She was pretty, a little nasty-mouthed, but pretty. Tall, with a bullet-looking head. Standing west of Karibib with a suitcase. She didn’t wing her arm out when I drove by. Waiting on something better. They’re always waiting on something better while I work. But I stopped anyway, and she walked up, and I leaned over and opened the door. She didn’t say anything and didn’t get in. I didn’t say anything either. What would I? I leaned over to close the door. You’re getting in, you’re not getting in. What difference does it make to me? She put her hand on the door, and my eyes said to her, In or out? Her hand on the door like I’m the one in the road begging a lift. Where are you going? she said. I pointed up the road. How far? she said. I have to answer questions? Upington, I said. Tonight. Her hand was still on the edge of the door. All right, she said. She hoisted her suitcase and expected me to take it. I let the thing stand there in the air above the seat. She put it down on the seat and climbed up. I jerked my thumb. There’s room for it in the back, and she, with her knees on the seat, lifted it and put it back there. Then she sat with her hands folded like a nun. She wasn’t a nun. She looked straight ahead out the windscreen. I don’t play the radio. I like to think when I drive. Thirty, forty kilometers, she didn’t say a word. Up and over the hills and straight up to the checkpoint before Windhoek. At the checkpoint she didn’t take out her card and they didn’t ask her to. That’s how it is now. Six times in a route now I show my card. The other day they fined me two hundred rand for my tires. Cop measured my treads with a ruler and said I was in violation. Straight past Windhoek on the underway, and she’s so still it doesn’t look like she’s breathing. Maybe she thought if she breathed she’d be giving me something. I got used to it. I feel her there and don’t feel her, and listen for her breathing and don’t hear it. I do the three hundred k’s to Mariental, where I stop for petrol. When I get back in the cab, there’s thirty rand on my seat. I look at it awhile and then get in and sit on it. She doesn’t say anything, but I see her breathe. Outside Horncranz, I ask her if she has a name, and without taking her eyes off the glass or moving her nasty little mouth, she says she does. Outside Gibeon, I said, Do you ever tell people what it is? and then she did tilt her head and she did look straight at me. And all right, I want to touch her, not grab her, just touch her. And I look at her and she knows it. Stop, she says. Here? A flat stretch of tarmac south of Keetmans, at least two hundred more k to the border. Nothing, no dorp for sixty, seventy k in either direction. An hour to dark. You want to get out here?
Here.