Killing Time in Crystal City Read Free

when she turns it over and signs “Stacey” across the knuckle part where I can look at it all the time.
    â€œSo, Stacey, are you running away?”
    â€œWhy would I do that? I don’t run away from things, things run away from me. I’m just on a kind of grand tour.”
    â€œThat sounds nice,” I say.
    â€œNice,” she repeats, but in a tone with twelve more layers of everything than the one I used.
    â€œWhen did the tour start?”
    â€œTwo and a half years ago.”
    â€œWhen does it finish?”
    She lets this last one sit there for several seconds, though her face shows nothing along the lines of pondering.
    â€œI haven’t given that a single minute of thought.”
    That one sounds like a hint that further questions will not be taken at this time. So we both just look ahead for now.
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    There it is. I can see it coming, and I rush back up through the near-empty bus to my original seat so I can take it all in fully.
    Crystal City.
    â€œDon’t you want to come up here and have a look, Stacey?” I call back to her. Best seats in the house. She has her eyes closed and waves at me wearily. I return to the view by myself.
    Is there a better capsule, a better pod of motion and vision? A space module, sure, I’d be on that right now if it was ever on offer, pointing and laughing at everybody stuck down here on Planet Puke. But let’s be real. And real is the front seat on the top deck of a bus going somewhere. Everything is in front, everything’s forward. Nothing’s behind you, no rear window view for you, sir.
    The bus station I come into, though, looks just like the bus station I pulled out of. Could just about be the same place. Could be a big fat fast one played on me, and the driver took a big wobbly go-round to get back to the same, same place.
    Except why would he do that? Because people don’t need reasons. Making believe that people need reasons to be demented and shitty accomplishes nothing other than to make you demented and shitty yourself. Which you don’t want. I have to remember to tell Stacey that at an appropriate moment so she knows that I did in fact learn a little something about life before I met her. A little something.
    Except, anyway, I saw it, more than the bus station. I saw Crystal City on the approach. So no matter how much the travel zombie industry wants to disguise their zombie-town depots to look just like each other everywhere, we know better. We won’t fall for it, because we have arrived, and we know it.
    Why do they want to do that anyway, make your destination look like your departure when they know all you want to do with your departure point is to depart it?
    Anyway.
    â€œAnyway,” I say, as the bus hisses into its bay and I return to collect my backpack and my actual friend.
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    The bus station of Crystal City is precisely as grimy as the one back in Ass Bucket. It’s a little bigger, though, so there are more bays, more buses coming in, more going out, belching more exhaust into the oily air and beeping randomly and for no apparent reason other than to make everybody more jaggedy and angry.
    I follow behind Stacey as we bump our way out of the big daytime dusk of the garage area, fighting through the flow of fellow travelers to get to the terminal on the other side of the thick glass doors. Already my eyes feel irritated and what passes for air here is working my lungs over to provoke the first whistlings of wheeze as I breathe.
    The diesel-mechanical stench is replaced by a deep-fried-humanity stench as we push through the doors into the waiting lounge, cafeteria, ticketing offices tilt-a-whirl of busfolk society. Just a few steps in, Stacey turns around sharply and I almost bump into her before braking.
    â€œIs that you making that noise?” she says.
    â€œNo,” I say, and lung-whistle right through