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“You don’t strike me as a cyclist,” Letty said.
“I wasn’t trying out for the Tour de France. I was trying to get my ass from my room to Computer Science without paying for parking. Physics and other engineering shit is over there on the other side of the union...” He waved in the general direction of the student union. “...and really what you need to remember is ‘redbrick.’ You remember that, and you mostly can’t go wrong.”
As they walked around, they passed a pond with a sign that said “Danger—Alligators and Snakes in Area.”
“Yeah. We’re in Florida,” Baxter said.
When they’d coveredmost of the campus, they went back to the truck, and Letty threw the ATM receipt on the floor of the backseat. Then they took a trip down Congress Avenue, where Baxter pointed out his two favorite bars and a pizza joint where he said he lived much of his campus life; Letty took photos.
Next, he drove them past his old living quarters, which were in the rear of a house owned by an old lady who, he said, “was a pretty nice old lady. I was there for three years.”
“It’s like every state university, but with palm trees and Spanish moss in the live oaks,” Letty said. “I’ve seen enough. I couldn’t remember much more. What we need to do is talk about your time here. We can do that on the way to California.”
“Thirty-six fuckin’ hours,” Baxter said. “You ready?”
“Yes. After a couple of stops.”
They stopped at an Office Depot and bought Bubble Wrap and wrapped the drum set, and from there, went to a Guitar Center, where Letty bought six drumsticks, two sets of brushes, and a practice pad. Before she got back in the truck, she rolled the tips of the drumsticks over a rough concrete curb, to give them a worn look. They made a final stop at a Whole Foods market, where they bought sandwiches and crackers for the trip, along with off-brand cola and ice that they put in the Yeti cooler that sat on the truck’s backseat.
“I liked this place all right,” Baxter said, as they headed for the I-75 on-ramp. He thought about it for a minute, then said, “Actually, I didn’t like it that much. I can’t really say that I ever had a good time here. Not one that lasted, anyway.”
They left Gainesville behind at ten o’clock in the morning, give or take, ground through the I-75 traffic jam going north, made it to I-10 and took a geographical left. Except for a brief loop around New Orleans, they’d stay on I-10 all the way to Los Angeles.
“Tell me stories about Gainesville,” Letty said, as they rolled out of town. “Your main girlfriend there. The time you got drunkest. Getting high on weed and where you bought it. The fight you saw in a bar... what music you listened to.”
Baxter talked, getting into it, reminiscing, sometimes amusing, and it seemed to Letty that he kept coming back to one particular girlfriend who might have dumped him. Was she his only serious girlfriend? Letty didn’t ask.
“I liked weed and I liked micro-dosing on acid. But you know what? I almost never did it, because I couldn’t afford it. I mean, I had about two extra dollars a week to live on. I actually workedpart-time in a men’s clothing store, selling accessories, which was stuff like ties and underwear and socks, minimum wage with a two percent commission. I only got to work in the suit department for a day, where the big commission money was. The buyer over there thought I was...”
He hesitated, and Letty filled in: “Unsuitable?”
“I was gonna say that,” Baxter said.
“Bull. You never thought of it,” Letty replied.
Baxter’s amusement didn’t extend to Letty’s suggestion that they skip a few of the McDonald’s restaurants that they passed on the highway.
“You’re probably seventy or eighty pounds overweight and you’re not using any calories sitting in the truck,” she said. “You must have eaten three thousand calories already today and...”
“Shut the fuck up.”
“You could at least drink Diet Coke. Every one of those...”
“Shut the fuck up.”
“...is like a hundred and forty empty calories per can...”
“Shut the fuck up...”
“Maybe you would have had more girlfriends if you lost weight,” Letty said.
“I don’t have much trouble that way,” Baxter said. “Women are basically simple creatures. Taking them to bed isn’t a problem.”
“Shut the fuck up.”
Baxter laughed as Letty fumed and looked out the passenger window, but finally she couldn’t stand it any longer, and said, “Women arenotsimple. Not as simple as men.”
“Then how come they’re so easy to manipulate?” Baxter asked. “You tell the pretty ones that they’re smart, and the smart ones that they’re pretty, and badda-bing, you got them in bed.”
