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| Looking Toward Decatur Street |
I had just taken a shower and changed into my third and last set of clean clothes. She said "You look all dressed up, with nowhere to go.."
She was wearing a dark brown fedora on her head, which made her face look cute, and was almost the color of her hair. She was also wearing the shirt that I had given her, the brand new one which someone had dropped on the sidewalk, outside one of the fancy clothing stores. She had her face made up with eye liner and stuff.
She told me that she was going to miss me and that I was the only guy that she had met in New Orleans that didn't turn out to be a "pig," or a word to that effect.
There was something different in the way she looked at me, and I noticed, as we walked towards PJ's Coffee, that we kept brushing up against each other. This was out of character for her, as she had been very shy and jumpy and almost seemed afraid that I was going to try to touch her; even though we had slept side by side in a stairwell, while Tropical Depression Lee raged on Canal Street, making it almost disappear behind a curtain of rain.
Sue said that she wanted to drink that night. She wanted to celebrate my last night in New Orleans.
We went and I got us each a Cobra Malt Liquor.
My dad once said "Don't marry a woman until you have seen her drunk," by the way...
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| Karrie Could Drink Sue Under The Table |
Sue reitterated that she was going to miss me. Then, as we sat in front of PJ's Coffee, we wound up very close to each other. She said "You can kiss me," which I did. It was an awkward kiss, partly because I had always sensed in her a cat which could scratch your eyes out if you werent' careful.
I also figured that the Cobra played a factor.
Sue said that she would follow me wherever I was to go that night, to play on Decatur Street, or to watch the game somewhere. We got another Cobra each, during the consumption of which, She said that I might wind up having to carry her. It awakended old feelings that I haven't had since the days of carrying Karrie.
Then, Sue said that the beer was making her hungry, which made me want to reach into my travelling money of about 25 bucks and get her something to eat. I wasn't sure if this was a hint of some kind. Maybe she thought that, with the change in the status of our relationship, I would feel obligated to spend money, which I had a miniscule amount of, I wasn't sure, and the Cobra wasn't helping me to reason it out. The timing of her saying it was strange; like right when I was ready to kiss her again.
I knew that her food money had just run out, and that she knew that I had a couple good nights playing. It was confusing and getting more so.
I decided to play for an hour on Decatur, before the game, then find a place nearby to watch it. We started walking down Decatur.
I also had it in the back of my mind that one of my sleeping spots was at the far end, by Frenchmans Street, and that we might wind up there one what was to be my last night in the city; for a while, at least.
Then, She was rambling about going into a restaurant and stealing the waitress' tips off of the tables. I had the sense that she was serious, and for the first time since I met her, I said to myself. "I've got to get away from this chick." She might have been expressing her frustration over not having money; but this made me feel pressured to buy her things.
The game had started earlier than I had expected because I had forgotten that New Orleans was in the Central Time Zone. I then jettisoned my plans to play for an hour (though it might have covered the expense of watching the game in a bar, at least allowed us to "milk" one beer for much of the game), and instead, we headed back towards Canal Street, and a bar which Sue mentioned, where we would be allowed to sit and watch the game and wouldn't have to spend money.
Sue couldn't find the bar.
She has always been very bad with directions, often saying "Oh, I know where we are now!" only after us sallying forth onto Bourbon Street, the most famous landmark in the French Quarter.
I suggested that we go to Popeye's Chicken, another place which allows people to sit and watch TV while not purchasing anything. I guess the laxadaisical attitude of the employees, while not a good thing when they are making your sandwich, has its advantages for the homeless.
I Make A Terrible Misjudgment And Lose Sue
Sue put her bag and her cat carrier with Kooky in it, down on a bench. She then said that she was going to run and find the bar, which she hadn't been able to find earlier.
"Whatever you do, don't leave," She beseeched me.
She ran down the street.
As she did, I thought that it was going to take her a while to find this bar, because we had already checked the immediate area, and it wasn't there.
I started to wonder if Sue was "all there" and if she hadn't been thinking of a bar in Seattle or somewhere and was confusing the cities.
Popeye's was showing a political debate on CNN, and not the game.
This was probably the Cobra working on me, but I decided to run to the next block and watch the game from a sidewalk, where I would be able to glimpse Sue on her way back to Popeye's and head her off. She might not know that I ever left.
One of my mistakes was not realising that Sue begged me not to leave, not so much because she wanted my company, but rather, so that I would be guarding her cat, Kooky. The other error was not imagining that she could take a different route back to Popeye's, especially if she found the bar to be off on a different tangent.
I watched one series when the Patriots had the ball. I must complement the Patriots for holding the ball so long and putting together a long drive, but I wish they had just thrown a long bomb and scored quickly because, after they scored, I ran back to Popeyes to find both Sue and Kooky gone.
On the night of our first kiss, I had given her every indication that I had deserted her. I felt terrible about it all that night. She must have taken a different way back to Popeye's, causing me to miss seeing her. Well shiver me timbers...
I watched the Patriots win the game at Pete's bar, knowing that I had lost Sue, maybe for good; maybe for my own good. I don't know.
The next morning, I was up early looking for her.
I found her sitting on a bench on Canal Street. She wasn't mad about my apparent ditching of her; she was mortified that Kooky may have been stolen. Is there a reason that she is 48 and single??
So, after coming to New Orleans and losing my first friend, Dragonfly, after the laced Hurricane incident, I go out the same way, by alienating my second one. Darn those Hurricanes and Cobras!
The Train Ride
I decided to walk to the rail yard, tuesday morning, as I know the city better now, and knew I could cut in half the distance that I walked on the way in.
It was early and not very hot out.
I found the yard after about a 3 mile walk, and asked one of the conductors about going to Mobile. He told me that I would have to go to another yard to get a CSX train. He gave me directions, some water and wished me luck and told me to be carefull.
He may have good rail sense, but he directed me to the wrong spot, but I quickly figured it out and found the place he described, where the two lines, CSX and Norfolk Southern cross.
A conductor there pointed out a train that was going to Mobile, but told me that it didn't leave until 8:30, giving me about 6 hours to wait.
I walked to a store, being pursued by a cloud of mosquitos.
It was as if New Orleans wanted to suck the blood out of me one last time before I left. Inside the store, there were a few still hovering around me as I was getting beer out of the cooler. They had followed me across 4 lanes of traffic and into the store! They are as desperate as some of the bums on the streets of the French Quarter.
While drinking a beer behind the He-She club (for transexuals), I found a 10 speed bike abandoned behind the place. (It looked like a girls bike, unless you looked REALLY close, I joked to myself).
This almost changed my plans. If the back tire wasn't flat, I considered riding it into the Quarter and using it nightly to escape the place, thus addressing my main reason for leaving New Orleans for a while; safety.
It's not good to give the thugs too much time to observe your habits and formulate plans of ambush. I could feel a dark cloud hovering over head, especially after having two good nights, Friday and Saturday and netting about 100 bucks, which was better than most other street performers, with the exception of teenaged girls playing accordians (you can't compete with them).
Where Am I?
For 7 Hours, the bike, my guitar and I rode in an empty boxcar.
We stopped for about a half hour in a swamp near Mississippi, and a cloud of mosquitoes entered the boxcar. I saved myself by using a liberal amount of the repellant which the Lidgleys had sent last spring.
The water that the conductor gave me came in handy.
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| Mobile skyline from a new angle |
My best guess was that we were just to the north of Mobile, maybe across the bay, maybe not. The bridge looked familiar from my bike ride to Fairhope.
I took a gamble and tossed the bike off into some tall grass, and then began walking towards what looked similar to the Mobile skyline; yet something wasn't quite right.
As I walked about two miles towards what looked similar to the RSA Tower in downtown Mobile, it began to dawn upon me that I was seeing the city from an entirely new angle, making things look further apart, or closer together than they "should" have been. Soon, it all started to look familiar, and I found one of my sleeping spots and slept until about 10 in the morning with nobody bothering me. Then I started this day.
The booty which I brought back with me:
- A Sprint LG cellphone, which Sue gave me
- A blue pen, which Sue gave me
- A 10 Speed Bike
- 4 New Shirts
- 2 Pairs of Socks
- 10 Pencils and a sharpener (art supplies)
- A "New Orleans Saints" lighter
- A vial a patchulli oil
- 1 set of strings
- 2 books "The Great Santini," and "The House of Seven Gables"
- Beads and bracelet
- toothpaste
I need to make a little money to fix the back tire on the bike, so that I can take it with me and be able to get around more easily.
I hope Sue has forgiven me by then. I plan to post the pictures that I took, after I kissed her, but before I pissed her off.
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