he was real scared. Rory turned his shoulders
to me, taking a few biffs and bumps and socks. If they'd thrown him out of the
fire department training program, I guess it was for being too weak.

At the same time, he wasn't giving up and I still felt like I should knock him
down. Good and hard.

Then he went berserk and ran into me, maybe thinking he was part of the hockey
game he'd been listening to. He didn't slam hard enough before he grappled and
it didn't get him anywhere. He threw a lot of mud around and got himself dirty
and swampy and wet.

I came back with an elbow strike and a pop to his chin.

Oh, wow!

Reeling from two well-placed blows, my "partner" collapsed into the mud and
grass. I should have remembered I needed him to drive the car, but all that
was forgotten. I kicked that loser again and again, stomping him, grinding my
heel into him, aggravating my stubbed toe until all the piss in my system had
boiled over and was back to where I could handle it. I was getting my wish,
beating the shit out of him like a good invisible tomboy, but it didn't feel
the way I hoped it would feel.

On the highway, cars and trucks roared passed without slowing down. I guess
the police had other things to worry about other than us.

Lightning flashed in the distance.

The cool, fresh air helped, but not much.

"I oughta get some rope and drag you behind this damned car for a while," I
told him. "Do you know how stupid you are putting away beers---"

"You fucking can't do anything...without me," Rory said, trying to get his
wind back. "You can't kill me now. I made a call...from the gas station. I
told a friend of mine in Gatineau I was traveling with someone. I told him I
was coming from down south to his place, driving someone... someone dangerous.
We're going to his place first of all and check in before anything else."

"That's a bluff...you've been watching too many TV shows, eh? What's his
address? He'd better not be with the cops."

Sore, Rory rattled off the address and phone number. They sounded like
Gatineau names and numbers, but for all I could verify right then and there,
it could have been a doughnut shop or an aluminum siding warehouse.

But it was a plausible bluff. Rory could have done just that. He had taken a
few steps to insure himself, I guess.

"I'm going to drive this damned car to a phone. I'm going to call that number
you just gave me...and if it's bogus, I'm going to pound you down again...I'm
going to really beat on you. And no, you don't get to ‘nail' me. You screwed
me enough already, Bozo."

While he lay there, I rigged up the car for a long, long push into a place
where we couldn't be seen from the highway and threw all the junk from the
back seat into the passenger seat and piled it as high as it would go. With a
roll of yellow duct tape, I trussed Rory up good and tight and taped up his
mouth too and then stuffed him into the backseat where all the junk had been a
few minutes before.

I smelled cops.

In the back of my mind, I could picture Rory on the phone back at the gas
station, tipping off the local police.

It was either drive or walk. And with the storm the way it was, walking wasn't
a choice.

Well, like I told Rory, I was in charge.

Regardless of how it would look, I got into the driver's seat, Eastern costume
and all and started her up, putting the transmission through hell. I never
went to driving school. Yeah, I knew which pedals to push, but I didn't have
the feel for them, yet.

Shuddering, the VW climbed up from the grassy field and merged with northbound
traffic, fighting a mean, wet headwind to the next town. My knuckles ached
holding the hard ring of the steering wheel. They ached when I shifted gears
and they ached when I tuned the radio to something other than hockey and easy
listening. Oh, wow. That had been a good punch-up back there...I couldn't wait
for my next one.

Even in Canada, payphones are on their way out in favor of the portable,
handheld variety, so it took a while to find the old fashioned kind outside a
motel. A handful of coins later, I got through to a calm, easy- sounding voice
using the number that Rory had spilled. I gave an alias, confirmed the address
and apologized that there would be a change in plans. Just that. And I got a
name. And a profession. A doctor. A male doctor.

Just enough gas in the VW to make Gatineau. And if not, close enough to walk
or sneak a ride on an open-bed truck.

I sat there behind the wheel, thinking. Thinking hard. Then I leaned over the
seat and looked down at Rory lying there under the blanket, but still tied up
with strong tape.

"That phone number was for a hospital. A good place for you, Bozo. But not for
me. I'm driving this heap till it runs out of gas. Then it's au revoir."

That big, comfortable van would have to stay in the impound yard. There were
other desperate guys with wheels and I knew where to look for them. I left the
VW conked out in a NO PARKING zone with Rory in the back seat. Owning only a
few things, I took them with me in a big backpack. I had changed clothes into
a winter outfit which covered pretty much all of me except my nose and I fixed
that with a scarf. An umbrella topped off what wasn't really a disguise and I
hit the streets.

A quick peep in a telephone directory told me where "Mr. Doctor" actually
lived. Since he was working that night, he wouldn't be at his cozy little
house when I came calling. Even then, I would never use the front door.

(to be continued)