That doesn't matter. You only love her. That's what they say. But I belong to her forever. And I'm telling you this: As soon as she takes you in her arms we'll be in Nome, Alaska. They told me that, too. Now I know this is the good bus. I'm going to sit here now and be quiet and hope and wait and pray until I see her running to meet you and kissing your mouth into Nome, Alaska.
The morning was overcast and cool like her touch as he passed the shop-windows that were just now sleepily raising their eyelids. He felt very rested, but also very hungry. The long brown scaled ribs of the first bench soared against his back. Behind him, other benches squatted in a queue. No one was in the waiting room but he. The fountain had been turned off. The ticket window was down. On its eight faces, which had been textured to resemble the sockets inhabited by pomegranate seeds, two luminescences like oval headlamps moved as his gaze moved. Perhaps they were the headlights of his high and silver train. He got up and went outside the station, watching the empty track. Suddenly the taste of her saliva came into his mouth.
On the train, a child was crying with dull hopelessness. He sat down in a seat still warm from a vanished body. The train began to move almost immediately. Wet gray streets, wet white-gray sky, wet green-gray trees, mudfields and green fields unraveled, the train clicking like a monstrous loom. There was nowhere to go except home, and home was nowhere anymore. He was starving. To the even jack-hammering of the rails he sat remembering the dinner she'd made him last night: lamb chops and home fries and buttered beans.
The train slowed, as if to enjoy the shade of the overpass, then rolled between a trestle's interminable X's as it crossed the greenish-brown river.
He disembarked with the others and went into the first coffee shop he could find.
Both waitresses limped. One was a fat lady whose gray hair was cropped so severely that she might have been a recent electroshock patient. The other was an old Chinese who shouted almost consonantlessly.
The Chinese lady brought him a menu.
Pork chops and eggs, please, he said.
Why you wan' po'k cho' OK! screeched the waitress.
The walls glistened yellow-green with grease.
A giraffe-necked man in the next booth kept biting his ladyfriend's ear with a silly laugh. An old man lurched in, clutching the rails of his walker. In came a woman, limping.
The clockface was so gilded with decades of grease that it might have been deep sea brass.
A whore and a pimp were sitting side by side at the counter. The pimp said: They stole something else from me. I threw away all my underwear that didn't have holes in it so they'd leave me alone, but they stole the raggedy ones just the same.
The whore yawned and drank her coffee.
What'll you have? said the fat waitress.
Number three, said the pimp.
I dunno what the number three is, said the fat waitress. You order what it is, not what number it is. I don't care how many girls you got working for you.
Gimme some soup then, said the pimp meekly.
A man in a booth smoked, sucking his elliptical face into a round tobacco moon while his glasses gleamed greedily.
The fat waitress hobbled bowlegged, leaning on each booth as she went, struggling with a scalding platter of meat that was too heavy for her.
He remembered the taste of her armpits and the pulsing of the veins in her fingers when he kissed her hands. He thought of the train going farther and farther from her.
The Chinese waitress brought his pork chops and eggs.
Thank you, he said.
She stared at him in surprise.
What do you have coming, hon? the fat waitress was saying to the whore. I didn't hear you.
Two over easy, the whore said bitterly.
He was never going to see her again.
You whaiee po'k cho' ho' sausssssss? shrieked the old Chinese lady.
Hot sauce? OK.
Thank you, he said when she brought it, and she smiled a timid old smile. That was when he began to love her.
Where's my soup? said the pimp.
Just a minute more, said the fat waitress.
I don't have time for you, bitch, the pimp said. — He got up and walked out. The whore looked down at the counter and ground out her cigarette against the saucer.
Your friend's no good, said the fat waitress in outrage. I told him the soup would be ready in a minute and he called me a bitch. The hell with him.
The whore said nothing.
You whaiee whea' toasss please? shrieked the waitress.
Sure, I'll take some wheat toast. Thank you.
This time her smile was full and open.
As he ate he looked around him at the horrible place. The man who had been smoking moved in the next booth, which the giraffe-necked man had left. His face was flushed red. He stuck his cigarette into the nosepiece of his glasses and glared dreamily. —
