Just pinged, I cruise up to a popular corner of Bourbon Street in the early morning hours of a jam-packed fall Saturday night. Though it’s approaching three AM, Bourbon Street is still utterly slammed with people, ten abreast across the asphalt, blocked to car traffic save for the intersections. Police cruisers are camped at every corner, mostly as a show of force. When I pull up, my riders, two young women, are chatting flirtatiously with this crossing’s appointed cops.

I confirm the name of the young woman who called the Uber and she and her friend pile in, laughing and waving goodbye to the police, eyelids aflutter. One of the officers sports a rueful grin, then shakes his head slowly, returning his eyes to the clattering madness of inebriated revelers I’m about to weave through.

“We’ve got at least a couple of stops if that’s okay, hon,” the rider informs me.

“No problem,” I respond, noting that the first destination is several miles away and the surge on this fare is nearly 3x. “No problem at all.” I will always do multiple stops for people if they ask, but it sure sweetens the deal to be getting almost three bucks a mile for the privilege.

The rider and her friend immediately revert their attention to each other, talking mile-a- minute, inhabiting the space of long-running besties who wouldn’t roll their eyes at said description. They are looking into each other’s eyes when they talk across the back seat, not staring out the window or mostly forward like so many riders in dialogue.

“Can you believe him? ‘Too pretty for Tinder,’ my God. I mean, I wish. You should see some of these guys I’ve been hooking up with.”

“Oh really?”

“I mean, not lately. It’s just so hard, you know? These guys on Tinder are just the worst. The. Worst. I’m telling you.”

“Tell me about it. That one guy was kind of cute tonight.”

“Which one? The one at the bar? Or at the other bar?”

“I was talking about the cop!”

“Oh. Him. Wasn’t he married?”

“So?”

“So!”

They fall to laughing and discussing other gentlemen I didn’t see that night and I turn my attention forward, catching drifts of their banter. They seem tipsy at worst, just enough alcohol to make them gush a little more but not really put them out of sorts. An impressive accomplishment for apparently being out for six or eight hours on New Orleans’ most notorious street.

We reach the friend’s house, earlier noted as the first stop, and it’s somewhere in Lakeview. Lakeview is where the Katrina flooding started before the levees broke in the Lower Ninth Ward and diverted most of the water into that area. Katrina’s flooding actually came from the lake (Lake Pontchartrain), not the Mississippi River as many people (including myself before I moved here) assume. We are surrounded by water on pretty much all sides in this little sub- sea-level basin. A popular snarky T-shirt in post-flood New Orleans reads “The Army Corps of Engineers: Putting the Lake in Lakeview.” Many of the roads up here look like they were hit with a 7.0 San Andreas earthquake not five minutes prior. They are better suited to springy-tired Mars Rovers than conventional cars and trucks.

“So, are we doing brunch tomorrow?”

“Maybe at like four.”

“Yeah, I’m tired. But kinda hungry. You sure you don’t want to go out now?”

“Can’t. I am dead. You can crash here though.”

“No, I wanna go home.”

“Home home? Or to your parents’?”

“Home home.”

“Really?”

“I just sleep better there. And they have her tonight.”

“Okay, whatever you say. It’s so far, though.”

“So tomorrow?”

“Text me when you wake up.”

“Okay, hon. Love ya. See you tomorrow.”

“Bye!”

The conversation plays out over a half-open back door, the aperture of which narrows slowly near the head of the friend as she tries to withdraw from the talk. On the closing note of “Bye,” the door slams and I ask the remaining rider where we’re headed.

“Would you mind, I mean, really, would it be too inconvenient to go to City Diner? Do you know where that’s at? I’ll buy you a pancake!”

I smile. “I’m happy to take you there. I can find out where it is, one second. And I’m good.”

“You sure? These are the best pancakes.”

“Really, I’m good. Had a big dinner. Thank you though.”

“Dinner?! What was that, like ten hours ago! Come on, let me buy you a pancake.”

I finish fiddling with my phone and my standard British accented Waze voice declares “Let’s go! Drive safely. In half a mile, turn left on Paris Avenue.”

“All right, got it,” I say. “City Diner in Metairie, right?”

“Yeah, that’s it. And then it’ll just be a few miles down the road to my place. Oh I can’t wait till you see this pancake! They’re huge. You’ll be eating on it for like a week.”

“I really don’t need –”

“Just try it.”

“Fine. One pancake.”

“You only need one. Trust me.”

She calls in the order, shrimp and grits, an omelet, and a single pancake. She cups the phone to ask if I want chocolate chips.

“I’m good, thanks. Just plain is fine.”

A minute or so goes by, we merge onto the freeway.

“Man, I am so messed up,” she says, half to me, half to the chair in front of her.

“Had a lot tonight?”

“No, not even that. Like, messed up messed up. Like I’m a messed up person.”

“We’ve all got issues. I doubt yours are that bad.”

“No, really. I just keep hooking up with these guys. And like I don’t even like them. Like, I don’t even know. I don’t know what I’m looking for from them. You know?”

“Fair enough.”

“And I should stop. Because I have my daughter to think about. I really need to think about her and her future.”

“How old is she?”

“Four.”

I am, admittedly, taken aback that she has a four-year-old. I’d put her at about 22, 23 years old. Not that people don’t have kids at much younger ages than 18 every day. “Cool,” I say.

“Yeah. She’s crazy.”

“How so?”

“She’s just so crazy. She says the craziest things.  I don’t even know.  She’s got a mind of her own, you know? Like she’s just her own person. But I can’t keep up with her. She has so much energy and she keeps wanting to do things and learn about everything.”

“That’s good.”

“Yeah. Yeah, it’s real good. She’s the best. But crazy! She’s so crazy.”

“So your parents help out a bit?”

“Yeah, they’re amazing. She’s there right now. They take care of her a lot. So I can see these guys, my God. I don’t know what’s wrong with me. And I sleep better at home just by myself. It’s hard lately.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

I let the silence breathe for a bit. I know she wants to say something more, but I also know I am just a stranger and it is not my place to push it. Even as a friend, this would be a delicate moment between deciding to reveal something personal and not. And while it’s easier with a stranger, it’s also harder.

“I just miss her dad.”

“Yeah.”

“I miss him so much.”

“Yeah. What happened?”

A deep inhale. “He passed.”

“Oh, I’m so sorry.”

“Yeah. Me too.”

“That must be hard.”

“It’s impossible. It’s killing me.”

“Wow. I can’t even imagine.”

“And like,” a little catch of a breath, the verge of that pre-crying inhale, “she doesn’t even remember him. You know? She’s not going to remember him.”

“Yeah. Wow.”

“She’s not going to remember him and there’s no one she can call daddy and my parents are great and all but oh my God I don’t mean to dump this all on you, you’re being so nice—”

“It’s okay. I’m happy to listen.”

“Well okay, sure, I’ll buy you that pancake. You’re going to eat on it for a week, I tell you.” She’s regaining her composure, the one she had after talking to the police. “And these guys aren’t him. You know? They aren’t him and they won’t bring him back and I just miss him so much.”

“Yeah, that’s understandable.”

“And I keep them away from her, you know. I don’t want her to remember them instead. But my parents are great and they help so much but I just feel so alone. You know? And like I don’t even know what I’m looking for. But she’s crazy, my daughter. She’s everything to me. But I can’t keep up with her. You know?”

“That’s great that you have her, at least.”

“Yeah. It is. Oh, just up here on the left.”

The lights of City Diner, an establishment I’ve never seen before, are indeed up on the left, nestled amongst several big-box hotel chains just off an exit in the New Orleans suburb of Metairie. It looks like a Denny’s ate another Denny’s and replaced that misshapen yellow logo with a fleur-de-lis. I recall the Denny’s hexagon welcoming me to many of my own late-night exploits, a lifetime prior, when I was this woman’s age.

“You better be getting excited for this pancake. You’ll be eating on it for like a week.”

I wait in the car as she bounces out into the hot September air, then into the diner as a guy holds the door for her. The air conditioner whirs in the sudden silence, the idling engine clicking into a slightly different rhythm, then settling to something quieter. I can’t imagine how good a pancake would have to be for me to want to spend a week eating it. I figure I’ll try to scarf it down before the next ride, or even before this one ends. I wonder if I’m sufficiently hungry for this task.

She emerges five minutes later, carrying a standard large doggie-bag and a pizza box. I try to recall if she ordered a pizza, but I’m certain she didn’t. I would be surprised if the place sells pizza. She knocks on the front passenger window.

I roll it down. She slides the box through the window and onto the seat beside me. It barely fits, both through the window or on the seat. It is, without question, the largest pizza box I have ever seen.

“What’s that?”

She is grinning irresistibly. “Your pancake!”

“My—” I open the box lid skeptically. It contains, precisely, one pancake. The diameter, roughly, of a car tire. It is the thickness of a moderately intriguing novel. “Um.”

“I told you you’d be eating on it for like a week.” “You said one pancake!”

“It is one pancake.”

“Wow. Where am I going to put this?”

“Do you need butter too?”

“Does it come in a bucket?”

She laughs, melodiously, in a way that feels slightly forced. “No, just those little plastic thingies.”

“I’m good. Just plain will be fine.”

“Try it!”

I flip the box lid up just enough so it sits ajar, warm sugary perfume emanating from the gap. I tear off a piece and taste it. It’s amazing.

“Good, huh?”

“Amazing.”

“I told you,” she almost squeals. “Oh, let me put in the next stop.”

“You can just tell me.”

“Oh, okay.” She tells me the address, a few miles down the road.  “Thanks!”

“No problem. Thanks for this pancake! I’m going to have to put it in the trunk.”

“It’ll keep. It’s good, right? You’re going to be eating on it for like a week.”

Five days later, I finished the last of the pancake. It was still delicious, though hardened a little from time spent in the fridge. It took up a whole shelf and I was kind of relieved to have finished it just to clear up the space. But in the weeks after, every time I opened the fridge door, I missed seeing the ridiculous City Diner pizza box and the little bits of sweetness it brought back to mind.

– Storey Clayton