by Tabitha Vohn
***
She rushed to the bus station after dumping his car off around the corner from his studio, locking his keys inside. The pain from crying in her injured eye had been excruciating, and it had taken her a good ten, fifteen minutes of driving near ninety to make her realize that she had to slow down and think and be smart about this. She had nothing except for her purse, which she had slammed onto the counter by the door, before, and had been conscious enough to grab along with his keys on her way out the door. She had her credit card and her bank accounts which consisted of the remains of her latest book release sales. Mentally, she calculated how much she had saved; it would be enough to live off of for a while. So she ditched his car, thinking about how stupid it was to have taken it in the first place; how all he would have to do is call the cops and track her down. She parked it and walked through the alley to the back of his studio. They had just gotten back from touring; no one would be there. She let herself in the back entrance using his key, punched in the passcode that he had given her. She moved with the meticulous steps of a horror movie starlet, listening for every rustling pipe, every phantom footfall. She let herself into the corner john and switched on the light.
The sight of her bloodied reflection sent up a fresh batch of cries and she stifled them in her soiled, paper-thin cardigan sleeve that was now ruined and torn. Going to work, she soaped her arms and face and patted them down with paper towels. Most of the bleeding had already stopped; it was just a matter of blotting away what had dried. She dug the tweezers out of her purse and plucked out the few pieces of broken glass that were still fixed in her skin, and re-cleaned them as best she could. The damage to her eye was impossible to mask, though. It was so bloodshot she could barely see through it, and it seemed as though her eyeball had literally been bruised. With a shaking hand, she covered her good eye: she could see at least, barely. She would have to have a doctor examine it, once she made it out of the city. The only thing on her mind was getting away. She fixated on it with survivalist intensity, like a hunted mark or an animal in shock, and she was in shock, after all.
Having satisfied herself that her injuries were peculiar but not arresting, she let herself out the way she had come, but not before checking the windows in the front of the studio, just to be sure no one had discovered her there. She looked around the empty space-silent, peaceful, a room robbed of life after the guests had gone home- she saw every chair she had sat in, every object she had touched. Her heart ached with the gravity of it, just for a moment, and then she was gone, and the walls hushed their dim echoes of memory again.
Tabitha walked five blocks to the bus station, being careful to stay amongst crowds of passersby, and ducking down back alleys and cross-streets when necessary. She stopped at a touristy, hippie store; the kind that sold incense and tie-dyed sundresses. She bought a Grateful Dead t-shirt, a newsboy cap, and a different pair of sunglasses, small and geometric, a military jacket, and a one-shoulder bag; things she would never normally wear. She paid the cashier and changed in the dressing room. She tucked her abundant hair into the cap, replaced her sunglasses with the new ones, and dumped the contents of her purse into the bag. On the way out, she dumped the old purse and her tattered sweater into the trash.
She bought a loud, purple colored lipstick from a street vendor, and put it on in the bus station restroom after purchasing her ticket. She gave her reflection a long study and, thankfully, didn’t recognize herself. She could be any punk kid off the street, taking a bus to nowhere. She had a twenty minute wait for the bus that would take her north. Her instinct was to run towards family; it was the one thing about her he never asked and therefore didn’t know. Her blood was beginning to slow and calm ever so slightly. She bought a bottle of water and a Jane magazine for the ride. She stood by the terminal, watching in all directions and listening, constantly, to the myriad of voices the swarmed around her in a drowsy cloud.
Finally, the departure screen showed that her bus was boarding. She picked up her bag and was walking in line when she noticed a familiar green Cadillac rushing down a nearby street. James’ car. She saw the car park, not far from the station. James jumped out while a shadowy figure remained slumped in the passenger seat. Suddenly, the fight rose in her veins again and her mind raced with a thousand scenarios. The bus was not boarding fast enough. There were only two buses boarding; it was only a matter of time before he would search hers out. Her eyes darted around, around the platform. She saw a skater kid leaning against the newsstand reading a comic book, his board propped against the wall.
“Hey,” she said to the kid, “I’ll give you ten bucks if you stand in line with me.”
“For real?”
“Yeah.”
She pulled him by the shirtsleeve into the line.
“Hey, what about my board?”
“You’re not getting on the bus, you’re just seeing me off. Your board’ll be fine,” she answered, digging in her bag for ten bucks.
“Oh, okay. Cool.”
She saw a tall halo of black coming from the shops behind. She forced herself to stare straight ahead, to lean a little casually into the boy. When it was her turn to board, she turned and hugged him with one arm, placing the ten dollars in his hand with the other.
“Now walk away and wave, and don’t look at the money, got it?”
She boarded and went to the back of the bus. The boy waved and walked away with a nonchalant stride. He picked up his board and headed down the street to the bookshop to buy more comics.
Tabitha eyed the crowd still boarding the bus. She saw James not ten feet away, searching frantically. Shit, she thought, her nerves battling, threatening to unravel. She took out the magazine and pretended to read an article on child brides. No, really read it. Don’t try and act casual, be cool.
The passengers were all boarded, and the bus was about to pull away when, suddenly, James banged on the door of the bus and stepped aboard. Tabitha folded the magazine shut, still in her hands, and pretended to be mildly interested like the rest of the group.
“You have a ticket, sir,” the driver asked.
“No, I don’t. I just need to see if someone’s here.”
“Sir, if you do not have a ticket for this bus, then I suggest you turn yourself around and…”
“Tabs,” James said over the driver, “are you in here? Tabs, I need to know if you’re ok. He said there was an accident. He sent me to find you. Tabs, he’s really frantic...”
“Mister, you are going to get off my bus, right now,” the driver said, rising up from his seat.
The other passengers were glancing around, sort of confused, more annoyed than interested. No one wanted to be held up by some lovers’ spat. The driver had James by the arm now and was pushing him down the steps.
“Tabs,” he shouted, “we just need to know you’re ok. Tabs?”
“Look man, you don’t even know if your girl’s on this bus, and if she is, she’s answered you. Now go, before I get security.”
The driver secured the door and the bus pulled away. Tabitha felt the rumble of the motor beneath her, disbelieving that she was actually moving away from the nightmare afternoon that was shrouded in mist, heavy as a dream or a drug, unreal in its harshness and its unforgiving. The fear that she had felt for a dear friend, wanting nothing more than to be far, far away. The moment the bus pulled from the terminal, she felt instant sadness for James, whom she would never say goodbye to. As the bus pulled around the station, she realized her nails were aching fiercely. She saw her hands in claws, gripping the underside of her seat. She tucked them into her lap with slow, mechanical movements, feeling that somehow they were not her hands but someone else’s.
The bus stopped at a light, not one block from the station. Across the way, she saw two men talking by a green car. The taller one was shaking his head, making slow, methodical gestures with his hands. The other one was holding a bloodied towel to his arm, and was throwing up the injured arm in wild, angr
y waves, running his hand over his eyes and hair with desperation, still trying to hold the towel in place. The light turned and the bus moved on, leaving the two figures behind, wordless and forlorn beside a green Cadillac.
Tabitha did not realize that she was crying until the older woman in the seat across from her handed her a wad of Kleenex. She felt distended, as if her heart was breaking away from its core. Heathcliff had stood on a rocky cliff, pronouncing to the world, “I cannot live without my life; I cannot live without my soul”, and Catherine asked the night winds, “Why am I so changed?”
“You did the right thing,” the old woman said to her from across the seat. “Accidents, accidents-they all say ‘It was an accident’. You’re a smart girl. You get away. Start over.”
Tabs offered the woman a nod, and turned her eyes to the window, watching the world roll by in syrupy drizzles of color. In less than 24 hours, she would be arriving in a small, northwestern town where a local painter with waist length hair and sleeve tattoos would give her a ride deep into the woods on unmarked roads, roads only a few locals knew because they bought produce or the goods that the “community” proffered. They would park and walk the last three miles on trails where motor vehicles weren’t passable. Tabitha would be introduced to Amelia as “Paul’s sister”, and she would spend the night on a stranger’s cot, stifling exhausted sobs into a patchwork quilt that smelled of patchouli and clove