Page 1 of Texas Kissing

1

Lily

I useblackout drapes but Texas morning sundon’t give a damn.It crept around the edges and through the pinprick holes where the material had worn thin and lit up my sleeping face like a laser. When I blearily opened my eyes, it was with my hands up over them, trying to push away the morning like it was a dog licking my face.

It was going to be one of those days.

I figured I might as well get it over with, so I knelt up on my bed and lifted the drapes. I tentatively opened my eyes just enough to glimpse a massive Texas sky dusted with marshmallow clouds, the sun already hot on my face through the rear window.

I should explainrear window.My home is a Greyhound bus.

I needed a project, when I arrived in Texas. Buying the bus and converting it was perfect—complicated enough that I could immerse myself in it for weeks and forget what I’d left behind.

My bed is where the last four rows of seats wouldhave been. A single bed, because that’s all I need.

Walk forward through a curtain and you get to the kitchen. I ripped out all the seats and added a counter, stove and sink. Water and power comes from the farm I’m parked on—the dried-up creek bed wasn’t any use to anyone, so the farmer’s happy to let me park there for a few hundred dollars a month.

Downstairs, I expanded the bus’s bathroom. You know the luggage bays under the bus where you stuff your suitcase? That’s where my tub and shower are.

Why a bus? Because it’s always ready to move.

My name is Lily, and I’m on the run.

People say that, when you move somewhere new, it takes a couple of days to acclimatize to the weather. It’s been two years and I’m still waiting. In winter, I long for snow and the slippery-smooth feel of a freshly-broken-off icicle. In fall and spring I hanker after those cool, comfortable days where the rain’s just cleared the air and everything feels fresh and new. And in summer, like it is now...I just want to be in civilization, where the outdoors is tamed—something to be enjoyed from behind darkened glass in the cool breeze of air conditioning.

I miss New York.

I left the drapes closed (have you any ideahow manydrapes you have to make for an entire bus?) and padded in my nightshirt downstairs to the bathroom. It was way too hot for a nightshirt, even with the bus’s a/c, but I’m not one of those women who’s comfortable walking around in her underwear, even when there’s no one to see.

I’ve rigged up a system of mirrors to bring sunlight down from the roof of the bus to the bathroom, so it feels almost like showering outdoors. I washed my hair, drawing conditioner through the ends so that—hopefully—it would freak out slightly less when the sun hit it. You would have thought raven-black, Italian-American hair would feel like it’s in its element in Texas, but not mine. Back in New York, I think I spoiled it with fancy salons and now it sulkily refuses to cooperate.

Ditto my skin. My ancestors, I’m told, came from some village in Sicily, so I know that in theory I can tan with the best of them. But my skin’s as pale as my name—Lily—suggests because….

Well, because I spend a lot of time indoors.

Part of that has to do with havingtoo muchskin. Too much flesh. I was never the slender, foxy girl, bouncing around New York from party to party. That’s the movie star role. I’m more like the comedy sidekick, the one who has to struggle into her plus-size jeans and is there to make the main character look good.

That was always okay with me; I knew my place.

But that slender, foxy girl I was best friends with? She’s dead. And I’m not anyone’s comedy sidekick, because I don’t dare become friends with anyone anymore.

When I’d finished patting the water from my body with a faded towel, I dressed in a blouse and jeans and got ready to go out.Notmy favorite thing in the world. With grocery deliveries and an internetconnection, I can go a week without leaving the bus and that’s exactly how I like it. But there was business to attend to.

I reached under my bed and pulled a lever and the whole thing folded up on springs. Beneath it is my work area.

On the underside of the bed, in little plastic pouches, were over thirty fake passports and driver’s licenses, all in various stages of completion. More pouches held my raw materials—the special paper and bindings, the holograms and electronic chips that are supposed to be impossible to fake.

I picked up the bag containing this month’s delivery: five of my special “All in One” packs (passport, driver’s license, social security card—buy together and save!) and I was ready.

Almostready. Also attached to the underside of the bed, where I can grab it quickly in the night, is my gun, a cute little snub-nosed thing that fits in my purse. It has mother-of-pearl grips and looks like a toy, and it’ll happily chew up anyone I turn it on. In two years, I’d never had to use it. But I was ready to.

I hate crowds. Not in a social phobia sort of a way. I just get kind of antsy and breathless and irrationally angry and there’s never enough air….

Okay, maybe I’m on the social phobiaspectrum.

Whatever, I don’t like crowds. Or the hooting, crowing war cries Texan men feel it’s necessary to give when they’re doing anything exciting. Or animals, which are big and unpredictable.

So a rodeo? Not my thing.

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