Crescent City Connection

leaned out the window. “I could swear I see someone … Hey, Michelle!” Lovelace yelled loud enough to grate on their nerves—bad. A girl turned around. Lovelace waved madly.
    Woody slowed to a stop.
    “Hey, thanks for the ride.” She leapt out of the car and bounded in the opposite direction, just wanting to lose Woody and Candy, not really having any plans.
    As soon as she dared, she slowed to the prevailing pace, trying to make herself invisible. She went into a bookstore and pretended to look at magazines, mind racing.
    What did she do now? Where could she go?
    Woody had been on the money—she was not only a minor, she’d spent a little time locked up once, courtesy of her old pal Depression.
    She just wasn’t going to win any argument about why her dad shouldn’t kidnap her if he wanted to—he could always say she was suicidal; she’d phoned and begged him to pick her up. And now she was irrational, she needed her meds.
    Michelle would vouch for her, but much good it would do. Her dad would say she was a pathological liar, Michelle didn’t know… she was a danger to herself and others.
    Her mother might help her if she could find her. But Jacqueline was in Mexico living on a beach or something, probably stoned out of her gourd.
    What a couple of pieces of work. Why wasn’t there anybody nice in her family?
    A flashback of her Uncle Isaac’s Christmas card popped into her mind. It was a drawing of an old streetcar loaded up with holiday packages. On its side was written DESIRE , and the caption was in red, a holiday wreath around the streetcar: “Here’s wishing you loot, and many a hoot.”
    Inside was the usual lovely letter. She got them twice a year— on her birthday and Christmas. Uncle Isaac never forgot. He nearly always made the cards himself—he was an artist. He always told her what he was doing—painting and drawing, lately—and where he was living—New Orleans these days—but mostly he went off on poetic tangents he thought she might enjoy, and she always did.
    They were a little sentimental, sometimes a bit embarrassing, actually, but they were as sweet as maple syrup. She wrote him back as regularly as he wrote her—twice a year—and never talked to him, hadn’t since she was ten or twelve—but she felt close to him, truly felt he cared for her and would help her if she got in trouble.
    She’d gotten in trouble.
    She reconnoitered: He was her father’s brother, not her mother’s, but she didn’t really think that was a problem. Neither of the brothers had ever mentioned it, but she had the feeling there was some bad blood between them.
    She’d call him.
    But she broke out in a sweat when she remembered she hadn’t a cent.
    Where to get money?
    In a bar or restaurant, she thought: an unclaimed tip, a careless tray of change, something like that.
    She cruised a couple of places and couldn’t bring herself to do it.
    Finally, at a particularly busy coffeehouse, she saw a line for the phone and stood in it. When it was her turn, she made a show of looking up a number, fumbling, taking more than her share of time before “discovering” she had no change.
    The girl behind her was only too glad to speed up the process.
    Lovelace deposited the girl’s quarter and asked for information in New Orleans, intending in the end to reverse the charges and pay back her benefactor. But it never came to that: Isaac wasn’t listed.
    She found a table and sat, thinking to move on if anyone asked her to.
    Well, no problem: she knew his address. She had answered the Christmas card by continuing his gag with a play on the street name—something about the streetcar named Desire rolling down the street called Royal. The number was the year, with a “20” in front—Lovelace didn’t forget things like that.
    All she had to do was get there.
    A guy paused at her table. “Excuse me. Would you mind having my baby?”
    Seize the day, she thought. She said, “I’ve got a better idea. Let’s go to New Orleans.”
    “When you wanna go, sweetheart?”
    But it wasn’t going to be that easy. Half an hour later, she realized he was just flirting, but at least she had a plan.
    She was tall (very tall—five-feet-ten) and had a pretty good figure (though she wouldn’t mind losing ten pounds) and reddish sandy hair. She’d just ask people if they’d take her— nonthreatening-looking male people. Surely someone would bite.
    The first one had bought her some coffee, so the coffeehouse