2:00 p.m. Texas is big, we know, we know. But we are making it from Houston to El Paso today, dammit, and there may even be a Dairy Queen drive-thru along the way. Dairy Queen is memories of summer in Evanston, Illinois, back when there was a boy who had a car, and sometimes—or maybe it happened just once and it’s become the sort of thing myths are made of—we’d stop in a Dairy Queen for a Blizzard. And hot damn, today is made for a Blizzard, it is hot all over, the kind of hot you wear and can’t take off, the kind of hot where the hot rises from the roads. The trees are hot, the little mintgreen bugs are hot.

We called Jazon for a San Antonio lunch suggestion, and he suggested maybe we stop in at a Taco Cabana along the way. “And it’s pink,” he said. “Say no more,” I said. But then we pulled up at Super S Foods instead in search of picnic groceries. The beef jerky selection by the door was next to the wall that said “This is Eagle Country.” I tried to make Maud buy a gallon tin of liquid nacho cheese, but she wasn’t having any of it.

Now, we have just lunched by the bright blue of the South Llaso River just outside Junction, Texas. We are picnic fiends, and today’s feast included a whole roast chicken, spinach, radishes, leftover tomatoes, and a good hunk of parmesan.



Arrived in Houston last night, after braving mad storms on Interstate 10 from New Orleans. The sky was low and angry, shades of grey getting darker and darker. And then the wild lightning, fierce streaks, and then we drove into the middle of the storm, fat, wet pelts of rain, thicker and thicker, and then we could hardly see in front of us, we were driving on water, each car spitting up water behind it, and the highways were criss-crossing in the sky like a sci-fi movie, and still the rain falling falling falling furiously.

Hélène’s e-mail of directions to her place included a goodly number of “fais gaffes”—which is to say, watch out for the invisible stoplight, be careful of the holes near the railroad tracks, don’t miss this turn or you’ll find yourself heading for downtown with no return. So of course there had to be the one point on the highway when we missed an exit, and Maud had to call and say “On l’a raté.”

But we are clever girls who finally got an updated atlas at the last moment before leaving New York, so it wasn’t too long before we were pulling up outside the ocre cottage on State Street, the black-and-white Breton flag as advertised, the immense magnolia tree as promised.

We slipped in between the raindrops, skip skip jump to the porch, and then inside, and then there were the gorgeous old wood panels of the kitchen, and the warm red of the dining room, and a bottle of white wine open, and soon the whole house smelling delectable, of a Cajun shrimp stew.

The wholly unexpected thing about crashing at Hélène’s is that her son, Hoël, has a drum kit upstairs in his room. Drum kit is glitter red, and has a whole tin of drumsticks to choose from sitting next to it. Yaël played, and then I played, and man oh man it was good to be behind the drums again. Some ten or eleven years after, my feet still have it, my hands still have it, and oohhhh it felt good like a rock show feels good. And then Yaël played “Rocky Raccoon” on the guitar, she is amazing, this girl, and we sure like an attic full of instruments.

After dinner, an evening walk around the neighborhood and its pretty wooden houses. The frogs were out, too, little-like.

There was just time for tea, after, La Saveur du Soir, and then tired girls made their way up the narrow wooden staircase. Upstairs, I smiled at the magnolia tree on the other side of the glass panes. The next thing I knew, I was asleep. In the morning, milk and Nutella.