Jules Hinton's Strange Trip: Chapter 4 by JCH and Kas  

         Jules sat on the bed, looking around the room.  Something was different.  A feeling.  Again.  Or maybe he was crazy.  Hadn’t the TV been an RCA before?  Now it was a Zenith.  Maybe he was getting different motel rooms from the past few months mixed up.  He was in the right room--#42, the answer to all life’s questions, the number of Mulder’s apartment.  He cut the TV on with the remote that was bolted down to the table beside the bed.  Another documentary on ants...
         Nikki was in the bathroom.  He could hear the shower water running behind the sound of the TV.  Just like last night.  The dream.  He thought back to it.  She had been about to take a shower.  Or had just taken one.  No, that wasn’t it.  The water was running, but she was still partially dressed.  She was about to get into the shower.  He had been lying in bed.  Had they... made love?
         The bathroom door opened and Nikki was standing there.  She was wearing a white bra and panties.  Cotton.  Very sexy.  “Jules,”  She was about to ask him something.  Was this happening?  Was it a dream?  A hallucination?  Or a memory?  She noticed something was wrong.
         “What’s happening to me?” he asked.
         “Why don’t you lie down for a while?  You must still not be feeling well.  I have more aspirin, if you’d like to take them.”
         “No.  It’s not my head.  It’s...”  He looked at her hard.  The aspirin.  He took the pills she had given him at the Horny Toad right before he collapsed on stage.  That had to be it.  She had drugged him.  But that was ludicrous.  Why would she do something like that?  And then an invisible dagger--that’s what it felt like--stabbed him in the back of his head.  The pain quickly moved to the front.  Or was it the other way around?  Had it hit him in front of his head and then moved to the back?  But what did it matter?  The pain was immense, unlike anything he had felt before.  He fell on the bed with his head in his hands and shut his eyes as tight as he could.
         He was alone in a strange room when he opened his eyes.  But how could that be?  He hadn’t been asleep.  And he wasn’t asleep now.  At least, Jules didn’t think he was.  He felt lucid.  He was in the motel room with a half naked Nikki when he closed his eyes just a moment ago.  But where was he now?  It looked to be another motel room, a cheaper one than the one had just been in...  Just been in?  He hadn’t left.  But how did he get here?  And where was here?
         “Jules...”
         He felt Nikki move onto the bed beside him and opened his eyes.  The pain had left him as quickly as it had taken him.  She began stroking his hair just like she had done before they had taken him to the doctor’s office.  Or had he gone to the emergency room?
         “Is there anything I can do?” she asked.
         “Hold me,” he said.
         Which is what she did.

         A footstep brought him awake.  He lay motionless, concentrating both on controlling his breathing so that he would still appear to be in a deep sleep, and listening to the sound.  He had been here before.  In the desert.  Asleep under the stars.  The footsteps paused.  And then began circling his bike again.  The smell.  An unwashed body.  Man, not animal.  And then a cough, somewhat muffled.
         He opened his eyes slowly.  At first Jules could not see anyone.  And then the reflection in the chrome of his bike.  The man was standing about fifteen feet away, admiring Jules’ motorcycle.  He had a leather jacket and faded jeans on.  And boots.  His hair was pulled back into a ponytail, slightly longer and a little darker than his own.
         Jules stood up as quietly as he could, reaching for the branch that lay nearby.  He walked toward the stranger, prepared to defend himself and his bike.  But he had the distinct feeling that the man knew Jules was awake and that he was approaching him.  He laughed calmly and Jules felt the hair raise on the back of his neck.  He recognized that laugh, recognized it too well.  But it couldn’t be.  The man began turning around...
         “Who the fuck are you?” Jules asked.
         “You know who I am.  I’m you, Jules Verne Hinton.”

         He jerked awake in his motel room.
         “Jules, what’s wrong?  Was it a dream?”  Nikki jerked awake at the same time.  She turned on the bedside lamp and put her arms around him.
         Jules threw the cover off of him and staggered to the bathroom.  He was throwing water on his face when Nikki followed him in a minute or two later.  She had the sheet from the bed wrapped around her like a towel.
         “Do you want to talk about it?”
         That was all he wanted to do.  Tell her about all that had been happening this past week.  But she’d surely think he was out of his mind.  And he would probably agree with her.  “Just a dream, just like you said,” he replied.  “I think I’ll go take a bath.”
         He began running a tub of hot water.  A hot bath always made him feel good, no matter what the situation.  That, and looking at the stars.  It was still dark outside.  Probably around five o’clock.  He peeked out the bathroom window; the night had turned overcast.  He couldn’t even see the moon.
         “Do you want any company?” she asked.  She didn’t wait for an answer as she closed the door behind her to keep the heat in.  She turned toward him and let the sheet fall slowly from around her.  Still in her underwear.  She was enjoying the expression on his face, a mixture of embarrassment and amusement.  And desire.  She smiled, trying to break the mood.
         He was trying not to be too obvious looking at her.  But why?  She was right here with him.  He stood with a frown forming on his face.  She was really enjoying this.
         “Go ahead, don’t mind me.  I just didn’t want you to pass out in the tub or anything,” Nikki said, feigning seriousness.  She hopped up on the bathroom counter and folded her long legs indian-style.  He folded his arms across his chest and stared back.
         “Oh,” she laughed, “I get it!  I’m sorry.  Yeah, you go right ahead.  I’ll turn my head while you get in.”  She turned her head to the door, closing her eyes so tight it was almost comical.  Jules shrugged.  Great.  And quickly undressed.  He grabbed a towel and hung it on the edge of the tub before lowering himself into the water.
         “Okay, wise-ass,” he said, ”you can turn around now.”
         Nikki turned her head back to face him, her eyes squeezed shut.
         “This isn’t some kind of sick trick is it?  You’re not going to flash me or anything when I open my...?”  She opened one eye slowly.
         “Hey, I’m not the one walking around a motel room in front of some strange guy she just met wearing only her underwear,” he shot back.  He thought that ironic, since he was the one that was naked at the moment.
         She leaned back against the mirror on the wall, biting a lip while she adjusted a bra strap.  Jules winced at the sight, noticing his heart rate increase.  He tried to focus his attention elsewhere and not on the fact that he was sitting naked in a motel bathroom with a beautiful, and apparently uninhibited, girl.  Half-naked and by far the most interesting thing he’d run across on this roadtrip.  His brother would never believe this.
         He lowered himself into the warm water to wet his hair.  The tub was small.  That was one thing that Jules had noticed about motels room across the country.  Everything was small.  Small beds.  Small towels.  Small bars of soap.  And small bath tubs.
         “Nikki, can I ask you a strange question?”
         “Sure, Jules.  You can ask me anything.”
         “I’m not sure how to put this.  But did we...  I mean, you and I... you know, did we...  Well, my memory’s not always that good.  I mean, actually, it is.  Usually.  But I was just wondering if anything happened between us before we went to sleep.”
         “What?  You don’t remember?  How could you forget a night of passion like the one we just had!?  They were beating on the walls and knocking at our door threatening to call the cops if we didn’t keep it down, especially when you were running around the room making those ape noises.  And that was before you were hanging from the ceiling fan...” Jules had sat up abruptly, but caught the amused tone in her voice a split second later.  She started to giggle, watching the expression change on his face.
         “I was serious,” he said quietly.  “You know, I had those drinks and the headache.  Tell me I didn’t... you know, uh, do anything that I wouldn’t have done if I had been sober?  I mean, uh...”  He ended awkwardly, shooting her a side-long glance.  “You know what I mean.”
         She smiled and a touch of red appeared on her cheeks.  “You fell asleep in my arms.  I watched you for a little while, then went to sleep myself.”
         “Nothing happened.”  He sounded more disappointed than he meant to.
         “Well, you never know what may happen.”  He looked back at her.  “I mean, seeing you here in that warm tub of water and everything.”  Again there was that strange expression on her face.  Calculating.  Weighing something in her head.  And that teasing smile.
          “I’m starting to figure this out,” he said mysteriously.
         She raised an eyebrow as she stretched her back.  “Hmm.  What exactly are you figuring out, Mr. Hinton?”
         “I think that you’re planning to make me into some kind of loony character in some sort of story that you’re cooking up in that pretty head of yours.  Research, in other words.  I was right when I saw you at the diner, wasn’t I?  A student?  A writer?  A gypsy?  A traveler from some far-off galaxy?”
         “Truth?” Nikki said.  She looked serious.
         “That would be nice.  You have to admit this is just a little weird, right?  I just met you the other day.  You have no idea who I am.  And I don’t have a clue about you.”  Though he had to admit that he felt comfortable around her.  Obviously.  He wasn’t one to bathe in front of just anyone.
         She laughed.  “It’s not that complicated.  I... I got bored.  With where I was and what I was doing.  The direction my life had taken...”
         It sounded to Jules as though she’d told this before--it had the sound of having been repeated many times.  He knew the tone.  He’d used it himself countless times.  He’d even used it on her, and now here she was doing the same.  Except his programmed response had been:  ‘Doing the roadtrip thing... trying to figure out the future... taking some time off to think about things...’  And, of course, the old stand-by, ‘trying to find myself,’ told to countless waitresses, and gas station and quickie-mart attendants.  He had often wondered how he could ‘find’ himself when he was always right there.  Maybe he should be trying to lose himself.  Or was that what he was doing?  Jules brought his mind back to the present.
         “...So I’ve been traveling around, doing different things.  And hitching rides.”
         Jules gave her another serious look.
         “Yeah, I know it.  You don't have to say it,” Nikki said, frowning.  “I get it all of the time.  The world is full of all kinds of dangerous, sick people out there waiting at every truck stop and cheap motel for a chance to make a girl like me disappear.  Right?  Cults, militia men... Christians.  I get tired of that too.  Besides, I know how protect myself.  And I’m usually a pretty good judge of character.”
         There was that smile again.
         “So,” Jules began.  “That was it?  Just a coincidence that you and I met?  Two people soul-searching?  Criss-crossing the country?”  Jules unwrapped one of the small bars of perfumed soap, pretending to take a bite before starting to wash his arms and chest.
         Nikki looked at him from where she sat leaning against the bathroom mirror.  The gears were turning in her pretty brown eyes again.  He tried not to let his gaze drift to the rest of her.  She had to know what she was doing to him.  She had been looking directly at his face, he had noticed.  He thought this said a lot about her, though he wasn't exactly sure what it was.
         “Well, sometimes I think that maybe there’s something out there like what they say about attraction.  Not that ‘opposites’ attract, or anything like that,” she said, wrapping her arms around her knees.  “But sometimes I think that maybe ‘weirdness’ attracts ‘weirdness.”  And yes,” she smiled, just as he was opening his mouth to comment, “I do think that you’re weird, Jules Verne.  Hah!  But, you know what I mean, right?  So am I.  Strange might attract strange, right?”  She sounded as though she believed it, or that she wanted to believe it.  It certainly sounded interesting.  If they lived in a world where the stars and planets really could affect their lives, or at least provide them with their own personalized lucky numbers--available on more than a thousand psychic phone lines daily.  Well, even Dionne Warwick and Phillip Michael Thomas had to make a living somehow, didn’t they?  But, at this moment, he was willing to believe anything was possible.
         “So, you just move around?   Stick out your thumb and go?”
         “Pretty much,” she shrugged.  “You’d be surprised how easy it is for me to get a ride.”
         He smiled.  “No, I wouldn’t.  But why didn’t you tell me that when we met at that diner?”
         “How did I know that you weren’t some kind sick twisted guy that might want to make me disappear?  Another Ted Bundy or somebody?  You look like the type, you know.”  She really did have a pretty smile.  Dripping with sarcasm.  “Actually, I kicked myself the rest of the day for not asking you for a ride.”
         And I kicked myself for not thinking about offering you one, he thought.  “What makes you think I would have offered you one?  Some sick twisted girl I had just met who told me she’d have to kill me if she told me her name.”
         Nikki adjusted her bra-strap again.
         “Mind if I take this thing off?”  That teasing grin again.
         “I thought you came in here to make sure that I didn’t pass out,” Jules laughed.
         “Am I making it hard on you?”
         “That’s it!  Out!  Out!”  He started to get up to chase her out of the door, but thought again.  “Am I making it hard on you?” he said, mocking the fake girlie voice she had used.  She scrambled out, laughing all the way.

          She was lying beside him sleeping peacefully.  Jules thought that must be the surest sign of trust--to sleep with someone.  Actual sleep.  Nothing else.  He was wide awake.  It wasn’t that he didn’t trust her.  He had dozed intermittently after the bath, after the dream.  But there was something about her that he could not put a finger on.  Something didn’t add up.  How she just happened to be at that diner.  Waiting on him.  Well, that’s what it seemed like in retrospect.  And then there was how she just happened to show up last night at the Horny Toad.
         Was there really such a thing as Destiny?  Or Fate or Chance?  Or meanings in the patterns of fluffy white clouds in the sky?
         He looked at her again.  The sun was just starting to shine through the curtain onto her bare back.  The whiteness of her underwear glowed brightly against her tanned skin.  When was the last time that he had just slept with a girl?  From the way she’d been teasing him, Jules wasn’t sure that was all she had wanted to happen.  Why didn’t he let it happen?  Or even initiate it?  Something about her.  Not that he didn’t want to sleep with her.  He found her irresistible.  But something told him there was more to this girl than met the eye.  Something different.  Then again, his brother had always told him he over-analyzed things.  Maybe that was what he was doing here.
         Maybe it wasn’t her at all.  Maybe he was really avoiding what he should have been thinking about in the first place.  Too many unexplained occurrences.  Jules liked to live his life always knowing what to expect to a certain degree.  Like the night he slept under the stars in the desert, the night he had just dreamed about.  He had taken in every detail before he went to sleep just in case something happened without really thinking about it.  And when something had happened, he had known that the branch had been within his reach.
         That night still bothered him.  What had been out there with him?  The footprints didn't make sense.  No one could have covered their tracks as well as that man had.  And then a few nights later in the inn, the sounds of boots coming down the hall.  Boots out in the desert.  Boots at the inn.  A coincidence?  Nikki had been wearing boots in the diner parking lot, a wild thought reminded him.  But her feet were quite a bit smaller than the prints in the sand.
         But those two events paled in comparison to last night.  He had collapsed right on stage!  During a song.  And the hallucinations.  Not to mention the differences in his memory of the hotel room, different designs of the sheets, different brands of television sets, a phone or no phone.  Maybe it was all his imagination.  Yeah, too much sun.  Too much time away from Reality.  Or maybe he was just as crazy as his mom said his old man had been.  Hubert Hector Hinton, or Hugh, as his one good friend, an old man named Jonesy, called him, had spent much of his time in a mental hospital before killing himself in the early 70’s, not long after Jules was born.  You couldn’t blame the old man.  He just wasn’t the same after they found the tumor.  A sickening thought gripped his stomach for a second.  He had kept it away since the other day.  It had been why he had not told the doctor about the headaches the previous night.  He didn’t want to think that maybe some conditions were inherited.  It probably was just too much sun.  He looked back over at Nikki, watching her breath quietly in her sleep.
         The bike would have to be repacked.  She’d never fit on the seat behind him with his bundle of clothes and things.  It appeared that everything that Nikki owned was stuffed into that backpack of hers.  The only problem was the one helmet.  Jules had gone without one in the past for short hops, but he knew that even a trip around town could be deadly.  Maybe they could check one of the local retail superstores for a helmet.
         ‘I’m already thinking about the two of us traveling together,’ he thought with some surprise.  ‘I don’t even know if that’s what she wants.’  He looked down again at where she lay next to him on the bed, still half-wrapped in the sheet she had worn into the bathroom.  Jules carefully eased his legs off of the bed and walked over to the curtains.  Maybe an hour after dawn.  He glanced around the room before remembering there was no phone book here.  Maybe the maids had brought one, like they had secretly put the phone in the morning before while he slept.  A quick search told him there was none to be found.  He grabbed his wallet and slipped it into the pocket of the jeans he had worn that night.  Shoes tucked under an arm, Jules quietly slipped out of the door, locking it behind him.
         “Goddamn!  Watch where you fuckin’ goin’!” an overweight man in a stained Texas Longhorns t-shirt grunted, half-stumbling by.  He had a white plastic trashbag full of empty beer cans in one hand.  Jules stared at him angrily.  The man looked at him with slightly glazed eyes.  “What the fuck you lookin’ at?”
         Jules just shook his head and started to walk past the man.  The fat man muttered under his breath.  “Better fuckin’ move, goddamnit...”  He reeked of alcohol and day-old sweat.  Jules had been about to stop on the stairs and put his shoes on.  Instead he took the steps quickly, putting as much distance between himself and the fat man.  He stopped at the bottom to slip his shoes on and then headed for the phone booth near the edge of the road and the parking lot.  It had a decent telephone book.  Inside someone had left a big wad of bubble gum sticking the pages together.  Cigarette butts were all over the ground.  Cigarette butts and boot prints.  Jules stared at the ground for a minute before shaking it off.  This is Texas, he reminded himself.  Everybody wears boots in Texas.
         Retail stores.  There was a Walk-A-Mart Supercenter not too many miles up the road.  They would probably have a decent helmet.  He could let Nikki use his until they got there.  And maybe they would have something he could use for saddlebags or a larger bag to put the half-dozen smaller packs in that he carried.
         The fat man was standing further down the balcony staring hatefully back at him when Jules climbed the stairs again.  There was another man with him wearing a baseball cap with the logo of some kind of construction company on its front.  They had beer cans in their hand.  He met their gaze as he turned his key in the door.  The TV was on.  Nikki had just hung up the phone with an irritated look on her face.
         “What’s wrong?  Too early for room service?” he grinned.
         “Yeah, right.  I’ve been trying to call home for the last ten minutes.  I keep getting a busy signal.”  She rubbed the sleep from her eyes.  “I thought you’d gone out to get us some breakfast.”
         “Well, I know where we can get some beer for breakfast.”  Jules walked to the window and peered out through the crack in the curtain.  He couldn’t see the men standing outside a dozen doors down at this angle.
         “What?” she said in half-yawn.
         “Fucking rednecks.  Do you want me to invite them in?  I’m sure they’d  love what you’re wearing almost as much as I do.”  A pillow hit him in the back of the head.   “But really, I went out to check out where there might be a store around here that I could pick up an extra helmet.  That is, unless you’re going to go your own way.”
         Nikki looked back at him from where she was sitting on the bed.  “Maybe we could talk about that after we get some food in us.”
         “Okay,” Jules nodded.  Not quite the answer that he had wanted to hear, but it was a start.  She got up and walked into the bathroom, closing the door behind her.  Jules sat down on the bed and turned on the TV, flipping randomly through the channels.  Weather reports.  A clear day ahead, but hot.  Maybe they needed to head north and get out of the heat.  They.  If she was coming with him.  He wondered where her family lived, how far away it was.  Virginia was certainly long enough for him, though he had no immediate plans to return there.
         Nikki came out of the bathroom with a towel tucked neatly around her.  She flung a handful of white cotton straps and things into the top of her bag on the floor near the bathroom.
          Jules opened his eyes wide, dropping his jaw open comically.  She smiled.
 “What!?  It’s my turn to take a long bath.  But I was thinking--why don’t you run on out to that store or wherever and get that helmet?”  She picked her jeans up from the floor and pulled a few crumpled bills out of a front pocket.
        “Here’s some money.”
         That was a good sign, suggesting he get the helmet.  And giving him to pay for it on top of that!  “Don’t you want to come along?” Jules asked, taking the money and smoothing it out.  “I can wait for you, and then we can go get some breakfast or something.”  He put the bills in his wallet.
         Nikki frowned.  “I want to try to call home again and at least let them know where I am and who I’m with.  If we’re going to be taking the bike, I think I should let them know, just in case something happens.”
         “Hey,” Jules said, “I’ve never been in a wreck on a motorcycle."
         "Really?"  She said it like she didn't believe him.
         "Well, there was that one time.  But it really wasn’t my fault.  I mean, I wasn’t charged with anything.”
         “Like I said, let me take my bath and make some phone calls and then, when you get back from the store, we’ll go eat somewhere.  OK?”
         “Sounds good to me.  There’s that Griddle House up the highway.”  Nikki twisted her mouth, moaning and held her hand to the towel over her stomach.  Jules snickered while grabbing his helmet and jacket and then headed for the door.  “Say no more.  Just be careful who you open the door to.  These guys down the hall are probably still drinking.”
         Nikki yawned, covering her mouth with her hand and nodded, closing the door behind him as he went out.  He heard her slip the chain lock on and then headed for the stairs.  The fat man and his friend had gone back into their room.

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