Prologue

Dance for me, honey

Rex’s Bar, 53rd and Market Street, Philadelphia, PA, August, 1958
“Dance for me, honey, dance.”
  Barbara looked first at the smelly old man with rheumy eyes, and then at the outstretched hand of her mother. It was as it had always been, and everyone knew the rules. The man paid over the twenty-dollar bill with the leer of someone who knew its purchasing power. It would buy sexual favors from her mother, and as many drinks as it took to dull her pain. In the final analysis, alcohol was what Barbara’s mom was all about. It was her raison d’etre. Barbara would get her usual bonus: as many Shirley Temples as she could drink, as well as tokens for the jukebox.
  She climbed up on the table, a pretty ten-year-old with auburn ringlets and wearing a red polka dot dress. Every pedophile’s wet dream.
 “Oh, how sweet she is,” said the old man, his tobacco-stained teeth trying just a tad too hard to hide behind a leer that could freeze a furnace.
 Barbara tapped her dainty red shoes in time to the squeaky voices of the Chipmunks, trying to keep her mind firmly focused on the thought of another ginger ale with cherry juice and maraschino cherries.
 “You sure are a perty little girl,” the tramp shouted above the music. The accent was halfway between Hillbilly and the Hudson.
 The old man frightened Barbara. He wore a tattered old gray overcoat with a stringy hemline and looked as though he hadn’t shaved in days. He didn’t look the sort of man who had a dime to his name, yet the twenty-dollar bill was already being split to buy the drinks that gave her mother the Dutch courage to do what she did. What Barbara didn’t yet know was that this time the money was going to buy much more............


CHAPTER ONE

Humpty Dumpty

Interstate 35, Laredo, TX, August 1996
“Damn you, Mark. Damn you.” The words forced apart my parched lips in a thin rasp. What kind of man dumps his wife in the middle of a Texas Interstate, and in heat that would fry an egg in a hen’s womb?
  All he had said was, “it’s over,” and then there I was, alone with a half pack of cigarettes, a lighter and no sign of shade. It was well over one hundred and twelve degrees. All I could do was begin walking. Interstate 35 Northbound in Laredo may have been a busy route, but at that moment it seemed like the loneliest on earth. I waved franticly at every vehicle that drove my way. Some drivers waved back, some gave me the finger. A few truckers honked their air horns and blew kisses. My face was encrusted with dirt and grime from the road, and this was obviously a turn-on for some of them, although not enough to make them stop.
  Each time a big rig passed by, more dust was thrown up. I felt like the side of a building that was being sand blasted. Finally, a man stopped. He was driving a panel truck. He pulled to the shoulder, and I made a weak attempt at running up to his vehicle. I got to the passenger side window. I was crying and sweating. You couldn’t tell where the tears started and the sweat left off. I begged him for help. “Please mister, I need help. My husband threw me out of the truck and left me for dead.”
  The man was heavy, unkempt, and as bald as a bowling ball. “Get in girlie, I can take you to the next exit, but I want a blow job for my effort.”
  “Forget it, you creep,” I said with venom. “I would rather die out here.” I punched the outside of his passenger door in frustration. Bowling ball sped away, throwing up even more dirt. My face stung from the barrage of dry sand. Driven by the will to survive and the anger within, I walked what seemed like miles, until my legs suddenly buckled. The sun seemed to circle me like a giant vulture waiting for the end game. A kaleidoscope of colors flashed through my mind: the parched yellow of the Texas panhandle, the shimmering blue of the summer sky, and the green, green fields of my native Philly. Within seconds, I had slipped into the dark arms of oblivion.
When I came to, I could feel the strong hands of two men lifting my hundred and twenty one-pound frame to my feet. “Where am I? Who are you? What are you doing?”
  My skin was hot, my lips were burnt, and my head pounded as though someone was using a balpene hammer on it. My eyes felt like they were ready to explode, and my body felt like it had been dragged by a tow-truck. Apart from that, I was okay.
  One of the men said, “We are with D.O.T., the Department of Transportation.” His face was silhouetted against the sun, and anyway, it was hard for me to focus. “We will get you to help,” he said. “Here, drink this slowly.” He put the plastic bottle of water to my lips. I sipped the nectar weakly, and felt the cool liquid trickle down my chin and neck into my cleavage. It was almost sensuous. It didn’t matter that the trickle had turned into a meandering rivulet of grime.
  “What happened to you?” I heard another male voice ask in a deeper tone. I didn’t answer him. I was trying to, but the words wouldn’t come. I ran my fingers through my hair. It felt coarse, stringy, and full of knots and tangles. I must have looked like a monster out of a B movie. They put me in their car, and I found myself sharing the back seat with some computer equipment. He must have seen me looking at it because he explained something about fixing computers for the D.O.T.
  “My husband threw me out of the truck,” I blurted finally. I could feel the tears welling. I couldn’t believe he had done it. I didn’t want to believe it. We had been married for eight years, and although we had the usual ups and downs, I never believed he could do something like this. I felt like Humpty Dumpty. Nothing was going to put me back together again.