by Clint Kelly
“What, Bill?” Part of me said I shouldn’t have eaten the entire cinnamon roll, part of me wanted a second one, extra icing. Bill was not helping. I saw Ruthie come out of the kitchen of my mind with that look of “if you put another thousand calories into your mouth, I will pump your stomach with a turkey baster.” I waved Jake away—he was in his “can I get you another” mode—and signaled the new waitress to refill my cup.
And waited.
Bill stared at the red-and-white-checked oilcloth covering our table and absentmindedly smoothed it with the palms of his hands. It didn’t need smoothing. “I know you have every right to take a cab or catch a ride with a coworker, and if I was you, I might do the same thing. But things on the 17 aren’t the same without you. I can’t explain it. It sounds different. The riders are different. The air’s different. Sheesh, I sound like a loon.” Rheumy dark eyes implored me to make the Twilight Zone go away.
I reached across and gave Bill a friendly slap on the arm. “You sound like a man who’s been given a new bus. The chassis creaks in different places. The tranny growls at thirty instead of twenty. Spooky Doomie has morphed into Grinning Greg, and Jimmy the Jinx is taking a few days to soak the rash from his hind end. Hardly signs of the apocalypse.”
Bill studied me carefully. Too carefully. The man drove transit. When had he become my analyst?
Why did I have the sudden crazy urge to tell him about the McCutcheons and Bea’s brush with suicide? And the warning scribbled into the back of one of the seats on his bus, the warning that saved Bea’s life?
“Greta asks about you.”
Greta.
“She’s concerned for you. Pardon my asking, but have you two seen each other outside the bus?”
“I’m old enough to be her old man.” I said it too fast. Too defensively. Idiot.
Bill grinned slyly. “I didn’t ask if you’d spent a week in Monte Carlo together. ’Sides, age doesn’t mean what it used to. She seems like a sweet girl. Great figure. Artsy. You could do worse.”
“My Ruthie’s only been gone four years, Bill.”
“Forty-eight months.”
“You’re looking at a one-woman man, my friend.”
“Roxie thinks you’re hiding.”
“Does she?”
“Yup, and that Ruthie would want you to live, not lock yourself away like Howard Hughes.”
“Roxie’s pretty talkative.”
“Yup, and she wants to know if you’ll go bowl with me tomorrow night, grab a couple beers, act like normal people.”
I looked at my knuckles. They were bone white. “Shouldn’t we keep a little professional separation here?” My voice carried too much menace; Bill was one of the good guys. “You know what I mean. People don’t socialize with their barber, their minister, their bus driver.”
Bill reared back from the table, shoulders slumped under the hurt I’d inflicted. “In that case, Mr. Carter, I’ll tell Greta to mind her own business. And I’ll mind mine. Roxie too. Glad to see you looking well.” He stood up with a screech of chair legs and fumbled for a wallet.
I put out a hand to stop him. “My treat. Bill, listen, I didn’t mean—”
But he threw down a twenty and was gone.
I sat a long time, staring at the little silver bell positioned above the entrance to Crusty J’s. It went on ringing in my head. The waitress came by with the coffeepot a couple of times. I waved her off. Once, Jake silently squeezed my shoulder on his way by. The only thing that registered at the time, though, was the realization that a message could reach me beyond the confines of the 17 after all. This one said, “You, James Carter, are a colossal jerk.”
8
I walked to Kids Safari two days later. It was eight city blocks and it did me good to stretch my sore limbs and start feeling a part of things again. No riding the 17 because I wasn’t ready for any more messages and I wasn’t ready to face Bill. I walked a block east of Third to avoid confrontations with old ghosts.
Last evening, I’d called Greta at the art school. Not for love, Ruthie. For friendship. Perspective. A feminine point of view. After slaying our umpteenth mastodon, we hunter-gatherers get so we can’t feel, lose track of what’s important, start biting our bus drivers when all they want is to express their concern. I miss your gentle hand and laser-sharp insight, Ruth Anne.
After what Greta and I experienced at the Bayview Apartments, I felt I needed to check in with her, assure her I was all right. Thank her for asking.
Her cell went to voicemail.
The person who answered the art-school phone said she had no classes yesterday and was not scheduled to work in the bookstore.
I didn’t even know what kind of art she did. If self-absorption came in a cereal, I’d have a bowl every morning.
As much as I wished for a sensitive soul to hear me out, to help make sense of the senseless, I hesitated to pray for one. What if by some cosmic quirk, the prayer got answered and I discovered that there was a small army riding other buses and receiving other messages? I no more wished to be a member of God’s Special Forces unit than a lone ranger hearing my own dedicated voices. What if I was a peculiar species or a “kind” of human being wired to receive adjustments to the mortal-immortal construct? What if I was a certifiable nut case?
I removed my jacket—the tan nylon zip-up that Ruthie said went with everything. The morning was one of those great-to-be-alive, early-hint-of-fall days that gets the blood pumping. Once I had loosened the kinks in my muscles, I lengthened my stride and took pride in the fact that everything appeared to be in working order. The old tachometer wasn’t exactly pushing red but “sluggish” was far back on the left side of the dial.
The World Bank carnival had pulled up stakes and left town along with its clot of sideshow anarchists. Other than some broken storefronts, minor injuries, and a ruined bus, the one act of serious violence had failed to wreak the kind of evil havoc intended. Including evil against me, an ordinary man now skimming over the sidewalk of a city returning to normal. I laughed, despite all the abnormality in my recent life. What had Chase Lafferty, the antiques dealer, called me? Caped crusader? More like lucky duck.
With no intention of doing so, I turned right at Fourth and James and started jogging west back to Third, the route of the 17. I was still two blocks shy of Kids Safari, the only thought in my head how beautifully the rising sun glinted between the office high rises and how good the morning chill felt against my sweaty brow.
He reveals deep and hidden things; He knows what lies in darkness…
The thought slowed me only a little as I dashed across Third against the wait sign. Good-to-be-alive mornings such as this one were not contained by traffic regulations. Or by sonorous Biblical pronouncements. I turned south again. Halfway down the block, my arches reminded me of how far they had fallen and I slowed.
He reveals deep and hidden things; He knows what lies in darkness…
I hoped it was Ruthie calling. I was in no mood for messages from anyone else. A message-free day, please. If that was a prayer, I hoped it was heard and heeded.
Beyond the bus stop, an ambulance and fire truck flashed warning lights, their crews administering oxygen to a man slumped against the hubcap of an aging Pontiac drawn up to the curb. All too common a sight along Third between James and Main. Flop housing for the poor and indigent drew the alkies and other citizens of the street. The health of many was precarious, at best.
At the bus stop, Tai Chi Man performed calisthenics on one foot, then the next, hinging and unhinging like a high-speed praying mantis. Deep knee bends, stretching, controlled flailing. The decalcifying of ancient bones.
Big Pearl watched it all from her usual vantage point in a shuttered and unused doorway of the flophouse. She weighed four hundred pounds if she was an ounce and spread herself from doorjamb to doorjamb. She appeared to be legless, although it is not impossible that a form of them could be tucked beneath her. I’d never seen her move from there or ever found her
in another location. I didn’t know how she answered the needs of bladder and bowels and appetite. Her creature comforts were a few blankets and articles of clothing, a much-thumbed paperback copy of Shogun, a plastic jug of something from which she periodically sipped, and a plastic sleeve of photos of smiling children about whom she refused to speak but often kissed. She had close-cropped black hair, a crooked nose, a crooked smile, delicate hands for one so large, and a laugh that popped from her rhythmically like bursts from a Roman candle.
“Didja hear the news, Jim-Jim?” Why she calls me that, I also didn’t know.
“What’s that, Pearl?” On the mornings I walked, I tried to stop a few minutes and shoot the breeze with Pearl. I crouched beside her. She saw everything from street level and applied to what she saw a street logic that made me think.
She rearranged herself with the grunt of one whose too-small lungs are compressed against too-great weight. “The Eye Doctor paid old Farley a visit last night. That’s him there, gettin’ stabilized for the ride to the View.”
The View was Harborview Trauma Center, which turned away no one in need of medical care for lack of ability to pay. Many of Pearl’s friends, and Pearl herself, so I hear, were steady customers of the View.
“Now, Pearl, you know the Eye Doctor is just an urban legend.” The evil doctor, so the legend goes, was a sadist who stalked the homeless and left a particularly gruesome calling card. The once-renowned surgeon, driven mad by syphilis, chased his victims into alleyways, jumped onto their backs, rode them to earth, yanked back their heads, and dug out one eyeball with a rusty scalpel to eat in front of the other. “Is Farley missing an eye?” Even I thought I sounded stupid.
Pearl fixed me with one of her own eyes agleam with indignation. “Look at ’im. Look! They’re taping his eyehole now.”
I followed her finger and watched the paramedics tape a patch over the wounded man’s right eye.
“I think he probably just got it jabbed in a fight. You wait here and I’ll go check.” I made to stand. No sooner were the words out of my mouth, however, than I realized that without considerable help, Pearl could do nothing but wait there. She gave no notice of my insensitive flub.
Instead, she straightened her spine and pointed a delicate index finger, countenance decidedly cloudy. “You’ll do no such a thing! That kind of talk only stirs the dark natures, and before you know it, the Eye Doctor hears whose questioning his work, and before you know it the second time, Pearl’s searching around for her missing peeper.”
“OK, Pearl girl, I’ll zip my lip.” I handed her a pack of sugarless gum. Watermelon. Her favorite.
She smelled the pack by running it along her upper lip like a movie cowhand savoring his roll-your-own tobacco. “Good,” she said, opening the pack and offering me a stick. She examined the pack. “The ‘best by’ date says we should have chewed this before Memorial Day.” She popped a stick in her mouth, closed her eyes, chewed, then stretched the gum across her tongue and let me see.
“Sorry about that,” I said. “The mission doesn’t always get donations in a timely fashion.”
“Tell me about it.” She made a face. “I can’t get the taste of chunky, curdled yoghurt out of my mind. Did you know yoghurt could curdle?”
“Did not know that.” I said it with a face to match hers, and we shared a laugh.
Eight bursts escaped her Roman-candle laughter before she said, “Bobby Brew used it to lubricate his bicycle chain and Sammy from Miami said it made great hair gel.” Eight more bursts. I threw in a couple of snorts of my own.
“The 17 been by yet, Pearly?”
She popped her gum. “Bill’s mad at you.”
I sighed. “How so?”
“What’s got him so upset? He pulled right up here at least three times that I remember, opened the door, and asked if I’d seen you. He said someday he’s taking me for a ride in his new bus, no charge. Do you think he will?”
It was suddenly difficult to swallow. “Yes, Pearl, I think Bill means to do just that. He’s a good man.”
“You bet he is, and here he comes so you can tell him so.” She pointed to the approaching 17 angling toward the curb. “And tell him Pearl is ready for her ride.”
I suddenly became real busy with my cuticles, but the 17, door wide, didn’t move on.
“You comin’ or thumbin’?” Bill scowled. “I’m three minutes behind as is.”
I climbed in and swiped my monthly pass. I hesitated in case he had more to say, but was met with his stony silence and the door snapping closed.
I almost turned back and asked to get off.
The bus felt cold, as if the heat was off to match Bill’s mood.
Stupid to trade the sunny day out there for the icicles in here.
I went to an empty seat at the far back of the bus just ahead of a large woman in dreads, headphones, and faded pink stretch pants.
Her ice-blue T-shirt said “Fornication Is a Team Sport” across a braless and impossibly generous bosom. She bopped to the beat of whatever streamed from the headphones and pointed at an Abercrombie & Fitch billboard seven stories above the street where a shirtless and muscled young man, hands thrust deep into the pockets of off-the-hip jeans, made suggestive eye contact. “Who-whee,” the woman spoke loudly to no one in particular, “that is some eye candy!” She licked highly glossed lips. “Umm, umm, wouldn’t I like a taste of that sweet white sugar!” She clicked many-ringed fingers and moved in place across the dance floor of her mind.
Bill and the 17 lurched into traffic.
At Third and Main, Bill called out, “International District, historic Chinatown, King Street Station!” No one pulled the bell to stop, but a knot of people waited on the corner and Bill pulled to the curb to take them on.
I tensed at the four teens who slouched down the aisle, ball caps sideways or backwards, too-big pants riding obscenely low, frank stares challenging anyone to look their way. They talked profanity-laced smack and slammed into the seats ahead and beside mine.
The 17 didn’t move. “Gentlemen who just entered the bus, I’ll thank you not to use that kind of language,” Bill boomed, eyes of warning fixed on the rearview mirror that gave him a sweeping view of the interior of the 17.
The boys—for they couldn’t have been older than sixteen or seventeen—ignored the warning and let loose with a barrage of nasty words, talking rudely about Wilson’s attempted conquest of Marko’s sister.
In a flash, Bill was out of his seat and halfway down the aisle. He came to a stop one row in front of the teens, forearms resting on opposite seats, nostrils flaring, face as grim as death.
The boys stopped talking. Their smirks remained.
“I said no swearing on my bus!” Bill looked as if it was all he could do not to reach out and knock heads. “I hear one more cuss word and you’re off this bus for a week!”
The tallest of the boys rolled his eyes and grinned at his buddies. “Sure, warden, like you could enforce that. This is public transportation and we are the bleepin’ public. But so we don’t sit here the rest of the day, we’ll watch our mouths long as you mind the driving. Sound good?”
Bill’s ears turned red. I saw the gears turning in his mind. He was old school and no punk kid should get away disrespecting an adult. “Listen, you little—”
“Bill,” I interrupted. “I think our friends here know it’s your job to keep things smooth on your bus. We appreciate the job you do. We’ll watch our mouths from here on. Sorry for the misunderstanding.” My eyes said the sooner you get this crate moving, the sooner these guys get off at their stop. Don’t make it worse.
Thank goodness, Bill decided to pick a different battle. He turned heel, muttering something about pseudo-heroes, and stomped back to the driver’s cage.
I hoped the teens wouldn’t make further snide comments within Bill’s hearing and they didn’t.
But in seconds, the tall kid fixed me with a sneer. “So who made you king of the world? You better keep yo�
� friend there on a shorter leash. He’s on a shortcut to the grave, know what I mean?”
His words startled me. “Not exactly.”
“It’s simple, genius,” the kid said, nodding to each of his grinning sidekicks. “Old fool like that could have himself a heart attack over something so small. Hear me?”
He was a good-looking kid, skin the color of maple syrup, an easy, athletic flow to his movements. His eyes, though, jumped erratically, flicking left, right, his hands never still. Probably hopped up on something. Unpredictable. Not firing in proper sequential order. Dangerous.
“I hear you. It might be just as bad to disregard common courtesy and make people uncomfortable. We all want to feel safe and downtown isn’t always that way.”
I thought I had him for just a second before he went skating off again.
“No lectures, Papa John. I want lectures, I can go drag my ol’ man out of whatever bar he’s in, wind him up with a bottle o’ booze, and let him go. You just tell yo’ friend that threatening me ain’t the wise road. Tell him a hot summer’s comin’ and it’s heart-attack season. You tell him Tsunami said bite his tongue before someone does it for him.”
The look he gave me before turning back to his outriders, flirting now with the woman in dreads, was the hardest look I ever hope to see. Dark. Piercing. Malevolent.
Another block and the Space Needle rose like a torch above the city.
Tsunami slapped his posse to attention. “You know what that Needle is, man,” he said, pointing out the window at Seattle’s most famous icon. “That is one wicked syringe. It’s like a beacon that attracts heroin addicts from all over.” His chums soaked in the wisdom of the metaphor. “It’s the symbol of their hunger for H. This city’s seriously messed up. It be darker even than Chicago, man.”
When we got to my stop, I paused before exiting the 17. “Bill, don’t shut me out. I’m an idiot and I’m sorry for shooting off my mouth the other night. I’d like to invite you and Roxie over for dinner on Sunday. Nothing special, but I make a pretty good meatloaf. Whatta ya say?”