“This is she.”
“Joanna?” I asked into the receiver, “This is Kerry.”
I was calling about our history and political science club’s trip to a history convention in New Orleans. Joanna was the only other female going and could leave earlier in the day than the other members of the club. We decided to ride together. This meant that my dad didn’t have to accompany me. My mom asked who this Joanna was.
“I’d say she’s in her early twenties…”
“Yeah,” replied the voice on the other end of the line, early twenties. That’s about right.
“I think she’s a senior.”
“No! I’m a junior!”
“Oh, sorry, she’s a junior,” I corrected myself and then trying to assure my mother, “She’s nice.”
“You don’t know that,” the junior in her early twenties on the other end of the phone pointed out.
“Uh, well, I was assuming…” the rest of what I said was drowned out by laughter coming from the receiver. We agreed to get in touch with each other later in the week once we had a few more details.
I called her again nearer to our time of departure. “Do you have any idea what going on?
“No,” she admitted.
“Well, you’re in luck.”
I told her all the details I had accumulated from Jeff, the president of the club, and read off some of the lecture titles that included the word politics I’d written down, knowing my future companion was a political science major. Then I asked her a question that was weighing heavily on my mind, “You don’t smoke, do you?”
“No, no!” she exclaimed
“Oh, good,” I sighed in relief, because otherwise I was going to have to get nasty with you. I have a lead foot, just so you’d know.
“That’s fine,” she answered. “I drive way too fast myself.”
“Good, so you won’t mind. And uh, you aren’t a sot, are you?”
There was a pause on the other end. “Uh, no.”
“Cause I don’t want to be with someone who’s bowing at the porcelain alter at three o’clock in the morning.”
“Oh, no!” Joanna answered, “You don’t have to worry about that.”
“Good, ’cause I can think of better things to be doing at three o’clock in the morning. Like, sleep.”
She asked several questions about the details of our trip, and then we agreed on a meeting time and place. “I’ve got a chemistry test that’s over at ten. Let’s meet in the snack shop then.” She agreed.
I spent all day Thursday running around town, getting eye exams and a new pair of glasses after my reserve pair broke. Which left me getting out of bed after four hours of sleep so I could study for my chemistry exam. It didn’t help. Once that disaster was over, I exited Weaver Hall near my parked car and almost ran into Dr. Steedly, who greeted me saying, “Hi, Kerry.”
I returned his greeting and saw Joanna hurrying towards me with a big blue duffel over her shoulder. Reaching me, she turned around and started walking the other way, saying, “Let’s go.”
“Oh, okay.”
She followed me to my car. “It’s a Cavalier,” I apologized, unlocking the passenger side door. Joanna removed her leather jacket and climbed inside. “Just toss it in the back,” I instructed her. “I don’t think this car can have anything else go out on it,” I said as I drove out of the parking lot. “I’ve replaced just about everything. This car has been babied this week. Let’s see, I cleaned out all the trash, washed it, vacuumed the funny spot on the carpet where the air conditioning drips. Got the tires rotated. So she should get us there or back,” I patted the vinyl dashboard. “But you never can tell what unexpected surprises she’ll throw at you.”
“Makes life interesting,” my passenger smiled from where she was slumped in the seat next to me, “I’ll deal with it when it happens.”
She turned around, got a faded denim hat out of her bag, and stuck it on her head.
The radio had come on when I cranked the ignition, blaring classic rock into the vehicle. “I hope you like seventies rock,” I ventured.
Joanna laughed and nodded, “Fine with me.”
“Good,” I said relieved. “I was hoping you weren’t some redneck who only listens to country.”
She laughed again, “I was too.”
“I can listen to pretty much anything: rap, rock, jazz, metal, anything. But don’t make me listen to country music.”
We drove along listening to Phil Collins for a while. “I’m terribly excited,” my impassive passenger announced.
“Uh, okay.”
“I mean, I’m going to New Orleans with some girl I’ve only seen twice where I’m gonna spend the night and do whatever.”
“Well, let’s hope the car holds out.”
She grinned.
We had to stop by the Mobile Infirmary Credit Union for me to cash the check Jeff gave me for the trip. When I returned, the person sitting in the front seat was reading a paperback. She turned it so I could see the cover as I got in the car: Camus’ The Stranger. “Camoo?” I asked incredulously. “I can sum up that book in two words. It sucks.” Then I thought for a second before adding, “Or he dies.”
I handed her thirty-two dollars, which she stuffed in the breast pocket of her red flannel shirt. “Jeff says we’ve got seventy-two dollars for the room,” I informed her, “Twenty-five for gas, and the registration money which leaves thirty-two for spending money. And he said what we didn’t spend we could keep.”
“Let’s blow it all!” answered Joanna.
“Lock your door, I commanded as we pulled back on the road. “There’s weirdos around.”
Out on the interstate she turned to me and asked, “So, why history and chemistry?”
“I’m not majoring in chemistry,” I corrected her. “I’m majoring in biology.”
“Oh, sorry. Okay, why history and biology?”
“I want to go to medical school,” I answered. “I’m interested in history, and since I already had enough AP credit, I don’t have to take that much. I hope to graduate in three years. If I can make it through chemistry.
“How much chemistry do you have to take?” she asked.
“Five more classes.”
“Shoot!” my passenger exclaimed. “I took the class you’re taking right now last semester. The hardest class I’ve ever taken.”
“How did you do?” I asked her.
“Think I got the only A in the class,” she answered.
“Why did you take it?”
She laughed, “Seemed like a good idea at the time. I never had chemistry before.”
“You never had it before and you got an A?” She nodded. “I took the AP exam but didn’t get a high enough score to skip the first course,” I said. “But that’s good ’cause it’s killing me now, and I can’t imagine taking the next class.”
“I missed out on AP classes,” Joanna mentioned. “I didn’t go to high school.”
“What? What did you do? GED?” I asked. “Or homeschool?”
“Both,” she answered, then asked, “So, why University of Mobile?”
“Because they’re paying for all of it,” I laughed and then shuddered. “And I can’t imagine going to South.
“What kind of doctor do you want to be?” she asked.
“I want to be a psychiatrist,” I answered. “That way I can mess with people’s minds for real. I play enough mind games as it is. This way I can do it and help people. Of course.”
“Forgive me if I nod off,” my passenger said after a while, “My sleeping habits have been erratic this week.” She picked The Stranger back up and, turning to where she had left off without using a bookmark, began reading again. We rode on till Arrow 100.7 faded from the air and I turned the radio off. Up ahead a sign marked a bridge, saying, “Jordan River.”
“I guess we’re entering the promised land,” I observed, looking ahead to the road work being carried out on the other side. “Although it appears to be under construction.”
“Joanna looked up. “Michael row the boat ashore,” she muttered, “And then go back and pick up some plywood.”
I had to pee, so I pulled off at the next exit that promised food and gas. Joanna looked up again as we drove into a parking lot for a gas station connected to a KFC. “Have I mentioned that I have a bladder this big?” I asked, holding up a thumb and forefinger with a little space in between.
“Are you going in to use the bathroom,” she asked, “Or get something to eat?”
“Both.”
She got out of the car and followed me inside. When I emerged from the restroom, she was holding a bottle of grapefruit juice and staring at the menu in the chicken joint. I ordered a chicken sandwich. She got 6 honey barbecued wings. We sat down at a booth and ate. “You gonna eat that or wear it?” I asked as she struggled to get the meat off a wing into her mouth without burning it.
“Saving it for later,” she answered quietly, making a vain attempt to wipe her face with the back of one hand. Then she stared at me for several seconds, suspending a wing between both forefingers. I took a bite of my sandwich.
“I write stories about everything that happens to me,” she finally spoke. “I’m going to write about this trip. I usually write in the first person. But this time I’m going to write it from your perspective.”
I stopped chewing. “Okaaay.” Then I asked, “Why?”
She took another bite of chicken, “Just to do something different.”
“Well, good luck. You’ll be climbing inside the head of an eighteen year old college freshman.”
She grinned. “I hope so.”
“Back in the car I had to remind her to lock her door again. “Weirdoes around! There goes one now! See?”
She nodded and slid the lock shut.
We stopped at the Louisiana welcome station. I went to the bathroom and got a cup of complimentary coffee. Swamp water was more like it. I also got a map of New Orleans. My companion filled out the guest registry by scribbling, “Name: Joanna, State or Province: The Dark Side of the Moon, Number of members in party, 1/2.”
When a lady behind the counter asked her to sign it later on, she responded that she already had. Joanna thumbed through a book of hotel coupons while I finished my swamp water, but we couldn’t find our particular Comfort Inn.
Back in the car hurtling down the highway at eighty-five miles an hour, we chatted intermittently, punctuating my passenger’s periods of absorption in her book or staring out the window. “If I’m going to write about this from your perspective, she said suddenly, “I’ll need to vocalize anything I want included in the story.”
“Okay,” I turned to look at her. “Go ahead.”
“That was the first thing.”
“So what exactly is the purpose of writing this from my perspective?” I asked.
“As an exercise in writing from the viewpoint of another person,” she answered before adding, “And because I’m an egotist. I want to portray myself in the third person.”
“Finally, after driving over a huge bridge I remembered from my last visit five years ago, the skyline of our city of destination appeared. “There she is,” my companion uttered wistfully.
“Bring back fond memories?” I joked.
“The Sodom of the South,” she continued.
“Uh, okay.”
Traffic was getting heavier, but it still wasn’t bad at all. “Mom warned me about the way these coons drive,”
I said. “But I think I’ll be able to handle it.”
My passenger looked up from her book that she continued to read, despite the road that tested my car’s shocks. “The Happy Baker,” she read the sign on the truck in front of us, “With the Flashing Light.”
We laughed.
The Comfort Inn wasn’t too hard to find, although I did have to make a U-turn to get into it. Checking in was a real hassle. We had to wait for the ladies behind the counter to finish dealing with the people in front of us and the phone that kept ringing. “You need to dial the eight hundred number, one of them told everyone who called.
“Look,” said Joanna, pointing at a couple of security cameras aimed at us. “Let’s moon.” I laughed. She reached for her zipper.
Outside I remarked, “I think that was more complicated than registration.”
I pulled the car around through the gate where an annoyingly happy security guard was standing and into the parking lot under the motel. We got our bags and tromped up three flights of stairs to our room.
” Okay.” My roommate threw her bag down and fell back on the bed closest to the door. “What now?”
“Now,” I said sitting down on the other one and picking up the phone, “I call my mom.”
I dialed collect, “Hi Mom? No, we’re fine.”
At this moment from the other side of the room Joanna screamed, “Don’t tell her what happened!”
After I hung up, I told her, “You really set Mom off on that.”
Joanna grinned. “Now what?”
“Well,” I said looking at my watch, It’s two o’clock now. The next seminar starts at two-thirty, and there’s no way we’re going to be ready and down there by then.”
“Okay,” she nodded, “So what do you wanna do?”
“I dunno. What do you wanna do?”
“We could,” she paused thoughtfully, “wander around the French Quarter.”
“You know, wandering around the French Quarter sounds really appealing right now.”
I got our leather jackets off their hangers and handed one to her before we walked back down to the car.
—
I wrote this spring of 1996 and never finished it. We did indeed wander the French Quarter. We ordered daiquiris from a stand next to the beignet place on the water, and Kerry was aghast that they gave her one with real, live rum in it. I bought a t-shirt bearing a smiley face reading, “Another Prozac Moment.” We watched the STTNG episode where they all get drunk and laughed our butts off. The next day we eventually did go to one lecture each at the conference. Mine was incredibly boring. I got a couple books for cheap and a couple more for free from vendors who didn’t want to lug them home again. That’s all I remember.