"I thought he was gonna be one of them rough and tumble biker dudes that I just adore. You know, the ones that rip your clothes off with their teeth, the whole time swiggin' from a beer bottle and smoking a cigarette. I love that type. But when he opened his mouth and spoke he was a greasy little biker wannabe who boasted about his penis size."

"But Gert, you didn't even find out if it was a little or a big penis."

"With guys like Butch you don't have to check. You can take it on faith that he's bullshittin' ya." Gert swept her hair out of her eyes again. "Rainey, this whole state is full of assholes trying to get by on less."

Rainey sipped her beer and gazed towards the bar. Her stare alternated steadily between Nash's very cool tattoo and his slim butt. He stood drinking shots and talking with another guy. Her mind raced through all the possible scenarios: They run away together, her and the tattoo, first to Vegas where they get married in a sleazy chapel of love, then off to some tropical island in the South Pacific where she would lie around naked with that butt; or maybe they hit the road on the back of a Harley, the wind blowing back their hair, bugs smashing on their helmet visors, freedom straining to free itself from their bodies; or he would come home late and drunk and scream at her before he hit her.

"Hey Rainey." Gert shoved Rainey's elbow off the table.

"Gert, don't."

"Snap out of it girl. Either go over, squeeze his buns and talk ta him, or go home and use that cucumber you bought."

"What?" Rainey was only half listening. "What cucumber?"

"I'm jokin'. It looks like you got it bad for that guy."

A couple weeks went by before Rainey saw the tattoo again. She was at the Radio Shack out on Route 169, outside of Overton when she saw him walk in.

"Hey," she said, walking up to him.

Nash looked up from the toggle switches he held and said, "Hey."

"What are you doing out this way?"

"I need a kill switch for the stereo on my bike. Do I know you?"

"We danced together at the Blue Bayou Bar a while ago."

"Oh yeah." He went on looking through the various electronic switches lining the wall. "You're the one with the bear tattoo."

"That's right." He remembered her tattoo. "My name's Rainey." She held out her suddenly clammy hand to him.

"Nash," he said taking her hand without looking up.

"Speaker wire," she mumbled.

"Excuse me? I thought you said your name was Rainey?"

"Speaker wire, that's why I'm here. I hadn't really noticed it before but my trailer home seems to be bigger than the apartment I had back East."

Nash looked up at her, noticing for the first time how tall she really was and said, "How far back East?"

"All the way. Boston." Whenever anyone looked at her in a way that registered surprise at her height Rainey automatically went into a slouch.

Nash started to hum as he bounced the switches in his hand.

"You from around here?" Rainey hoped her voice wasn't cracking from her flustered state of uneasiness. She felt her face and neck go red with embarrassment and excitement. She couldn't explain it, but this fine physical speciman of a man with his long black hair was giving her the jitters in a thrilling way.

"Born and bred here in Nevada." The deep voice pushed the words out with an elongation of each syllable. Nash never looked directly at her; his gaze alternated between the racks of audio supplies and the rush and bustle of the parking lot. "Never even been out East."

"You got a motorcycle?" She couldn't take her eyes off him.

"Two of 'em. This one here," jerking his thumb towards the front window, "is a Harley. The one I got back at my yurt is a BMW."

"Your what?"

"My yurt.

"What the hell's a yurt?"

"My house. You've never heard of a yurt? Siberians live in 'em. Not all Siberians, of course, but the more industrious ones that go out hunting for animal skins that make up the insulation. Mine isn't covered in skins though. It's more contemporary. I covered it with corrugated metal and wood shingles. You should see it. And right next door is my peyote sweat lodge."

"Uh huh." Rainey's attraction dipped perceptibly. "I suppose you hold drug addled animal sacrificial rituals in your sweat lodge."

"I think Indian tribes might have used them for that. I don't go in for that kind of thing. Blood makes me woozy and it can get pretty messy. The yurt and lodge just make good housing." He dropped the toggle switches he'd been bouncing in his hand and bent over to pick them up.

Rainey watched him closely, still being drawn to him, and when his muscles rippled along his back and pressed against his tight t-shirt she momentarily forgot about his odd housing. "You lift weights?" She decided to be master of the obvious.

"Sometimes. I haven't been able to lately. Between work and fixing up my house, there just don't seem like much time to pump."

"Oh yeah, the house." She remembered. "Well, I've got to get some speaker wire." She started for the back of the store.

"See ya 'round." Nash didn't even give her a glimpse when he turned and strutted his way toward the register.

A yurt, she thought. Christ. She bought the speaker wire and was out by her car in time to see Nash roar out of the parking lot on his bike, black hair blowin' in the wind. The nut doesn't even wear a helmet.

Two more weeks went by and Rainey occasionally thought about Nash and his physique, but she didn't run into him like she'd hoped. She daydreamed she'd find herself alone at the laundromat, Nash coming and taking her forcefully on one of the dryers. She thrilled at the prospect of being handled roughly, of the slight pain slowly turning into intense pleasure. She could feel the strength of his muscles as he lifted her onto the dryer, his hot breath as he leaned over her, his thrusting and the motion of the dryer beneath her. This daydream was always followd by the one where he's drunk and trashing her trailer. She had no reason to think he'd be like this, but she couldn't shake the image.

Gert thought she'd become obsessed with the guy. "Rainey honey, you gettin' your panties all bunched up over this guy and ya don't even know him."

"I know," Rainey said. "It's crazy, cause part of me doesn't want to know him. I'm sure he'll be like all the others: smooth and cool at first, then turn into an asshole."

"Nature of the beast Rainey honey."

"You think he's too pumped for me?"

"He's too pumped for himself. I mean, what do you care?"

"I feel so out of his league," Rainey said dejectedly.

"What league are we talkin' 'bout?"

"The buffed league. Look at me." Rainey raised her hands. "I got no muscle tone."

"Right," Gert said. "From what I can see, you got nothing to worry 'bout. So what if you ain't buffed."

To take her mind off Nash she went around to the casino's that had floor shows and started asking about dancing jobs. She didn't have any luck. She'd been away from dancing too long.

Back East she'd worked in the insurance game, but here in the cradle of gambling and tastelessness, she wanted to do something different, something that would make people notice her in a way other than being over six feet tall did. She wanted to astound. But she had no idea how to do that.

Rainey finally saw Nash again. He was pumping iron down by the pool at the Desert Grove recreation center. Nash stood with weights lifted above his head, pectoral muscles bulging, striated leg muscles showing beneath dark blue gym shorts. His whole body was drenched in sweat, his hair covered by a kerchief, and he grunted like a wild beast whenever he raised the weights above his head.

Rainey stood silently by the gate and carefully took notice of every crease and bulge on his body. Unexpectedly the day seemed hotter than the 86 degrees it was. Rainey started to sweat profusely.

Nash dropped the weights on the rubber mat he worked on. He wiped the sweat from his face with the back of his hand and took a long drink from a Gatorade bottle. The sun shone brightly and the sweat glistened on his body.

There appeared to be a routine to the workout. Nash would lift the weights over his head 25 times, jerk them 25 times, then do 25 pushups. The whole time Rainey crept closer without Nash noticing. As she neared him she was able to see just how built up he was. Without his shirt on his triceps were large and solid, below the shorts his quadriceps were those of a long distance runner, and his deltoids swelled whenever he pressed the weights to his chest.

Rainey looked down at her thin frame. Her stomach hung slightly over the edge of her new bikini. She had no muscle tone anywhere, couldn't press 10 pounds if she had wanted to and would never be able to do even 2 pushups with her underdeveloped arms. She was embarrassed by her thoughts. She'd never before questioned the shape she was in; had always taken it for granted she had a good figure. Here she was scrutinizing muscle tone and flab, finding herself so concerned with a small paunch that it made her sick to her stomach. She quickly slipped away hoping Nash wouldn't see her. She couldn't approach Nash looking the way she did. Rainey hurried back to her trailer, changed into her baggiest clothes, got in the car and drove out of Desert Grove as fast as the speed bumps would allow.

She didn't know where she was heading. Didn't know why she should be fleeing. Embarrassment swept over her. She couldn't stop thinking that she'd gone as slack as she imagined. Her old boyfriends never said anything to her about it. But now, now she couldn't even take a glimpse at herself after she'd seen what a fine, well-developed specimen Nash was.

Rainey drove around the Vegas strip until it got dark, and finally pulled into the Flamingo's parking lot. The place was alive with out-of-towners and down-and-outers all waiting for the one big break of their lives. She dug into her purse at the cashier's window and got two quarter rolls for a twenty dollar bill. The nearest slot machine welcomed her cheerfully as she started pumping money into it.

Hours passed before Rainey took a break from pulling handles. She estimated she was about two hundred dollars ahead, but she'd made no progress with her own life. She tried not to think about her freaky behavior at the pool. When her reaction to Nash passed through her thoughts the knot in her stomach returned. He was a man with a nice body; well developed and taken care of. The complete opposite of what Rainey'd spent the past twelve years doing.

The slot machine had continued to give more than it received, then all of a sudden, nothing. Rainey gathered her buckets of quarters and headed for the cashiers window to cash in.

Rainey drove slowly back to her mobile home trying to come up with a solution to her dilemma. The most obvious would be to join a body building group and get her pecs in order. But it would be easier to just ignore Nash. Or leave Las Vegas all together and never return; go to some small town in the wilds of Montana and live out her days as a scrawny, weak mountain woman. The locals would think of her as that crazy lady of the hills. Or she could return East.

Rainey's frightened reaction to Nash surprised her because it was just a body. She liked normal problems, stuff like breaking a nail or having a boyfriend cheat on her. But this body was making her run away and lose herself in mindless endevours.

Rainey's attraction, she admitted, stemmed from loneliness. She also noticed within herself a superficial desire to possess an ideal specimen. She could key in on his body, lavish it with praise and adoration and forget herself.

As she pulled into her driveway she noticed a figure sitting on her front steps. From her car she couldn't make out the person in the dark but she could tell it was a man.

The figure stood and approached her car. She saw that it was Nash and she froze with her hands practically fusing to the steering wheel.

"I saw you earlier today and the way you rushed away from the pool made me concerned." He crouched down alongside the car and rested his elbows on the window ledge.

Rainey sat silently staring at him.

"Are you all right? You look white as a ghost."

"Let me out of my car," she managed to squeak out. Nash stood and helped Rainey open the car door. "I can do it." She slammed the door behind her and marched straight for her front porch. "You've been here all that time, waiting?"

"Yeah." Nash trailed behind her. "Are you sure you're all right?"

Rainey stopped. The thought that he'd been waiting for hours just to see how she was made her feel both touched by his concern and worried that he had nothing better to do with his life. She wheeled around to face him. "What do you want?" she shouted.

"I told you, I was concerned. I thought something had scared you."

"Something has. You." She turned and walked away. When she reached her porch she opened the door to her trailer and went inside. She looked back out the door and saw Nash had followed her and stood on the porch. He had a confused look to his face, an expression that begged her for an explanation. But Rainey could only stare at him. Eventually he walked off the porch, down the lawn to the sidewalk and headed towards the pool area.