It was ironic to me that a week before leaving I had done a complete inventory of all my paintings--tracked them down. There were lots that I had forgotten about: "Bluebonnet" was a favorite:
not that you have any idea what it looks like.
All in all there were about thirty nine, which doesn't sound like too many, right? Except that the police have banned me from selling them: I can only give them as gifts, and I don't have that many friends. I mean, there are the tards and the toasters at the mental clinic Jon put me in about six years ago, but they're probably dead and drooling by now. Also, I didn't like them, ergo: they aren't my friends.
They just seemed so broken. It was creepy. I don't want to talk about it, particularly not now, sitting here on the bus next to him.
I ask how he snuck on the bus. I guess I sound clipped, because he gives me an affronted look.
He reminds me about moving silently through the woods in his moccasins, and I manage a weak chuckle, only to retreat to profound awkwardness. I know what question will follow; I can feel it swimming through the conversation. The question about why I left, and why I was crying, and the original question about just where I took that photograph (the only one I suspect he knows the answer to) and the unspoken question, which swings, according to circumstance, between should I be concerned? and am I capable of handling this?
Most people settle for no, but I never pegged this guy as "most people". His hair moves around a lot (it's surprisingly slippery) as he speaks, and I focus on it instead of the words he's forming. They twist into the first question. I start to answer in a gross, routine way, but then I stop. I have more respect for him than this.
So I start at the beginning. I show him the card, which is still sitting in my wallet and is now a faded brownish. I show him Jon's number written in the eight different spots I dreamed up; I even show him his own name and address on my stomach. He nods numbly, and then begins to tell me about his own problems, which I guess are extensive, and I nod like I'm supposed to. Eventually, he stops, but not for long. Question Number Two is coming up, and he starts to ask it, and then realizes that Three comes first. I explain the answer, and he looks at me gapingly and with rabbitlike terror, but a strange sort of pride. I feel like a pet Chihuahua that has beaten the shit out of a neighbor's Rottweiler.
So he asks, meekly, how I got up there, and I say,
"Climbed."
There is a pause.
"Just..up the sides, or is there a ladder?"
"Oh yes, a big one. I just hopped up there and at the top there's a ledge."
I realize how horribly flippant I sound, and I apologize. I tell him that it was scary: for one ridiculous moment I feel the need to protect him, like he's so impressionable that he'll just take the bus home and try it out. It's an uncomfortable sort of motherly thing to do, and I apologize again. He says it's OK, says quieter that a friend of his died up there.
I tell him that I know, and he doesn't seem surprised. Maybe we are both mildly psychic; maybe we are two crazy people who live alike and have similar friends. My best friend in high school, he took to a bottle of drain cleaner in his freshman year of college. He was brilliant. I felt bad.