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Beautiful Thieves

Benjamin Christensen

    The twin yellow lines may have well been dashes on a treasure map. To them, the road was an endless maze of escape routes, always somewhere to run. Rounding a corner, the car and its occupants began a steep ascent. Dustin’s hands guided the steering wheel as Tasha put her bare feet on the dashboard. Her bright pink toenails had been painted from the largest bottle she had been able to conceal in the low-cut line of her dress. Dustin smirked. He put a hand on her bare thigh, Tasha’s smooth, bronze skin felt like heaven to his fingers. With swiftness, he slid his hand downwards, pushing her black sundress with it.
    She squealed, and quickly drew her knees to her chest, pushing his hand off of her. Dustin laughed as Tasha smacked him on the chest.
    “Pay attention to the road.”
    A moment passed before she snickered. “There will be plenty of time for this.”
    Her finger hooked under the shoulder strap of her dress and seductively let it fall to her elbow. Dustin’s foot pressed harder, and the engine hummed louder.
    Dustin’s eyes drifted to the rear view mirror, never fully able to shake the feeling of being followed. The reflection was empty, save for buildings and the road that had already passed under their wheels.
    Tasha lowered her head to her palm. Her teeth began biting at the edge of her nails, these, not painted so brightly. Strands of her black hair blew in the breeze of the open window.
    Rays of late-afternoon sun gleamed off the orange paint of their ride-of-the-day. The car crested the hill, and for that brief instance, they owned it all. This was a break in the desperate lives they led, a moment of peace interrupting nothing but chaos.
    “You good?” Dustin questioned her silence in this, normally triumphant moment.
    Tasha solemnly nodded, but in her head she was undoubtedly envisioning the same scenarios Dustin was: an endless possibility of ways to go, all of them ending under the same façade of blue and red lights.
    Again he checked the rear view; again no one. Dustin let his eyes drift down the hill to the glowing green orb that hung suspended in its yellow case. In an instant the green light vanished, replaced above it by its yellow counterpart. This light was harder to see; each ray of the late afternoon sun cascaded down on it, masking its yellow glow. He knew what this light meant, every driver did; the innate response of most operators was to press the brakes, except, he hesitated. Dustin saw the light change to yellow; he saw it with his own eyes. Yet his foot never moved to the other pedal, no, in fact he pushed slightly harder on the one it was already on.
    “You’re not going to make it.” Tasha said.
    Her tone was smug, mocking even. He imagined the devilish smirk on her face, and in thinking of hers, he grew one of his own. Her feet were no longer on the dashboard, and the strap for her dress had relocated to its spot on her shoulder. The needle on the speedometer steadily climbed higher in its arc before peaking, just as the car had done.
    Tasha drew her finger from her mouth and placed them on the top of the window. Dustin looked at her and met her eyes. His foot maintained its pressure on the pedal as he felt the car’s descent level out at the bottom of the hill.
    Their eyes were locked on each other, a moment of true fearlessness. This was a rush unlike anything they had experienced thus far. As they passed under that red light, they could see everything in each other’s eyes. For that brief instance, they were one.
    In the blindness that their love created, the headlights from the left were invisible.
    Tasha had been right, the scene was illuminated with red and blue lights, but they never had the chance to see them. The lights reflected over the ground and its pools of crimson. Green pieces of paper littered the scene, each one coming from one of the canvas bags that had been ejected from the backseat; the canvas bags that were marked, First Financial.

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