Z. Packer - Drinking Coffee Elsewhere

WHEN THEY reached Columbus, Georgia, the bus driver took an exit and switched to low gear. The machinery of the bus fought against moving so slowly, moaning until it came to a complete stop in a Burger King parking lot.

“Fifteen minutes, folks,” the driver said. Before he could even open the door, people pushed impatiently down the aisle.

The driver stepped outside and lit a cigarette while passengers hustled into the Burger King. Tia did not want to spend her money quickly, so she stayed in her seat and watched the driver. He walked to the edge of the parking lot where weeds rose up in a growth of densely packed stalks. It seemed as though he were sizing up the weeds to see if the brush would make a path for him. Tia could see only the back of his head, but he seemed to be thinking, I will leave you all behind, and then where will you be? I will enter this here growth of weed and disappear forever .

“Go,” Tia whispered, looking out the window. “Go.” She was rooting for him, knowing she would be the only person who understood what he was doing and why, until she saw him unzip his pants and loose his urine in a series of arcs so elaborate he seemed to be spelling out his name.

Everyone returned with Whoppers and Cokes. The driver yawned, making motions for dawdlers to hurry onto the bus. He sat in his seat, looked at his watch, then closed the door. He had already swung the bus into a slow reverse when someone in back told him that one man was inside the Burger King, still waiting for his food.

“Fifteen minutes,” said the bus driver. “I’m no joke, folks. I say fifteen minutes, that means fifteen minutes.” He turned out of the parking lot.

“Lordy, lordy. Buses sure have changed,” said the white woman across the aisle from Tia. “ No kind of manners.” Tia was about to agree until she realized that the white woman was talking to herself.

The bus had just made the turn out onto the service road when the abandoned passenger came flying out of the Burger King with his bag of food.

“He’s just back there, Chuckie. Wait for him!”

The bus driver continued at a slow crawl toward the interstate sign. The abandoned man crossed the road, and a car he’d dodged honked madly. Once he’d gotten on the right side of the road, he caught up to the bus just a few yards from the door. The driver braked and the bus halted with a hydraulic sigh.

The man, exhausted, stopped running and lowered his head to catch his breath. Just as he’d made it inches from the door, the driver kicked into drive again.

“No he didn’t !” one woman squealed.

“Girrrrrl. We should report this one! Report his ass to the Greyhound people!”

The abandoned man began running once more, and the whole busload of passengers were either pressed against the windows or standing in the aisle. “Run! Run! Run!” they chanted to the man who was already running. The bus driver stopped for the man once more — another tease — and drove off again. This time the passengers began yelling at the bus driver, cursing him while he checked his rearview mirror as if to make sure they didn’t hit him. “All I can say,” hollered one woman, “is that you is wrong, Mr. Bus Driver. I don’t know who you or Mr. Greyhound is, but you is both wrong !”

Tia could feel herself smiling from the excitement of it all. It was different from church, where everyone felt something she wished she could feel but didn’t. She thought she felt God the most when she was quiet, or when she wondered whether there was a God at all. But here on the bus, everyone was rooting for a man whom none of them knew, but there he was, real and running. When everyone began banging the windows as if to break them, she banged on them too, yelling, “Run! Run! Run!”

The third time the driver stopped, he opened the door and the man boarded the bus to wild cheering. Whatever food he’d bought had fallen out the bottom of the bag. He heaved, trying to stare at the driver murderously, but tears streamed down his face. As he made his way down the aisle, people applauded; men clamped him on the shoulder as if to affirm his manhood.

In his delirium, perhaps, the man passed his original seat, and when he’d gotten to Tia’s row, he sniffed up his tears and sat next to her. Another shock of excitement hit her, as if she were sitting next to a celebrity. But he soon feel asleep, his head nodding off on her shoulder, and when a rivulet of drool, thin as spider silk, trickled onto her collar, she hadn’t the heart to nudge him awake.

THEY APPROACHED Atlanta; her insides jumped when she saw the skyline. She tried to figure out why it hit her so hard. They were just buildings. But in each one, someone worked, someone sang, someone complained; someone shuttled away the trash, the storehouse of banalities, secrets, and cravings. When the lights were out, she thought, surely some couple would creep up or down a stairwell, stopping on a landing to embrace. The buildings breathed and exhaled possibilities; that was why a skyline like this one could stop your heart. As the bus entered the city’s center, threading its way in, the skyline seemed to whisper, You too are possible .

The nearly abandoned man’s celebrity had faded by the time people stumbled out of the bus and into hot, gleaming Atlanta. Tia stood in the Atlanta bus station as streams of people with destinations whizzed past her, bumped into her, crowded around her. She found a carousel of phones and shrugged off her backpack, set down her clarinet case. Atlanta had two separate phone books, A through Μ and Ν through Z, each over a thousand pages. When she found the right phone book she counted twenty-two Dunloveys, no Ros-alyns, but four R’s.

The first R. Dunlovey’s phone was busy; the second, she found out from the answering machine, belonged to a gaggle of college students. On her third call, a black man answered the phone.

“Yeah,” the voice said. “Who is it?”

“I’m looking for Rosalyn Dunlovey.”

“I’m asking who you is , not who you want .” In the background she heard children. Something smashed, and the phone on the other end tumbled and fell.

When things settled down she said, “This is Tia.”

“Well, Tia, there’s a Rosa here, but no Rosalyn. How you know Rosa?”

Tia had never heard her aunt Roberta call her mother Rosa. Her mother would have been Roz, not Rosa. And kids. What if her mother had other children, and hadn’t bothered to visit Tia now that she had younger children? Tia didn’t want to think about it. She preferred the image of her mother on an anonymous street corner, doing — she didn’t know what her mother would be doing — to that of her mother living a real life without her. Then, for the first time, it occurred to her that her mother might be dead.

“I’m sorry. I have the wrong number.”

“Wait a minute,” the man said, suddenly buttering his words, “you sound good. Rosa ain’t gone be off work till ten. Why don’t you come—”

Tia hung up. She closed her eyes. She did not know why she’d expected there to be fewer people, less noise, less ugliness when she opened them again, but she had.

SHE DECIDED that she’d leave the bus station and call hotels from pay phones elsewhere.

“What’s your price range?” one hotel desk clerk asked.

She told him.

“Ten dollars?” He whistled, high and arch. He’d been the only one to stay on the phone after she’d announced how much money she had. “What you’re looking for is a motel . You’re looking for, like, a roach motel.” The clerk laughed, and when Tia did not, he said, “I was just kidding.”

Tia pictured her aunt Roberta in the kitchen, singing along with the gospel station on the radio. About now, she would notice that Tia was late coming home from school.