Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
CHAPTER I4
IT WAS TEN MINUTES to seven in the morning and it was cold. Standing outside the
Bloomsburg bus station, I could see my breath. The few cars out this early trailed clouds of
vapor. I was hung over and in a few minutes I was going to climb onto a bus for a five-hour
ride into New York. I would sooner have eaten cat food.
My brother had suggested that I take the bus because it would save having to find a place
to park in Manhattan. I could leave the car with him and come back for it in a day or two.
At two in the morning, after many beers, this had seemed a good plan. But now, standing in
the early-morning chill, I realized I was making a serious mistake. You only go on a long-
distance bus in the United States because either you cannot afford to fly or-and this is really
licking the bottom of the barrel in America-you cannot afford a car. Being unable to afford
a car in America is the last step before living out of a plastic sack. As a result, most of the
people on long-distance buses are one of the following: mentally defective, actively schiz-
oid, armed and dangerous, in a drugged stupor, just released from prison or nuns. Occasion-
allyyouwillalsoseeapairofNorwegianstudents.YoucantelltheyareNorwegianstudents
becausetheyaresopinkfacedandhealthy-lookingandtheywearlittlepaleblueanklesocks
with their sandals.
Byandlargearideonalong-distancebusinAmericacombinesmostoftheshortcomingsof
prison life with those of an ocean crossing in a troopship. So when the bus pulled up before
me, heaving a pneumatic sigh, and its doors flapped open, 1 boarded it with some misgiv-
ings.Thedriverhimselfdidn'tlookanytoostable.Hehadthesortofhairyouassociatewith
people who have had accidents involving live wires. There were about half a dozen other
passengers, though only two of them looked seriously dangerous and just one was talking to
himself. I took a seat near the back and settled down to get some sleep. I had drunk far too
many beers with my brother the night before, and the hot spices from the submarine sand-
wich were now expanding ominously inside my abdomen and drifting around like that stuff
they put in lava lamps. Soon from one end or the other it would begin to seep out.
I felt a hand on my shoulder from behind. Through the gap in the seat I could see it was an
Indian man-by that I mean a man from India, not an American Indian. “Can I smoke on this
bus?” he asked me.
“I don't know,” I said. “I don't smoke anymore, so I don't pay much attention to these
things.”
