glad about that. You make a fuss, you draw attention to yourself.
The guy in the uniform was right—there couldn’t have been more than a dozen people on the bus when we pulled out. I found a pair of seats all the way at the back. Nobody would want those seats if they had any other choice; the bathroom was just across from them.
I put the duffel on the seat next to me, all the outside pockets facing me, with the strap looped around my wrist. Just habit—who’s going to snatch a bag on a bus?
Probably everybody on that bus had a different reason for going wherever they were headed. I never try and figure out stuff like that—there’s no way to ever find out if I’d guessed right.
It was easier after it got dark. A few people put their lights on—to read, I guess.
The bus smelled a lot like prison. People smells, I mean. Closed in. That kind of smell, it gets into everything—you couldn’t get it out with a barrelful of bleach and a power-washer. The seat was a lot better than anything you could get in prison, but, even cranked way back, you still had to sleep kind of sitting up, so it was a push between that seat and a cell bunk.
When we stopped to change buses, some people bought stuff to eat or a book to read. A couple of them tried to smoke a whole pack of cigarettes while we were waiting.
They changed drivers, too. The bus filled up a little more, but it was still about half empty. Nobody even got close to sitting near me.
I heard people talking to each other. A real skinny girl walked past me to use the toilet. She saw me, ran her tongue around her mouth. I looked out the window.
She was in there a long time. I hoped she wasn’t still poking herself, trying to find a vein. Or nodding out.
A guy walked back toward me. I could see him coming in the reflection from the window. He wanted the toilet, but he was out of luck. He shrugged, like he was used to it.
The skinny girl finally came out. She had to put her hand on the top of the seats to get down the aisle, but she made it.
I felt sorry for the next person to go in there.
Then I must have fallen asleep.
It was bright outside when I opened my eyes. The toilet was what I expected. When I came out, I poured some of this clear stuff over my hands, and rubbed until they were dry. Then I took out one of those tubes for keeping your lips from cracking and used it on each nostril.
I had two of the power bars and a whole bottle of water. I made them last a long time.
It was still light when the bus pulled into the last stop. There were a couple of cabs waiting, but I moved in the opposite direction.
One thing for sure, I didn’t want to hang around the bus station. Places like that, they get bad at night, no matter where you are. And I knew I didn’t look too good—a day and a half on a bus, nobody would. Solly should have told me more about this, I was saying to myself when a horn beeped. A little beep, like, polite, almost. A dark-blue car was at the curb. The window nearest me slid down. I didn’t think that had anything to do with me, so I moved away a little bit … but the car followed along.
I looked in the open window. It was a woman—her face was shadowed, but I could see her legs.
“Get in,” she said. “I’ll take you where you’re going.”
I knew she had to be Rena. No woman goes to a bus station to pick up guys.
“You are a big boy.”
“I’m not any kind of boy.”
She blew smoke at the windshield. “See, that’s one of the differences between us.”
“You and me?”
“Men and women. Call a man a boy, he’s all insulted. Call a woman a girl, she’s all happy and sweet.”
“I never thought about it.”
“Men don’t,” she said, like she was done answering a lot of questions I never asked.
I didn’t look at her real close, either—you don’t do that. The windows of the big car were tinted, so you could look outside without sunglasses or anything. There wasn’t all that much to see.
The car was like a room with the curtains pulled. Every time