This One Time With Julia

by David Lampson

  She rubbed her face and looked around.

  “Do we have a flat?”

  “I don’t know. It just stopped working.”

  She leaned over and looked at the dashboard. “The car’s not broken. You just ran out of gas.”

  “What?”

  “You didn’t see the light?”

  “What light?”

  “Are you really not familiar with the gas light?”

  I started to go on a very nervous kind of tilt. I felt like I was back at school, and that some teacher was asking me to read something impossible. I had never driven a car long enough to run out of gas before.

  “I guess I just missed it.”

  “You don’t know about the gas light?”

  Julia squeezed up against the car door like she wanted to be as far away from me as possible. From the way she looked at me, and the way she kept shaking her head out the window, I got this very strong feeling that she didn’t want me to come with her to Tennessee anymore, that I’d have to spend the rest of my life in this cornfield, or else go back to Los Angeles and beg Marcus to let me back in his apartment one last time. But then slowly her expression changed. I could see her whole body relax, and now she seemed more curious than anything else.

  “How do you do that?” she asked me.

  “What?”

  “You’re so calm. Alvin was never this calm. Were you just born this way?”

  “I can’t remember.”

  “The strangest part is that I feel it’s actually contagious. It’s a nice way to live. You just drive the car until it stops working. You don’t even care why. Then you just sit and wait for the next thing to happen.”

  “You’re making fun of me.”

  “I’m not. I’m really not. In fact, I want you to teach me. And you must have a pretty calming effect on me too, because the old Julia would be totally freaking out right now. I can see why people like you, like Marcus says. You just float along. No matter what happens, you take everything in stride. We’re in the middle of a cornfield, totally out of gas, and it barely affects you at all. How do you manage not to stress out about this?”

  “I don’t even have to think about it.”

  “I always worry about everything. So what’s your secret? How do you handle this situation, for example? Do you start walking to a gas station? Do we wait to get randomly rescued by a stranger? Do we just sit here until we starve to death? Am I asking all the wrong questions?”

  “I guess we should start walking,” I said.

  We got out of the car and walked along the grassy shoulder of the road. About an hour later we finally found a gas station, and I took out some money from an ATM, and bought this little can of gas, and also a Skor bar, and some milk. While we were walking back, Julia asked me, “Is it true what Marcus said? Can you really not read?”

  “I could read if I wanted to.”

  “I promise it doesn’t bother me at all. I just want to know. Actually I think it’s interesting. I never met anyone our age who couldn’t read.”

  “You should see my signature,” I said. “The handwriting is really very good.”

  “You can’t, then.”

  “Not yet.”

  “This is so unbelievable. I just have no idea what I’m doing. What on earth is happening to me?” She balled up her fists and screamed silently up at the sky. “I’m getting a crush on a boy who can’t read.”

  It took me a few seconds to realize what Julia had just said. I’d had crushes on other people before, but this crush was on me, and I could feel it washing through my whole body. I can remember how nervous and excited my stomach was, like I was constantly about to burst out laughing. Most of all I felt lucky, like I’d hit an impossible shot, or drawn an impossible card. Everything was different between us from that moment on. For the rest of the day, we switched drivers every few hours, and I watched the gas light carefully at all times. Julia would sort of lean into me once in a while, and it started to feel like we’d been doing this forever.

  I found out the country doesn’t really change too much as you are driving through it in a car, at least not as much as I thought it would. The restaurants we saw at the end were mostly the same as the ones we saw at the beginning, and I was happy to find out there was going to be a McDonald’s every fifteen miles the whole way. At the first one we stopped at, I asked the manager if she knew Francisco. I just wanted to know if he’d finally kissed Carmen, but I saw that I’d only confused her.

  “You’re ridiculous,” said Julia afterward. “How is she supposed to know who any of those people are? But on the other hand—” She frowned, and started rubbing her temples. “What do I know? I’m no expert. Who am I to judge? Who am I to say McDonald’s employees don’t all know each other? Maybe there’s a huge retreat every year, with bonding activities. There’s probably a community online. Do you ever feel like you have two voices in your head, constantly arguing with each other?”

  I wasn’t sure I even had one voice, but I didn’t want Julia to feel like she was going crazy. “Once in a while,” I said.

  We drove the whole second day without getting to Tennessee. I had no idea it could take so long to drive somewhere. We stopped for gas as it was starting to get dark, and Julia saw a sign for a place called the C’mon Inn, which she thought was a really good name, so we decided to stop there for the night.

  I was starting to find out that every motel in the world was different. The C’mon Inn felt more like a house than either of the motels that I’d seen in Los Angeles. It had a bathtub and a flat-screen TV and little toaster oven, too. We walked to this grocery store about a block away and got a bag of pepperoni and some bagels and some shredded cheese, and then Julia made these little bagel pizzas in the toaster oven. We didn’t have any plates in the room, so we ate off one of the bathroom towels while we shared the other as a napkin.

  I can remember almost everything about that night. After dinner Julia beat me at poker for a while, and we watched a little TV, an exciting show about some different people who all wanted to be famous chefs, and then we unfolded the sofa bed for me. While Julia went into the bathroom to wash her face, I lay down and tested the bed. I could still feel pieces of metal under the mattress, but it was more comfortable than the last one I’d slept on, or maybe I was just more tired. It took me a few minutes to find my pillows hidden in the closet, and I was fluffing them when Julia came out of the bathroom. She had on the same white shorts as she’d worn the night before, but this time her hair was pulled back in a ponytail, and she was wearing this very shiny lipgloss that smelled like cherry candy. I was pretty sure she had just brushed her teeth in there, but I can remember that she was also chewing gum.

  “I really think I’m getting used to you,” she said.

  “I hope so.”

  “Okay, goodnight Joe.”

  Julia came over and gave me a hug. I put my hands on her back and held her against my chest, waiting for her to let go. She didn’t let go. This was the fifth time I had touched her, and two of the other times were only handshakes, and this one lasted by far the longest. It felt like an hour. Maybe it was only a few seconds. I have no idea how long it was. Just when I thought she was going to let go, she squeezed me even tighter and said, “I feel so much calmer now.”

  “That’s good.”

  Suddenly she pulled away, smiling, and turned a little red. Then she blew into my eyes. “Made you blink,” she said.

  Just as I realized we were about to kiss, we did. Nobody really started it. We just both came closer until it was happening. I think kissing Julia had been on my mind since I’d first seen her in the lobby of Alvin’s hotel, but I had no idea what it would feel like and no way to imagine it, because I’d never felt another person’s tongue before. Her lips tasted like cherry candy but her mouth was minty. At one point she laughed when I accidentally swallowed her gum. Of all the things I’d tried in my life so far, this was already my favorite. I kissed her for maybe five minutes, and then we l
ay down on her bed and kept kissing.

  “I’m cold,” she said. “Warm me up.”

  We cuddled underneath the covers and I put my face into her chest. Her shirt still smelled like bagel pizzas. She squeezed me again, even harder this time. Then she wriggled out of my arms and started messing with my forehead. “You have a zit.”

  “Where?”

  “Right here.”

  “What are you doing?”

  “Popping it. Hold still like a man.”

  The zit was right over my eyebrow, and it took her a few seconds to pop it. It hurt a lot more than I thought it would. When it was over she kissed my forehead, and hugged me again.

  “We’re just keeping each other company,” she said.

  “I can’t believe I kissed you.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because I wanted to so badly.”

  I was only trying to keep the conversation going while we waited to start kissing again, but right away I knew I’d said something wrong. Julia put on this little worried frown and pushed my chest away.

  “We’re probably both feeling a little lonely, Joe, but it can’t mean anything, okay? You have to promise.”

  “I promise.”

  “You can’t like me too much.”

  “I won’t.”

  “Kissing isn’t supposed to be a big deal anyway. Ginger and I had a kissing competition when she came with my family to Quebec last summer. I kissed nine boys, and Ginger kissed thirteen. It’s not like we fell in love with all those boys. How many girls have you kissed before me?”

  “Two.”

  “Come on.”

  “It’s true.”

  “I don’t believe you.”

  I hadn’t thought about either one of those girls for a pretty long time, but I could still picture them both pretty well. “I kissed the first girl on the school bus in eighth grade. I kissed her on the lips, but only for a second. The second girl sold ice cream at the basketball court about three years ago. She really liked Alvin, but she tried to get his attention by pretending to like me. I only ever kissed her on the cheek. Anyway, I wish I’d never kissed either one of them.”

  “Why?”

  “Because then this would be my first time kissing anyone.”

  Julia’s whole body went a little stiff, and again I knew I’d made a terrible mistake. She didn’t push me off the bed or anything, but I could tell she sort of wanted to.

  “We should probably get to sleep,” she said. “We have another long day of driving tomorrow.”

  “Okay.”

  “I’ll sleep on the sofa bed tonight.”

  “I was just talking,” I said. “I don’t even know what I said.”

  “I’m sorry, Joe. I just can’t be falling in love with any boys right now.”

  “I take everything back.”

  “We should probably go to sleep now.”

  It didn’t matter what I said. Julia was starting to climb out of the bed, but I stopped her and took the sofa bed myself. And just like the night before, it took me forever to get to sleep. All night there were planes zooming over our hotel room as I thought about where I’d gone wrong. I was still awake an hour later when Julia sat up in her bed with her eyes wide upon, climbing an imaginary ladder. By now I basically knew what to expect.

  “There’s not going to be enough breakfast,” she said. “There never is.”

  I sat up. “You’re just sleeping,” I said, even though I knew she couldn’t hear me. “We already bought all this cereal and fruit. Plus, they have breakfast in the lobby.”

  She wouldn’t look at me. “I’m scared.”

  “There’s nothing to be scared of.”

  “I’m scared to go to college,” she said. And I’ve been eating too much pizza, and now I’m starting to feel fat.”

  “We just have to get you back to sleep,” I said.

  “I used to go jogging every day, but now I can’t because of my foot. I’ve been to so many foot doctors, and they’re all full of it.”

  “What’s the problem with your foot?”

  “I think I might have another cavity. I noticed it this morning. And I think I might have an allergy to wheat.”

  “Please,” I said. “Just try to relax.”

  “I don’t understand your clothing,” she said. “I think your pants are way too big. I hate almost everything I’ve seen you wear.”

  I climbed out of bed and went over to her. “Don’t you want to lie down again?”

  “It’s dangerous for you to fall for me,” she said. “We come from two different worlds. We’re not made for each other.”

  I sat down on the bed. I knew she couldn’t hear me, but I didn’t care. “You don’t know that,” I said. “I could change.”

  “It ended so badly for Alvin.”

  “Maybe I’m different.”

  “I’ll have to go back to my real life, and I can’t take you with me.”

  “What can I say? You’re not going to hear me.”

  She wasn’t moving anymore, just sitting up against the wall and staring into space.

  “Alvin is never coming back,” she said.

  “Of course he is.”

  “Tomorrow, when I’m awake, I won’t be able to say it. But I know he never went sailing. And I know he’s never coming back.”

  “Where would he go if he didn’t go sailing?”

  “You must feel it too. You just won’t admit it yet.” Julia’s arms started to move, and then her legs. She was climbing her ladder. “We can’t just have toast every single day,” she said. “There has to be a real breakfast.”

  I knew there was no point in asking her any more questions. All I could do was talk to her in an extremely soothing way until she calmed down. “Don’t worry,” I said. “I’ll make it right now. We have everything we need.”

  Finally Julia closed her eyes, and soon she was sleeping normally again. I climbed back into my sofa bed and listened to her breathing while I remembered the whole day one more time: beating Marcus at basketball, Alvin in his sailing hat, running out of gas with Julia, and then that feeling of dropping off a cliff as I drove away from Los Angeles. I realized that I’d forgotten to tell Francisco that I was moving to Tennessee, or to tell Marcus that Alvin had gone sailing around the world. Just before I fell asleep, it occurred to me that I’d left that apartment forever, and I was a little surprised how sad this made me feel, considering that I didn’t live there very long.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  The next morning we woke up early and I drove for half a day. We stopped for lunch just one more time, and then Julia took over, and I fell asleep for a little while, and when I woke up we were in Tennessee. I remember it being a pretty clean city, but not so different from what I was used to, just more people working, eating, talking on their cell phones. The air in the streets smelled a little more like smoke than I was used to, and I saw some cowboy hats and boots, but not as many as I expected, and there was country music playing everywhere.

  “Wake up, Joe. We’re in Nashville.”

  We crossed a river on a huge retractable bridge, and passed a football stadium, I think, and then Julia pulled the car into the garage of this enormous department store.

  “Where are we going?”

  “Have you ever interviewed for a job before?”

  “Not recently.”

  “I did about a million college interviews last year. According to my dad, the way you dress is half the battle. No matter what job you’re applying for, he says the secret of an interview is to always wear a suit.”

  “I don’t think I’ve ever worn a suit.”

  “Houston will be interviewing you, and he’ll definitely feel the same way. He likes manners. He likes to feel like a southern gentleman. Respect is a big deal to him.”

  “He’s your boss?”

  “Houston is my brother. I guess he’s my boss too. My father is really the boss, but he’s having some legal problems, so Houston is in charge of both hotels. He
spends most of his time in the city, so I’m running the front desk at Oakwood, until I go to Vanderbilt in the fall.”

  “What do I need to say to him?”

  “Well, I wouldn’t mention Alvin, first of all. Houston wasn’t Alvin’s biggest fan.”

  “What else?”

  “It’ll be a piece of cake. He’ll notice the suit, and he’ll see that you have a good face, and then if he has a job he’ll give it to you. And I’m pretty sure he does. Since when do you get nervous?”

  It wasn’t so much that I wanted a job, but it seemed important to Julia. And if I didn’t get one, I thought I might have to go back to Los Angeles, and I wasn’t sure when I’d ever see her again.

  “It’s not like I’m doing it on purpose.”

  “There’s nothing to be worried about, Joe. I’m going to put in a good word for you.”

  I’d never worn a suit before, but I didn’t mind the idea too much, especially since I knew now that Julia hated all my clothes. The men’s clothing was on the top floor of this beautiful department store. I must have tried on ten different suits that day, while Julia and the tailor stood around giving me their opinions. I remember that the tailor’s hair was always wet but that his skin was very dry. I’d never tried on a suit before, or any nice clothes at all really, so I had no idea how much I would enjoy it. They all had such soft, smooth material, and I loved the way they smelled. The tailor loved most of the suits I put on, but Julia always seemed to find some button or stripe or problem with the fit that ruined almost everything for her. After about an hour they finally settled on this beautiful dark blue suit with very thin white stripes and these amazing, smooth lapels that I could never get tired of rubbing. The tailor said the fabric went nicely with my skin, and Julia agreed, and said it made me stand up straighter, and that I also seemed more mature.

  The tailor picked out a dress shirt to go with it, and a matching blue silk tie, and a couple of pretty nice shoes. After I put on everything, they put me in front of a mirror to see the final effect.

  I guess I hadn’t been looking in the mirror much, because I’d sort of forgotten what I looked like. My hair was a lot darker than I remembered, and my eyes were a nice dark brown too. I think that suit really did make me look taller, and definitely older, and maybe a little smarter. Compared to the last mirror I had seen, I was pretty happy with what I saw, though I couldn’t quite believe it was me.