I noticed her as I pulled into the parking lot of the liquor store.
Boy, that sounds seedy. Let me try again…
I noticed her as I pulled my truck into the parking lot. She was attractive, slender with long dark hair. It was a bit of a wet day, so she stood under an awning at a secondary entrance to the building. With a suitcase in front of her, she appeared to be waiting on someone.
I guessed right on that one. She was waiting on me. Or someone like me.
As I exited the store with a box full of wine in my hands, she was standing by my truck.
“Can I get a ride to the Marathon (gas) station?” she asked.
The sum of my knowledge of this North Georgia town I was in is how to get to this bottle shop, a frequent stop for me, but it’s a small town, so finding her gas station shouldn’t be a problem.
“Sure, hop in.”
Before moving a muscle, she had another request.
“Would you mind buying me a small bottle of Fireball?”
Fireball is a cinnamon-spiced whiskey favored by drunk women in their 20s who have yet to learn to shoot tequila. This may or may not be my liquor cabinet.
That wasn’t happening. If you’re out bumming a ride from a stranger, there’s a part of me that wonders if buying you alcohol might be simply fueling your problems. Request denied. I tossed her suitcase in the back of the truck and off we went.
This was a little unlike me. People wandering up to me asking for something usually get nothing.
Don’t get me wrong. If I knew you needed help, you’d get my shirt and shoes in a snowstorm. The problem, of course, is that you don’t know. In my hometown, we see the same people on the same corners with the same cardboard sign they’ve had for years. Begging is their hustle.
So I wondered to myself if I wasn’t helping this person out because she was an attractive female. That was likely the case.
Call it the Pretty Woman syndrome. You know, she’s a precious fallen angel who simply needs a white knight to come along and ‘rescue’ her.
So maybe this day was my day to be her white knight. At any moment, the clouds would roll away, the sun would shine, and her world would be transformed. She’d be filled with renewed hope, joyful of a new day dawning and thanking me profusely for leading her out of her personal darkness.
Yeah, right.
In addition to being nice looking, she was nice, thanking me for the ride, making a little small talk.
She asked if she could use my phone, saying hers was broken. I saw no problem there.
As she tried calling a couple of numbers, she asked if I had been at the store to buy beer.
Wine, I said.
“Can we drink some?”
For this wine, we needed a corkscrew. I told her I didn’t have one.
That was just a flat-out lie. When it comes to needing a corkscrew, call me Scout. Boy Scout. Always prepared. I’d be more likely to not have a spare tire.
But her requests were noticeably starting to stack up.
As we reached her destination and I was unloading her suitcase, she had another.
“Do you have a twenty you could let me have?”
I laughed, and I’m sure she didn’t know why, but it was because I had planned to offer her money anyway.
It’s really rare that I ever have any folding money on me, but on this day I knew I had a little in my wallet, and she seemed to be someone that could use a hand. Her asking for it simply beat me to the punch.
Besides, by this point she had asked for a ride, a bottle of Fireball, the use of my phone, a drink of my wine and now, money. I figured there was nothing left she could ask for.
Wrong.
With a newly-acquired twenty in her hand, she had one more request: “Wanna take me back to the liquor store?”
White Knight didn’t answer that one. He climbed back onto his trusty steed and drove away.
Next time I see Pretty Woman coming on my TV, I’m gonna be tempted to go all Elvis on it: pull out my six-shooter and blow that sucker up.
Or… perhaps I just sell the TV in a yard sale. Maybe I can get my $20 back.