What it's like to hang with Kerri

As the light glowed through the hotel curtains, Kerri said from the other bed, “Good morning sunshine.”
“Good morning, rainwater,” I said.
“How you feeling?” she said.
“Eh. 46 percent.”
“I had a horrible dream,” she said. “I woke up shivering. Can I tell you? I was pregnant and a demon was trying to kill my baby. Finally, the door was about to open up and I'd see who the demon was, and I woke up.”
“Who's the demon!” I cried. “Go back to sleep!”
“I know!”

We got going quickly, by now knowing that the people coming to pick us up would arrive 20 minutes earlier than they said they would.
“Chris made a major trade on fantasy baseball today,” Kerri said. She was not a sports fan, but it was fun to see her enjoy sharing a team with her funny 23-year-old brother.
“Who did he trade?” I said.
“I can't say,” she said.
“Why not?”
“I can't remember,” she said.
“You're not at liberty to remember?”
“That's correct,” she said. “I have a question. Is repatriation covered on our international teacher cards?”
“Of remains?”
“Kinda grim, I know,” she said.
“Don't die," I said. "If you do, I'll carry your ashes." I acted out a customs guy asking me if I had anything to declare. I wept: “Kerri.”
“That’s nice,” she said. “I want you to be nice to me.”
“I am!”
“4 times out of 10?” she said.
“I'm 7 out of 10.”
“4,” she said.
“And you?”
“I'm sweet 5 and a half,” she said.
“Ha. Your warped vision of the world,” I said. “You see the world through a reflection in a spoon.”
“You see it through a reflection in a fork,” she said, and burst out laughing.
“Ridiculous as usual.”



On the ride, Kerri talked about her friend Bill’s brother, who dropped out of high school with one term to go. He had an A average. He hasn't worked since, and sits in the house watching TV. His mother supports him.
“He's never been diagnosed, but everyone thinks he has agoraphobia,” Kerri said.
“Yeah,” I said. “If he never leaves the house, my mother would diagnose that one, easy.”
“He's dating someone with agoraphobia.”
“How do they ever meet?” I said.
“Under the cover of night, in trenchcoats, they walk her dog together.”
“That’s sweet. Good for him.”

We drove around sunny and crowded downtown Shanghai after delivering the old woman's huge red suitcase to her daughter, and getting Kerri’s.
“It seems you didn't kill her mother,’ I said.
“I feel better now, cause I could apologize to her face,” said Kerri.
Mr. Fan’s driver drove us past where an older village was being razed. This place was turning into NY. Fortunately, I like NY.
Driving back south, I thought about my ex-girlfriend back in Queens. No one to cuddle, no one to kiss here. As the cars on the highway near Hangzhou went past and Madonna’s “What it Feels Like For a Girl” played in my earphones, I looked for a sign. Did I love my Queens girl? Was this it, the thing my grandfather had told me about? I looked into the faces of people in other cars, thinking “Not one of you has had my life,” but it was no different from how I feel at home. Alienation. Being an actual alien here makes these feelings weaker, explains them. Of course I feel cocky half the time here, and at home. All I needed was a little sleep, and I felt it coming as the wind hit my face and made my hair dance wildly like a scientist’s, as Coldplay’s song “The Scientist” came on in my earphones.
Kerri interrupted my reverie to admit she'd swallowed a mouthful of Scope, since she had nowhere to spit.
“All to freshen your breath?” I said.
“I didn't want to gross you out,” she said.
“You could have just spit it into the water bottle.”
“This was an hour ago,” she said.
“You're going to go into kidney failure,” I said, and stared out the window again.
Kerri kept talking to me as I listened to a love song in my headphones. I wished she'd put on hers. I said, “I think there's a good song playing on your headphones right now.”
“It's come to that already?” she said, and smiled. It’s nice when you are comfortable with a person enough to tell them to shut up.

As we drove into a tunnel, I said, “I hope cement tiles don't fall on us,” since a woman had just been crushed that way in our beloved Boston. Kerri said, “It's not the Big Dig but still I feel a little intrepidation.”
For one hour and a half I debated whether to tell this educated woman she'd used the wrong word, since I'd already corrected her pronunciation of “Taoism” a little before.
“Did you rub every greasy part of your body on these?” I said, putting on her glasses.
“What?” she said.
“You can't see through them at all. There's a wax on them.”
“They were on my head,” she said.
“I think I just burst a blood vessel in my eye,” I said, handing them back.
“That's not good,” she said.
“Don't worry about it.”
“Sounds bad,” she said.
“Don't get your panties in a bunch,” I said.
“Who says I'm wearing any?”
I rolled my eyes, which made the blood vessel hurt even worse.