Greyhound by Steffan Piper Page B

and craggy mountains rising up in the background. The words Welcome to California were painted neatly within the upper portion of the canvas like it was a good thing. A very unconcerned and innocent-looking bear was frolicking in the stream, grabbing at a fish. I stared at the painting for a few minutes, locked in a trance. It wasn’t the California I knew at all. Maybe this is what it was for the adults or everyone else. Maybe this is what it was for my mother on her honeymoon with Dick. In my mind I pictured the innocent bear fishing them both from that frothy stream. They were gasping for air, their mouths full of ice-cold water, trying to get away. That was possibly the only California that would’ve made sense to me.
    The Blythe Terminal was something to see. It was large, well-built, and clean, which was quite the opposite from the overcrowded and dirty Los Angeles Terminal, which was too small, too cramped, and falling apart. It would’ve made some sense if they could’ve switched terminals, but that just wasn’t possible.
    I made my way across the charcoal gray marble to the far end. Two thin signs hung above two doorways and read Mens and Womens, amber-lit from inside. The bathroom was covered in white square tile from floor to ceiling. In the middle stood a large, round stainless-steel fountain with running water that was being used by one other man. It was the first time I’d ever seen anyone peeing in a water fountain. I surveyed the room for urinals. Once I realized that the fountain contraption was the urinal, I stepped up and did my business. Thankfully, the center portion of the fountain was raised, obscuring me from the other man directly across from where I stood.
    A short row of stalls that was made of the same wood as the phone booths was set back opposite the sinks. The bathroom was bigger than a lot of apartments I had lived in with my mother. The sound of someone flushing cut through the calm sound of my pee mixing into the running water below me.
    I noticed that even though I was in a bathroom, the air smelled fresh and clean, and the place was considerably relaxing. A tile mural of horses running across a desert plain was embedded into one of the walls just left of where I was standing. The homeless people in Los Angeles would’ve loved this place.
    I washed up quickly and left. I was starting to feel the vise grip of sleep closing in and twisting around me. My eyes were heavy, the joints of my hands hurt, and I couldn’t stop yawning. I thought I was going to swallow a bug the third time my mouth stretched open to vacuum in the night air and fill my body with the dark poison of the middle-of-nowhere. As I stepped outside, I could see that the bus was running again and people were filtering forward in a hazy state. I saw a lot of the same riders from Los Angeles and Palm Springs, but only a few other people had been on the bus ride longer than I had: an old woman with her not-so-pretty daughter, the creepy guy in the suit, and the man with the red hair and green army jacket who had gotten hassled by the evil Frank Burns in Bakersfield.
    We rumbled back out into the night, away from the Blythe Terminal with all of its clean and well-lit surfaces. A man with a janitor’s cart and a hose was spraying down one of the bus platforms. After we left, the place looked vacant. It was easy for me to huddle back into the corner of my window seat and fade away. Marcus said it was okay for me to take two seats, as he was stretched out on the third and into the aisle, slowly drifting away.
    When Monty had merged us all back onto the freeway, I looked across the bus and out one of the windows on the opposite side to see if the Blythe Terminal was still visible. With the glare from the passing cars, the strong glow wasn’t all that impressive now and could’ve been easily missed if you weren’t paying attention.
    I had hoped that they had a gift shop, as the thought occurred to me earlier to see if I had