Mosquitoland(13)

“Okay, now I’m worried,” says Poncho Man.

My misplaced epiglottis flutters, then calms, then flutters again. I pull my travel-sized makeup remover from my bag and push past his knees.

I can wait no longer.

Walking down the center aisle, I hear the endless line of massive semis speeding by outside, kicking up giant bursts of rain. In the second to last row, Arlene is passed out on Jabba the Gut’s shoulder. He’s reading a Philip K. Dick novel, unfazed by his seatmate’s baby head.

Inside the bathroom, I slide the latch to OCCUPIED. The light comes on automatically, flooding the tiny room with a sickly yellow tint, as if everything were suddenly jaundiced. In the grimy mirror, I watch as my dead eye closes. This still freaks me out, as my actual perception is unchanged. The only way I know my bad eye is closed is that my good one sees it shut in the mirror.

Mom used to say how pretty I was, but I knew better. Still do. My features, independent of one another, might be considered enviable: strong jaw, full lips, dark eyes and hair, olive-brown skin. The attractive pieces are all there, but jumbled somehow. As if each facial feature stopped just short of its proper destination. I act like I don’t care, but I do. I always have. And my God, what wouldn’t I give to put the pieces together?

But I’m a Picasso, not a Vermeer.

From my pocket, I pull out my mother’s lipstick—my war paint. It’s a black tube with a shiny silver ring around the middle. I try my best not to use it in public. Even with a heavy dose of makeup remover, a reddish hue is noticeable around the cheeks, like a manufactured blush. But hue or no, I need this now.

I start with the left cheek, always. This habit is king, and it must be exactly the same, line for line. The first stroke is a two-sided arrow, the point of which touches the bridge of my nose. Then, a broad horizontal line across the forehead. The third stroke is an arrow on my right cheek, mirroring the first one. Next, a thick line down the middle of my face, from the top of my forehead to the bottom of my chin. And lastly, a dot inside both arrows.

“Even Picasso used a little rouge,” I whisper.

And then it happens . . .





8


Recall

TELL ME WHAT you see here, Mary. I stare at my reflection in the shaking mirror, clutching the sink for balance. I’m blind and wet, and my name is Mary, not Mim, and I’ve never been in a fight, never been on a boat, never quit a job, never been to Venice, never, never, never . . .

The bottom drops out, and I’m down, on my side, floating in a strange sudden weightlessness, as if in water or outer space. From far away—one, two, a thousand pleas for mercy, animallike screams, rabid and seething for survival. A minute, an hour, a lifetime—there is no time, there are no Things. I have no more Things. I have only scraping metal, screaming voices, and death.

And suddenly, my symphony of travel crescendos, achieving its rumbling, mighty End.

The bus is still.

On. Off. On—off—on. The jaundiced lightbulb flashes at random intervals. I lie on my side, staring straight into the now-cracked mirror. Like a joke with some sick punch line, my right eyelid is closed. For a moment, I am content to lie immobile, a cyclops among a thousand shatterings. Breath races through my lungs, veins, limbs, spreading like a virus to every corner of my body. It gathers strength, then, at once, rushes to my head.

There is life in my life.

To my left, the door hangs loosely by a hinge. UNOCCUPIED. The opening is narrow, but I squeeze under it, into the main compartment of the bus. Despite the pain, I pull myself off the floor and look around.

The Greyhound is tipped.

It’s a simmering stew of glass and blood and sewage and luggage, a cinematic devastation. Like the lights in the bathroom, the cabin lights flicker on and off in irregular intervals. Some people are moving, some are moaning, and some aren’t doing either. Carl is bleeding in about six places, administering CPR to one of the Japanese guys. I see Poncho Man help Amazon Blonde to her feet, right where I’d been sitting. I stand and stare for I-don’t-know-how-long, until an ax crashes through the left wall—formerly the roof of the bus. Firefighters crawl through the wreckage like ants, pulling limp bodies around their shoulders, administering first aid. Two EMTs—one with acne and scraggly red hair—approach the limp body of a woman. The redhead leans over, puts his ear to the woman’s chest. Straightening, he looks at his partner, shakes his head. Together, they hoist her from her seat and that’s when I see who it is: Arlene.

My Arlene.

I am Mary Iris Malone, and I am empty, cleaned the f*ck out. All that’s left is a fierce hunger for flight.

I have to get out of here.

I stumble forward, stepping on a yellow dash. Then another and another. I’m walking on the highway. From inside the bus. The windows, once lining the sides of the Greyhound, are gone, replaced by wet blacktop. Seats are jutting out of the wall, row after row of them. I step over and around people, and it’s impossible not to wonder which ones are dead and which ones are unconscious—the difference between stepping over a person and stepping over a body.

The dam of my epiglottis cracks, then crumbles; I vomit on the ground in front of me.

And I see it. Thing of Things, impossible, yet inevitable. Poking out from under a threadbare Philip K. Dick novel, the corner of Arlene’s wooden box. Like a time capsule, it remains blissfully unaffected by the annihilation of the world around it. I pick it up, stagger the rest of the way through the bizarro bus. Through the jagged perforation of hacked metal, I step outside, transported from one dreamlike scene to another. The rain soaks through my hoodie in seconds, and at first, all I can think is I never even heard the sirens. I pull Arlene’s box tight against my stomach and turn in a slow circle.