All come to look for America

They boarded in Pittsburgh. The couple. As couples will. Two dolls stuffed with sawdust in a ghastly after-you-Alphonse relationship.

The bus was the usual tin can on wheels, humming along the interstate like a lonely ghost. The kind of place where you could lose your soul in a matter of hours and never know it was gone. I was riding near the back, just the way I liked it, slouched low in my seat so nobody could spot the man in the gabardine suit. At least, not without trying. And why would you?

I don’t need to explain the gabardine suit (that I had a damned high opinion of). Double-breasted. Beige. Paired with a navy-blue flannel shirt, a black, embroidered bowtie, brown-and-white shoes, a Panama hat rather too small for me and a reddish-brown moustache, aged three weeks.

But let me tell you this: it’s not the kind of thing you wear for show. It’s not the kind of thing you wear when you want to stand out in a crowd. You wear it when you want to fade into the shadows, when you want people to look right past you like you’re nothing but a whisper. And that’s what I was — just a whisper. Watching. Waiting.

She wasn’t much to look at — at least, not at first. Not until you realized she had the kind of face that had seen too many mornings, too many nights, and kept on going like it was just another damn day. You could see it in her eyes — there was a weariness there, unusual in someone so young, the kind you don’t get from reading books or doing dishes. It’s the kind of weariness that comes from living fast and forgetting to look where you’re going.

And then there was him. Short but not too big around. He was the kind of guy who’d take the first punch, just to see if he could take it. A medieval haircut that wouldn’t be out of place in a Robin Hood movie starring Errol Flynn.

A scrapper, a fighter, but there was something else underneath. Something hollow, like a man who’d been looking for answers in all the wrong places and had never quite figured out what the question was. Seemed to carry a reminder of every glove that laid him down or cut him till he cried out.

They didn’t sit together at first. He stood near the back, eyes darting across the bus like a man looking for an escape hatch, hands in his coat pockets like he was trying to keep his fingers from getting caught in something. She sat by herself, pulling out a magazine and giving it the kind of attention that makes you wonder what she’s really thinking about.

I had her pegged in the first five minutes. You could smell hopelessness in the air — thick as smoke. But the guy? He was harder to figure. He had this nervous energy about him. The kind of energy that burns you from the inside out. I couldn’t put my finger on it. Not yet. But I would. I always do.

“Let us be lovers,” he said to her, suddenly breaking the silence. The words hung in the air, like a promise or a threat. But there was something about it — something desperate, like a man who’d forgotten how to live any other way but with a sense of recklessness. “We’ll marry our fortunes together,” he added, like it meant something. Maybe it did to him. Who the hell talks like that?

I’ll tell you who. Someone with a comb and a fountain-pen clip protruding, familiarly, from the right-hand pocket of his olive-drab shirt.

I knew then. I knew it like I knew my own name. He was running. They both were. Running from something. Running to something. Maybe it was one of those pipe dreams. Maybe it was just the kind of thing people say when they’ve been on the road too long.

Step to the rear of the vehicle, folks. It was the driver to some late arrivals.

She didn’t flinch. Didn’t ask questions. Just nodded. “I’ve got some real estate here in my bag,” she said, and it was the kind of statement that could mean anything. Real estate. Paper and dust and the things that people sell to try and convince themselves they’re moving up in the world.

I smoked my cigarette, feeling the low burn in a lung, and kept my eye on them. They briefly got off at the next stop, both of them like apparitions, stepping into the dark air, then quickly hieing to the snacks-and-smokes counter at the gas station.

As the bus was about to depart for the next port of call, they returned in an oblique jog with Mrs. Wagner pies and a pack of cigarettes — cheap things, things people buy when they’re not sure how long their money will last but need to buy something to prove other people can see them. As they made their way down the middle corridor of the bus, some of the other passengers stared up at them with blank annoyance, like people in deck chairs on Mediterranean cruises when oblivious passersby block the sun.

They sat down in the seats, and I watched them. I always watch. In the struggle between yourself and the world, you must side with the world. Kafka. This was the furthest thing from a Mediterranean cruise.

Turning up the collar of her camel’s-hair jacket to hide her face, she appeared to be either crying or laughing. Softly at first, then louder. She was playing some kind of game with the other passengers, analyzing their faces, the expressions they wore like masks. She had this way of making everything seem absurd, like she was in on a joke no one else was invited to. It was both charming and dangerous — mitered and joined to a tee.

It wasn’t long before she caught on to something. People usually don’t. But she looked right at me. Looked right at me like she knew who I was before I even opened my mouth. It’s always the eyes, isn’t it? That’s how you know.

“The man in the gabardine suit,” she whispered to him, her voice low enough that only a man like me would hear. “He’s a spy.”

Now, I don’t mind a reasonable amount of trouble. It’s part of the job, after all. But there was something in her voice, some edge to it, like she was speaking a warning, or maybe a death sentence. I didn’t like it. Humankind can bear very little reality. Eliot.

I didn’t flinch either. I never flinch. But I leaned forward, just a little, enough so she could hear me when I said, “Be careful. My bowtie is really a camera.”

Iris in. Click. Iris out.

She didn’t blink. She didn’t even look surprised. She just nodded, like she was taking notes on a mental checklist. Maybe she was used to dealing with people like me. Or maybe she was just tired of being damned for her importunity or pretending she wasn’t part of the same game.

The Greyhound kept rolling, and I, safely ensconced in my envelope of solitude, kept watching. Her eyes stayed glued to her magazine, but I could see her glancing out the window, following the highway’s path like it was leading somewhere she didn’t want to go. Him, he stared at the scenery.

I lit another cigarette. The smoke curled up in the dim light, a lazy trail toward the ceiling. I could feel the tension building between them. The kind of tension that always boils over eventually, leaving nothing but steam and a palimpsest of remorse and contrition.

She leaned her head against the window, staring out into the night like the world was too big and she was too small to matter. Lit another cigarette and crossed her legs. Then a ladylike yawn with a closed mouth; her nostril wings gave her away. Bit reflectively at the cuticle of her thumb.

Those traits of ours that most embarrass when we are young, we later come to see as our charms. Stein.

“Kathy” he said, his voice soft, though he knew she was sleeping. “Michigan seems like a dream to me now. It took me four days to hitchhike from Saginaw.”

Passengers will please refrain.

I counted the cars flashing by on the New Jersey Turnpike. A hundred headlights, all racing toward something for the nonce — toward nothing for the harsh, watty glare of eternity. And what, in God’s name, was all this pother about? It was all the same. The whole warp and weft of it. An absurd, liminal enterprise. They were looking for America, just like everyone else.

But the thing about America is this: it’s a lie. Everyone’s searching for it, but it doesn’t exist. Not anymore. America smoked its last cigarette an hour ago, exhaling the smoke in a thin, sibilant stream.

Trespassers will be prosecuted.

I wasn’t lost. Not like them. I had a purpose. I always do. I’m empty and aching and I do know why.

The moon climbed over an open field, casting its cold light over the empty fields. All the trees were washed with April rain. I closed my eyes and the moon in the meadow took my darling Lorraine.