Four Three Two One

by Courtney Stevens

  “Knows that it will, preknowledge? Or forces his will to be done, predestined?” Rudy said.

  I liked these questions. They were mildly threatening and simultaneously harmless. My insides inched around like worms, but exploring philosophical mysteries added context. And it certainly improved our moods. I said, “We’re really wondering: Is everything orchestrated? Was Stacy always going to get pregnant? Were we always going to take this non–road trip road trip? Was Dolly destined to break down?”

  Which left Becky to ask the unasked question. “Was Simon Westwood always going to blow your bus? And if so, did any of you sense it was coming?”

  “We’re not talking about him!” Caroline snapped, her tone back to I’ll shave you in your sleep status. She moved the headband round and round her head.

  “But we are, Cuz. He’s here whether we name him or not.”

  “No. He’s in a million pieces in an unmarked grave in Bath because his dad doesn’t want vandals pissing on him. And I, for one, am happy to blame the puppet master. God, if that’s what you want to call Him.”

  Rudy cut her off with his chair. “Because it’s easier than blaming Simon?”

  “No, douchebag. Because it’s easier than blaming myself.”

  I curbed us far off the interstate. Sheer walls of white granite and limestone rose thirty feet like we were at the base of a mountain. A metal net covered the facing to prevent rockslides. “Caroline,” I said. “Did you know Simon was going to blow Bus Twenty-One?”

  “Did I have a premonition?” she asked.

  “Did you know?”

  She backed farther into the rocks, her fingers twisting through the chicken wire barrier. “Would I have gotten on if I did?”

  I followed her. Weeds stabbed at my legs. “Maybe so,” I said. “I think you’re into destructive things, and Simon might have been one of them.”

  She pitched into me like a limp doll and laid her forehead against my breastbone. From this view, I saw the thin scars left from the razor covering her skull. She took one deep breath, and I considered what I should do with my hands. Hold her head? Wrap her up? In the end, I lifted her face, held her jaws with my thumbs, and looked inside her. “Caroline, why did you stay with him?”

  We must have been a sight. Traffic slowed. Life slowed too.

  “Why do you stay with Chan?” she asked. “Because you love him, or because you can’t get away?”

  “Because I love him.”

  “Well.” She sighed, her gaze refusing to meet my eyes. “Congrats on your perfect life.”

  Caroline’s knees bent and I worried she might collapse and knock us to the ground. But her toes grew into the cement and though she wavered, she did not fall. I wrapped my arms around her slight frame. “This was never your fault,” I whispered.

  “This was always my fault,” she whispered back.

  33. WHO GOT UP THIS HULLABALLOO ANYWAY?

  $75,110.00

  No one said much after Caroline’s meltdown. Only Rudy, who offered her a ride, which she accepted. Her added weight, although slight, must have been an extra workout for his arms. They fell behind a little—her being cautious the fabric of her dress didn’t catch in the wheel, him making sure she didn’t slide off his lap—but I knew he was glad he could do this for her. Chan always wore the same prideful non-smiles when he took care of something for me. Another guy in a long list of guys who liked his hero status. I questioned if I’d pushed Caroline too hard. She was angry, but sometimes anger kept people alive. Becky was on my hip, asking me to lag back long enough to say, “I’m worried about her.” I was too.

  Simon, the AAA driver, had promised the body shop was directly off the ramp, beside the Shoney’s. I saw Shoney’s. Mercurys and Lincolns dotted the lot. The Open sign flashed above the front door.

  Behind me, Becky asked, “Do people still eat at Shoney’s?”

  I lifted my shoulders. “My gran likes their strawberry pie.”

  “I thought they’d all closed.”

  Becky dug a rock from her flats and used the back of her cell phone like a mirror. While applying lipstick that was somehow miraculously not melted, she said, “I say we find out about Dolly and then split one of those pies. I gotta feed the monster.” She rubbed her stomach, and it growled on cue.

  Caroline, raised with more money than any of us, was opposed to the idea on principle. Her face twisted around the word Shoney’s like Becky was asking her to lunch on sour prunes. Let them duke it out over food; low-grade fighting brought color to Caroline’s cheeks, and God knows, she needed to be a shade above puke green. Rudy flashed me a thumbs-up behind her back as she slid from his lap to volley disparaging remarks with Becky.

  It was full-throttle Shoney’s assault until we reached Auto Fix Nation. When the decision of where to wait became Shoney’s or hell, Shoney’s won hand and foot. Among Auto Fix Nation’s many amenities were ripped pleather couches, a Skittles machine, and the very finest selection of Bikers and Babes magazine (with the Christmas pullout poster). The desk clerk’s pale-blue button-up service shirt was embroidered with the name Digger on the pocket. Digger wrote my phone number on his arm with a Sharpie and promised to call “after Roddy got her all tinkered out.”

  “How long might the tinkering take?” I asked, knowing the question was folly before the answer came.

  “We close at six.” Digger told me after checking his watch. “So you’ll hear from us by, well, six.”

  “Fantastic.”

  “Don’t you go washin’ that arm, Digger,” Becky said, probably because she couldn’t help herself.

  “Ah, don’t worry, darlin’, I keep all the pretty numbers.”

  “Jesus Christ,” Rudy whispered.

  “To Shoney’s,” Caroline said.

  Our sudden appearance in the Shoney’s waiting area disturbed the fabric of the restaurant. A young hostess with bangles from wrists to elbows leaned over the counter and whispered, “There’s an Applebee’s at the next exit.”

  “We came for strawberry pie,” Becky announced.

  “Okeydokey, artichokey.”

  That was a real quote from a real human even though it didn’t seem possible. She tucked us in a rounded corner booth away from the tables of senior citizens, who were mostly seated near the restrooms or salad bar. Rudy rolled to the open spot and checked the menu. “I say we order breakfast first.”

  We had just placed our order when we heard air brakes. Caroline parted the miniblinds wide, and then wider. “Tour bus.”

  The second coming of the senior siege descended upon us, and the volume in the room quadrupled. Shoney’s quickly proved why it existed. For every polyester knit suit and nylon sweater, there were smiling waitresses with coffee cups ready to flirt with men four times their age. I imagined a manager in the back saying, “This is our moment, troops. Go out there and get two-dollar tips like your life depends on their Depends.”

  Our table filled with plates and drinks, and our hostess swung by our table and said, “Y’all ordered just in time.” Since we hadn’t done much more than snack for lunch, the food was exceptional.

  With her mouth full of pancakes, Caroline asked, “Which of you got this thing up?” She volleyed a glare at me and then Rudy.

  “This what?” I asked.

  “Global warming! The destruction of the Great Barrier Reef.” Massive eye roll. “This trip.”

  Our eyes scraped each other’s plates. There was a busy silence between us. My head stayed bent. I started with an easy, palatable answer. “I always wanted to see Ellis Island. So does Rudy. So we thought—”

  “We’d try,” Rudy finished.

  “And then there’s the art installation. We just—”

  Rudy again. “Feel like we—”

  “Should be there,” I said.

  “For Carter,” we said together.

  “Did y’all practice that?” Caroline asked.

  “Oh, shush,” Rudy said.

  Becky moved the topic from Acc
elerant Orange. “Well, I got suspended because of Go and came along for the ride.”

  “What did y’all get suspended for?”

  My cheeks were flames and the flames were spreading into my chest. “Cutting school during a bomb threat. They wanted to put us on a bus for safety and I said hell no.”

  Caroline turned her fork upside down and sucked syrup from the tines. I expected her to poke fun at me, but instead she said, “Tell me: What’s your obsession with Ellis Island? Because I also have an obsession, but I’m betting ours are different.”

  “I want to replicate a family picture. My gran—man, I wish you could meet her—does this thing with replicating photos. I was trying to do the same so we’d have three generations of the same photo, taken with the same camera. Probably sounds stupid if you haven’t seen her wall of photos, but that’s what I was doing in June. Unfortunately, I lost our family camera, a very old Kodak, in the explosion.”

  Caroline folded her napkin into a square. A tiny square. The tiniest square possible. “Tell me about the bomb threat at your school.”

  I sipped my coffee. “I think anyone that has anything to do with bombs—fake or real—should be strung between a couple of trees.”

  Caroline parted the miniblinds again. A layer of dust poofed into the air. “You’re right about that. So, Jennings, if you ran from the general vicinity of a school bus, what makes you think you can handle Accelerant Orange?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe, I really want that photo at Ellis Island.”

  “No.”

  “Okay. Fine. I want to take any photo I please.”

  “No.”

  “All right. New York broke me and Chan. And what do you do when you get lost? You go back to the last place you were found.”

  There it was. Well, most of it.

  Caroline kept pressing. “You sure New York was the last place you were found?”

  “Yes.”

  Caroline jabbed her fork at my chest. “If that’s true, board that bus out there. Test her out. Show us you have the stones to take back what you lost.”

  “I don’t have to prove anything to you.”

  “Yeah, you do. Come on, Jennings. What’s the worst that could happen?”

  In 1993 a car bomb detonated below the World Trade Center North Tower. Six people died. Many more were injured. I’d bet my red beanie there were spouses who begged their partners to stay home the next morning. I imagined their conversation. The husband said, “Honey, we always said we’d raise our kids out of the city.” The wife, after attempting to shower PTSD down the drain, argued, “This is my job. I have to go.” Maybe he made the coffee and tried again—this time, pleading desperately. “Do this for me, please!” But that ill-fated woman grabbed a North Tower badge, and said, “What are the odds that this will happen again?”

  Eight years later, the answer came. One hundred percent.

  One tragedy didn’t buy you cosmic leeway.

  “That bus out there could blow too,” I said.

  “You really know how to play worst-case scenario. Here’s the thing: I’m not going another mile unless you find that driver and ask him for a tour.”

  “Care—”

  I held a hand up to Rudy, knowing what to say to Caroline. “Keep that up, and we’ll leave you at Shoney’s.”

  Caroline laughed in my face. “You don’t think anyone is expendable. Your bleeding heart probably weeps for Simon and curses the mommy who made him the man he became.” How did she know that when I’d just said bombers should be strung up? “Don’t give, Jennings, if you can’t get.”

  I had pushed her to the brink twice today. Bullied her, even.

  “Watch it, Care.”

  “Ru, you weren’t telling her to ease up on me earlier, now, were you?” To me she said, “There is no point in driving to New York if you can’t board the senior trolley tour of South Carolina. Or, at least, attempt it. Think of all those generous people out there watching Accelerant Orange episode forty-five.” She gave the five her best Southern twang. “They’re probably typing their credit card numbers in right now, believing their hard-earned money will go to someone with a spine. Do you really want to let all those suckers down?”

  “You’re being a bitch,” Rudy said. “This is hard enough without heaping extra guilt on her.”

  Caroline looked satisfied by the accusation. “Please. Every single one of us dresses in rags of guilt. Way before there was a dollar amount attached to our potential healing. Way before there was an art installation. Plus, look at all that brimming determination.” She pointed at the vein pulsing in my forehead. “Our golden girl’s going to try it.”

  “You are a bitch,” I said. “And you’re right. I’ll try.”

  God, I missed Chan. But I had to get used to the idea of doing hard things without him.

  I stepped toward the driver. And nearly fell over from the rush.

  34. RIDE, SALLY, RIDE.

  $78,880.00

  A middle-aged bus driver hunched over the end of the counter. He ate sausage links like he’d never eat again, and when I climbed atop the stool beside him, he didn’t notice. I watched as he tapped his paper check with his yellowed fingernails. “Bus driver eats for free,” he reminded the waitress. He had not one but two cigarettes above his left ear.

  “Um, sir,” I said.

  “Oh yeah,” he said, the words stretched with a Midwestern accent.

  “My gran’s considering a bus tour to Philadelphia, and I wondered if I might hop on your bus and check the seats for her. She had a hip replacement.” I feigned deep concern. “We all want her to go, but we’re worried. You could ease our minds.”

  “Sure, kid. Lemme hoover this down, and I’ll unlock her.”

  I nodded and swiveled in the opposite direction so he wouldn’t feel pressed. Rudy was there. He gave me a cheesy smile I couldn’t return. My stomach was roiling from the sausages and the idea that I was about to be up close and personal with a bus. I put my chin on the counter and took a deep breath.

  “Ya ready, kid?”

  “She is,” Rudy answered, thrusting out his hand.

  The man popped the cigarette he was holding into the corner of his mouth and shook Rudy’s hand. “You the brother?”

  “I’m the friend,” Rudy answered.

  He slapped Rudy on the back and said, “Good on you. Let’s head outside to Sally. Ya know, like ‘ride, Sally, ride.’” He laughed heartily at his own joke and slapped Rudy between the shoulder blades again.

  Rudy tugged me off the stool and we followed the driver out the front door. The smell of tobacco wafted toward our nostrils and Sally beamed in the late-afternoon sun. Her diesel engine ran like a purring jungle cat. When I closed my eyes, the image distorted. The bus flipped sideways. Melted metal. Crumpled steel. Burning skin. Rudy screamed.

  When I opened them again: the aqua-blue bus, the black steering wheel, the gray, swaying steps. Cigarettes and diesel.

  Closed. A bus in pieces. I touched my side, blood escaped from a hole near my hip.

  Opened. An empty, innocuous charter bus. Ride, Sally, ride.

  The driver, who had by now told us that his name was Dennis and that he was married with five kids and he’d once been a rodeo clown in Fort Worth, stepped clear for me to enter. “I’ll have to pat you down when you leave,” he said, but he took an embroidered hankie from his back pocket and pressed it into my hand. “Nose is bleeding, tiger. Don’t drip on the seats.”

  “You don’t have to do this. Caroline’s daring you because you dared her.”

  “She’s not wrong.”

  “What if something happens to you in there?”

  “I have to make it up there before we worry about that.”

  Rudy accepted this answer with grace. His lip even curled into a smile. “Ride, Sally, ride,” he said, but I couldn’t bring myself to enjoy the joke. The bottom step lay six inches away. The standard-issue grooved rubber flooring from Bus #21 covered the three-step well. The
driver’s seat loomed. Next to that, a shiny aluminum pole ran floor to ceiling. The fire extinguisher was bolted to the floor. Its red metal loomed into focus and out again.

  I lifted my foot, pawing at the step.

  Everything blurred.

  Everything swayed.

  A rush of emotions thrashed by like straight-line winds. Chan and me kissing. Chan and me fighting. Chan and me alive.

  The ringing in my ears shook my balance. Endless, endless ringing. I gripped the rail inside the well. A tsunami crested and fell. Heat.

  Nothing.

  I awoke stretched across Rudy’s lap, feet dangling over the side, head lolling on his shoulder. He pressed the driver’s bloodstained hankie against my nose.

  “How long?” I asked.

  “A few seconds,” he said, but Becky and Caroline were there. Unless they’d slipped outside to watch me board the bus, they couldn’t have made the dash so quickly.

  “You were right,” I said to Caroline. “I’m not ready for this.”

  “‘The attempt and not the deed confounds us,’” Rudy said.

  “Churchill?” Becky asked.

  “Shakespeare,” said Rudy at the same time that I said, “Stock’s people, the crowds, the crowds that believe in you and me and all of us, will measure the deed, not the attempt.”

  “I’m about to ‘Cotton-Eyed Joe’ your ass, Jennings.”

  “Do it,” I told Becky.

  She clutched my chin the way Granddad used to. “You tried something huge.”

  And failed. In front of my crew. I liked my role as shining example and pillar of fortitude, and this, whatever I was right now, was like being gnawed to death by a rat. I did not want to faint at the steps of Accelerant Orange, and at this rate, I thought I might.

  “I’ve got to figure this out,” I said.

  “Two days ago, you refused to even look at a bus. Today, you nearly put your foot on the bottom step. That’s progress. And we’re celebrating. Now let’s get back inside so we can eat strawberry pie like senior citizens,” Becky said.

  35. SOCIETY’S PRODIGIOUS METAPHOR FOR LOVE