Passenger by Ronald Malfi
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either a product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
For John Edward Lawson and Jennifer Barnes—
Passengers on a similar journey.
“And that was the first of our adventures on the Road of Mystery.”
—Darren Speegle,
“The Lunatic Mystique”
“Everyone has at least one scene that they cannot erase from memory….”
—Darren Speegle,
“Merging Tableaux”
PART I
ONE
The bus shudders to a stop, the moan of its brakes like the melancholic mating call of humpback whales. I sit up, jarred awake, eyes wide. The harsh interior lights sting my pupils and, blinking reflexively, I bring a single hand up to block out the light. The bus is practically empty yet I’m sitting in the very last row. Outside, dusk claims the city, punctuated by the wink of sodium streetlamps and the smeary headlights of oncoming traffic. Just above me, the hinged door of an overhead bin vibrates.
I look down at my hands, which are clean and pale and cold. My fingers are absent of rings and my wrist holds no watch. I turn them over. Curiously, there is handwriting on the palm of my left hand. Printed in black ink in simple handwriting, it says:
1400 St. Paul Street, Apartment 3B
I am wearing dark jeans, sneakers that still look new, and a plain white dress shirt, heavily starched, with no undershirt beneath. A stiff canvas overcoat that could have been cut from the fabric of an army tent completes the ensemble. I run a hand through my hair and find it freshly cropped close to the scalp.
There sounds a wheeze and a hiss as the hydraulic doors at the front of the bus separate. The few remaining people stand from their seats and shuffle in a dreary line toward the doors. The driver has the windshield wipers clacking, though it does not appear to be raining.
I turn my head to the left and stare at the window. Not out into the oncoming night, not into the streets or at the passing vehicles in the opposing lane, but at the window itself—at my reflection in the glass. I can make out the vague suggestion of a slender, white face with dark eyes set in deep pockets and a strong definition to the mouth and chin. I examine the close-cropped hair, also dark, and the way the cheeks look sunken and hollow. The eyes stare back at me, nearly wincing.
At the front of the bus, the last of the passengers exit.
Above me, the overhead bin continues to rattle.
“Last stop.” The bus driver, a dark-skinned woman with messy thighs that spill over the edge of her seat, leers at me in the enormous mirror above the windshield. “End of the line.”
I stand and shuffle into the aisle. Walking toward the front of the bus, my gait unsteady, I find myself studying my reflection in every window I pass. I stop beside the bus driver and pause long enough to examine in detail my countenance in the oblong mirror above the windshield. Gaunt, skeletal, hollowed out like a pumpkin at Halloween. I appear to be of an undetermined age.
“Have a good night,” the bus driver says. She is not being polite; it is an attempt to hurry me along.
I turn away and face the open doors. Three rubber-matted steps lead to the sidewalk. A muddy shoeprint resonates ghostlike from the first rubber-matted step. There is a handrail to the right, which I grip on the way down. Like an old man. As if I have never taken a step on my own.
Outside, the canvas overcoat provides little protection from the cold. There is no one else on the street; I am alone. And for several moments, I can only stand on the curb, uncertain of myself, uncertain of my surroundings: the slouching concrete buildings with the monkey-bar fire escapes conspiring to close in on me; the bone-colored sidewalks and gouged streets; the rise and loom of larger buildings just off in the distance, their lighted windows shimmering; the wooden bench just behind me, the horizontal slats of its backrest stenciled with one cryptic word in glaring white letters:
BELIEVE
The bus doors hiss shut. There is a squeal as the brakes disengage and a peal of grinding gears as the bus eases forward. It moves slowly, chugging through the intersection and a yellow traffic light. Black exhaust burps from the tailpipe.
And I cannot move.
And I cannot think.
With a weakness reserved for the terminally ill, I ease myself down on the believe bench. I press my hands into my lap. The cold causes me to shiver and tremble. I am aware of my feet in my sneakers, the way the toes feel raw and numb and how they curl up underneath themselves in hiding, and of the cold in my nearly hairless scalp. I am aware, too, of a ghostly throb toward the back of my head. It is a syncopated tribal beat: WHUMP-whump, WHUMP-whump, WHUMP-whump. My chest is cold and I feel like I am swimming in my too-big pants.
Suddenly, as if prompted by a brilliant idea, I eject myself from my seat.
A wallet.
I must have a wallet.
Hands slap against my coat, my chest, up and down my thighs. I take both hands and stuff them into the rear pockets of my jeans, a desperate choreography. But there is no wallet. There is nothing: the pockets are empty.