Thursday, May 5
2:34 p.m. Our bottoms were beginning to ache from the sitting when we pulled up the curving driveway at Laureen’s around four. Glasses of cold water for refreshment, and then the bright Nashville day was waiting.

“We’ll drive round and look at the beautiful houses,” Laureen said, “because that’s what people do in Nashville, drive around and look at the beautiful houses.” Along Belle Meade Boulevard, grand Southern mansions, their pillars straight and tall like white-jacketed butlers at attention, preened on polite green lawns.



If you are lucky enough to have Laureen tourguide you around Nashville, you will discover some unusual things. Like the Belle Meade Plantation Home, which comes complete with creek and slave house and cut-out photo opportunities. Like the Belle Meade Country Club, which doesn’t accept Jews and blacks. As we drove past, Laureen gestured and said, “There’s some white people playing golf.” Like the Pantheon, which was built of papier-mâché for a World’s Fair, and which the Nashville community liked so much, they rebuilt it solid. There were geese and ducks by the lake, and the ducklings, in the sunlight, were glowing balls of fluff.



Laureen took us downtown to her office, too, where we admired (a) her view of the Cumberland River and (b) the soda machine in the common kitchen.

And then, because the girl is on top of things, there were reservations at Margot’s for dinner. And, oh, we were feasting like kings today, what with the sugar snap peas in a beet vinaigrette, the goat cheese, the plump, salty olives, the grilled snapper on a bed of warm frisée and slender carrots.

Laureen’s friend Erin came and joined, Erin with the dark, earnest eyes and the sweet smile and the stories that make you double over with laughing. Here are some things girls talk about at dinner: Arles. Crying at trial. Horrifying blind dates. The dearth of eligible bachelors in Nashville, Tennessee. Yaël was talking about co-operative banking when Maud leaned over to me and muttered, “I’m having the pot de crème, fuckit.” There were pot de crèmes all around, then, and a lemon ice box pie for me. Sweet and tart on a graham crust, surrounded by strawberries, and cold to make your mouth form an “O.”



On the way home, Laureen pointed out Fat Mo’s, where the sign outside read: “The biggest burgers in town.” The really unexpected thing about Fat Mo’s is that “Mo” is short for “Mohammed.” Laureen’s friend Lee, who is vegetarian, does some lawyering for Fat Mo, and we are hoping that Fat Mo creates a veggie burger in his honor. It is clear to us, there is no other way to go, that the veggie burger will be called Fat Lee.

Downtown on Broadway, the buskers were out: here, a guy, his guitar, his dog; there, a two-man band with a guitar and a full drum kit. There was one guy in a cowboy hat outside a bar, and then another. The neon signs came in the shapes of guitar and cowboy boot, but we could hardly keep our eyes open.

At night, the traffic lights hang in the darkness on Franklin Place. Set back from the road on Tyne Boulevard, the houses glow through the trees and hedges, a chandelier here, a spotlighted brick façade there. Inside at least one of them, I know this much is true, there are soft beds for girls who are adventuring around America.

Thursday, May 5
11:36 p.m.In the crisp morning, breakfast on the screened porch. Toast and feta and apricot jam, and a cup of Snow Monkey Plum tea because it is Laureen’s favorite, but mostly because it is called Snow Monkey Plum. There was a visit from Daniel, the kid next door, newly adopted from Russia. At ten months old, the kid already has a Slavic face.

The Natchez Trace Parkway took us out of Tennessee and, briefly, into Alabama, where, among the green and the birds of the scenic route, our short sojourn was interrupted by a visit from the local copper. (India, are you reading this? We are not doing such a good job, especially at seventy in a fifty-five zone, avoiding les keufs.) The passing policeman took a U-turn behind us and turned on his lights. Yaêl pulled over to the side. “Non mais.” “Non mais non mais non.” “Merde merde merde.”

The officer seemed unsure what to do with Yaël’s French driver’s license. He let us off with a warning, and said “Y’all have a nice day.” “T’as une sourire qui tue, Yaya,” Maud said, as we waved and pulled away.

We crossed the Tennessee River and found a spot by the Old Ferry Crossing for a picnic. The wildflowers made the grass a carpet of lilac. We revisted the cheeses, the breads, the tomatoes, the avocadoes, the grapes from the day before. Still good.

On Highway 45, a tractor on brown fields raised a cloud of dirty white dust behind him. A “For Sale” sign leaned on the wall of a shack by the highway. It really was a shack, but it had a front porch, and the front porch had a rocking chair. In the backseat I succumbed to the post-lunch and the midday hot and the muffled rumbling of the road beneath our wheels.

We were approaching Tupelo, Mississippi, proudly advertised as the birthplace of Elvis Presley, when I woke. Yaël’s Guide du routard refers to Tupelo as “le trou du cul de l’Amérique,” and there is some truth to this, because once you have hammed it up like showgirls next to Elvis’s car at the birthplace museum, and once you have marveled not only at the museum lady’s helmet of candy-floss hair but also at the oven mitts printed with recipes for Elvis’s Peanut Butter And Banana Sandwich—a recipe that calls for 1 Stick of Butter—there is not so much else to do. We zipped out of there and were back on the road illico presto.

I was behind the wheel and we were merrily barreling along southward to Jackson (Olive, tu lis?, je ne te connais pas, mais merci pour la zik. Rigolo, ton CD, c’est gégé!) when Route 25 disappeared. We were about to make a U-turn when a minivan pulled up behind us and a boy, maybe fourteen, came up to our window to ask if we were lost. We don’t know how he knew, but he knew. His mum got out of the car, too, and they pointed us in the right direction. “You’ll pass a car dealership—” the boy said, and his mother interrupted, “Don’t matter what you pass, just keep going straight to Jackson.” The boy let his mother walk back to the car before he said, “And you’ll pass a gas station.”

One three-point turn later, there was Route 25 refound, and a car dealership. And then, a gas station.

The heat chased us, relentless, to Jackson, Mississippi.

Jackson. After passing through miserable stretches of strip malls, we drove in empty streets looking, futilely, for a downtown. Yaël finally hopped out to question a lone passer-by. Apparently it all shuts down at five in Jackson.

A highway Barnes & Noble provided a rest-stop and a two-hour wireless connection for $3.95. There are some e-mails that can only be sent when one is in the middle of Mississippi.



It was late, then, and the neon lights of Bop’s Frozen Custard glowed invitingly. Hungry, tired, defeated by the overwhelming grimness of the city, we pulled up to the drive-through counter to order grilled chicken and turkey burgers. We wolfed. “Mmm,” Maud said.

“Et alors?”

“Degueulasse.”

We drove on into the blackness of Raymond looking for a motel before we turned around and headed back toward Jackson. “Jackson, c’est notre châtiment,” Maud said, but I couldn’t figure out why, when we hadn’t done anything to deserve it. “Les étoiles sont belles quand-même,” I said, and that much was true, for the wide Mississippi sky was made for jewel stars like tonight.

On the outskirts of Jackson, past the billboard that read “No Ring No Fling,” finally, a Comfort Inn. The check-in lady asked for my Zip code and her eyes widened when she heard the digits. “You’re a long way from Brooklyn,” she said. “What are you doing in Mississippi?” I told her we were driving to L.A. “Just to drive?” she said. “Yeah,” I said, “because why not.”

And this is now: One of us is reading. One of us is organizing photos on the computer. One of us has just emerged, sweet-smelling, from the shower. The thing is, sometimes there is nothing better than a hot shower.

Friday, May 6
10:56 p.m. Sitting on the upstairs balcony of the Mazant Guesthouse in pyjamas and the evening breeze. The giant magnolia tree in the yard bows down with fat white blooms. A passing train honks in the distance.

Arrived in New Orleans this afternoon. We rejoined the Natchez Trace Parkway heading south from Jackson, stopping in Natchez for a walkabout and a look-see. Like a nautical explosion of multicolored feather boas, the Isle of Capri casinoboat sat on the Mississippi River, while a massive barge pushed along in the waterway.



Everybody likes a Main Street, especially the sort of Main Street that has a shop like Darby’s, where the sign outside reads “Everything Under the Sun!” Inside, there was pecan fudge for sampling, and a T-shirt that said “Paris,” and a pink flamingo dressed up in sequins.



I asked the shopkeeper lady at the postcards-and-things shop next door about this restaurant I’d heard about. It’s in the shape of a giant woman dressed in red, and YOU ENTER UNDER HER SKIRT. When shopkeeper lady said, “...and they have pies,” well, there was no question, then. We tumbled into the car and headed south.

On Route 61, Mammy’s Cupboard called from the highway. “C’est une grande mamie,” I’d said. “On’n’la ratera pas.” And truly, there she was on the left, and Maud was moaning in the backseat at the sight.



In Mammy’s Cupboard, wooden shelves of jellies in mayhaw and muscadine; blueberry lemonade a shade of deep pink served ice-cold and refresca in jam jars; chicken pot pie and broccoli cornbread the Friday special; a salad of cheddar, bacon bits, and mayonnaise on lettuce; a giant can of Crisco on the kitchen shelf; a white-haired grandma cooking in the kitchen; a pie menu; and, truly, pies.



Three old biddies with heads of white came in, and Maud said, “C’est nous dans cinquante ans.” One of them was even shorter than the others. Later, the three old biddies looked over at us, as if they’d been thinking, That was us fifty years ago.



For a good many minutes we were silent at the table, that sort of silence that comes with complete and utter bliss. The ice cubes clinked in our jam jar cups.

When the nice shoplady cleared our plates, she said, “Y’all ready for dessert?” which I like because she understood there was no question that dessert would happen. I mean, come on. The banana caramel pie was soft bananas and thick dulce de leche and a sweet cloud of meringuey cream. And pie is pie, but pie and coffee is something else. And the coffee came in a footed milk-glass cup, and, oh, just everything was good, and we could have moved in, maybe, but the road was calling again.



On Highway 61 southward, we stopped for gas and fell into conversation with one Chuck Riddle from Missoura. Chuck Riddle rides his bike, and was heading to Lafayette for the crawfish festival. He was of a group of seven, and we passed them again later on the highway, these seven, some with beards, some with boots, altogether seven jolly biker dwarves revving along these Southern roads.

Eventually we zipped by the sign that read “Bienvenue en Louisiane,” and we whooped in the car. We have Good Feelings about New Orleans. As we approached the city, the humidity seeped into the car. Maud put on a Louis Armstrong CD, and we hummed and whistled to “Jeepers Creepers.”

In New Orleans, we drove through narrow, bumpy streets with faded wood houses seeming to lean in on either side. On Burgundy and Mazant, a white house with a seagreen door sits behind a low, curvy iron fence. Carina came out onto the porch to welcome us, while Eleanor sniffed hello, dogly.