JOAN

Joan

Ultra-fastidious Joan had everything organized, everything planned. Her
hobbies,
personal hygiene, music, studies, and ballet lessons all had their own
little compartments within her brain and they weren't allowed to come
out without permission. "After all," thought Joan, "it just wouldn't do
to have these little parts of my life co-mingling. They might misplace
themselves and then what? Why, it just wouldn't do."

Joan planned on being a hygienist. She had even gone so far as to
memorize every line of every film that was every shown in her 'Health
For Society' class. She had memorized the credits and knew all the
names of the actors, producers, and best boy in each and every
black-and-white film. The sound was always by Glen Glenn Sound.
Always.

There was one little compartment that she rarely opened and when she
did it was always very briefly. She kept her concept of the perfect
man, the perfect family, and the perfect life inside. Joan named this
compartment and had its name inscribed on a brass plaque, which she
hung on its door. The compartment's name was 5A and that was what was
inscribed on the brass plaque because that was its name because that
was what Joan had named it. On one of the rare and brief occasions when
Joan did open the compartment, the perfect man said, "Yes?" "Ah,
nothing. Just checking," said Joan as she closed the door to 5A.
Everything was in order.

But then she met Travis while on a train ride to visit her Aunt, who
lived just outside of
Birmingham. She was busy looking out the window and counting the
telephone poles.
Every time she counted a prime number, she mouthed it to herself but
never spoke it out loud. It was somewhere between 37 and 51 when Travis
took the seat directly across from her. "How do you do that? How can
you ride backwards like that and count
forward at the same time?" Joan was unimpressed. She had heard that
line before.

Travis looked a lot like the perfect man from 5A, but Joan recognized
him for what he was. His 'Buster Brown' image was just a disguise. He
was really a smuggler of ten Cuban cigars that he had hidden inside the
false bottom of a jewelry case before he
had passed through US Customs in Miami.

He would have probably have been caught then and there had it not been
for the woman in front of him causing such a terrible scene about the
US law that forbids the import of hollow-eyed goldfish with gaping
mouths for lewd or immoral purposes. She was taken
away while still protesting that her constitutional right to bear arms
should be extended to cover her goldfish. Some in the crowd agreed with
her, but Travis didn't so they let him pass without inspecting the
jewelry case.

Travis tried to start a conversation using anything that came to his
mind and Joan avoided it by anything that came to her mind. He tried to
tell her about the explosion at the cereal factory where he used to
work, she thought about how the ancient Greek gods could hold the stars
in their hands. He tried to tell her about boxing with cardboard
cut-outs of Sonny Liston, she thought about the acoustic properties of
solid geometric shapes. He tried to tell her that they had met once
before when she was the beautiful girl beside the Ferris wheel, she
thought about the lunar eclipse. He tried to ask her about her family,
she thought about Cole Porter.

Finally, Travis conceded. This was a lost cause as far as he was
concerned. He just sat there and stared at her in silence. Joan resumed
counting the telephone poles, this time in base 2, and without mouthing
the numbers. Travis considered the emergency cord and its awesome
control over potential energy. A few pounds of pull on the cord would
bring tons of rolling stock to a halt, eventually.

Their eyes met, Travis said, "Yes?" in the precise tone as 5A. Perhaps
he was the perfect man after all. Joan and Travis engaged in
conversation while a moth made a futile bid for suicide by repeatedly
assailing a coach lamp. She called him 'Big Boy' and he called her
'Spooge'.

The train entered a tunnel and Joan's pulse quickened. She tried to
breathe normally, to regain her composure. She thought to herself that
perhaps Travis was the perfect man, but then he lit a smuggled cigar
and Joan remembered. She plans on being a hygienist and Travis' words
didn't translate to Glen Glenn Sound.