Booty Call
by Shauna Checkley
Careening along the highway, Janessa was glad for cruise control. Guess I’m kind of on cruise control as well, she chuckled inwardly. Her body felt like the eager, polished machine she was riding in. She could feel her overheated inner circuitry lighting up like the dashboard that curved in front of her. Mona Lisa overdrive hahaha...
She was on the Trans-Canada highway heading to Dennis’s acreage outside of Regina. It was roughly a twenty-five minute drive. Yet the day was revelatory: calm with a light breeze instead of the usual raging prairie winds, and those tall blue skies were like heavenly, azure columns that were getting ready to touch down. Megan Thee Stallion rapped on the radio. All was bliss.
More than anything, Janessa enjoyed getting out for a drive, leaving the small city on the plains that felt claustrophobic at times. Like then.
Gotta take more drives, she thought, making a mental note for the future.
Then her thoughts shifted to Dennis. Like a hologram, the image sprang open in her mind. She saw the middle-aged man, silver fox with the periwinkle eyes that had not seemed to dim over time. She suddenly recalled with tactile intensity, his touch and smell. It was like a phantom stranger that jumped out and accosted her, that scent like leather and cologne, his firm, steady grip, and their lives together.
She had lived at his acreage for months, enjoying the slow, steady rhythms of rural life.
Initially, the quiet peace had been almost a treat — a welcome respite from the tumult of city living — but it eventually soured. She began to feel bored, isolated. She longed to have more immediate access to people and places. Can’t live without my day spa. Or Robin’s Donuts. Though there were others on neighbouring acreages, she didn’t seem to connect readily with them. They just formed part of a larger, rural backdrop of tumbling thistles, barbed wire, and endless patchwork fields.
Slowing down and signaling, Janessa was preparing to turn off the highway and onto a gravel road. She heard the crunch of loose rocks under her tires. She recalled the months of driving that very road to work. It was like a body that was familiar to the touch, the layout and nuances fully explored and memorized.
Feeling that delightful chill of anticipation, Janessa nearly melted in the driver’s seat. After all, it was a long-distance booty call. She clutched the steering wheel tightly.
The text in question flashed across her eyes. Wanna drive out for some of that down time that I miss lol...
Though she usually ignored propositions such as that from Dennis or anyone, her body seemed to answer for her this time. Her fingers flew like birds to type the affirmative to him. Be right there lol
And here she was. Slowing down as one did on gravel, she pressed lightly on the brake. She then drove extra carefully. But then it came to her. All the reasons why she left in the first place. His vacant moods and the expectation that she would do all the work required out there on that little house on the prairie.
Yet the crowning blow, she recalled, was that fateful showdown over Mike and Molly, her two overweight tabbies. Not handling the move as well as she believed they would, her beloved cats began to leak bodily fluids, culminating in Dennis’ referring to Mike as the puker and Molly as the pisser and ordering all of them off his property immediately. He was shocked when she called his bluff and promptly began to load up her SUV.
They didn’t speak for months after the rupture. Only lately had they begun to message lightly back and forth, more so him than her, the truth be told.
As her body cooled and her mind darkened, Janessa stiffened behind the wheel. Anyone observing her would have seen her pert face crumple into an unsightly knot of lines. To hell with that!
She turned her vehicle around and headed back to the city. She hummed along to the radio. She looked forward to seeing Mike and Molly when she got back home. Maybe I’ll start taking them out for drives as well. Who knows, it could be just what we all need...
Copyright © 2022 by Shauna Checkley
