(Scraped from the Cozy Cafe Forums- date unknown)
The bus pulled in from the end of that long subterranean corridor which marks one of Downtown Denver’s most prominent architectural feats, the Union Station concourse. It looked practically like an oncoming submarine, headlights kept from view by a thick winter frost. It was one of the coldest days of the year, -5 degrees, and that was as true down here as it was up above. I’d be glad to feel the bus’s warmth.
Not that I would be feeling any human warmth for a while. Shirley had made it clear that I should leave her and the kids on their own while they considered what to do next. And I would respect her prerogative. The trip would do me good. Some breathing room, definitely some long periods of reflection. Consideration, a game plan for whatever lay up ahead. I’d figure it out.
I don’t know why we had grown distant, that was maybe the worst of it. I hadn’t said anything that could have offended her, nor had she displayed signs of discontent prior to her polite request that I leave. It had come entirely out of the blue. Maybe that’s the worst facet of a long-term relationship- the unpredictability, the spontaneity, the sense that at any moment it could all crumble, a Jenga tower of shaky foundations raining down. And I was racking my brains there in the concourse near the door to the gate thinking about what it could have been. But there simply wasn’t an answer.
This woman was sitting on the bench behind the gate, fidgeting nervously with her ticket- $45.00 to Glenwood Springs, same as mine, bus headed there only arrived 4 times a day. I had been planning to explore the pools of Glenwood, the warm aquamarine waters, soak them up, and then afterward maybe do some spelunking in the cave system. I hadn’t been down there since I was 20, and was aching to revisit those seemingly limitless depths. Get lost. Maybe disappear into a little hole, allow the earth to ingest me.
What struck me about the woman was the way her right leg was draped languidly over her left, her arm casual and relaxed, her face- well, it was something to say the least. She was a character, I thought. Like someone you would see in a sitcom, a personality too large to be real. A forced presence, and a gnawing boredom.
As the bus pulled onto the curb and settled in, we all arranged ourselves in an orderly line and the driver popped out to check that all was well. He gave the bus a thorough inspection, including retrieving a stray suitcase from the luggage compartment, which he then took to the Lost and Found desk, twenty feet behind us. He was a balding, middle-aged guy with a round figure- not fat, necessarily, but portly, and you could tell by the way he wore his CDOT insignia that he took his role seriously. His expression was stern, as if he were a pilot.
“Welcome aboard,” he muttered as the line began moving up. The woman with the intense demeanor stood directly behind me, and I was on edge. I had packed light- three shirts, a couple pairs of socks, toothbrush and travel shampoo I had bought at the dollar store on Colfax. All that was located in a little duffel bag I had slung around my right shoulder. I was considering that I should have brought a coat, it would be as cold in Glenwood as it was here, if not colder. But the prospect of those warm, deep, volcanic pools had caused me to forget.
In the space between the concourse and the interior of the bus, the icy stabbing needles dug into my skin, my wrist felt numb, and I had to pull out my ticket even though I felt like my fingers were becoming inoperable. I grasped my left hand with my right, warming them both through friction. The woman stared at me, a puzzled disposition overtook her, and I shrugged, as if to say that this was the best I could do, I was trying to hurry, but the drafts whistling from the forsaken winter hellscape overhead made that expediency difficult.
“You need a scarf or something?” she asked. I shook my head from side to side and mounted the stairs, holding my ticket out in full display of the driver, who gave a lone grunt before pointing back with his thumb. The woman then displayed her ticket. It was going to be a long and arduous ride.
The bus was sparsely populated for midday. I guess not many go on trips this long, most would rather drive than take the bus. There were a few college students who looked like preppy types from Fort Collins up front, one old black guy listening to music on his headphones in the left aisle about five seats from the front.
I’ve always wondered why it is that so many people on a coach bus decide to sit near the front, where the noisy hum of the engine can be made out. Even when I board them from the end of the line, there’s always one snug, isolated, quiet seat in the back rows on the right. Motion sickness, maybe. Or a feeling of security near the driver, as if in the far reaches of the back the unspeakable deeds are committed. They probably are.
I had just nestled in with my travel pillow when I noticed that the woman had decided to occupy the seat directly opposite mine, on the right, with only the aisle separating us. I hadn’t heard her walk back, though maybe I was distracted by the ambient energy of Union Station- the gas leaking from pipes, the dripping water on the asphalt, the murmur from behind those manicured glass doors.
There she was, striped shirt and all, messy black haircut that didn’t really suit her and looked as if it had been administered over the course of an hour in the bathtub, legs crossed, defensive position. She was pensive, that’s how I guess I would call it. Pensive and alone, and definitely not flirting with me. As alone as I was, deep in thought. Everyone who uses public transportation is reflective to a certain capacity, viscerally aware of their surroundings by necessity of their forfeiture of control.
I tried to ignore her, pulled out my copy of The Firm by John Grisham. I had been reading it during business trips, and I was around halfway through, and hoped that I could get absorbed by it. Slowly, the bus began creeping forward and into the cold light of day up the Park Avenue ramp, and I prepared myself for the inertia, the sense of acceleration and prompt deceleration which was all too common on this line.
We made our way along I-70. Afternoon gave way to evening, the dimly lit greasy spoons and shacks of West Colfax faintly visible through the windows on the other side. On my side the cold, desolate reaches of Arvada, Wheat Ridge, and Lafayette became gradually blanketed in a thick sleet mixture until they turned into indistinguishable grey blobs. My stomach hurt, and this sense of general nausea was strengthened by the ceaseless glow of the overhead light. I decided to turn it off with a quick push and shoved The Firm back into my suitcase. Then I crossed my arms and put my legs up on the rest. These CDOT buses were fancier than the RTD coach ones, they came with little monitors on the back of the headrests and a bathroom.
On the reflection of the windshield up front I could make out the stern expression of the driver, who paid close attention to the flow of switches and lights in front of him, hugging the curves to ensure we didn’t feel too much push or pull. I wondered what he got out of it, what sort of psyche exactly craved this kind of thing.
The bus crept slowly past Denver and past Golden and into the opening of the chasms that wend their way down from the lofty peaks. Where do mountains begin? It’s a matter of semantics, really- the difference between a hill and a mountain, a town and a village, a creek and a river. We define boundaries, yet they’re ultimately a human construct and fail to do justice to the grandeur of the sleeping giants that rest on the edge of our city.
My brother-in-law, when he came up here, was uneasy at the sight of the Collegiate Peaks. We had gone on a day trip up to Alma with him- this was before we had children to tie us down- and he had been terrified at the mere thought of scaling one of them, or even looking at them. It broke his mind to stare down anything that massive.
I hadn’t understood it back then, yet now, as the faint headlights of the bus reflected off those meager guardrails, I spotted the tiny, distant sparkle of little houses on the sides of the Rockies- and they were so distant they were like sounding beacons in the depths of a fathomless sea, separated by miles and miles of unbreathable, snow-filled air. A chill set in, so I decided to pull out my blanket and move closer to the heater.
The woman across the aisle pulled out some sort of shawl from her bag and wrapped it around her neck. Her eyes were darkened with mascara, lashes hanging limp over the sockets. Tired, I guess. She rubbed her forehead, massaging her brain, rapt in thought. I envied her. My thoughts were somewhere else, replaced by subconscious detritus.
We were now speeding past Genesee Park and Mount Evans- up ahead, the winding ribbon of lit cars along the length of I-70 that on any other night would have appeared gorgeous tonight was faded and mute, as if someone had turned a dial and sapped the world of its life. The bus weaved around each car, left to right, and the potential of ice buildup occurred to me.
“What are you doing out tonight?”
The presence of tangible speech interrupted by reverie and my attention was drawn firmly to her. I hadn’t expected her to be so forthcoming, but perhaps she was experiencing the same boredom and needed an outlet, some vessel for conversation.
“I could ask you the same thing.”
She gave a half-hearted, insincere smile, the type that says I’m in a lot of pain right now and wouldn’t mind if you reduced the smart-aleck comments, flipped on the heat and the light above her, and I got a better view- that face looked so familiar, but I couldn’t place it. The hair, too. I knew I recognized her, from some magazine ad or something. Aside from the shawl, she was as I had envisioned. She nimbly picked out a thick amber scarf with frills on the end from her bag and handed it to me. Reluctant, I tossed it on along with my blanket, head nestled in the travel pillow. A fleeting semblance of comfort. To my right, the heater continued chugging along, filling the main cabin with warmth.
“I guess I ask because you look as if you’re a long way from home,” she said, “and unhappy about it. You can always tell here, whether people genuinely enjoy themselves or not. You gather an insight into people’s innermost thoughts and desires.” Her words were distant and sultry, as if emanating off the bare walls of limitless acoustic canyon rock.
“That’s true,” I conceded, shifting my position slightly so as to make eye contact. “You need to be perceptive, though, to catch them. Little tells. I learn those from poker.” I’m growing tired now. The bus is rumbling softly underneath me, lulling me closer toward some kind of distant rectangular light.
She nods, all too familiar with the game. Her elbow is propped up on her knee, face framed by thumb and index finger, staring toward the front and to two of the college students in particular, a couple nestled into each other’s arms. She looks hungry, starving for that sort of intimacy, to feel the touch of another person.
“You’re easy to read,” she continues. “Insecurity. Fragility. Stress lines around the eyes, little things like that. I’ve lived long enough that I can just... make these things out. I hate it, being privy to all this. Knowing what nobody has any right to know.”
The rectangular light doubles in size.
“Do you ever have strange dreams?” she asks, completely out of the blue, her gaze turning once more to me. As the bus makes a particularly sharp turn and the dimly lit sign announcing Genesee Park rushes past my window, I’m startled back towards cognizance. She appears unsettled by me, as if she didn’t create the same effect on everyone around her.
“No, not in particular,” I respond. “I’m told, always, that dreams hold significance, that they’re not just mental waste, that you can find meaning in them. Draw diagrams to map them out immediately after you wake up, keep dream journals, stuff like that. I actually kept a dream journal a long time ago, for about two months. I had heard about lucid dreaming from a friend who recommended that if you wanted to be aware you were dreaming you could keep a dream journal and bridge the gap between your dreams and your reality. It didn’t work. I just kept having dreams where I was pulled along by the whims of my brain.” Slight chuckle. Behind her, the sparse lights set up along this segment of I-70 frame her as if she were a deranged tour guide along the passage towards the underworld.
“Describe one.”
“One where I have no agency, you mean?”
“Yes.”
“I find myself driving east, on a certain street in West Denver.”
“You mean Auraria?” she asked.
“No, West Denver-” I caught myself. “Yes, actually., I guess it WOULD be near Auraria, from how the dream plays out- or an idealized version of that area, right when you approach Larimer Square.” I scratched my nose.
“Anyway, I’m driving,” I went on. “The buildings- they’re also idealized, exaggerated pieces of Denver technology, cartoonish stone and marble columns stretching up into the blue sky. It’s summer, the sun is beating down, but it’s not too hot, only around 75 degrees. There are buildings with a pebble exterior and strange geometric windows inscribed onto them. And so I’m on this street, in my car. I don’t have a car anymore. Not right now, anyway.” She nodded, tapping those perfectly painted black nails of hers on her knee. Listening, rapt.
“The street is slanted,” I recite. “More than any street should be, more than those ones in San Francisco. And as you drive along, toward the faraway towers of Downtown Denver, these exaggerated buildings passing you on either side, the road curves up such that you’re actually driving UP- my back is pressed against my seat as if I were in a rocketship prior to liftoff- and even though this defies gravity, and I KNOW it defies gravity, the car continues driving rather than falling and careening down this impossible asphalt cliff. A ninety degree angle. And as I ascend, again, in the direction of Denver, gravity itself breaks apart, and I’m floating in the confines of my car. And then it ends.” I was staring at her when I said this, and in slight embarrassment, I looked away, out into the pitch dark silhouettes. She remained silent for some time, considering the significance of my dream.
“You’re right,” she said, staring straight forward blankly. “That probably means nothing.”
We continued, slowly but surely, as the night drew on and the sleet outside gathered. I checked my watch. Not long now. To my right, the familiar sign whizzed past. Now entering Clear Creek County. Ahead of us, I could make out the distant, sparkling lights of all the expensive gift shops in Breckenridge, and away off to the south, the frozen, permafrosted plateau which situated Alma.
One of the college couples up front disembarked at the Breckenridge stop. They waved goodbye to the driver as if the driver gave a shit about who they were, hauled their backpacks full of skiing equipment from the storage compartment. I couldn’t see the driver’s face very well, but he looked tired. Some bags under the eyes. Couldn’t be a very satisfying or well-paying job, so much time spent away from home.
He probably had some sort of family, I realized. Again I wondered if maybe he had a deep-seated resentment toward them, if this cushy CDOT position satisfied a repressed disdain towards them, or if he genuinely was underpaid and if that could explain his general demeanor. Hair sticking out all messy from the underside of his cap, two-way radio jutting from his front coat pocket. Eyes that pierced right ahead, never flinching or wavering. Focusing on the blizzard. Mesmerized by that all-permeating confetti.
It was becoming substantially warmer, and I worried about drifting off and missing my stop, or having to be woken up by someone once we arrived in Glenwood- couldn’t quite decide whether it would be worse to be woken up by the woman across the aisle or the driver. Neither possibility appealed to me much, but something about the low, droning vibratory hum of the engine underneath my seat was causing me to lose it. I pulled The Firm out again and started reading it, line by line, very carefully. Keep the neurons firing.
“That The Firm?” she asked. Annoyed, I dropped it on the seat next to me.
“Yes, matter of fact it is,” I replied. I was getting drowsy now. Incoherent. “You see the movie? Tom Cruise one?”
“I have,” she said, still twinkling in that weird fashion. “I also read the book. Won’t spoil it for you. But it’s one of my favorites.”
“How’s that?”
“I guess,” she said, crossing her arms to consider her rationale, “the sense of confinement is what really seals it for me. Like, Mitch is going to be screwed no matter what course of action he takes. He’s going to be fucked. Royally. And the trick- the conceit, as it were- is how he can arrive at a third option. And being of a legal mindset, he recognizes that there really shouldn’t be any third option. Because the legal system functions around a lack of creativity, and requires as few options as possible for the purposes of clarity.” I nodded, vaguely aware of what she was going after.
“I guess you’re right,” I said. “That’s what I get from it. The conflict within Mitch between the necessity of the formulation of a creative, extralegal plan and his role as a lawyer, which is incompatible with anything beyond the law as he recognizes it.” She nodded. Stifled a laugh behind her painted nails. Kind of a smile. At least she was warming up, too. Maybe in this temperature, good humor was a prerequisite.
“Too fucking hot in here,” I remarked.
It was then that I started losing it. Eyelids involuntarily dropping. You know how it gets. I leaned somewhat against the window, even as it shook, propped my travel pillow up, snuggled in deeper and deeper. Imagining the blankets suffocating me as an enveloping cloth cyclone, keeping me safe and warm and shielded from the cold outside. A womb of security.
And while this process continued, and my copy of The Firm remained spread open on my lap, I gazed vaguely at my fellow passenger. She had been so needlessly approachable. Nobody on public transit is this friendly, I realized. Never, unless they were trying to hit on you. And she wasn’t trying to hit on me. I could just tell. She didn’t even like me, I don’t think.
She had reclined somewhat, arm on the armrest, tapping it methodically, finger by finger, and behind her I could make out those little gray particles, drifting lazily down, in such quantities as to grind traffic to a halt. I could hear subtle honks and beeping noises from up front. A standstill. The great I-70 winter clog I had heard so much about on the news. Miles and miles of stalled traffic, either from a car accident or a downed tree.
The driver, obviously indignant toward this development, slammed his fist down onto the steering wheel and produced a loud beep. This jolted me to immediate awareness as much as a cup of Arabica blend. I poked out from the aisle as he swung the doors open, hoisted himself from his seat, and dashed out into the frigid night.
He returned a few minutes later, visibly miffed, covered in a thick layer of precipitation, and like some erstwhile messiah he raised his pudgy hands toward the ceiling, and we all took note.
“Major traffic jam,” he said. “Major. State troopers estimate could last an hour or more to get us going. Don’t worry, though. I’ve called this in to Glenwood Station on the officer’s radio, they’ve been informed about the delay and we’ll be on our way as soon as possible.” This was met with some discontent. The old guy in front took out his headphones and scratched his head. He wasn’t accustomed to stuff like this, you could tell. He withdrew a little bag of salted peanuts from his coat and sucked on one.
“I told you we should have taken Alan’s car,” one of the college girls remarked. “We’re gonna be out here all night. I’m going to text them.”
“There’s no reception out here,” her boyfriend said. He had blond bangs and they were sitting across the aisle from each other, presumably due to their respective carry-on bags. She was wearing a leather jacket and stilettos, he had on a wool sweater and some sort of neon bracelet which was probably outdated, though I can’t say I keep up to speed much with that sort of thing.
“Fuh,” she murmured, flipping on her overhead light.
I leaned back and my compatriot did the same, taking advantage of what little reclining was available to us. Outside, the snow fell heavy, in big fat particulate flakes, illuminated by the line of cars to our left and beyond it the unforgiving winter of the Rockies. Perturbed by the thought, I nestled deeper into my coat, rubbed my sweaty palms together.
And as the heat grew, blasting from the spherical vents overhead, I noticed something strange- that as her eyelids closed and she fell into a sort of languid fugue state, the panorama of icy death behind her faded out, as if someone had turned a knob on an old television set. In its place came a rectangle of piercing blue light- with exact, precise angles. Not a natural phenomena. It looked like the reflection of an old CRT TV monitor, although it couldn’t be- there were none on board, the only TVs were pithy little DVD-powered displays scattered every five seats, and none near mine.
“What is that?” I stammered, blinking. She abruptly awoke, grabbing hold of her legs to improve their circulation, and as she did the square vanished.
“The window?”
“No. There was a TV. Like the display when you pause a VCR.”
“Don’t mention VCRs around me.”
I found this comment intriguing and menacing, there was more than a vague trace of hostility in it, her lips became singed with poison at the mere thought, a peculiar revulsion to the very concept, and it was then I realized she was privy to something I wasn’t.
Taken aback, I tried to put the whole incident out of my head, but as my field of vision was drawn to my own window, past the hypnotic pattern of dots designed to provide shade, something registered inside me- that while the screen had faded out, the external world hadn’t faded back in. Everything outside the bus- the whispers of slender pines, the guardrails, the tire tracks carved into the slush- had disappeared.
From up in front, the college couple began harried murmurs, the black guy took off his headphones and leaned into the aisle to get a better view, his eyes wide with terror. The driver pulled out his cellphone, which refused to turn on no matter how fervently he pressed the button. One of the girls stood up and tried to open the emergency exit latch.
“Don’t do that!” the driver shouted, ordering her back into place. “I don’t- I don’t know what happened. So we’re just going to sit here. No fire. No smoke.” He turned his nose up towards the ceiling, where the bright white panels stared down at him with a tone of ridicule. A riddle he couldn’t quite place his finger on, he paced up and down the aisle, making mental notes of everyone’s position.
Now came the noises of subdued panic, the little skittering jolts like rats in a cage, the claustrophobic paranoia, the faces pressed up real close against the glass to ensure that nothing, not one solitary light, could be made out beyond the boundaries of the large sarcophagus in which we found ourselves. One minute, a highway. A dark highway, yes, but a tangible, physical realm. Now- only shadows.
“Do you know what this is?” I turned my neck, but she had fallen asleep again, evidently exhausted. That was strange, as if the event had drawn energy from her, depleted her will. I grabbed her wrist and shook her to her senses. She looked around, pupils routinely contracting to the pulse of the bus’s engine, which still hummed beneath us.
“I don’t. I’m sorry.”
“You know what this is,” I said. “Ever since you got on here, ever since we started talking. Something’s different about you.”
“I didn’t catch enough sleep last night,” she half-giggled, brushing a strand of her third ponytail out of her lashes. “You know how it feels not to get enough sleep, but do you ever savor it? Revel in it? Take into account the sensation?”
“Stop talking in riddles. We need some way out of this.”
“Out of what?”
Up front, one of the guys started hyperventilating, his eyes rolled back and he shuddered uncontrollably. A girl sitting next to him in a heavy magenta coat shuffled around in his back backpack before withdrawing a slender device- presumably an epi-pen- tearing the cap off with her teeth, ripping off his sleeve, and jamming it into his forearm. He slumped forward.
“For fuck’s sake, let us off!” she screamed.
The driver, now understanding the gravity of the medical nightmare he was in and the subsequent lawsuits that would happen if he didn’t comply, got a panicky look, turned toward the control panel, tried pushing the appropriate button. He jammed it with his index finger multiple times, grunted as he brought his fist down onto the thing- but the doors wouldn’t move. The girl with the coat started pounding on the glass, her face inseparably printed into it.
The guy up front with the headphones was approached by the driver, who promptly removed them from his ears and asked, in a quaking voice:
“Look, man- how do these still work?”
“I don’t know why your phones don’t work,” he responded. “This- this is cassette. Please just let me lean back and enjoy my music. I have no idea what you’re on about, but I need to get to Glenwood by tonight.”
Cassette. That meant, wherever we were, there was some kind of magnetic field comparable to the Earth’s. Out there, in the void beyond, some analogous pole, some deep, hidden beacon which summoned the waves of the magnetic particulate running through his device on a thin plastic backing. Somewhere, in the swirling mists.
They had become somewhat noticeable, these mists, thin shrouds of pale vapor which moved in an unnatural way, grasping at the panes like fingers, with apparent sentience and tactile capabilities. They would manifest, drift for ten feet or so, lit by the lights of the bus, then drift out into nothing. Like some eerie orchestra, they pirouetted on unseen winds.
Beckoning.
My associate had decided to lean against the window, crossing her legs into the aisle, applying some dark rouge lipstick from her purse. She turned on the overhead light, smacked a couple times to ensure maximum effect, apathetically stared at me. I was probably the calmest in the situation besides her. She was unbelievably indifferent, sighing as if she had witnessed mental breakdowns on this scale a thousand times.
The guy in the couple had risen to his feet, he raced towards the front and started kicking at the door, and the driver didn’t object, just put his face into his hands and sobbed at what a failure he was, and try as he might, the boyfriend couldn’t make a dent in the thing, even while his girlfriend cheered him on with ravenous enthusiasm.
There were other forces at play to encourage this behavior, I realized. Something about the space amplified people’s fears, their insecurities, their horror. It was like being in the grip of some terminal sickness, lying on the hospital bed, choking and dying in the most horrible, painful way it’s possible to die, every vein and muscle taut with recognition of your own imminent destruction.
Surely, there was nothing inherently frightening about this place. It was colorless, featureless besides the vapor, yet the exact shade of it, the precise aroma, was carefully designed to inspire fear. And she- she was somehow immune to all this. I may not have been, and as such I knew that it wouldn’t be long before I gave into the collective hysteria as well. I would lose myself, turn into a member of the screaming herd, the cattle in for the slaughter.
“They’re calling for me,” she said. I spun and backed away from her, my fingers trembling. Even she inspired fear at this point.
“What...?”
“They want me, out there. That’s what you saw. I think they want me.”
I can’t explain what happened then. Her eyes blank, her face a featureless canvas, her purse slung over her shoulder, she rose to her feet and began walking, slowly, with a measured stride, up toward the front, gripping the armrests, her lacquered nails creating little indentations in the felt backing. Nobody moved to stop her.
It was like a weird parade, and I got up to accompany her, many of the passengers wondering who we were given that we hadn’t made our presence known up until then. Their silence was deafening, they crouched as if we were leviathans casting shadows onto their forms. She gave the driver a sympathetic look, put her hand on his shoulder, and he looked up at her, tears and mucus in plentiful rivulets.
“It’s okay,” she reassured him in a quiet, soothing tone. “I’m leaving.”
She proceeded down the steps and I went right behind her, hand on her shoulder, and the doors effortlessly swung open like gossamer curtains and we were there, on the last precipice at the end of all things, looking out onto the wastes of that devoid vacuum. She was completely emotionless, calm and benign, measuring the eye of the hurricane.
“I need to leave now,” she said, turning around to meet my gaze. “They want me.”
From the pitch empty, there came a low tone, like the output of a radio antenna, piercing and horrible, and above a deep red moon hung, not the moon of our world but with a similar pattern of craters, a perfect crimson disc suspended over the inky expanse. Clouds of darkness enshrouded it periodically.
“I can go with you,” I volunteered. “I’m sick of being here. I’ll join you. Wherever it is you’re going, you should have company along.”
“Sssssh,” she brought her finger to my lips, tapped them gently. “That won’t work. Stay here. Stay here and make peace with yourself. Wherever it is you’re going, whatever it is you’ve been through. Remember me, and you’ll be alright.”
And with that, she stepped off the platform, out from the physical confines of the bus, the narrow coffin, and walked slowly off into the void, and as she did she faded, not exactly like a person in perspective but rather like the lit shadow of a flickering candle as it consumes all its wax, wavering and sputtering into diminutive absence.
And then, as the last traces of her striped shirt disappeared, I noticed that my arms were cold, and that there was now a highway outside- I-70, the narrow passage, and beyond it the pines and conifers with their elegant statures. I sighed, rubbed my arms together, and mounted the entrance. The driver appeared incredibly relieved, he was panting in waves of apprehension, his tan gloves gripping the wheel.
“What- what happened out there, man?”
I said nothing, just walked down the aisle, where the guy with the allergic reaction had settled down and the guy with the headphones had either dozed off or fainted, and the other couple was leaning into each other’s arms, nestled in a warm comfort which seemed so far removed from the frenzied panic moments earlier.
The engine rose to life, the growl of a beast from the thing’s cylinders. The traffic jam had picked up, we were at last moving, the doors shut closed and I folded my hands in my lap, my copy of The Firm remaining unread for the remainder of the night, as I replayed the evening’s events over and over again in my head, like some sort of highlight reel.
Now here I am, in the hot springs, emerald steaming waters before me, so different from whatever environment she now finds herself in, so natural and vibrant, a panacea of life to balance the frigid shell of death. It’s 11 P.M. and I keep telling myself I’ll stay in here for one minute longer, but it’s doing something to my heart and I should probably head for my room and swim under the heap of blankets and drift off to sleep.
Over me, the Western Slope looms high, imposing behemoths so unlike the ones I’m used to on the Front Range, but respectable in their own right. They’re silhouettes, silent giants who’ve been witness to generations of settlement and said nothing, remained complacent and apathetic to all who pass near them. I suppose I should be content to do the same.
But I worry that, if I forget, if I don’t stop to consider what happened tonight, I’ll get lost in the land of dreams and find myself staring into a deep blue rectangle, a rectangle from which there’s no escape, a rectangle leading into a nightmare world. Sleep is tricky like that. You never know how it’ll turn out. You never know how life will turn out.
Well, there’s no alternative to life.