17.
I should not have flirted with the bus driver.
I probably knew that of course, as much as I knew that aiming smart-mouthed quips over my shoulder at his familiar slump behind the steering wheel constituted flirting. I was young. I was flirting with everything.
Maybe I liked it when, on the second day, he adjusted the mirror over his seat so that he always had me in his view.
Maybe I liked the feeling that he was looking at me while I was looking at the side of the road crawling by. Anyway, I had my current crush showing off in the next seat, a bag of snacks for the trip, a worksheet from the teacher because we were supposed to be pretending this was school, AM radio in my head, a pair of Levi's 501 shrink-to-fits that had done just that, molded with a spot for my strawberry lip gloss in the front pocket and my comb in the back. I had that new peasant blouse with the neckline that made me wonder about things I'd never thought of before the very first minute I tried it on. Basically, I was on a field trip to the world.
So maybe I wasn't thinking straight every time I used my smile or invented a personal joke for him to riff off. I shouldn't have laughed in just that way when he pretended to shut the door each time I climbed on or off the bus. I should have made him buy his own french fries too. I can see that now, of course. But I was just going to throw mine away.
I may as well admit it. I liked his attention. It was just about the only thing I liked about myself, compared to all those other girls. It was something I had that they didn't, so I grabbed it and made myself feel good.
By the last night of the trip, I was wanting to go home. My boyfriend was acting like a jerk to impress a group of guys we both agreed we hated, but now I could see he secretly wanted to impress. Traitor. My girlfriends were doing something somewhere else, and hadn't bothered to make sure I was with them. They were probably off trying to impress the same guys.
Figures.
Which is how I ended up kicking the gravel in the parking lot of the motel wondering what on earth I was doing in nowhere Wyoming at 10pm, surrounded by nothing except a busload of Indian souvenirs, new props for the same juvenile act I had to pretend to care about at school every day of forever.
He was there against the open door of the bus, standing with the same slump he used when he sat. Same tired shirt as on day one. Same thin greasy hair, or probably worse. It was dark.
Why aren't you with your friends, shouldn't you be in your room?
That was exactly the question I'd been thinking about. He asked it out loud.
I need to get gas for the bus. You wanna go with?
And then for some reason, or probably for all the reasons, I ignored everything I'd learned in my life so far and said, Sure.
And so we drove. I sat two rows back, across the aisle. I don't know why. Sitting on the front row would have seemed too close. Sitting any further back would have seemed creepy, all alone. I remember a fleeting thought about the lever that operated the door, how it was there by his leg.
We rehearsed a few of our same jokes. He pointed out the moon through the windshield. Half full. We went away from town, not toward it. There were dark clumps of brush, and sky. There were black outlines of hills I didn't know. I remember giggling when he wasn't funny. I remember shivering, but not the kind that comes from cold. More the kind that doesn't like what's happening and especially what might happen next.
And then we stopped.
He turned off the bus. Here's something you might not know: there's a particular silence that happens when you're alone late at night on a bus in the middle of nowhere and the driver cuts the engine. You know it when you hear it.
My mother was once sitting in her car parked outside the post office when a man jumped from a 9 story building, hitting the sidewalk next to her. She knew that sound immediately, even with her eyes on a newspaper and the engine idling. I’m guessing it’s a similar sound.
I knew it would happen. He came back those two rows, filling the dark aisle and pushing into the seat beside me. I moved closer to the window.
We should be getting back. They’ll be worrying about me. I told my friends I’d meet them. They’ll be checking rooms. Did I say any of these things out loud? I’m not sure I made any sound at all. The window was cold.
I know where you live, he said.
And he did. Turns out he drove tour buses around the city on the weekends, and I happened to live in a neighborhood that was included on his tour. He offered me weeding petunias in the front yard on a Saturday as proof. But it was just an ice breaker. He was making conversation.
I see those buses all the time. I’ll watch for you, I said. Or thought.
Then he waited and let us both think for a bit before he said, I see what you do.
I see the way you strut around here. I see the way you laugh with your rich friends. But I know what you all really want.
I’m not sure if those were his actual words, but it's not important. Because it was going just like anyone would expect. I tried to figure out some way to make that funny. I wanted to make him laugh. I felt like the same thing that got me here was the only shred of hope I had to get out.
But instead, it somehow got even quieter.
I might have said something next. I remember wishing I’d gone to the bathroom before getting on the bus, which now seems silly and too specific. I should have just wished I’d never gotten on the bus at all. It was like my mind wanted to worry about small things.
There is comfort in counting details. Yellow teeth. His smell. A gut. The dullness of his wire glasses, shades unclipped and still there in his shirt pocket even at night. Stupid.
It almost felt like I needed to step back from the situation and watch it happen before I could believe it. So I took mental inventory.
The curve of rough, square fingers. Used to doing hard things.
The hair across his brown arm, spotted from spending its life propped in a bus window. It rested on the seat in front of us, blocking the aisle, ready. I don’t know how I could have seen hair at night, but it was there. Maybe I was filling in what I’d seen during the day. His sweating. His breathing. His eyes on me in the mirror above the steering wheel.
His eyes on me.
You think I’m yellow, he said.
You think I’m yellow. You don’t think I’ll do it.
His face was coming at me square, lips peeled back just the way they did every time he tried to be funny and close the door on me.
How do you answer that? It’s the kind of question you can’t answer. It’s the kind of question my dad calls do you still beat your wife. Thinking of my dad made me wonder all at once whether he’d be madder at the driver, or at me. And made me want to cry.
In the same flash, I realized that I’d never been around anyone who actually used the word yellow that way. I thought men only said it on TV, but now I met him. And it fit. And he wouldn't stop saying it.
Well, I'm not yellow. He said it with his eyes on me.
And then suddenly, there was crying.
But it wasn’t me. It was him.
He was crying all out, shoulders going up and down, forehead pasted to the seat in front of us. I’d never seen a man cry like that. Don’t tell my wife. I’ve been married 35 years. My wife will divorce me. I’ll lose my job. I can’t lose my job.
All his fear came pouring out and pooled there between us.
Next his relief that he’d decided, and whatever didn’t happen, didn’t. And then as fast as that rushed out, everything was gone.
He lifted up his head, and he turned to me, flat and deliberate and like I needed reminding. He said, I know where you live. And he made sure I saw what he knew.
Which said the rest.
And I didn’t have anything to say at all. He got up, and he started the bus, and he drove us back to the motel. And when I was getting off the bus, he didn’t try to close the door on me.
And no one asked where I’d been. I didn’t even need to lie.
The next day, he said it to me again as we were loading up, although he never opened his mouth at all and pretended like I was any girl, but we both knew what he meant. And even though I managed to swap my seat for one in the very back he knew how to work that mirror because he had been a bus driver for so long he could make it so no one could get away with funny business on his bus no matter where they sat.
And even though I mostly stared out the window across an entire state, every now and then I glanced up for a reminder and as many times as I looked up he was happy to say it again, just like that. And then once more. All the way home.