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While riding the bus, watching an old lady gum a slice of orange which she with trembling fingers delicately extracts from a cellophane wrap, a squat Mexican reading a thick novel, an old man who mutters at his fists clenched around a gnarled and splintered cane, a silent youth scarred with acne, rebellious piercings, and the occasional scowl intermingled with a sloe-eyed gaze at nothing listening to the sweet nonsense pouring out of his walkman, held together with duct tape and the willpower of a boy on the brink of old age, I silently trace the edges of my front teeth with a dirty fingernail, and marvel at how boring life tastes after an hour at the movies. The seats seethe with the broken spirit and irreverent soil of a thousand million trillion people who have argued, fought, loved, wept, hated and laughed everywhere except here, one person for every dollar their government owes them. A quick pock in the road, a lurch, a brief synchronicity of shoulders that would make Jung weep, and the people and I go back to our numb regard of the walls, the road outside, each other. It smells like wet newspaper and some-body's stale cigar-ettes, the floor are tacky with the juices leaked out of ripped grocery bags, and the windows are etched with gang scratches resembling hyroglyphs more than a western alphabet. At this moment I am frozen in time, I have no past and I certainly have no future, and this bus will carry me forever in the itchy warmth of my canvas pants and second hand store coat. My fingers are numb, my lips are sore from chewing. I want nothing. My stop arrives. The cold works it's way into the cracks of warmth left by the creases of how I sat, and slowly the bones in my knees and ankles work up their protest at another mile walk, while the soles of my feet hum again through the thin soles of hand-me-down tennis shoes. The sky is a perfect gray, and the horizon meets it with the same familiar cordiallity of two brothers meeting at the funeral of their father. The sidewalk is littered with cigarette butts that I attempt to read, casting my fortune before me with a sweep of my toe. They tell me I will be rich, I will be famous, I will be lavished with praise and kisses from beautiful women with large bosoms and few morals, who worship me. They tell me I will own yachts, will bake myself in Mediterranean suns, will eat expensive foods and waste expensive wines in bottles half consumed and discarded. They tell me that I will be back at this bus stop tomorrow, to wait for another noisome ride into the city to walk amongst cardboard boxes, affixing stickers and labels to those whose contents make their delivery more urgent than then the others. My stomach pushes the front of my coat over my toes as I gaze down and walk home. I watch it pass over cracks, butts, small stones, dried up weeds between slabs of dead-flesh concrete. I linger at each corner, ignoring the washed out yellow of the headlights which appear a long way off and turn before reaching where I stand. I am invincible. I walk along the street, past derelict houses held up by peeling paint, front yards littered with patches of oil from weekend tune-ups and severed dolls heads from abandoned childhoods. It is bleak, it is for-lorn, it is nothing to put on a post card and it is my kingdom, where I am crown prince and heir apparent, lord of the pasture, king of the bees. My utopia. Browned ground beef, an aroma that reminds me of dark red hallways when I was a child in another city, drifts out of this window and that, over the sound of rerun sitcoms and cracked radios set to music from two decades ago. My stomach gurgles, my tongue roots in the corners of my mouth for the salt from popcorn at the movie an hour ago. I finger the ticket stub in my pocket, feel the ragged edge of the serration where before a young Asian girl with dark lips ripped it to prove I exist. I try to recall the films last scene. The man and woman are standing on a a beach, the sun setting, they are looking up at the sky. They are not holding hands. The music swells, the credits roll, the lights come on, everyone leaves, my Christmas bonus is used up. Home appears. Two weeks before, my father reminded me that nobody works on Christmas eve and so now the walls are clean, freshly scraped and painted, the stoop has been swept, the swatch of grass raked of wrappers and other wind-drunk rubbish. The windows are clean, almost gemlike, and catch the last spears of light shot from the sun as it submits to another nightly murder on the edge of the world. I pause before the door, my hand hot inside my pocket, and hear from the other side dad's record player. Gershwin's music, notes tripping out of trumpets like children at recess racing to be the first to get the tether ball, the jungle gym, the backstop for kick ball and the base for tag, laughing at the breeze which tosses scarves, stocking caps, lost mittens, until the recess lady blows her whistle at the end of the song, makes me wish it was tomorrow and I could go back to the bus. I open the door, and my father laughs, gesturing for me to sit with him at the table and eat, eat eat. He is so happy. I begin to think about getting a second job.
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