Chapter 13

Travis switched cars with his mother, despite his father's protest over how he mishandled cars, trucks, and anything of value. As he made his way across the width of Michigan, Anya had crawled into the back seat of the sedan and promptly had fallen asleep. She didn't even stir when he pulled off of the interstate to fill up the gas tank.

He grabbed a couple of bottles of juice from the little store, paid the bill and slid back behind the steering wheel. As he put the car into gear, he noticed his friend and chummy hallucination Jesus had slipped into the passenger seat.

"I'm not accustomed to picking up hitch-hikers," Travis remarked as he put the car in gear and pulled back into traffic.

"Why is it that whenever you want to talk to me, you're cranky? It's not my fault that you spent half the night shtupping the lady," Jesus gently rebuked him.

"Put your seat belt on; it's not safe," Travis ordered, ignoring the comment.

"I'm already dead. Do you plan on killing me again?" Jesus laughed.

"Don't tempt me. I'm a good driver, no matter what my father says," Travis tossed back.

"Do you mean that?" Jesus turned serious, "no matter what your father says."

Travis took a moment to process the question behind the question, "There is a part of me that still wants his approval; that wants him to come out and say point blank, 'I'm proud of you'. Intellectually,,, I know that scenario will never come to pass and that he will never say those words to me."

Jesus repeated after him, "Intellectually."

Travis got defensive and started gesturing with his right hand as he spoke, "I don't have the right words but I know what I'm trying to say. I accept that I will never hear those words from my father but I still want to hear them anyway. At this time, I'm willing to settle for his bitchy acquiescence for all the work I've done."

"But it's still about you," Jesus remarked putting 'you' in quotations marks with his fingers.

"Could you be anymore annoying if you tried," Travis commented with a slight chuckle. "It's not about me, this is dad's problem. He isn't going to change much. He means well but he is difficult, mean, nasty, rude and horrible to be around a lot of the time. Even Anya called him a barbarian."

"However, you found a way to work with the barbarian," Jesus pointed out as he rifled through the glove compartment and withdrew an old, unremembered tootsie roll. The wax paper had melded to the candy and he had to use his nails to peel off the tidbits of paper that clung to it. Looking stale and discolored, he popped the previously chewy into his mouth and began carefully masticating it.

"That candy is disgusting," Travis said.

"You'll never know; you can't eat this crap anymore," Jesus twittered between rolling motions of his jaw, "there is something about an old, stale tootsie roll that just brings out the nostalgia in a fellow."

"The Romans never had tootsie rolls," Travis argued with clear logic.

"Oops," his companion admitted, "my bad."

Jesus swallowed his tootsie roll ridding himself of the contradiction and wound up for his next subject, "What about Anya? Do you love her?"

"Jesus!" Travis blurted, "I've known her, what, maybe a week? My mom was already asking my intentions and acting like she was planning the wedding. I bet you talked to my mother, too."

"Don't use my name in vain," Jesus lectured.

"You're dead."

"Don't think that you can use that against me. Besides you're trying to change the subject," his passenger accused him.

Travis started to correct who changed the subject, but decided that the point wasn't worth arguing. He sweated over the Anya conundrum for awhile before trying to speak, "I'm infatuated with her. She does incredible things to me with her body and when she gives me her full attention, I simply melt into a puddle of mush. I'll do almost anything in the world to get her approval or to make her laugh."