Overnight in New York

The hotel we are staying at is not in the airport. And instead of waiting for the shuttle, as the airport lady told us to do, my mother insists that we take a city bus. I am glad about this because I have never taken a shuttle before and I do not want to take one this day.

"I'm not waiting for an hour when the other bus comes right away," my mother says.

She is correct and the city bus does come right away. There are bus stops just before the intersections, not after them like in Saskatoon. The bus driver is careful and waits until the light turns green before he pulls out. Suddenly I see a man running after the bus, but he is not fast enough to catch up.

"Stop!" yells one of the other passengers. "There's a man wants to get on."

"Not allowed," says the bus driver. "I can only stop at the bus stops. Regulations."

"Hard-hearted," says someone from behind me.

"Look at that guy run!" says another.

"You'd think there'd be some flexibility here," says someone else.

We go on like this for another block, through a green light, and the man is still running. He must really want to be on this bus.

I look around at the scenery. There are warehouses and I think they look like buildings the Mafia would be in. I tell this to my mother and she tells me to stop worrying. But she looks out the window and I think she looks worried too. She has that H of wrinkles in the middle of her forehead.

"The Mafia have big cars with colored windows," I say.

"Oh, stop," says my mother. "You don't need to worry about the Mafia."

"This is a large city," I say. "And that's where the Mafia work and live."

Just then, a big van with colored windows pulls up alongside the bus and swerves until it is just in front of the bus. The bus lurches to a stop. My mother grabs her purse and hugs it to her chest. I look carefully to see if the Mafia are going to get out of the van and come in and rob us. But what happens is not the Mafia getting out of the van. What happens is that the running man gets out of the van. He sprints over to the door of the bus and gets on. The whole bus cheers and applauds.

"Why would the Mafia care about a running man?" I ask my mother.

"Hush," she says. "That was probably just a soccer mom taking pity."

I do not know how she comes to these illogical conclusions. My mother does not base her thinking on evidence.

When we get to the hotel, I do not like the smell of our room and it takes me some time to choose whether I will sleep on the bed or the couch. Finally, I select the couch. Then my mother calls Alan Phoenix to tell him about the change of plans. Her voice is in the red zone for part of the time, and while she talks I sit beside her and keep opening and shutting the clasp of her purse until she brushes my hand away. I am not feeling happy with this part of the trip and I don't want to sit beside her, but I do it anyway. Maybe this is what the new minister back home meant when he came to preach his guest sermon, before the congregation decided to hire him. In times of transition, he said, we look for islands of stability. Islands of stability. I didn't understand it then but I think I do now. In this new hotel room, my mother and her flowered purse are an island of stability, even though I don't want them to be.

We spend the night in the hotel and then we go to the restaurant in the airport for breakfast. I have pancakes and I ask for blueberries, but the waitress says they don't have any. This is disappointing and I fill out the little card on the table where it asks for customer comments: Should get blueberries, I write. That will be smart information for them so that they can prepare for next time.