Preservation

Preservation
Erotic vibes struck the desert winds with dignity and respect. These were upper-class whores, stranded in God’s wasteland with their thumbs firmly pointed up into the air. The highway was baron at seven A.M. on a Sunday; the sun contemplating whether or not it was worth the effort to shine on such lost souls. Their heightened knees were bloody; the blonde and brunette having both fallen at off-putting times in their walks through the sand. They had names that weren’t important, made-up identities changing frequently as more demented lunatics followed the arrows in truck stop bathroom stalls to the phone numbers to the exit signs.
They made a living in a fifty-mile radius; a packaged deal that had gone through many subtle line-up changes in the past year. There were new girls falling apart as they waved the memorial statues of their golden boy football playing boyfriend’s goodbye, different moods of purses and backpacks at their side. Mascara got runny in the heat, and yet they all looked forward to the soft and dangled looks from happily married men, merely ordering extra cheese on their son’s pizzas. The sweating would then be contagious, even in the most accomplished of nuclear family restaurants with industrial-sized air conditioning units in the kitchens and former smoking sections.
The blonde had left her fresh pack of slims in the tan minivan, not given the fragile human right of lighting up once business was taken care of. Her companion, on the other hand, was lucky and unfortunate enough to grab her corduroy satchel from the backseat of the man’s ride, moments before it tore off without her, and yet didn’t fashion herself a nicotine addict. She preferred coke. White powder stuck to both their noses after snorting for world peace off of the tomato-stained dashboard. Standard bottles of brown sauce and rolled green vices for ambience came before a call and a ride from an unmarked payphone. They obliged their host, a nameless craftsman who repeated the same verses over and over again following his specific instructions to bend.
"I still don’t understand why we have to mind our manners after dark. I still don’t get why we have to flatter our wife’s boss." His words grew faster and faster until they were slurred and both guests of the minivan looked at each other, less than aroused and completely unsure of what came next.
The blonde could almost taste the smoke on her tongue when he opened the sliding door and gracefully kicked her in the stomach with his boot; both sets of their clothes tumbling into the dirt, hardly softening the blow. Shocked by such a quick motion, the brunette could hardly catch her balance enough to slug him in the face, before being pushed out the other side. They were then caked with dust as the van skidded off towards the loose direction of the road, and both working girls wondered why exactly they had agreed to cross the border.
"I hate you for this." The blonde said, licking her lips of salt. "I should’ve went with those cowboy’s fans."
"You hate getting teamed." The brunette replied, clunking around in the man’s brown suit jacket and pants. She considered how many outfits he went through leaving naïve hookers behind in the desert, before soon deciding that it was better not to think too much about such things.
"It would’ve been better than this. We could die out here."
"I doubt it. We’ll arrive somewhere eventually. Besides, I haven’t run out of strength yet." She lifted her legs with a hearty breath.
"We’re going to dehydrate. That suns gonna kill us." The blonde turned back for a moment and tiredly starred into the red, before realizing that she couldn’t remember the last time they had argued with one another. It reminded her of her parents, upstairs and down.
"So what if it does?" The brunette sighed, her complexion flushed from one too many lines.
"I don’t wanna be another carcass on the side of the road." She moved her feet around the dog’s loose guts before noticing the tiniest of reflections off in the distance.
"You’re not gonna…"
"Do you see that?" The blonde interrupted, pointing to the sparkle again. "Over there, do you see it?"
"See what?" Her companion squinted, and soon felt the heat in her head, for the first time. "Oh… Yeah, I see that."
"So it’s gotta be something we need."
"Probably…" The brunette said, hesitantly focusing on the light again. It was infrequently catching the rays, making her unbalanced.
"So why I was worrying so much?"
"It’s what we do sometimes, I guess." She said it, without thinking, and soon continued to walk and stare.
They were welcomed into town with open arms, soon tossing their cares back into the wind as more arrangements were made for the evening. There was to be everything under the sun, and nothing left to remember the following morning.