The Mystic Arts of Erasing All Signs of Death

I sat with my jeans in my lap.

– Sure, but the bus sucks.

She shrugged.

– I like the bus. I like to watch the sides of the road.

I looked at the floor, trying to keep a lid on something that didn't seem to want to cooperate at that moment of exhaustion and postcoital confusion.

– I don't like buses.

– Don't like riding them?

That was a tricky question.

– No. I mean, yeah. I don't like riding them. But I also just kind of don't like them.

– Have you always felt this hostility toward public transportation?

– Not public transportation. I'm fine with light rail or trams. Subways. Just buses I don't like.

– Forever?

I thought about that. But I didn't need to, really, I knew it wasn't forever.

– Urn, no, no, not forever. I used to ride them quite a bit.

– When you were a kid?

– No. I mean, yeah, but.

Words just kept occurring to me, kept finding ways to put themselves together. While I was trying to corral one bunch, another slipped out. These were the next ones.

– Yeah, come to think of it, it is kind of a new thing. Not liking buses. Hating them, really.

She took a step over.

– Web, you're killing me. Are you serious? Are you trying to cheer me up? Because I hate that. If you're making this up to cheer me up I will be so fucking pissed at you.

Again, I tried to get things under control, knowing where this conversation ended. Not wanting to go there. Ever again.

But things, they have a way of going out of your control sometimes. Have you noticed that?

And I kept talking.

– Yeah. Hell yeah. I mean, no. I mean, really, I can't stand the things. Make me crazy.

– Why?

She folded her arms.

– I want to know why. You better not just be trying to get me to hang around longer.

I laughed.

– Well, they're loud and they smell. They get in the way. And they're really kind of ugly.

She smiled.

I took this as encouragement and kept talking, something that's rarely gone well for me in my life.

– And they're haunted.

She raised her eyebrows.

I raised a hand.

– No, no. Really. This is so strange. I don't know. Just this thing. Kind of started. Something happened and I started not liking them.

She laughed. Sort of.

– Because they're haunted?

I rubbed the spot between my eyes and squinted.

– Yeah, OK. Urn, let me think.

– You're lying. You're so trying to sucker me.

– No, I'm not.

– You totally are. You're trying to think of something funny to say. You are fucking with me and you are so busted.

I laughed again.

– No. It's just that it's complicated and I sometimes, I don't know, forget exactly how.

I looked up at the sky outside the window.

A piece of it snapped off and dropped and hit me on the head.

And it was all there again, the whole thing, back in my head, one picture, entire. No longer broken into the little fragments I liked to keep it scattered in. Fragments hidden on ghost buses cruising L.A. Freighters of lost things. But not of me.

I looked at Soledad, who'd just helped me to put it all together again.

And I thought, How kind of her.

– No, I got it! Yeah, huh, it's funny. You know. Because, it's not like I forgot. It's more like I think about it all the time. So I kind of forget it's there. Like white noise?

She tilted her head.

– Web?

– Yeah, funny thing. Totally fucked up, but funny in a distinctly not ha-ha way.

– Web. Hey.

– Weird how I had to think really hard to remember the… details? Details. Yeah.

– Are you OK?

– Yeah, I'm fine. So I was on this bus. I was teaching. I was a teacher before. Did I tell you that? I was. My dad always wanted me to be a teacher. Well, not always, but that's a long story. So I was a teacher. And I was on a bus. With my class. Fifth grade. Ten- and eleven-year-olds. Great age for kids, I think. Because they're really coming into their own as people, but the hormones haven't gone entirely berserk yet. They're mostly still kids. So my class and two other classes a little younger are on this bus. It's a field trip. Remember those?

– Sure.

– Yeah. This was cool. Did you grow up in L.A.? Cuz when you grow up in L.A., when I was a kid anyway, you always, sooner or later, you always go up to the Griffith Observatory. The planetarium. But it had been closed for renovations for like a year. Then it reopened. So we were going. I'd had to twist arms to make it happen. Field trips are a major production these days. So we were going. And we're riding in the bus. Lalalala. Kids talking, yelling, texting to the kid in the seat next to them. Kids in the back of the bus shoving each other and playing with toys they're not supposed to have because they start fights over them. I'm walking the aisle, talking to kids. Talking to this kid Tameka. Cute girl. She's pissed at one of her friends over this hat she's been wearing that no one else had, but now her friend is wearing the same hat and she doesn't understand how her friend could bite off her style like that. And we were talking about that. So then. Urn. Crap. What happened then? Oh, yeah, man, how could I forget this part? So then, yeah, there's like a noise, like, like, like when you dent a soda can and pop it back out. But louder. There's a couple sounds like that. And someone screamed for the driver to stop. Crap, who was that? Oh, oh yeah, it was me. So I screamed for her to stop. And she did. And the kids. Some ran for the door. But I told them to get on the floor. Under their seats. And most of them did. Then I thought, Crcif, we should get out of here. Or did I yell it? Anyway, I yelled at the driver to drive away. But she was on the floor, too. Aaaaand. There were sirens. And a helicopter. And it happened really fast. But pretty soon there were cops and they came on the bus and got the kids off. And they tried to get me off. But, you know, I really didn't want to leave Tameka behind? So they had to kind of, pry me loose from her. Embarrassing, kind of. And then, well, that was kind of it. Except that there was a real mess in there, in the bus. Man, I had stuff all over me. Don't know how I got those clothes clean. No, that's right, Chev threw them out. And, what happened was there was some kind of thing, some thing on the street between some guys who had a beef with each other, never found out about what. So, bullets were exchanged. Obviously some hit the bus. So. That's what hit Tameka. That's why it was such a mess in there. Aaaaanyway that's why I guess I don't like buses. Funny, right? That I'd forget something like that? So thanks, you know, for pushing the point, really digging into me and getting me to stir all that up. Because, you know, I clearly haven't been doing enough to keep people at arm's distance and it's a good reminder to me to tell you to get the fuck out of here.

– Web? Web, are you OK?

I looked at her from under the bed where I'd crawled and curled into a ball.

– GETTHEFUCKOUT!