After fourteen hours of driving, we pull into Baltimore and see the exit for downtown Baltimore via Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd or via Phelps (I think?). We took Martin Luther King Jr. and found ourselves in some sketchy surroundings, so we hightailed it back to the highway, now woozy with fatigue and desperate to find a place to stop and settle in. It made me think of Episode 10 from The Boondocks where you can't help that notice every street named after Dr. King tends to be--um, how should I say this?--not quite what you'd call upscale. Anyway.
Baltimore has just as many frustrating one-way streets as Montreal. I felt right at home. We find the Holiday Inn, get settled in and call down to the front desk to find out where the nearest Popeye's is, because we've got a craving for fried chicken and beer that cannot be denied. Ali, the lovely sister on the phone took pity on our plight and gave us directions to the nearest one she knew, which happened to be right around the corner from where she lived. So, although we were exhausted, we were also buoyed up by the hunt! We armed ourselves with purses, Ali's directions (but not the road map, stupid me) and all the enthusiasm we could muster, and we hit the road.
Everything was going fine until we got to the 295 looking for the correct exit. We were halfway to Washingtone before we realized that we had been driving much longer than the reputed 15 minutes it would take to get there. We turned around and miraculously found our way back to the hotel a mere hour and fifteen minutes later, now delirious with fatigue and hallucinating (just a tiny bit--if envisioning a bucket of fried chicken and biscuits flying just out of reach and how to bring about the imminent death by soup spoon of a concierge named Ali in technicolour counts as hallucination).
I called back down at the front desk, where Ali had mysteriously decamped, and now I was speaking with Antwone, the gentlemen who checked us in. I asked about the restaurant downstairs (now closed) and whether there were any places nearby that would deliver. There was. I asked for the number. He asked where we were from. I said, Montreal Canada, we were exhausted from trying to find a Popeye's and just wanted to eat and go to sleep. He then asks, "Why didn't y'all ask me?"
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What do you answer to this? Okay: Deep breath. Deep breath. Don't roll your eyes or grit your teeth Tamara. If you can hear a smile over a telephone, surely you can sense when someone is strangling a pillow and wishing it was your neck. Deep breath.
"My bad. Anyway, the bar is open downstairs and I can bring beers back up to my room, right?"
He replied in the affirmative, and then proceeds to tell me about his friend from Montreal. Steph and I are now dizzy with hunger, so I interrupt as nicely as I can and ask about that delivery number and we hang up.
We order two cheesburgers (somehow they are 12-inch burgers, whatever that means), fries and onion rings. That will cost 24 bucks. I die a little inside. We go downstairs to pick up six beers. That costs 30 dollars. I die a little more and trudge back upstairs, 40% dead now.
When the food arrives an hour later (keep in mind, we set out in search of Popeye's around 9:30 pm and it is now midnight) and the death percentage is hovering around 65%, we open the bag and find what looks like two wrapped submarines. Death percentage has shot up to 95% and I'm about to collapse on the floor in tears of frustration.
But behold! Inside the submarine rolls are cheeseburgers, oddly enough. Sure, they're lukewarm, but my onion rings are tasty, and hunger is a marvellous tonic. Food and beers are inhaled and we drop off into sleep after being awake for seventeen hours on three hours of sleep.
I have crazy nightmares about death that night. And so I make a vow: no more greasy food before bedtime. No, really, I'm serious.
The next day, the city looks like a completely different place: less menacing, more open. Fueled with tasty hot coffee, we hit the road, determined to make it to Jonesboro and to resume the hunt for that ever-elusive Chickenus Deepfriedicus...
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