The Dead and the Dreamer

"We can go. I'll stop in here later," he told her. "I don't know what I was thinking bringing you here in the first place."

"No," Tammy said, looking up at him. Her face wet with tears and her eyes puffy and red.

"We can. I don't mind."

She stretched up and kissed him on the lips. She quickly backed away with a look of pleasant surprise in her drowning eyes. She then reached up and kissed him again with even more force and passion.

John reciprocated her actions and held her to him. He brought up his right hand and gently held her cheek as they continued kissing without a care in the world for their location.

Tammy pulled away slowly. She smiled and brushed the windblown hair from her wet face. The sun made her shine with a radiant glow and John wished she was not standing in dirt and surrounded by wrecked cars. She was made to be pampered, he thought. Then another thought popped into his head: he was falling for her.

She squeezed his hand and kissed him again. The summer wind blew her hair around and into their faces again. John was lost in the moment. At that instant, the Corvette didn't matter, the fat guy in the shack didn't matter, and to his shock, music didn't matter a bit.

Suddenly she pulled back and let go of his hands.

"What?"

She smiled and cocked her head to the shack out by the entrance. "We're being watched."

"Let's give him a show," John said. He wanted to cheer her up and thought by her expression that he had.

"I'll stay right here and you go check out the car."

John looked back at the guy standing at the door to the white shack. The man's bulk easily filled the space and he was eating something. It looked like a bag of microwave popcorn. "I'll be right back," John told her, gently squeezing her arm.

As he walked to the smashed in Corvette he wasn't thinking about brake lines. He was thinking about what just happened and if it would ever happen again. She had been crying and was in a very vulnerable state. Her emotions just got the best of her and she simply had to reach out for someone at that weak moment. He just happened to be there.

At the car, John got down on his knees and twisted onto his back. He shimmied under the car as best he could. Given the way the car was damaged, it sat closer to the ground than Corvettes usually do. Just behind the front wheels, where the brake drums attach, the hose connection was cut clean. The brake fluid would have drained and left the car unstoppable. It was the type of cut in a line that an accident could not have caused.