The trouble with being in a car with a critic and a drag queen is that they never agree on anything. The radio becomes a fumble of half-songs. Decades come back in a very big way. Joni Mitchell. Michael Jackson. Smiths. Stripes. Deborah Harry. David Byrne. Bowie. A lot of Bowie. Each trend is defined. Argued. Defended. Cigarettes stay lit for miles. Simona becomes a caravan of a smoking section.

Cassie turns out to be quite a character. One hour out of the city and we can suddenly no longer go west. A phone call from her father changes everything. She begins to claw at her mouth, her teeth grip every nail, she hugs the seatbelt, she pounces at the window.

“We can’t,” she says, “we can’t cant can’t can’t can’t.”

“Can’t what?” I ask. For some reason I’m driving. Earl never made it.

“We’re gonna be right in the storm, we can’t,” she says. Rainman-like she begins to sway in her seat. “Can’t do it,” she repeats.

I try to keep my eyes on the road. I had never seen anything like it. With the intensity of a woman in labor, Georgette gives out a moan from the backseat. This is the city talking, I realize. The withdrawal kicking in, the cockpit shaking itself open at takeoff.

“What do you want to do?” I ask in my most therapeutic, grandparent-sedating voice.

“We have to go South,” she states.

“South?” I ask and find myself instantly wishing for my table and my space and nothing else.

“South,” she states. She holds her cell phone to her mouth. She holds it between her palms, they are drawn together.

“How can we go South?” I ask.

“We have to,” Cassie says with the determination of a hijacker. “We will go down just a bit then go West. We’ll pass the storm.”

I look at her. She nods to herself.

“Darling, let us just do it,” Georgette chimes in.

I look in the rearview, I look all around. There’s no help. We take an exit. We go south. Just a bit turns into three states.

We go way South.


Somewhere in the Appalachians we stop. The clouds float algae-like near the hills, the sun sinks in them slowly. It’s one hell of a sun. Cassie is ecstatic. We’re on a two-lane country road looking for the waffle house.

“Waffle house! Waffle house!” Cassie yells over a Save Ferris track. Yes, dear readers, I have gotten a doctorate in the 80’s. Just in case you’ve missed it the first time.

“It’s right by here,” Cassie keeps on, “I know it.”

The Men in Black anthem comes over a vintage radio station. This tips everything over. In her knitted hat, Cassie dances in her seat, she bangs on the glove compartment.

“Waffle house!”

She can’t contain herself. I can feel Georgette exhale slightly in the backseat. I snap my head back just for a moment. He has his fingers under the tip of his ear, his knees draw together towards the door. His eyes pass over a barn, a field.

We never find waffles. We find a rest stop and park. Cassie is a different person. She floats out of the car ethereal, with the passivity of a spirit. She is heartbroken, I know that. Georgette knows it too. Despite his seeming annoyance with her, he walks along, he slips his arm under hers. Together they walk under the oversized Chilli’s sign. I lock the car and walk to the edge of the parking lot. I could never like rest stops, these roadhouses of deja-vu, of ray ban stands and unused payphones and stationary eighteen-wheelers, of groundhog days and mornings and minutes just waiting for you to step into them and buy something.

I stand by where the concrete ends and the grass starts, ahead of me is a field big enough to land a plane on, if only it wasn’t part swamp. A flock of about thirty birds grows miniature over the green and yellow crust of the algae. Across the field I spot a small house. It looks real, it looks warm. I exhale.

I find the bathroom without trouble and do what I have to do. I take an extra long time to do it. I wash my hands in the sink, I make the water as hot as it can get, I wash my face, my hair, the back of my neck. A few stalls into the bathroom a father commands his son on how to urinate. I dip my fingers into the already wet center of the paper-towel roll, I spin myself what I need and a little bit more. I bring the dry and patternless paper to my face, I sink my lids into it. I try to tell myself who I am. Who I’m not. Or at least, I try to make sure I can remember.