Cliff Face - Sunset
We're a few hours out of the city now. A bus full of lowly people elevated high above the road and the miles and miles of, flat, autumnal nothing around us. I have jumped off the cliff face but I haven't hit the bottom. Maybe there is no bottom.
I've never traveled by bus before, am not used to being stuck next to strangers for long periods of time. On a bus, there's really no other option than to introduce yourself to the person you'll be with for the next fourteen hours. I'm lucky this time. I don't get a crazy one. I get Jeremy. Twenty-something with eyes that look older and hair like feathers. His collar bones peek out of a ratty black and blue Mexican sweater that's too small for him. He has long, bony fingers and hands and I imagine if I took hold of one that it would be cool to the touch.
He takes a smashed sandwich out of his backpack. Turkey and some kind of white cheese, bread soaked through with yellow mustard. White trash mustard, Brian would call it. The sandwich is badly in need of color variation. Jeremy eats the first half in three bites, managing to make each bite of squishy, mustard soaked bread look somewhat dainty, which I find charming. He's about to start on the second half but pauses. "Are you hungry?" he asks.
I shake my head. "But thanks," I say.
"Have you eaten anything today?" he says.
I'm taken aback by that question. I look down at my bony wrists, my grey sweatpants, imagine my stringy hair and blotchy face. Realize that homeless or starving is not too far fetched. That, in fact, I have not eaten. "I'm fine," I say.
Jeremy puts the sandwich half and the brown bag on my lap. My stomach does a flip and I feel my eyes tear up, half from the kindness of this stranger, half because I cannot imagine putting the sandwich into my mouth, chewing, and swallowing. "I'm pregnant," I say.
I do not say that this is the first time I've put the words out into the world, and that this makes them true. I do not tell him that he is the first person to know this truth, besides myself.
"Oh," he says. "Oh," and takes the sandwich from my lap. "I thought that was a morning thing."
"It's alright," I say. "Thank you for offering."
He eats the rest in the same fashion as the first half, crumples the bag loudly, and shoves it back into his backpack. "Wish we could smoke in here," he says, wiping his hands on his jeans. I remember patterns from college. Food, cigarette. Coffee, cigarette. Sex, cigarette.
"So, what's in San Diego?" I ask after a while.
"I'm visiting my friend, Jess," he says.
"Girlfriend?" I say.
"No, just a friend. What about you?" he says. "What's in San Diego?"
"I'm going home," I say.
"Oh. Then what's in Albuquerque?"
"Nothing," I say.
There is a mother and daughter sitting in front of us. The girl three or four years old. The mother is slicing an apple, and through the gap in the seats, I see a slice held out, then a tiny hand, then nothing for a while. Slice. Hand. Nothing. A tiny, grasping hand.
"You know," Jeremy says, "you kind of remind me of my mom." He says this like an afterthought, folds his sweater up, puts it behind his head, and closes his eyes.
The sun is going down, casting a deep orange over the desert. I let myself be lulled to sleep by the white noise hum of the bus.