Chasing Nirvana

Ten

Scooter and I split up to find Jimmy. He would search the clubs and parties she often frequented, he said. So I said I'd look around the places Jimmy and I had hung out before, like the creek and a couple of coffee joints we've visited. But of course, I had forgotten it was still the middle of the night (or very early morning, if I had be precise), and most places were close. The creek was too far away from the hospital; there was no way she could make there alone, without a car, without cash or even a phone on her. At least I'm assuming she didn't have them. Why couldn't she just wait?! I was going to do it, I was going to talk Scooter around. But she had to go and run off and now I was left trying to find her.

I drove around town in circles, half angry, half desperate, and a whole lot worried about where she gone. Where could she be, this dark at night, alone? Stories of murders and rapists and kidnappers flash through my mind. Why the fuck couldn't she just do what she was told for once? Why? I gritted my teeth as I looked around the darkened streets, praying to god I wouldn't see a dead girl by the street. I passed by Frankie's 24-Hr Pizza, which was probably the only place still open within a ten mile radius in this god forsaken town at two o'clock in the morning. It wasn't much, but it was close enough to the hospital that a girl could get here in under an hour. I decided to just try my luck.

The place was more crowded than I had expected when I walked in. Mostly truckers driving through, and a few midnight snackers. No one too interesting. Then I saw her. She was sitting in a booth behind a sectional wall and a potted plant, a book in one hand, a glass of coke in the other. She would have been hidden to half the restaurant, not to mention anyone who was merely looking into the restaurant's window while driving by. Every now and then, a strand of dark brown hair would fall into her eyes, and she'd tuck in back in absentmindedly as she read her book, the picture of calmness.

"Why. Didn't. You. Wait?"

She looked up. "Oh, you're here." She set her book down on the table, marking it carefully with the Nirvana restaurant photograph. I glared at her.

"You couldn't call? You couldn't text me? We agreed to wait before I sneak you out, Jimmy!"

She didn't reply. She just stared at me with her big, brown eyes, an inscrutable expression on her face. I paced a few steps back and forth, and then turned around.

"So what are you planning to do now, huh? You've got no clothes, no cash, no car. Nothing to travel with. No idea where you want to go, or how you're going to get there."

"I'm going on a road trip."

"A road trip? To where?"

"To search for nirvana."

"Not that word again, goddamn it."

She said nothing.

"And where is that, exactly?"

 She hesitated for a while, and then said, "I don't know."

"You don't know? You want to visit the restaurant but you don't know where it is?"

"Well, I know the place, I just don't know which one." She reached into the pocket of her coat and pulled out a map. It was filled with markings and circles and red dots. She pointed to a red dot located somewhere in South Carolina. "This might be the restaurant." She pointed to another one, this time in Georgia. "Or this. Or this. I Googled the number of restaurants named Nirvana along east coast and found a few."

"How many exactly are we talking about?"

"Sixteen."

"How sure are you that they would only be in the east?" I asked, getting distracted from my own anger. "What about those that in the west?"