Long bus rides evoke a sense of movement and it doesn't really matter where to. Nighttime spins around and Bob Dylan's offbeat, off-pitch voice seems vaguely, though falsely resonant. I forget my jacket and remember once more not to underestimate Canadian winters. The border control man is suspicious of me. It's his job to be suspicious, even at three in the morning when I am usually absurdist, desperate, gloriously happy or asleep. I try to look non-threatening. When we clamber back on I note that David, the two-year old who already speaks more French than I do ("Quoi, papa?") is being both sticky and loud, but it only subliminally registers. I think drowsily of Sunday night and guitar strums I heard once, long ago, around the fire that I can't go back to. It takes me a long time to notice that the bus isn't moving, but I don't care. Two hours of stop-motion jerkiness and the black New York bus driver with perfectly round John Lennon glasses appraises the situation in a dry drawl. I don't care. I know many people would be nervous or anxious or irritated at this delay. My younger self would, but I don't care. I sleep and dream of Central Asia sand.
It's morning. We've moved a bit. We are now on a desolate and disconsolate shoulder on a stretch of highway and stuck again. The brakes are frozen. I abandon my seat up front with David and his mother and go hang out with the two New Zealand girls I know. We play the "guess the capital" game. I realize how much my geographical knowledge has deteriorated since seventh grade.
Two hours later the bus suddenly unfreezes. With a disaffected shrug, the bus driver fires 'er up and we roll on out to Albany.
From Albany to New York the suburban stripped sprawl hits. The signs advertising a better life through a better car, a better vodka, a better toothpaste, a better condom. The fast-food, quick and easy simple worthless satisfactions, the millions of closeted lives. I feel sick and sad. All of it imposes, impinges, attacks - the surreal airbrushed longhaired figurine woman who represents an ideal I feel wrong for not desiring, the dirtiness of the broken-down station bathroom, the people who just seem so crass and impatient all the time - "I ain't got no change for no twenty." I want to curl up in a corner and block it all out, but a small part of me is glad I can still feel strongly about something.
We roll into Port Authority five hours after schedule and New York hits all of a sudden. It's overwhelming and we try not to act less like tourists and more like cool indie kids from Montreal with giant climber packs. Because that's what we are. Clearly.
We walk forty blocks down to Chinatown. It's a long trek through the sunlight. I'm wearing only a flannel shirt and a short skirt, and my leggings and legwarmers are too warm for this weather. It's an odd feeling - the feeling of being too warm for the weather. The total absence of snow. We stop in a bakery place. It turns to be a goldmine of cheap delights, disguisting pies and almond bubble tea. We arrive in the heart of Chinatown. Everything is very crowded, pressing, confusing. Everyone seems to be advertising everything, including the harried little woman with the sign and unintelligible accent. She demands ten dollars from us and points us around the corner, where a bus lies in waiting discreetly and unpretentiously. Within five minutes it leaves and spirits us to Philadelphia without the merest of hiccups. And then it's the SEPTA home, the same train I always took to shows at the Trocadero or the Art Museum or the Ritz theatre.
I walk down the streets around my house. They're still the same. Nothing has changed here in the little time that I've been gone. I take the key from its spot and unlock the door. The house is cold and clean. It doesn't change either, on the surface. I throw down my pack and make a mess and ravenously consume whatever's in the fridge, knowing I now have all of the time in the world. Fifteen minutes later the phone rings.
"You have a collect call from..."
The next word is said with so much happiness, so much ebullience, so much laughter at the general state of the world that I can't help but smile into the phone. Suddenly there's no time again.
