The young woman in the short orange dress had brown skin and bouncy, curly hair. She was beautiful in that sense of seeing someone and knowing nothing about them. Anyway, I glanced, and she noticed. She walked toward me.
“You heading that way?”
She pointed down the road.
“Nah, back on the freeway,” I told her.
“You sure?”
That was a weird thing to say. I didn’t trust it.
“Yeah,” I said. “Gotta keep going.”
She made this face, like “eh,” and walked down the way she pointed. No hesitation, not a care.
I finished pumping gas and fired up Google Maps. I had to go down that way to get back on the freeway, so I drove on. I passed her and looked ahead. It was a crummy sort of street, the kind I grew up knowing to avoid. Rundown motels, barbed wire, bars on all the windows. Took another moment or two to see the women all up and down the place. One middle-aged blonde raised her hand forward and twirled it, like that Rihanna GIF. Nearby were the shady guys and a car or two that was pulled over to talk to them.
I checked out my rearview
near the end of a block. I spotted the woman in the orange dress one last time. I missed that she was carrying a styrofoam cup when we spoke. Red straw, some design that was a blob of color from that distance. Probably from some local burger place.
That’s how I ended my visit to Fresno. It was hot, unbelievably high. The kind of heat you can only feel in the central valley.
