Travelers

"Thank you. Thank you for profiling me, just like that."

I looked at him quizzically, and he pointed behind me, "No, not you. Her."

He began his heavy descent into the window seat next to my coveted aisle. Holding up a full, heavy-duty garbage bag with his left arm, huge, he fought gravity for the last seat. Sweat stuck to his neck; ice crackled, swooshed inside his fountain drink. "Bedding, linens" he explained. "I'm a truck driver. Only two baggage spots allowed under the bus." I offered to help him push his load through the rope borders of the overhead compartment. "Tried last time. You'd think it be soft, it'd fit..."

"Yeah, you'd think... bedding at all... Are you sure we can't try to put it up there?"

"Nah, I'm all right."

"You're lucky she's small," a stranger remarked to my companion.

"That's what I was thinking when I asked to sit next to you. Last time, I sat next to this young lady, she was even smaller than you are..."

Fragments of conversation stopped and started with traffic. He grew up in South Carolina, and was now traveling from Maine to Ohio, with a two-hour layover in New York. I didn't ask why. "New York, New York, what is it about New York...? Everyone, New York, New York..." He mused. "Where are you going?"

I painted broad strokes about family in Jersey, and No, I'm not married ("Why not?"), I'm working on it I guess, I've been with somebody for a long time, No, I'm between places right now. He nodded, his head a free grappling phantom limb, gasping for air underneath the black claustrophobia, which sealed his white shirt to his sticky chest. I took his drink cup and placed it under my seat. "What would your man think if he saw you right here, next to me?"

Was he talking about his size? His race? Gender? Against whom was he defending himself?("Thank you. Thank you for profiling me...") I felt ashamed... Of what?

"I don't know if he would think anything. It's expected. We know buses get crowded on Friday afternoons."

He shifted his dissatisfied gaze to the stop-starts of the cars outside.

He mumbled to himself some, turned to me occasionally, breaking out in surprisingly spacious laughter about conspiracy theorists in the back of the bus, about the driver's poor choices of driving lane, about "That other girl in the front, look! She is your twin." ("I'll take a look next time she walks back.") He asked me about the language I spoke on my cell phone. "Russian." Pause. "You must have graduated college, huh?" "Yeah."

We drifted through most of Connecticut quietly to ourselves, but I wanted to share with him the energy of New York. Driving through the city, I wanted to narrate streets, places, people... "Have you spent much time in New York?" I asked.

"I've made deliveries to the Bronx, to Long Island, to Staten Island... I've never done.... New York, you know, DOWNtown, like they all do... It's not my kind of place, not at all."

"Too crowded?"

"People walking in the streets, who should be in a cage. All these motherfuckers walkin' around, need to be locked up!"

"Something like that," the most I could do. He continued before I could get my bearings back.

"All these stores... Do you see? The steps -- once, across from the other, right fucking on top of each other."

"...Stores?"

"No, that don't matter, I just mean... These projects, look, all of these projects," he gestured at apartment buildings. "New York State, I bet 90% of all them motherfuckers live to pick up that check three times a month. All they do."

"Whoa, whoa, that's pushing it."

"Maybe I have my percentages off, a little wrong here, but it's the state, the whole fucking state, filled with this trash, motherfuckers... All they want..."

I mumbled something about patterns, entrenched generational poverty, unavailable opportunity... "Yeah, yeah... All they want..." My words were disappearing into his heavy-duty bag, now fuller, sticker by the minute. The bag was so heavy it slowed the bus down. I drew my eyes away, looked at my twin, who was walking again to the back of the bus. "Look, look look! It's her! Do you see her?" Impatience, excitement. "I see her, I see; sure, I guess we look alike, I guess I agree with you."

The bus came to a complete stop, and we both waited silently for human traffic to start moving out. I wished him luck with the last leg of his journey, and we looked at each other smilelessly, emptily, both sitting firm in our own window seats, looking out, mumbling to ourselves.