Lulu played with the window button on the door, letting the tempered glass move up and down a few inches at a time.
“Could you please stop doing that?” Drake asked.
She held one hand out of the half-open window, catching snowflakes. “I just want to feel the breeze,” she said.
Drake pulled up on the window control button on his door. “You’re letting the warm air out. I thought you were freezing.”
Lulu pulled her hand back in and pressed down on her button, keeping the window frozen in place. “I was freezing. But I like the breeze.”
He reached over and tried to pull her hand away. Lulu playfully swatted him away and laughed. “Come on! I haven’t been able to enjoy this in forever!”
“Maybe I should have left you out in the parking lot if you liked it so much.” Drake gave up fighting her. He gave his attention back to the road and merged into the left lane of I-90 West. They passed under an exit marker that told them “Gary/Chicago Intl. Airport: 1 Mile”. Below the marker was a flashing sign that announced: CLOSED.
Lulu followed the sign as it passed over the windshield. “You could have. I would’ve worked something out.”
Drake scoffed. “Yeah, okay. You would’ve found a place to sleep eventually, but it’d be in a coffin or something like that.”
“I’m not as helpless as you think I am. I’ve made it this far, haven’t I?”
“By leeching off of me!” Drake laughed. “If you never stole my seat you’d still be back in Miami doing porn.” Lulu opened her mouth to speak, but Drake added, “Sorry, that’s not fair. You’re still doing that anyway when I’m not looking.”
“You know, you’re talking a lot of shit for a guy.”
“Meaning?” He flipped up the turn signal to shift lanes again as a semi came speeding up behind him. But the change in lanes brought him right onto the tail of a minivan so close that they could see what the kids in the backseat were watching on their tablets.
“Meaning you’re a guy. Shame me all you want for what I do, but I bet as soon as I fell asleep last night you were looking me up. See anything you liked?”
Drake shook his head, unbelieving. “I did not look you up.”
“Wow, so convincing.”
He turned up the music playing from his phone to ignore her.
“At the airport then,” she said. “That’s why you came back. You found my page, saw a pic, then thought, ‘damn, I really blew my chance, didn’t I?’”
Drake took advantage of her attention being pulled away from the window to roll it back up, then merged back into the fast lane to pass the minivan. “I didn’t realize before how full of yourself you were. For a dollar a month I thought you had more humility.”
Lulu depressed the window button again. “It’s called ‘being a caring supplier’. I do just fine at the rate I set. There’s no reason to be greedy.”
“It’s called ‘bad business’ in an oversaturated market. In another year you’re gonna be competing with A.I. girls who cost the same amount but have bigger boobs.”
“Are you saying my boobs aren’t nice enough?”
Drake flushed red. “No! No, that’s not what I meant. Yours are fine-”
“Fine?” She couldn’t help but grin at his embarrassment. “Just fine?”
He took a deep breath and corrected his verbal posture. “They’re none of my business. I couldn’t care less about your…boobs.”
She pushed him again. “Wait, so you don’t like them?”
After the embarrassment of his initial comment, he’d come back down to a professional position. “I’m not feeding into this. Lulu, I’m not interested in talking about your porn.”
“I thought we were talking about you not thinking I’m attractive.”
“I do, but that’s not what we were talking about.”
“You do?”
Drake groaned and shifted lanes again, once more rolling up her window.
“Okay, objectively you are an attractive woman. I’m not gonna pretend you’re not-”
“But you don’t like my boobs.”
Drake let go of the wheel, shaking his hands with a strained laugh. “Why are you so hung up on that?”
Lulu shrugged and looked out of the window, rolling it back down. “Just trying to figure out what I can do to get a new subscriber. It’s my boobs, isn’t it?”
“It’s not your boobs,” he said, irritation beginning to creep into his tone.
“I bet if I looked through your history, all I’d see is videos of girls with massive tits.”
“You’d be very bored if you looked through my phone.”
“Oh yeah?” she asked, eyeing his phone with ill intent. “Think you’re too vanilla for me?”
“Too vanilla for the pornstar who doesn’t even get all the way naked? Ha, no. Just empty. See, I actually practice what I preach.”
“Okay, yeah. Sure. Every guy ever watches porn. You don’t have to be ashamed of it.”
Drake rolled her window up again and shifted lanes to pass a heavily modified truck that was threatening to take up two lanes. “I’m not ashamed. I’m very proud of the fact that I don’t buy into the most vile industry in this country. It ruins people’s lives and destroys expectations for sex in real life.”
“Oh give me a break.” She pushed the window back down. “Everyone knows it’s fake, and if they wanna let it get to them, then that’s on the guy who just wants an excuse to get with his step-sister. You can’t blame the actors.”
“They’re actors? You’re an actor?” He rolled the window back up and held the button in the up position.
“No, I’m a model. I don’t do porn.”
Drake let go of the button to rub his forehead, and Lulu immediately took the chance to roll the window down again. “You don’t do porn? Okay, sure. Let’s pretend for a minute. Why not? If what you’re doing isn’t porn, why are you defending porn so much? You’re not even willing to fully commit to the nudity, so you must have some hold-ups about the whole thing.”
“You do know you can have respect as an outsider, right? Or just limits. Even if I did do porn, that doesn’t mean I automatically have to go for the most hardcore shit. I could do soft, romantic stuff. More artistic porn.”
“And the modeling you’re doing is artistic modeling? Cutting your hair and talking dirty?”
She ignored him and carried on her previous train of thought. “The problem with people like you is everyone who works in the adult industry gets lumped into one singular group, and you are so quick to judge, yet at the same time will consume it endlessly. Porn is the biggest industry in the country, yet I’m just trying to get from one day to the next.”
“So, you are doing porn.”
Lulu replaced words with a death glare.
Drake turned his head to grin back, believing he’d won that spout.
That was when she reached out and grabbed his phone from the pocket under the dashboard.
“Hey!” he shouted, reaching for his phone but missing as she huddled into the corner of her seat.
“I just wanna know what kind of stuff you watch! What’s your password?”
“Fuck you, put that back!” He steered out of the way of a car coming up behind them. Beside them, someone honked at Drake’s sudden lane shift.
Lulu also exclaimed at being thrown to the other side of the seat, but held the phone up high to keep him from getting it.
“Just tell me, then!” she screamed, laughing. “Unlike you, I won’t judge.”
Drake struggled to maintain his lane while fighting with her. “Give it back, Lu!” Behind him and beside him, cars honked their horns. He shifted right again to merge into the slow lane.
“Admit it! You were looking me up last night.” She fought off his arm and tried to hold the phone up to his face so that it would unlock. He looked away and forward, grabbed wildly.
“I was not!” he insisted.
The car ahead came to a sudden halt. Drake had only a moment to recognize this, and managed to steer away, merging hard into the left lane. Both he and Lulu were pulled to the right by the force of the shift. Lulu’s raised arm fell back against the open window. When her wrist slammed onto the edge of the window, her grip loosened. She realized what happened before Drake did.
He straightened out the rental and sped forward to flip off the other driver, then saw her face.
“What’s wrong?”
They passed a tenth-of-a-mile marker. Lulu turned to face him in stunned silence. They passed another tenth-of-a-mile marker.
“Lulu,” he said slowly. “Where is my phone?”
* * *
It took them fifteen minutes to get off the interstate at exit 17, drive back west through the streets of Gary, Illinois, and hop back on to I-90 to find where Drake’s phone had landed. Lulu sat in the passenger seat, watching him navigate the traffic on foot to search for what was left of the device. He returned to the car with a broken, shattered, and bent amalgamation of metal and glass, and a mean look on his face.
The car shook when he slammed the door shut.
Lulu bit her lip. She stared down at the destroyed phone in his hand, while he looked forward at the traffic passing them on the interstate.
She carefully considered what she was going to say next, but nothing seemed appropriate.
Now we can listen to my music.
Want me to drive for a little bit?
You wanna borrow mine?
She settled on, “I’m sure we can find a store somewhere close by.”
Drake rolled down his window and tossed the scraps out. A passing driver blared his horn as their car ran over the pieces. Drake then sank down in his seat. “I should’ve stayed on that plane.”
Feeling an optimistic sense of purpose, Lulu got close to him and laid her head on his shoulder. “But you didn’t…” she cooed. “We can still make this work. Come on. I bet this is still gonna turn out better than if you stayed on that plane. You probably would’ve ended up back in Miami.”
“Miami I could do with right now.” He sat up to start the car again and jerked her head away.
Even with the knowledge that her close proximity was not wanted at the moment, Lulu stayed close and rubbed his arm. “You don’t mean that.”
His head drifted around and down. “Find us a store.” He put the car in drive and pulled out onto the road. “And keep the window shut.”
“Right,” she said, strapping back in. But she didn’t take her phone out. “Problem is, I don’t have any internet here.”
Drake gripped the steering wheel until his knuckles turned white.