rolled into New Orleans with $10 and bad directions. The directions were written in red lip liner on the back of a parking ticket I have no intention of paying. The $10 got me a beer and a pack of smokes. The night before I slept in the parking lot of a Days Inn two hours south of Atlanta. I bathed in the restroom of a Texaco. Now I'm rattling down St. Charles, slick with rain, lousy with potholes. New Orleans fits my mood: Everything once beautiful falling apart. I'm here to visit my friend Mary, who teaches English at a private school called Isidore Newman. We meet her colleagues at a barbecue. They are the kind of teachers I always wanted to have -- young and bright and attractive and twisted and just ever-so beaten down by their profession. People say teaching pays you in ways a check can't measure. Ha. Try using that one at the bank.
This is my last stop, folks. I wish I could tell you how I feel about that, but I only feel broke and a wee paranoid about the smell of my clothes. More as it comes, but patience. I suspect it will be slow coming.