Page 17 - Contrast1977Aprilv20n2

this bus station, planted in an eternal city soil changed
cold and anaemic under the concrete.

Somehow I had to ignore Leslie and evade that suffo-
cating attention, the pleas, demands. I looked from the

fading penguins to the tellers' booth where my friend was
fitted in together with his cohorts, curried faces all. He
was crouching into his frame and his lips were working at
a microphone. Ever}~here people were looking up; some
gathered their bags and moved to a particular gate •..
Leslie nudged my ribs: "Your bus is here."

And we were waiting in a long line; the greasy doors
to ~~e outer dock were fumbling open and ~~e line gave a
spont.aneous jerk, just like a conveyor belt before it will
run smoothly. Leslie was going to accompany me till the
last moment, and, just before falling into the box with
tile rest of us, hop off. As always.

The shoulders in front were tall and armored and I I
pretended to be trying to peer around them to the driver
taking tickets. But that Leslie voice, endearing, almost
lisping, fluting out its last, was flooding into my sore

soul, and x.-ighttilere I nearly gave it up. My jaw worked,
begged the line to trudge faster, yet dared not push that
packed, stretched sweater just ahead.

In the end I was first: tile bald driver snatched my

ticket and tore it, handed half back, and pointed to a bus

docked around the bend. Those ahead were hurrying impor-

tantly with their various belongings, making a production

out of it, as though they were spacemen and Snyde's was the

rocket, and the mental institution most of them were headed

for was Mars. I laughed as I moved out into the snowbank

of fog, trying not to hear t.hat;Sunday night refrain,

mutilated by wind and my resolve: "~know what. Then until

later! Call me on Tuesday!" I heard the coded lOve but I

was laughing louder than the love, partly at the crummy

school bus that had been selected by Snyde for tonight's bus
squat and anachronistic beside the splendid Greyhounds. My
laughter carried me right into the cave and a green seat
""here my legs were squashed up against the next, and it was
exactly like a womb, tllis bus, and absurd womb that Would