4.

The first year of college had come to an end. There were some victories. I had made the LSU football team as a walk-on defensive back. I had gotten a good bit of playing time in the intrasquad scrimmage, the first and last time I would ever play in Tiger Stadium, a.k.a. ‘Death Valley.’ I had broken up two passes that I could have intercepted and I had gotten my bell good and rung, so good in fact that my neck would possess the muscular recall for years. I’d done okay in my Honors class, slogging through the Middle Ages, engaging Born Again’s in debate in which they found themselves rejecting Christ himself for his humble origins. I had also lied, cheated and stolen, collecting a cornucopia of bad karma. Somehow I had managed to retain the love of JW through the infidelities and thefts, through the dip in my reputation, through my rejections and failures. None of this had come without a price. LSU had informed me that I wouldn’t be welcomed back in the fall.

So I packed my shit and put it on the curb in front of my dormitory. Wayne pulled up in the Honeybee and I loaded it with clothes I didn’t need, books I didn’t need, stuff that would have served me better if I’d set it on fire and walked away. I was on all the wrong paths back then but the most devastating was the need to acquire cool stuff. Wayne didn’t care. He had his crappy jeans and a tight-t-shirt across that barrel chest. He laughed at the thought that we’d be packing two more people and their gear into his compact car.

Again, this was me, overextending, telling a friend we had room, ignoring the mountain of shit that JW had. When she heard I’d offered Roger a ride back to New Orleans, her mouth dropped.

“You shouldn’t have done that,” she said. “We’ll never get all of our stuff in Wayne’s little car.”

Ah, but we did. Wayne took it as his personal mission to fit luggage and boom boxes and curling irons and extra blankets, shoes galore and three human beings besides himself into that tiny car.

“Heh, heh,” he said as we jumped on the Interstate for the hour drive to the Big Easy. Roger was wedged in the backseat like a hidden bottle of booze. JW was on my lap with bags piled in front of us blocking half the windshield as well as the passenger window. Wayne navigated using one mirror and his mother wits. Of course we survived. Hell, we thrived on those pressure situations. That was Wayne, always ready to save the day.

I’m sure he hated me, to tell the truth. I was decent enough to him but the way I treated JW made his bile rise. It had to. She was as lovely as a rose, smart and gentle and ready to laugh. She exuded sensuality, grace and charm. She was way too good for me and Wayne knew it. He accompanied me on many of my forays through New Orleans to other girls’ houses. He remarked favorably on my Playboy status, a girl at school and a slew of girls back home. I must have thought I was a trained dick back then. Through it all Wayne just smiled and gave me a ride. But he loved JW. It had come right out in the open last semester. Once JW found out about me and the Ghetto Girl she held nothing back. She told me about how she’d kissed Wayne in her dorm room the day she moved to Baton Rouge. When I confronted him about it he looked me square in the face and said, “I love her.”

“Good, “I said. “She needs a lot of people to love her. I can’t do it alone.”