Lyndall—thrown from a horse as a girl—and Deidre—who once wilted in a foxhole—were a pair.

Through a chance encounter, they fell in step during a grocery store robbery of durians and honeydew melons. Deidre, with the help of a toy gun and noxious chrome paint, menaced the cashier. To which the cashier—Lyndall—responded with the expert chucking of a honeydew, delivering a devastating melon-on-melon blow. When Deidre regained her senses, she wiped the juices from her eyes and collected herself from the lobster tank with a laugh.

And Lyndall said, “Ma’am, there’s no funny business here.”

Deidre, enamored with Lyndall’s blank expressions and low drawl, bought honeydews on Wednesdays and rolled them down the conveyor belt with Lyndall at its end. She peered at the cashier’s well-lined face, counted the divots in her forehead, and smiled.

With her card charged, Deidre sat on the asphalt by the cart return and waited for Lyndall to take her smoke break. Lyndall took her breaks at odd times—2:03 or 3:12—most Wednesdays, leaving Deidre to drum her fingers along the honeydew cradled to her stomach.

Lyndall smoked half a cigarette in silence, rinsed her hands with floral sanitizer, and directed her marble stare at Deidre. She was always shocked into silence by this approach, but by the fourth Wednesday, Lyndall grew tired of the empty air and prompted:

“Why melons?”

Deidre, shaking the shock from her jaw, answered, “It’s a sturdy fruit.”

Lyndall nodded thoughtfully and suggested, “Let’s have dinner.”

Deidre wore her nicest dress—a pre-war relic made of green nylon—and met Lyndall at the park with a picnic basket and her toy guy. Lyndall scorched burgers at a damp charcoal grill and spoke very little, though Deidre noted her preference for mustard, her ambidextrous tendencies, and predilection for pickles. Deidre offered durian, and Lyndall complained of its bitterness.

They split the honeydew as the sun settled into the lake and held communion; they were inseparable at the appearance of the first star, which Lyndall named “Venus.”

By Thursday, Deidre was sleeping on Lyndall’s porch away from the moths and mosquitos.

By Friday, Lyndall had quit her job.

By Saturday, they had commandeered a Model T Speedster from a neighbor Lyndall had quarreled with over the volume of her phonograph.

Lyndall couldn’t drive, preferring the company of a racehorse despite her wariness around them. “They have souls; they can be reasoned with,” she explained as Deidre started the antique vehicle and hit the gas.

Deidre was good with vehicles and decent with guns. “The war does that to you,” she told Lyndall, who had no such experience with lonely trenches and bullet holes. “I’m riddled with scars.”

“I have a plate in my head,” said Lyndall, as if to rival Deidre’s pockmarks in lieu of soothing. Regardless, Deidre found the fact a potent ointment.

The Speedster took them away from the town with its stagnant grocery store and crumbling park. With the destination unknown, Lyndall kicked up her feet and dozed in the open window, hair whipping about her softened face and twitch-less eyelids.

At a truck stop one hundred and twelve klicks away, Lyndall roused to the sound of calamity.

Deidre, in her nice green dress, was in the midst of a skirmish with a trucker in a red hat. She matched the man blow for blow, blocking his knuckles with her elbows and landing punches against the balloon belly protruding from his flannel.

Though the man appeared outmatched by her companion, Deidre’s pocked cheek bore a red splotch slowly shifting to purple. A hotness rose from Lyndall’s soles that soon engulfed her head.

Searching the glove compartment, she discovered a tire pressure gauge among a coterie of fast food napkins. She rose from the passenger seat, weighed the device in her hand, and sent it careening towards the assailant.

The gauge struck his eye, and Deidre performed a two-step hop to the Speedster, a voracious laugh emerging from bleeding lips.

Throwing the vehicle in reverse, the pair escaped the scene. A tittering harmony filled the dusty air as the sun fell onto the horizon, and a distant siren matched their tire squeals.

Lyndall took stock of Deidre’s adrenaline-drunk smile, of the strength of her arms, and of the delicateness of the crow’s feet surrounding her eyes. She estimated an age-gap of no more than six years between them, judging by the soft musk of Deidre’s perfume.

At the appearance of Venus, they retired to A Hole in the Wall—a dive bar strung with fairy lights and lit with intention. Like a beacon, it illuminated the encroaching darkness threatening to swallow the highway.

Greeted by a blue gazing ball, the pair entered the bar in giddy spirits. Arm-in-arm, Lyndall and Deidre made a home of a corner booth, ordering onion rings and tall boys to chow and sling about the table.

Lyndall mended Deidre’s sleeve with borrowed thread as the latter nursed a cold glass against her bruise.

“Those are skillful fingers,” Deidre noted, testing the puff with her palm and finding the stitch surgical.

“I patch my own blue jeans,” Lyndall explained, flexing her knee.

They found respite in a storage room atop an inflatable mattress, as provided by the barback who swore them to secrecy. Long after the bar closed, sunrise leaking through the woodpecker peephole, Lyndall and Deidre counted white sheep versus black and whispered girlhood stories until one of them—who’s to say—nestled into a soft, crepe-y neck to sleep.

Midday, the pair escaped when the barback came searching for limes. They loaded the Speedster with oranges and sobering peanuts and moved onto the next.

Sixteen klicks in, Deidre took to whistling. Seventeen klicks in, Lyndall sang along, improvising bawdy lyrics to throw Deidre off-rhythm. Twenty klicks in, they found a cliffside to peel fruit and contemplate where Venus might hide when the sun was too bright.

“Sun never scared me,” Lyndall said wisely, rubbing her leathery cheek. “My pa always told me to get my vitamin D from it.”

Considering this, Deidre inquired, “How did your pa die?”

Lyndall shook her head, expression betraying no hidden humor. “Lung cancer. Wasn’t the way he wanted.”

They tossed orange peels into the lake and drove on, the sky taking on the peel’s color as if the scraps had been discarded into the heavens. Venus appeared as the sun faded, and Deidre continued following yellow lines.

Lyndall plucked Deidre’s toy gun from the cupholder, where it rested inside an empty soda cup. Spinning it around her middle finger, Lyndall inquired, “Why’d you try to rob my store, anyways?”

The blurring streetlights cast a series of spotlights across Deidre’s furrowed brow. Her hair whipped around pursed lips.

Finally, she said, “I’ve not lived for much except violence and the occasional delight of nice fruit.”

“Durians aren’t sweet,” Lyndall reminded her.

“I know,” said Deidre, licking her lips.

Disruption of the cool night air and roaring engine humming above the pair’s whistling and tawdry songs came in the form of red and blue lights flashing to the beat of a heart attack. A siren tore through the mood, dampening the journey with fears of arrest.

“The trucker,” Lyndall suggested.

“He didn’t like my dress,” Deidre explained, wiggling her shoulder against the mended sleeve.

Lyndall clenched her jaw, turning to the police car with her teeth barred. She was doing her best impression of a mountain lion, hissing threats and explanations. “I’ll flatten your tires!” and “She did nothing wrong, you galumphin’ bastard!”

Lyndall and Deidre shared a glance in the rearview mirror, their reflections making contact before Lyndall could wrap her hand around Deidre’s knuckles. For a moment, Lyndall was driving the Speedster. For a moment, Deidre found the sweetness she coveted. For a moment, they were a pair hanging from the same sandy vine, ripe for the picking.

Lyndall’s smile wrinkled her face in new, odd ways; Deidre loved the sight.

The lights now a quarter a klick away, Lyndall held the toy gun high as Deidre whistled a jaunty tune half-remembered from the foxhole.

Lyndall—who once fired a foam dart at a red-faced cop—and Deidre—the getaway driver who couldn’t contain her laughter—went down swinging.

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