Chapter I

    It was gray that evening, the clouds slung low in the sky, light rainfall playing on my face as I watched the passengers board the bus. I let my dampened cigarette hang from my lips without relighting it, still as a statue and lost in some kind of distorted reverie. My mind was fogged with sleeplessness, my head pained by the gears still toiling against my temples from the morning's hangover. I watched the bus from a distance, the exhaust blending away in the sky, the passengers with their carefully packed luggage and children trailing nearby. These people had destinations, homes they were returning to or hotel reservations and tickets to the opera, contacts, plans, itineraries. I had a change of clothes, the entire sum of my bank account in cash, toiletries, two books, a few keepsakes -- everything I deemed necessary for the trip and everything I deemed worthwhile from the broken life I was leaving behind.

     It was with such an absolute detachment that I had navigated my last several days, bought a bus ticket to the closest city where I knew nobody and might find trouble, packed my bag and turned away from everyone I knew, so the fear and reluctance I was suddenly experiencing felt foreign, counterfeit. I took a step back as the rainfall picked up, wetting my glasses and warping my view of the last passengers hurrying onto the bus. I let the muffled voice of reluctance give its final plea. It was drowned in the rain, replaced by nervous anticipation with my first stride toward the bus.

    I reached the door just as it closed, knocked with a wet palm. It slung open and I ducked inside, wiping the hair from my brow. The bus driver, a lanky, dark-skinned man with a long face, gave me a grave nod. The bus was roomier than any I had been on before, the seats light blue and plush, not unlike the business class section of an airplane.

    I took my seat next to a slight, wrinkled lady with beady eyes fixed on a magazine. I threw my backpack onto my lap, laid my glasses on it and let my head fall into my palms, rubbing my eyes with a muffled groan. As the bus lurched the first inches forward, I chuckled into my hands, the sheer audacity of my circumstances setting in, the melancholy momentarily muted.

    "Hello," a soft voice crooned, and I looked at the lady next to me, who had directed the greeting upward and away, as if to a specter, as if to a distant bird.

    "Good evening," I replied, shuffling in my seat like a guilty man on stand at his trial. I unzipped my backpack and thumbed through it, retrieving a book, burying my eyes in it without discerning a word.

    "Some night for a trip," she opined, closing her magazine and fixing her cloudy blue eyes on me. I returned her glance briefly, nodding and diverting my gaze back to the book.

    "Might I ask where you’re off to, young man?" she asked, her head turning as if on a swivel, her glance finding the window, finding the sky.

    I cleared my throat. "Relatives," I said, rubbing my thumb along my forearm. "Aunt. Aunt and uncle, that is. They’ve just landed in the city and I offered to help them move."

    "That’s kind of you," she replied, reopening her magazine and leafing through the pages. I cast a sidelong glance at her, anticipating another question or an observation, but she found a page in the magazine and fell silent. I returned to the book, reading the same paragraph three times before comprehension seeped in.

    Fatigue began to close its curtains around me about half an hour into the trip, so I laid my head back on the seat, using a sweatshirt as a pillow. A few scenarios for where my trip might lead played out in my mind, fractured and burned as if projected from a broken reel: smoke dancing from the tip of a cigarette in the corner of a dingy hotel room, hands splayed out before a glass of beer in a dark bar, a leaning in spiked relief against a brick alleyway wall. There was something else, a sunrise against a cityscape with two people atop a skyscraper �" were they dancing? �" but it melted into a dreamless sleep.

    A bump in the road jostled me awake, flinging my book against the seat in front of me. I took a deep breath, squinting and reopening my eyes, slow to reorient myself.

    "You're awake," the elderly lady observed. "It’s ugly out there, isn’t it?" She pointed a crooked finger at the window.

    I rubbed my eyes. The sky was a tableau of grays. "It is," I replied.

    "What part of the city have your aunt and uncle moved to?" she asked, her smile turning her eyes to little blue slits.

    "Oh-" I began, coughing to allow a moment's thought, "the northwest."

    "Ah, yes," she mused, "the Victorian district?"

    "Yeah," I replied.

    "Pretty area," she said with a crooked smile.

    I nodded with a slight smile, readjusted my sweatshirt and laid my head back with a sigh. She kept her gaze fixed on me without adding another word as I closed my eyes. I opened one eye a minute later and peeked in her direction, hoping I wouldn’t meet her stare, but her head was cocked sideways toward the window, moonlight smoothing the wrinkles on the side of her face.

    I drifted into sleep more slowly this time, an uneasy feeling like a whirl that traveled up to my throat and back, up and back. I don’t know how long I slept, maybe an hour, before I was startled awake by a nightmare, a film of sweat lining my forehead. I tried to fall back asleep for awhile but couldn’t, so I opened my book again, poring over the same blocks of text repeatedly.

    Whenever I looked up from the book for more than a brief moment, the lady would begin talking as if in mid-conversation, as if the dialog hadn’t stopped in her mind. She told me about her husband who had died in a commercial airliner crash, how she hadn’t flown since then, her days as a substitute teacher in an inner city, the battle she fought and won over leukemia, the soft-faced neighbor who tended to her garden and household chores in exchange for piano lessons for his daughter. She couldn’t wait to arrive back home, because her daschund had separation anxiety.

    As for me, I would only be gone for the weekend and would be returning to school to continue pursuing my journalism degree. My girlfriend was still alive, and she would be visiting the following weekend. I couldn’t wait to see her. My father was still in biomedical research and may have found a woman worth getting remarried for. My mother, god rest her soul, lived on through fond memories. Yes, besides life’s usual stressors and setbacks, things were as swell as a patch of oranges.

    Darkness was thrown like a tarp over the bus station when we arrived, the rain long since passed, the whirl of the wind audible from inside the idling vehicle. I got up and stretched, anxious to get away from the old lady and her blanketing kindness. It was easy enough to get lost in the stories as I was telling them, but every pause in the conversation was punctuated by a sharp, wistful feeling.

    I offered to carry her luggage from the bus, smirking at how this stranger had managed to dredge up some kindness from me, disaffected as I was. When I stepped off the bus I took a deep breath, the scent of exhaust faint in the cool air. We were under an overhang where other buses were parked and people were shuffling about with their luggage, bus drivers with neatly-creased blue uniforms smoking cigarettes and milling around, each one seemingly darker-skinned than the last.

    I followed her to a vast parking lot where she quickly found her car and popped the trunk. "In there will be fine, and thanks again," she said.

    "Sure thing," I responded, lugging the suitcase into the trunk.

    She walked slowly to the driver’s seat and lowered herself inside. With the door still open, she looked upward at me with a smile and said "it was so nice to meet you, dear. Best of luck to you."

    "Thanks," I replied. "And you too." I gave her a feeble wave as she closed the door and started away when I heard her window rolling down.

    "Oh, Ethan," she called, and I turned my head back in mid-stride. "You’ll want to look in the back of your book. I’m afraid you’ve left something there," and she rolled her window up and pulled away before I could respond.

    I stood and watched her drive away, my face twisted in confusion. I couldn’t think of anything I might have left in a book; I packed so lightly. I slung my backpack from my shoulders and sat on a nearby curb, the sound of footsteps and distant engines coming to life around me. I pulled the book from my backpack and flipped to the back, a folded piece of paper falling to the concrete. The first sight when I unfolded the paper was a $50 bill. A note was written in small handwriting, cursive, black ink:

    

    Ethan,

    Please forgive me if I’m overreaching, but I can’t help myself from trying to guide someone home if I know they’re lost. I don’t know where you’re off to, but I know it isn’t to an aunt and uncle’s: there is no Victorian district in the northwest, or anywhere else in the city for that matter.

    I’ve worked with adolescents and young men all my life, and I can spot sadness and aimlessness from a mountaintop. I don’t know what it is you’re running from or to, but the pieces of the puzzle tell me you are indeed running.

    You’re going to have to forgive me again, because I did something inappropriate in trying to figure your story: I looked briefly through your bag while you were away from the seat. Nosy at best and despicable at worst, I know, but please bear with me.

    What I found in there was troubling. For one thing, you seem to only have one change of clothes. For another, you’ve got a large sum in cash, what I suspect might be all you have to your name. Normally these things would be indicative of someone who is up to no good, but my perceptions are so rarely off and I sense a gentleness in you.

    I admit that I could be wrong. You could very well be on your way to a crime spree, and I could very well be consigning myself to trouble by reaching out to you. I really, really don’t believe this is the case, however. And don’t worry: I’m not alerting authorities or anyone else of what I’ve surmised of you. And I have no way of reaching you, so whether we see one another again is entirely up to you.

    I’m worried about you, Ethan. The city is an unforgiving place. I wish you’d reconsider what you’re doing and head back home. You are undoubtedly loved. You are undoubtedly missed.

    I also found a laminated picture of a beautiful young lady in your bag. There was a poem scribbled on the back, a very touching piece about loss and the finality of death. Very reminiscent of Wordsworth. Is that who it was, Ethan? I get the feeling that a kindred spirit is something we share.

    Have you lost someone? I know all too well the pain off loss, of sudden separation, the dark hole it leaves in one’s spirit. I’ve learned how to move forward from it, how to take those daunting steps in the dark, in the ugly face of despair.

    Alone is no way to grieve, and no way to arrive in an unfamiliar city. I’m going to leave my phone number so you can contact me if you find yourself in need of shelter or food or an understanding soul. I can provide any reasonable accommodations you may need. You’ll have to deal with the dog if you find yourself here, though. He’s rather rambunctious, and recently I even saw him eating his own poop out in the backyard.

    Please find a wise use for the enclosed money. And again, please forgive me if I’m overreaching.

    Whatever it is you’re doing, Ethan, I hope you find peace. Remember that you are loved. I will pray for you.

    With sincerest wishes,

    Madeline

 

    I sat on the curb for awhile, the letter flitting in my hand, frozen with disbelief. My initial feelings were of anger, of violation of my privacy and person, but the sympathy and selflessness of the letter, ill-founded as it may have been, were powerful, potent. I waded between the two feelings, shaking my head, the wind blowing my hair askew.

    I realized that this stranger had cracked the core of what brought me here, had penetrated my wall of unfeeling, and this upset me greatly. I wanted more than anything to unread the letter. I pocketed the money and stood in a sudden fury, crumbling the letter and throwing it to the ground.

    Scanning the scene before me, I found the cityscape in the distance, the buildings silhouetted in the dark. I started in their direction with a scoff.

    I had only made it a few paces before I stopped mid-stride, a vague yearning welling up in my stomach. I imagined the lady penning the letter with her little hand, smiling at me knowingly with the moonlight from the window dappled on her features. I shook my head. I turned around.