jaunt to Goblin Valley State Park. By twilight, we found a motel with separate cabins and a big claw-footed tub. Quicksilver dried himself by spending the chilly night outside, howling for a full moon, no doubt. Ric dried himself on the cool, scratchy motel sheets with me.
Fed and fueled, we got on the road early, all of us smelling of pine soap as we headed into Colorado and its mountain air. Even Dolly looked freshly washed and shined. Maybe the ghosts and goblins had given her a moonbeam rubdown after her rocky start out of Vegas.
My silver familiar had morphed into a New Age necklace studded with turquoise for the morning drive. Instead of curling shyly around my big toe nights, as had been its habit, now the familiar was twining itself over Ric's and my interlocked fingers and limbs, slipping like a mobile cold shiver over our overheated skin.
I didn't mention the new silent partner in our sex life. Ric had the single Silver Eye now, whatever that meant. He popped a brown contact lens over the pale reflective iris every morning, like taking a pill, to normalize his looks.
Remembering the nightmare visions from being the main course at a vampire feast under the Karnak only made him more gung-ho to get to Kansas and unearth the cause of my trauma. Part of that was his ex-lawman, good-deed mentality. I think another reason was that concentrating on my issues pushed his own back from the front line.
So ... this was a contradiction: I was actually happy that my youthful unhappiness made such a good diversion for Ric.
Here we were, both pretending the other needed our help most.
I started out driving while Quicksilver made up doggy dreamtime in the backseat and Ric turned Dolly's radio dial left and right up and down the FM and AM ranges. All we got was static wail.
Dolly's big wheels were no joy to navigate around hairpin mountainside turns. I recalled reading a beauty tip that driving a big old wheel without power steering was great exercise for the bust support muscles. Dolly had power-everything, but, even so, my entire body was putting English into those continuous hairpin turns. I was sure to be sore tomorrow.
Still, the sun poured down sparkle on the speedy roadside creeks following the twisting mountain roads. Towns and even glimpses of habitation were rare in the mountains. Ric used his cell phone to map the highway for likely stops. I'd never adulterate Dolly's vintage integrity by adding any slick, modern gadgets, not even the threatened fuzz buster.
Light faded fast amid these impressive peaks. I yawned in the deepening shadows and checked the gas gauge. Dolly wasn't stingy with gasoline, but her tank was built for travel. The road went ever down and down until we finally hit the deserted flats again.
"I'll drive now," Ric said. "All those major curves must be exhausting to hold on to. I speak from experience."
I smiled faintly at his double entendre. I was pretty tired from the constant tension in my shoulders, and it was twilight in the shadow of the Rockies. He sped Dolly along the empty road, knowing my arm and back muscles craved a hot shower.
"A good kind of exhausting," I added. "That's real driving, not just steering."
"Yeah," Ric said. "And I was sitting, helpless, on the outside, gazing two miles down into ravines and hoping Detroit's Largest didn't plan to take us on a Thelma and Louise dive."
"Guys just so hate being not in control."
Quicksilver, who'd slept through the mountain pass, sat up and growled protest from the backseat. He was a guy too.
"Look." Ric pointed to a highway sign that was all words and no pictures.
The type was huge, but impossible to read while we were whizzing by at ninety miles an hour.
"Let's do that," he shouted into the wind whipping past Dolly's big-screen fifties windshield.
I had no idea what kind of off-road hokey attraction he was talking about. They were usually ill-kept reptile farms or fireworks shacks out here.
"The sun is setting," I pointed out, jerking my head over my shoulder to look past Quicksilver's sunglasses-free mug, all black nose and white teeth.
A spectacular, pollution-abetted sunset was setting the western mountain peaks afire, turning the dimming sky into a psychedelic painted desert of purple, orange, green, and gold.
"We should be finding a motel for the night," I said.
"This is better." Ric surprised me. I was sure he was eager for a replay of last night. His ordeal had done