Previously: I made a turkey sandwich and grabbed a beer from the fridge … A vivid memory is a terrible thing. There’s no rest … There’s no distance, and it’s not getting better … I try to fill my head with empty things … How many things happened on the day I was born? How many conversations? And am I connected to them all in some mystical way? … I don’t believe in America but the Grand Canyon is still some shit … That’s Belmont!
Take it from the top:
fernweh (fern-way) n.
1. An ache for distant places
2. Being homesick for anywhere but home
It was going to be a long four hours until Erie, and what did I expect when we got there? I guess, I thought, at best, we would be able to find the boy’s house, knock on his door, and have a chance to talk to him and his mother/father/uncle/guardian and show him my phone, and maybe have him call it to prove that it was the phone connected to the number and that his grandmother would never be able to answer it. I kind of wanted to knowhow he really got my number, maybe see the letter.
Other than that, what could we do? We couldn’t find Millie. We couldn’t make the kid happy.
I think Ana wanted to get out of Chicago. I think she wanted to see something else. Had she been to Ohio? No. Had she been to Pennsylvania? No. I think the night we spent in the hotel was her first night in a hotel. The second day of our trip was the first day she spent without seeing her mother, physically seeing her and touching her, even once. What did her mother say when Ana told her about the trip? She was fine with it, according to Ana. What about her sister? She was fine, too. Ana didn’t offer much more than that, but something was going on, something beyond the job, something that would make a woman who never leaves home for any reason want to get in the car and drive to Erie, Pennsylvania of all places.
There was nothing happening in Ohio. I needed Ana to help me stay awake.
“Hey, Ana, wake up again. Wake up.”
“What? Christ!”
“Can I tell you something funny? Something I think you’ll think is actually funny.”
“Go on. What?”
I looked in the rearview. “That road back there, that one right back there that we just drove under, it was named Fangboner.” I looked at Ana. “Fangboner.”
She looked back, eyebrows raised, a little curious. “Fangboner Road?”
“Yeah. Fangboner.”
“Okay, that’s kind of funny.”
“See,” I hit the steering wheel, “that’s why you have to stay awake. Now we can make jokes about Fangboner. Careful, Dracula, is that a stake under your cloak? Blah! No, I’ve just popped a fangboner!”
“That’s dumb. How about, Not only do I vant to suck your blood, I vant you to suck on my...”
“Not bad. Good try. Now this is the game: What if you met a guy who was perfect in every way: Tall, played the guitar, six pack abs, spoke, like, seven languages because he was always traveling the world to set up schools for girls, when he was home he was painting murals or cooking you gourmet-level meals, he could go down on you so good it made your head swim, but he had a tooth on his dick? Would you go out with him? If he had a fangboner, as it were?”
Now her eyebrows were lower, in concentration. “He’s gone down on me before I saw his dick?”
“Sure.”
Now concern. “This is your game?”
“Sure. Would you go out with him?”
Relaxed with resignation. “Why does he have a tooth on his dick?”
“Medical mystery. Can’t be explained.”
“That might feel good, actually.”
“It’s a jagged tooth.”
Eyes closed. “Why doesn’t he have it removed?”
“It’s too risky. It might leave him impotent. Plus it’s part of who he is. Why should he have to change who he is?”
Still closed. “Fine. Yes. I’d go out with him.”
“Liar.”
Open with exasperation. “Would you go out with a woman who had a tooth in her coochie?”
“This isn’t about me.”
She turned toward the window. “I’m done with this game.”
“Come on.”
“I answered the question and you called me a liar. This is a dumb game. I don’t even know where you learned it.”
“Steve and I made it up.”
She’d assumed the sleeping position. “Call Steve and play it with him. I’m not going to play this stupid game with you. You need to find more friends. I’m going to sleep.”
We were just east of Cleveland, driving to Erie because some kid accidentally called me a few times, and conducting the world’s most pointless thought experiment, because, God help us, we had nothing better to do, but, because Ana was there, in the car, close enough to touch, I was happy.
Thank you for reading. Next week starts like this:
Mildred Frances Boones was born in Minot, North Dakota on March 12, 1914.
Then we read two obituaries.