The Bus of Dreams

by Mary Morris

  Pete came over with a case of Cokes wrapped in a red ribbon. “Just thought I’d make it up to you for the change in summer plans. This should carry you through.” He popped one open with his teeth. Pete had a million ways of opening a bottle of Coke. He could do it with a dime; he could twist it on the edge of almost any piece of furniture. He could even crack the lip of the glass so that no glass would go in. He sat down at the kitchen table, across the room from her, and fanned himself with an old magazine.

  “I’m upset,” Sally said.

  “Look, honey”—Pete leaned back in the chair—“I know I’ve disappointed you, but Jaspar’s still not ready to have a new mother. We’ve got to think about the future.”

  Sally had heard this many times in the past year. Jaspar had agreed to tell his father when he was ready to meet Sally, and so far Jaspar wasn’t ready. Sally pulled her chair near him and drank from his Coke. “Oh, I understand your predicament.” She tried to decide if she really did understand, but then pushed that thought away. “But I just dread having to deal with Mr. Petrocelli.”

  She pointed to the old air conditioner. Mr. Petrocelli had given Sally a hard time before. He’d tried to evict her when Katmandu had gotten on the roof. He came screaming into her apartment once when her neighbor’s stereo was on, thinking it was hers. She didn’t think she could deal with Mr. Petrocelli. But she was pretty sure she could deal with Pete.

  Sally had met Pete on a sweltering day at Jones Beach. He’d just separated from his wife and was having one of his first outings with a group of friends. They’d brought a huge cooler of Cokes and beers. While Sally and her friend Tracy, who taught exercise classes at the TrimTime Health Club, put their toes in the oily water, she had noticed Pete looking at her, and she’d looked at him.

  Sally had often wondered how things happen between people. Pete sat on his towel, drinking a beer, and the next thing she knew he was standing next to her. He said, “I like the Jersey shore better, but my friends wanted to come here.” Some spark had flown. Something inexplicable and strange. A few nights later in bed he told her that she really turned him on. Their lovemaking had been a slow build, and since that night she’d always missed his body when it wasn’t next to hers.

  Because of the unexpected heat wave in June, it would take a week for the new air conditioner to be installed. In the morning Sally had taken a deep breath, something she seemed to be doing often these days, and called Mr. Petrocelli. He’d said to her, “I’ma sicka man. You take out the air conditioner. You geta new one. Calla my friend Rico at Cool Cat. He’ll take care of you.” Sally had called Rico, and for a price she could afford, he offered to remove the old a.c. and put in a new one. But it would take a week.

  During that week Sally found herself lingering in banks longer than she needed to. She rode only on air-conditioned buses. She went to movies with Tracy in the middle of the afternoon and sipped club soda afterward. She and Pete slept together for a few nights, their bodies keeping a distance from one another, and finally he said, “Honey, why don’t we just cool it until you get your new unit installed.”

  On Saturday night Sally went to see her father in Queens. She sat on one of the twin beds in her father’s bedroom and he sat on the other bed, drinking Heineken’s. The bedroom was the only air-conditioned room in the house, and the old G.E. hummed as they watched reruns of “Saturday Night Live,” One skit was about an actress who only wanted to make it as a waitress. She’d gone to waitressing school, studied balancing trays, serving with one hand, but she was a flop. “All I ever get is leads in Broadway plays,” she complained.

  They’d laughed over the skit. Then Sally reached across for the phone and tried to call Pete, but there was no answer, so she guessed he was out with Jaspar. It was late for them to be out, but she decided to wait until the next skit was over before she tried again. Her father opened another beer, watching her dial again. He said, “No sense you keep calling some guy who doesn’t come home. You’ll just get yourself all hot and bothered.”

  “He’ll be home later.”

  Her father moved to an armchair. “So, you decide what you’re going to do with yourself?”

  “I’m going to get a new air conditioner.”

  Her father nodded. “That’s as good a place as any to start.” He asked her to turn the cooling up. It was the same air conditioner that had kept his bedroom cool when her mother was alive and they’d had the double bed. Sometimes on Sunday afternoons they’d close the door and turn on the air conditioner, even if it wasn’t hot, and stay there for a while.

  Since her mother died, her father’s habits had changed. He had a belly now and he didn’t dress as well. He wasn’t so careful about getting the grease out from under his nails when he came home from his small repair shop. And he collected things. He rinsed the little cartons from Chinese food he ate almost every night and stuck things in them. He labeled the little cartons. Bottle caps, nickels, flat-headed nails. They lined the shelves. He kept old magazines and beer cans. Clutter was everywhere. Her mother hated clutter and always threw things away. She’d kept him at bay, but now he’d returned to what he’d always been. It made Sally wonder. If she stayed with Pete, what would she keep? What would she give up?

  The air conditioning men, Harry and Julio, slipped the old Fedders from the window and put it on the floor. Sweating profusely, they kept asking her for Cokes. “We’ll have you cooled off in no time flat.”

  Julio started sneezing. “You got a cat?”

  “In the kitchen,” Sally replied.

  “I shoulda brought my surgical mask. But we’ll be outa here soon.”

  Harry, who wore a shirt with badges all over it that read KEEP ON TRUCKIN’ and DIESEL MAN, seemed to be the boss. He let Julio lug the old a.c. out and bring the new one in while he measured the window. He kept a pencil behind his ear and he tapped the pencil against his ear as he made decisions for the installation of the new machine. “How were you getting that thing started, miss?” Harry said.

  “Manual,” she replied. “I’ve been giving it a twist with my hand.”

  “Coulda lost your hand,” Harry said. “This thing’s rotten to the core.” Julio sneezed several times as he staggered across the room with the new 1984 model Fedders in his arms. Harry slipped in some new panels and set a bar across the window. Sally was amazed at how easy the procedure was. In recent weeks nothing had gone quite this smoothly. She told herself that if she could accomplish this one simple task, she could move on to bigger things. If I can do this, Sally told herself, if I can be a grown-up person and get an air conditioner installed, then I can do anything.

  While they were drilling braces for the window, the phone rang. “I just wanted to say hi, honey.” Pete was calling from Western Deli, midway through his route. “Scorcher out here.”

  “Here too, honey. I miss you.”

  “I miss you too.”

  There was a pause, so Sally said, “I’m having my new air conditioner installed, so you can come here this weekend if you want.”

  She heard Pete take a sip of Coke. Then there was silence at the other end. “That’s what I’m calling about. Jaspar’s been pretty bad this week and Marilyn asked if I couldn’t take him to the Watergap this weekend, canoeing.” Sally felt the phone, warm in her hand, sweat in her palm.

  “Oh,” she said. “I guess if he’s having a hard time, you should do that.”

  “I’ve disappointed you again.”

  “Well, I know there isn’t much you can do about it.” Sally sighed. “I tried to call you Saturday night.”

  The Coke bottle hit the receiver, making a clunking noise. “I didn’t get home till real late. Marilyn’s been all upset over Jaspar. We had to talk some things out.” Sally nodded without speaking. Julio sneezed as he moved the air conditioner across the room. She smiled weakly at the men, then turned her back to them.

  “Did you get home at all?” she asked softly.

  “Of course I did.” His voice was moist o
n the other end of the phone, and it made her tremble. “You know I did,” he whispered, and a wave traveled through her. She thought it was his voice that made her lights go out, surrounding her in darkness. His voice that made the old refrigerator cease its buzzing. That stopped Michael Jackson dead in the middle of a song.

  Mr. Petrocelli and his son, Carlo, stood in Sally’s living room, screaming. Mr. Petrocelli was a skinny, wiry man with green skin and white saliva that stuck in the corners of his mouth, as if he had rabies. He shouted at her, “You canna put a twelve-amp, twelve-thousand-BTU machine in. The machine I give you it’sa twelve-amps but only ten-thousand BTUs.”

  Julio and Harry sat on the floor, sipping Cokes, shaking their heads. “The BTUs don’t matter,” Harry said. “Amps is amps. She took down the whole apartment when she went.” Harry tried to explain that he had a little gadget, called a quick starter, that he’d hooked to the back of the machine, and it would pick up extra juice and the machine would be fine if Mr. Petrocelli would just throw on the breaker and let them try it again.

  “I’ma not gonna let you try anything again. I gotta key to the basement. It’sa my building and you aren’t gonna make me throw on the breaker.”

  Harry and Julio looked at her. “If he don’t throw on the breaker, we can’t wait around. You want us to take it out or what?”

  “She canna have this machine and I’ma not gonna throw the breaker on.”

  Sally held up her hands to Mr. Petrocelli. “Now calm down,” she said. “Let’s be reasonable. Harry, why don’t you go get the quick starter while I discuss this further with Mr. Petrocelli.”

  Harry and Julio left, and the Petrocellis remained. Sally said, “Maybe it’s your wiring that’s bad. Maybe that’s why it happened.”

  Mr. Petrocelli shouted at her. “I’ma sick man. I canna take this pressure. You call Rico. You tell him to take this out and put a new one in. You geta seven and half amps.”

  She thought of her Stouffer’s spinach soufflé, her Lean Cuisine glazed chicken, her Tropicana orange juice, in the freezer, defrosting. She thought about spending the evening in the dark. She looked at Mr. Petrocelli, his green skin, his white saliva, going on endlessly about amps and BTUs.

  Even though she knew better, Sally found herself yelling at Mr. Petrocelli. She told him she would deal with this herself. She told him she didn’t need his help. She told him all he knew how to do was abuse his tenants. She knew she should stop, but she couldn’t. Even as she yelled, she thought to herself, I should not be yelling at this crazy man. I should not be having a fight with a lunatic.

  The saliva in Mr. Petrocelli’s mouth thickened; his face turned a deeper shade of green. Carlo raised his fist to her. “You respect my father. Don’t you yell at my father.” Mr. Petrocelli had to throw his son against the wall to keep him from hitting her.

  Sally sat in the dark and the heat, food spoiling in the icebox, waiting for Harry to return with the new part and speculating on the nature of electricity. She thought that it was something she hadn’t understood at all. She didn’t know what amps were or BTUs. She hadn’t known where her fuse box was until Harry showed her. All her life she’d turned on electrical switches, made toast, dried her hair, typed résumés, without the least understanding of where the power came from. She knew of great generators, of windmills and water-powered turbines. She’d once protested against a nuclear reactor, but how the current made its way from spinning turbines or smashing atoms to her Norelco hair dryer was one of life’s great mysteries.

  She knew it had to do with positive and negative charges. That some things attracted others to them, others repelled, and this caused friction. Sometimes in the winter when she and Pete kissed on his wall-to-wall carpeting and they were barefoot, they got little shocks on their lips. And sometimes when they got into bed and shook the blanket over them, little blue sparks flew. But where it came from, she never knew.

  The air conditioner hummed quietly as Sally listened to a Laura Branigan record and dried her hair. Pete was coming to pick her up in an hour, and she wanted to look nice. Harry had come back in the early evening and installed the new piece. It picked up the juice and Harry had had her put on her stereo. Mr. Petrocelli, under a threat from Sally to call the police, had thrown the breaker back on. Sally had climbed into a warm bath after Harry left, feeling exhausted. She wanted to be in good shape when Pete arrived.

  When Pete was a half-hour late, Sally began phoning. When he was an hour late, she found herself getting annoyed. Pete had been arriving later and later. Just a week ago he’d been half an hour late to meet her bus and had left her standing there in a heat wave. He’d always been on time in the past, but now she felt as if small, barely perceptible things were starting to take place between them. Sally began to think of all the things he’d been late for. He hadn’t moved ahead with his divorce. And there’d been no progress in her meeting Jaspar.

  Finally there was a knock at her door. She prepared herself not to be angry as she flung open the door, and she found Mr. Petrocelli. “Here,” he said, “I brought you these. Delay-Time fuses. A present, from me.”

  Mr. Petrocelli walked into her apartment. He got on a kitchen chair and began showing Sally in minute detail how to test and change her fuses. “You turn it this way, then you turn it that way.” Sally did yoga breathing to keep herself calm. When he left, he put his green skin, his white mouth, close to her. “You see”—she felt his hot breath—“I’ma nicea man.”

  When Pete arrived two hours later, Sally was furious. All she said was “You should’ve called.” Over dinner they quarreled. He had to change their dinner plans for next Monday night, and Sally felt like a rubber band, pulled tight, ready to snap. When they got back to the apartment, they weren’t speaking much to one another. It was another hot, muggy night and Sally didn’t mind the distance so much. She put on the lights, the stereo. When she put on the air conditioner, the fuses blew.

  That night Sally and Pete sat in the dark in her hot apartment, talking about what they were going to do. They discussed the positive and negative aspects of their relationship. Lately they agreed the negative had been more obvious. They had a lot in common; they wanted the same things. But Pete felt Sally put too much pressure on him to be with her, and Sally felt Pete wasn’t someone she could count on. Into the night they talked and in the morning they agreed to give it another try. Sally would be more understanding. Pete would be more reliable.

  The next morning Harry came over and changed the fuses. As he changed the fuses, the lights came back on. “See,” he said, “the quick starter kept it from throwing the breaker.” Sally smiled, relieved that she would not have to deal with Mr. Petrocelli. “Now,” Harry says, “here’s what you gotta do. First put her on fan for about a minute. Then you can switch her to cool, after she’s nice and juiced up. Then you put on all your other appliances. Okay?” As he was leaving, he asked her to have dinner with him on Saturday night. Sally stepped back. She said she had a boyfriend, and Harry replied, “Looks like you may have had a boyfriend, but, excuse me, but from the conversation you had on the phone the other day, I’d say he’s giving you the boot.”

  Sally thanked him for changing her fuses and she went to the grocery store, where she lost her temper with the checkout girl, who got mad when she asked for shopping bags after the girl had already begun packing. She got angry with the janitor at the word processing place where she worked because he threw out some papers that were on the floor.

  Tuesday, as Sally was waiting for Pete to arrive, he called her. He was whispering into the phone. “I can’t talk. I’ve got an emergency situation here. Marilyn’s having a crisis. I can’t make it tonight.”

  Suddenly she found herself shouting at Pete, “What do you mean, you can’t make it tonight?”

  “I just can’t,” he whispered.

  “If you don’t make it,” Sally screamed into the phone, “you can forget it!”

  “Don’t call me. You’ll only make it worse.�
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  And he hung up. Sally clutched the phone in her hand, then slammed the receiver down. She did not know what to do with herself. She did not know what to do with her hands. She turned on her stereo. She turned on her lights. She plugged in an iron to iron a shirt. She turned on her air conditioner. She forgot to start at fan, the way Harry had told her to. Instead, she went right to cool and all the fuses blew.

  Sally found her flashlight and went to the fuse box. She’d blown a twenty amp and two fifteens. She turned off all her appliances. She did not think she could stand for one more moment to be in the dark. Sally got the fuses out of the drawer and slowly began to change them. The fuses were hot to the touch, and she twisted them out with a rag. When the new fuses were in, she tested to make sure she hadn’t thrown the breaker. When she was sure she hadn’t, she called her father. “Dad,” she said, “my new Fedders keeps blowing my fuses.”

  “So get another one.”

  “That simple?” Sally asked.

  “You bet,” her father said.

  In the morning Sally called Cool Cat and said quite calmly into the phone, “Get me another air conditioner.” She spoke slowly and with authority. “Get me something that works and doesn’t blow my fuses.”

  While Harry and Julio struggled to remove the new a.c. and install a slightly more expensive Friedrich, which used only seven and a half amps, Sally went out and got them beers. Pete had not called back, and she was wondering when he would. She had hardly slept the night before, waiting to hear from him. At three in the morning she’d called, but there was no answer. She’d poured herself a shot of vodka, something she’d never done before, and went back to sleep.