Stars Go Blue by Laura Pritchett Page B

Ben hides his bracelet under his shirt sleeve. It looks like the man with the ugly face and the missing teeth has closed his eyes, and perhaps fallen asleep, and Ben is glad for that. He loves the bus moving and the sound of Greeley coming closer and closer. Ray. That’s who he’s going to see, Ray. And there’s a slip of paper in his pocket to remind him what to do.
    And then, startling them out of the hush, the bus driver says on a loud thing, “I’m sorry to report, folks, that I-25 as well as the side roads have just been closed by the highway patrol. Up ahead is Ed’s Place, and I’m stopping there.”
    Ben hears the people groan.
    The man sitting next to him says, “Ah, fuck. I knew I should have left yesterday.”
    Ben wishes he had tied a string from his suitcase to his hand. He must not, he must not, he must not, he must not lose thisthing. He tells himself over and over as he walks off the bus with his suitcase, behind the others, and underneath an orange neon sign and a huge sky blowing fast and angry flakes. He ducks his head and the snow is smacking his face, hard, and he follows the others inside and follows a few men into the restroom. He goes into a stall and takes a piss but then he sets the suitcase on the seat of the toilet and unbuckles the suitcase and takes out the bottle and the syringes. He tries to fit them in his sock but it’s no good, they don’t fit. Finally he puts them in his jacket, one that Renny bought him years ago, which has deep pockets. In the suitcase he leaves the gun tucked in with the clothes and the picture of Ray from the newspaper and the name of Ray and some other slips of paper. He can’t remember if they are important or not. The gun is important as backup, because he’s learned the hard way that you should always have backup, you should always be able to put an animal out of its suffering. At the last minute, he takes out one of the newspaper articles and folds it and puts it in his pocket. He makes sure he has everything before he leaves. He double-checks—— jacket, wallet, suitcase —so that he will not forget these three important things.
    He finds a booth and orders a piece of cherry pie from the waitress, who is chubby and young, but who he realizes is not chubby but has a baby growing inside her.
    She says, “Well, looks like we’re all stuck here for the night. At least we got food. Could be worse. Pie and coffee? That’s all? Coming right up.” When she returns with the pie and coffee and he decides to order a sandwich—just some sandwich, he says, he can’t remember the name—and she regards him carefully and says, “That’s the order I’d eat my food in too. Hamburger coming right up.” He hopes that this woman has a baby girl.
    â€œJoin you?” Ben looks up to see a man, who is young, in his twenties, more of a boy than a man, with a bok-bok marked face, and some missing teeth, and not handsome at all, in fact, ugly.
    â€œI’m Luce,” says the man. “From the bus. I gave you some sandwich.”
    Ben is tired. His brain feels dummy and dusty. “Well, hi, Luce,” he says. “I’ll buy you dinner.”
    The man cocks his head at him. “That would be great, thanks. A man can always eat. Doesn’t it smell good here?”
    Ben can’t smell anything and wonders, briefly, why he can’t smell anything. He hasn’t smelled anything in a long time, as if that part of his world has been erased. “That’s the truth, a man can always eat.”
    â€œYes, it is.”
    When his hamburger comes, he tries to smell it. There is nothing: only air. But it looks good and he feels his mouth water. The boy-man says, “So, does it piss you off? Make you bitter? I always wanted to ask my dad that, but he wasn’t the talking type, plus now he wouldn’t know what the hell I was talking about.”
    Ben