It is the heat of summer, one of those days when all things seemed extra sultry and bleak. I climb aboard a bus headed south. It is a nondescript bus with an even more un-determined path. Eyes peer out of sweat coated faces as the air conditioner gasps above the slender rows. Two petite girls with their bug eyes and cherry faces exit with their mother just as I enter. The bus was suddenly empty of all things youthful. A college girl in her mid twenties with her legs wrapped around her professor boyfriend are the only thing that will keep this trip from being a bunch of salty old crackers baking in the sun.
"May I sit here?" I ask a woman about my age with graying black hair to shift her bag so that I can place my weary bones on the already dripping leather.
"Sure," she seems overly cheerful to have a seat companion, but I don't think much of it.
I have reached middle age and with that came a sense of responsibility to go out and make something happen. I have to go out and change the world before it is too late. Well it is either change the world, buy a Ferrari, or go live with your kids outside of Boca. The truth is I am already outside. I lived my life on the outskirts with my long hippy hair and my mustache that always seemed out of place on my slender Italian face.
"I'm Mary," she says taking my hand in hers.
The shake leads to a dripping of sweat between us as we pull away. It was way too hot and no one seemed to notice but me. Sure, they fanned themselves, wiped away the sweat, but they didn't complain. Instead we all headed south hoping to find something that wasn't autonomy from the high temperatures.
Mary intrigued me as much as any man my age can be intrigued by a woman they had barely talked to, which was a lot. There were a million fantasies already going through my mind about her overly small mouth and ample thighs that touched mine especially when the crazed bus driver barreled over a bump. Sweat trickled down her nose and touched the bare flesh of my hands. I dream of licking the sweat from my hand but think better against it.
"You got anything to eat?" Another old fart like me leans over smelling of tobacco.
"No," I say firmly pressing myself closer to Mary.
"I keep trying to quit smoking, but it makes the appetite more. I guess I got an oral fixation. Freud would have a field day with those of us who continue to smoke even though the health department is against it. You know I heard Freud worked for the health department somewhere in Austria or Russia, somewhere like that."
I could barely keep my cool as I continue to stare at him. Surely he realizes what he just said. Surely he knew how ignorant he has been, how invasive?
He continues, "I'm headed down to my grandkids birthday party. She is a beautiful little baby girl, but I fear for her with a mother like hers. I told my son to marry a good girl but he just wouldn't listen. He went behind my back and married that little..."
"I got a piece of chocolate," I say fishing the melted bar out of my pocket.
"Thank you," he says stuffing it into his mouth.
I close my eyes. Sleep comes almost instantly.
I awaken to a frightful spectacle of hell. Outside the window the waved lines of pavement lie motionless around us. The bus is stopped. I rub my eyes and wonder where the restaurant or bathroom is located. Surely there is some outhouse or fishy bar stool awaiting me for fifteen minutes of my journey? Nope, there is nothing because we are un-ironically stopped in the middle of nowhere.
"Where are we?" I turn to Mary.
"The bus is broken," she says lifting her hair off her neck, I freeze.
Mary has the kind of neck that a man like me imagines spreading lips on and running finger tips over. She is the pale color of flame outline, with even paler hairs spread along her mid-neck leading to her collar bone. I harden in my pants as her blackish hair is swooped neatly about fingers that could do a million things to a man. Her nails are natural and dainty with only one crack on the index finger on her right hand. I would kiss that hand.
"They can't call for help," my talkative friend next to me relays the information.
"Why not?" I say with my voice much louder than it should be.
"Radio is broken too."
Broken, I hate the word, broken.
We are all broken, I see that now. I thought I was different falling prey to that frail woman with her big doe eyes who eventually said she divorced me. I said she needed reasons and she said that I just gave her another. I walked out the door then and practically fell onto the bus. This bus would actually prove to be the only settlement that I would be allowed, broken.
The bus driver scrambles back onto the bus a blur of thick waist and knotted hair all over. He looks sweaty and nasty but for once I keep a thought to myself.
"We are going to be here for a while folks," his New York accent reminds us all of our mistake to think that we could travel south and suffer no repercussions.
"It's hot," the college girl says still sitting in the lap of her boyfriend.
"Then I suggest you take off some of those layers," the bus driver says pointing to the professor's arms around her.
"What layers?" She says it with a grin, "these layers?"
