6

Why did God take my Ruth? We were much better together. She truly was my better half. Heck, my better three quarters.

So I was feeling a mite sour boarding the bus. It was an argument I couldn’t win, but that didn’t stop me from waging it now and then with the One who knit us in our mothers’ wombs. Lately, the now-and-thens were beginning to pile up.

One day I will make a fine, grumpy old man.

My head hurt, as it did with some frequency since the explosion. They say it comes with one cracking one’s skull against unyielding asphalt and curbstone. “It should subside with time, Mr. Carter, but if the headaches persist, please give our office a call.” There was only so much Tylenol could do.

The 17 was crowded this morning, folks trying to avoid the drizzly streets. This was early for me, but twice a month, I served breakfast at the mission.

Bill was off, and an older woman I did not know sat at the wheel of the articulated 17 at morning rush hour. She was dishwater blonde and all business.

I made my way down the aisle to the side-facing seats up over the wheel wells.

The bunch of us boarding shuffled along at a pace only slightly faster than a chain gang shackled at the ankles.

My mood had been little improved by my oatmeal this morning and the fact my “fresh” blueberries had traveled to my bowl by way of Chile, 6,432 miles.

Insurance salesman Larry Erickson saw me coming. A nod. “Jim.”

A nod. “Larry.”

“Good day, Jim.”

“Good day, Larry.”

Two nods.

This had been going on for months. I explained to Ruthie that this is the way men talk. She could not believe that I came away from these encounters without knowing his wife’s current condition, the status of his children and their ages, and what he thought were the ex-governor’s chances of being appointed to the president’s cabinet. I said she should ask Mrs. Erickson those questions, that Mr. Erickson and I had exchanged all the information we considered necessary. She said I had learned nothing. I said not true—I knew that Larry was alive, that we both had hopes for a good day, that we wished one another well, and that we held continuing respect for one another. If all interpersonal transactions accomplished that much, world-peace talks would stand a far greater chance of success. This profundity was always followed, and concluded, by a rolling of Ruthie’s captivatingly warm eyes.

I preferred sitting at the near end of the side-facing seats. It meant that I had to make thigh-to-thigh contact with just one person and that I could look down on whatever the two people in the front-facing seats beside me were texting, watching on their laptops, or reading on their tablets. I never considered this snooping because this was, after all, public transportation. If Ruthie knew I did this, she did not hear it from me.

I nodded to the young man I squeezed next to. He wore a preppy sweater and slacks, a Marine-tight buzz cut, and rested sneaker-clad feet on a canvas O’Dea High School sports bag. The Catholic parochial school was known statewide for academic rigor and athletic prowess.

Today in the side-facing seat directly across the aisle was an additional distraction. A young woman with numerous piercings and orange hair sported a living, and quite striking, blue point Siamese cat on her shoulder. As we completed boarding, the feline would emit an occasional high-pitched mew that was pleasant considering some of the sounds a bus full of humans typically made.

Unfortunately, it was in that quiet few seconds between the final passenger taking a seat and the bus resuming its route that the young cat, still a kitten really, chose to express itself in a soft yowl.

The bus, which had begun its slow drift away from the stop, lurched to a sudden and decisive stop.

“Do you have a permit for that animal?” The middle-aged driver, eyes narrowed, spoke to Cat Woman’s image in the rearview observation mirror mounted above the cash box.

Had we been better organized, I think all we passengers might have responded in unison to the driver’s sternly shouted question with a “We took a vote and it was decided that the cat stays.”

“It’s a service animal,” responded the young woman, who had obviously smuggled the Siamese unnoticed past the driver’s cage. From her nervous twitches, sallow skin, yellowed fingers, and nails chewed to the quick, I deduced that Cat Woman was participating in a recovery program. That and the fact that she had loudly told her equally pierced seatmate in blue hair, “As soon as we get to Recovery House, let’s volunteer for childcare.”

“All well and good,” boomed the driver, “but you need to carry proper papers with you at all times. Do you have proof of the animal’s registration for service?”

On the verge of tears, Cat Woman performed a frantic whispered exchange with her friend, engaged in a bit of unproductive handwringing, and again wailed, “It’s a service animal. I’ve ridden with it before.”

“No papers, no ride.”

By now, our faces said that we, the passengers, sided with Cat Woman and what anyone could see was a perfectly mannered service kitten.

Judging by her face, All Blonde All Business didn’t give a rat’s tail what we thought.

We, the passengers in the side-facing seats, tried our best to wordlessly telegraph to the front, “If the cat goes, we go too.” The driver’s dour expression said clearly, “Don’t let the double folding doors hit you on the way out.”

Stick up for the girl.

God had cast the deciding vote.

I decided to wait for further instructions.

Stick up for the girl.

I muttered under my breath even as I stood, “Really?” I strode to the front as purposefully as a man about to bear-hug a hornets’ nest.

Up close, All Blonde All Business was twice as intimidating.

The passengers were becoming restless. The socially acceptable time allotted to this stop had been far exceeded. They needed to get to work and might turn on Cat Woman at any moment. For that matter, two hundred hungry diners waited to be served breakfast at the mission, and I’d better not be late.

The bus wasn’t moving.

“Yes, how may I help you?”

The driver’s voice revealed not an ounce of pity. The question might as well have been “Are you here to make trouble?” It was rumored by the regulars that Metro kept troublesome passengers deep underground in a dank holding cell run by a one-eyed hunchback.

“I’m hoping you’ll allow the young lady with the cat to ride this time with a reminder that next time, she needs to have proper documentation. The cat’s no disturbance at all.”

She fixed me with gimlet eye. “You allergic to cats?”

I wasn’t expecting that. “Well, no.”

“I didn’t think so. The swollen eyes. The difficulty breathing. The weeping, the sneezing, the itchy throat. I’ve experienced this, and I wouldn’t wish it on my worst enemy.”

I knew as sure as grass was green that I was newly arrived on her enemy list.

Stick up for the girl.

Of course I would stick up for the girl. Any decent, caring, reasonable person would. I didn’t need to be told to stick up for the girl.

Stick—

I looked past the driver’s rigid jaw, the stiff, broad shoulders, the unsmiling everything, and played the Bill card. “Do you know Bill, the usual driver on this route?”

She visibly softened in such a way that made me wonder if Bill’s charms had indeed reached these shores. “Yes,” she said. “Bill often subs for me on my usual route, the late-night haul on Capitol Hill. I stayed up after last night’s shift and took Bill’s route. He’s at a dentist appointment, I think. Least I could do. “

I nodded. “Then you know Bill. Such a gentleman. It sounds as if he may have allowed the young lady and her cat to ride without documentation, him with such a big heart, and she came to count on it. She means no harm. Why not let it go and tell her to have her papers come Monday?”

She hesitated. “Bill would like that.”

“Operator of the Year, you know,” I said.

“Two years running.” All Blonde All Business twinkled right up when she smiled. “You know that young lady?”

“Well, no.”

“Today the first day you’ve ever laid eyes on her?”

“Well, uh, yes.”

She stared at me and drummed white press-on nails with a yellow daisy pattern against the top of the cash box. “So you’ve never even seen or spoken to her before today and yet you know that she’s ridden with Bill and that he has permitted said ride without service papers for the feline? Were you born with these psychic powers?”

No, I received my powers after aliens took me into their saucer-like ship, probed me, and dropped me off at a farmhouse in rural Pennsylvania. Difficult woman. “I’m only saying—”

She brightened. “I’m just funnin’ ya. I guess we can let it go this once. We’ll call it a favor to Bill. You tell her, OK? I don’t want to see that cat without papers again.”

“Yes, ma’am,” I said. “And I’ll tell Bill what a gem you are.”

Her skeptical look said I was pulling her leg. She might be clairvoyant.

On the way to my seat, accompanied by an unusual amount of lurching back into traffic (“I’m just funnin’ ya”), I conveyed the message to Cat Woman and patted the Siamese. Both responded gratefully, one with a crooked smile, the other with a flick of tawny ears and eyes half-closed in contentment.

When I went to resume my seat, I found that I was to press thighs not with the put-together youth from O’Dea, who had retreated to the back of the bus, but with a slender brunette in professional attire. With recorder and impossibly thin laptop at the ready, she could be none other than a—

“Ruby Webster, Mr. Carter,” she said, somehow able, despite balancing the recording equipment, to thrust an arm and hand with amber bangles at the wrist into my personal seat space.

Offered no other choice, I shook the nearly fleshless hand, causing it to then rise like the mechanical safety barrier at a railroad crossing.

“Have we met?” I asked, warily wedging my buttocks into the open space.

“I’m special-features writer for the newspaper,” she said, referring to what some referred to as the only newspaper in town. In these days of tabloid news and scandal TV, journalists recast themselves more as “writers,” less as “reporters.” In the current climate, I suspected people minded less to be “written about” than “reported on.” She spoke in the civil-yet-hurried manner of someone on deadline. “You have a story and I want to tell it.”

I groaned inwardly. “No comment.” Something perverse in me had always wanted to say that. I instantly regretted it.

“So you do have a story?” She tipped forward, the subtle lean of a bloodhound sniffing the wind.

“We all do,” I said. “Every person on this bus, every person on the street, every poor person stuck behind a desk in every building we pass.”

She unleashed a blur of keystrokes on her laptop. In a single pompous sentence I had said nothing and already too much.

“Ms. Webster, with all due respect, I’m going to stick with ‘No comment.’”

She said nothing and waited. The recorder recorded the ambient sound. The laptop glowed.

I fidgeted. “Really, ma’am. I’m the most boring interview you’d ever do. I happened to be in the wrong place at the right time.”

Her fingers flew. From the concentration on her face, what I had said was worthy of the Gettysburg Address. She stopped. “Exactly where were you when the bomb entered the bus and how did you know it was a bomb?”

Nearby passengers awoke from their naps and smartphones to stare at us. At least two looked nervously about as if wherever I was, bombs followed.

I could pull the cord and just get off at the next stop. Walk to the mission. What if she came along? She would know where I volunteered. She’d talk to the director, the volunteer coordinator, the guys in line for waffles. They would be flattered. Fifteen seconds of fame. Spin whatever came into their heads. Bring up bits of private conversation. Make stuff up. Say something, say anything, to feed the tapping fingers, the turning gears of the recorder. James Carter? Jimmy Jim? My old friend Jimbo the Caped Crusader? We’re not what you’d call close, but close enough! He’s not like other guys I know. What do I mean? Let me tell you what I mean…

“May I call you James?”

I looked at the newspaper writer, a sick feeling in the pit of my stomach. “No, no, ma’am, I have nothing to say. Really, no.” Sure do talk a lot for someone with nothing to say.

“Mr. Carter then?”

What was the matter with this woman? What could she possibly be writing with all that tapping? I certainly was not going to tell her my deepest suspicions about these messages from beyond. Well, you see, Ms. Webster, God talks to me on the 17 bus. He sends me instructions, I follow them, and things happen. What things? Well, you see, Ms. Webster…

“Is Riley a family name?”

I stared at my hands. At times like these, I wished I could juggle. You know, balls and scarves and stuff. It would take my mind off things, things like feature writers and tapping computer keys. Take her mind off interviewing me.

“Your middle name. Is that a family name?”

“No comment. Really.”

Ruby Webster waited. “Let’s pretend I’m just a bus acquaintance and I’ve asked about your middle name. How would you answer?”

I pulled the cord. A ridiculous tinny ding sounded and an accusatory red STOP REQUESTED sign lit up at the front of the bus. But the bus wasn’t moving, halted by the cross-street vehicles whose operators had misjudged the traffic and were now stuck in the middle of the intersection and blocking our progress.

“Do you think of yourself as a hero?”

I squeezed my eyes shut and wished to teleport to Anaheim, California, to the front porch of my favorite Uncle Farnie. Now there was a story. Farnsworth Carter, a stuntman in many a B action movie, used to race chariots at West Coast horse tracks and community rodeos. Someone needed to write that life story.

“Is it true you turned down an invitation from the mayor to join him for lunch at City Hall?”

I willed the idiot drivers and their idiot vehicles blocking the idiot intersection to teleport to the nearest junkyard, the drivers to be cited for putting me in this awkward position, and their cars crushed on the spot.

Come to find out, today God’s radio only transmits and does not receive.

“Can’t you see he doesn’t want to answer your questions?”

Cat Woman, sticking up for me.

“You know Mr. Carter?” The newspaper writer refocused on the pierced girl and her Siamese. I believe Ms. Webster could interview Al Qaeda on the moon and still make the filing deadline.

“I know he’s a nice man who helps people.” Cat Woman stroked the cat until its tropical-blue eyes narrowed with pleasure. “That’s all I need to know.”

The light changed, the blocking cars vacated the intersection, and still the bus did not move. Several car horns blared in protest.

“So tell me, young lady, exactly how did this man help you?”

I stood and made for the front of the bus as Cat Woman related her version of the Service-Cat Incident. I took a respectful if firm position at the edge of the driver’s cage. “Excuse me, ma’am. What is keeping us from moving now?”

She pointed to an unmarked gray police sedan, bristling for all its sign-free anonymity with lights and antennae, sitting catawampus to the 17’s front bumper. She slid open the front doors and up stepped FBI Special Agents Barnes and Wu/Phu.