If you edited a newspaper and your most boring writer came in and asked for six months off to drive around the country, wouldn't you put your head to the side like you were considering it, and secretly think, Yes, there is a God. After he'd ambled out of the office, you'd be cackling madly like Insp. Clouseau's supervisor, Dreyfuss, and breaking out the hard stuff. He thinks this is a cute remark. He has the personality of a bag of sand.
Life is good.
When he needs to go to the bathroom, he tells us. The cooler goes behind the front seat, beside the IKEA picnic gear. The bag with the Atlantic Canada maps, the CAA books and accommodations books and all the spare pens, goes on the floor in front of the passenger seat, the notebook wedged between the seat and the centre tapes compartment, a pen clipped onto the spirals. Oh god, oh god, oh god, oh god, I know people like this. They order fries, and sometimes the fries aren't as good as other fries they've had, and they talk about that.