“Great porch!” Jeremy called from out back. “This is so cool. You’re so nice! We’ll just crash here a few days, just until we get money to get the bus fixed, then we’ll be back on the road.”

Crystal was fat in a comfortable way. She settled down on the sofa in a nest of string bags, draped a crimson-and-purple scarf across her lap, and began to thread beads on a length of hemp twine. She had a series of overlapping rings in the edge of her ear and a gold bead in her lower lip. Out from the bodice of her sundress, a tattoo of a writhing warrior goddess emerged. But in spite of all that violence about her person, her face had a serene, meditative look, as if nothing could faze her. She called everybody baby, even when addressing people a generation older than herself.

“The road is our home, baby,” she said.

Alice got out towels and washrags, put sheets on the bed in the spare room, cleaned up after the little dog, and cooked supper. Jeremy came dripping out of the bathroom, his dreadlocks smelling like a wet dog. Crystal changed her clothes in the middle of the living room, raising both arms and languorously twirling herself into a diaphanous nightgown. The warrior goddess went all the way around her torso, encumbered with wings and weaponry, several of its limbs foreshortened by rolls of fat. Jeremy sat down in front of the television and changed the channels spasmodically.

“We’re night people, baby,” Crystal said. She tucked her little fat feet under herself and settled into the sofa for a long nocturnal chat. She was from New Jersey, and she and the bus were in the middle of their fourth cross-country trek. “We are interstate celebrities.” The bus was plastered with bumper stickers. Beads and peace signs dangled from the rearview mirror, and little shrines decorated the dashboard.

“People love the bus,” Crystal said. “They want to ask questions and take pictures. We get written up in papers.” She had got the bus three years ago from an old boyfriend, just a plain old green VW bus. But the whole concept of the bus was hers, she said. It was a work in progress, and she was the artist. Jeremy was new, just along for the ride. “And whatever gets tossed his way, baby.” She pulled out photographs—the bus in Arizona beside a saguaro cactus, the bus with a mountain background, the bus rolling down an endless highway, Doobie’s head out the window. Close-up pictures showed the bumper stickers:

HAPPINESS IS A JOURNEY NOT A PLACE.

I DON’T BELIEVE IN MIRACLES, I DEPEND ON THEM.

QUESTION REALITY.

WHAT WOULD BUDDHA DO?

MAKE LOVE NOT WAR.