“Just like you couldn’t tell that trucker no?”
She didn’t expect him to come back at her in that combative tone. He seemed so heartless. “Yes.”
“Did you not realize that man wasn’t doing you any favors?”
“I needed a ride to Milton.”
“Then figure it out for yourself!” He seemed unusually upset. “Anything could have happened to you in that rig. Rape. Murder. Anything. But that didn’t matter to you.”
“It did matter to me.”
“Then why was your ass willing to go with him if you knew the risk?!” He was practically yelling.
“Because my car broke down, I’ve got nine dollars to my name, and I’ve got to be in Milton before four p.m. today.” She was angry too. “That’s why!”
Nine dollars to her name? Vince knew she was in desperate straits, but damn. Nine dollars?
But still. “That’s not an excuse,” he said. “You could have figured out a better way.”
“Oh yeah? Like what?” She folded her arms and turned as far as she could facing him. “Where is this better way? How do I get to it? Show me this better way because I’ve never seen it in my life! It’s so easy to sit up in this fancy car in your fancy suit and proclaim how I should just find another way like it’s as easy as just doing it. I don’t know if you noticed this or not, but people like you don’t go out of their way to help people like me.”
“Here we go with the race card,” Vince said contemptuously.
Ricki’s look turned from frustration to irritation. “What race card? I wasn’t talking about race. I’m talking about class. I’m talking about people like me, who can barely make ends meet, and people like you, who don’t even understand the concept. So don’t even act like I’m just making shit up. Because I’m not!”
Vince was stunned by the bitterness he heard in her voice. “Watch your language,” he said.
But she wasn’t done reading his ass. “Have you ever lived paycheck to paycheck and sometimes ran so low that you wasn’t even sure where your next meal was coming from? Have you ever had to rely on strangers that couldn’t stand the sight of you? Have you ever been so poor and powerless that people looked at you as if you were lower than trash? Well if you don’t know what I’m talking about, and you don’t get it, then why don’t you just shut the fuck up!”
Vince looked at her as if she’d lost her mind. Then he angrily pulled over to the side of the highway, slammed on brakes, causing both of them to jerk forward, and then he looked at her again. This time he was pointing directly at her small, anguished face. “I said it once, and I’ll say it again. This time for the last time. Watch. Your. Mouth.”
Ricki was stunned. He pulled all the way over to tell her that? Who did he think he was? She turned her small body all the way toward his big body. “Let’s get one thing straight, Mister,” she said to him. “Just because you’re giving me this ride doesn’t make you ruler over me.”
“Yes it does,” he shot back, to her disbelief. “When you’re in my presence, yes it does! And you will be respectful in my presence. You will not be cursing like somegotdamn sailor. Now watch yourself,” he added. When she didn’t say anything further, mainly because she seemed stunned by his response, then he exhaled again, pulled back onto the highway, and continued the drive. That child was working his last nerve!
Ricki sat there stumped. She didn’t know what to make of him. What man would declare, as if it was his God-given right, that he was the boss of a grown-ass woman? And he could cuss his head off, but she was being disrespectful when she cussed? What kind of white-privilege-control-freak shit was this? What was she getting herself into? She held onto the door handle and continued to stare at Vince. Any false move and she was jumping out.
Vince could see her staring from his side view, but he let her stare. He felt disappointed in his behavior. He was being too hard on her as if he needed to toughen her up when she was already more than tough enough.
But there was something else about her, something he saw within her that was so vulnerable to him, that he felt an irrational sense of responsibility for her. It didn’t compute onany level with who he was, but it was there as plain as the nose on his face. She needed him. Somehow he knew it. And it was angering the hell out of him that he knew it. Because the last person on earth he needed was her.
He looked at her. “Do you have a question,” he asked her, “or is staring at me your thing?”
“Why are you so mean?” she asked him, since he brought it up.
Vince smiled. “Me? Mean? Talk about the pot calling the kettle black!”
He had a point, she thought. She even had a glimmer of a smile on her stern face too. She decided to move on. “What do you do for a living to be able to afford a car like this?”
He caught that faint smile on her face. Although brief and weak, it made her look so much prettier when she smiled. Then he caught himself. Why in the world would he care about how she looked? He looked back at the road ahead of them. “I’m a lobbyist out of D.C.,” he said, “and I own a major PR firm.”
Ricki noticed how he emphasizedmajor. As if he liked being on top. But it was the other part that was of more note to her. “You’re a lobbyist?”
“That’s correct.”
“So you pay off congress people to keep passing bills for Fortune 500 companies so that they can continue to rip off the American people?”
He inwardly smiled. This child! “Those aren’t the words I would use.”
