* * *

I’m a little puzzled by the seeming lack of a bus station, until I figure out that this is a stop, not a station. The storefront has high windows, plastered with beer advertisements and lottery signs. To the left of the Budweiser ad is a smallish placard stating the place’s secondary function as a bus agency. Outside the place is a single bench, occupied by a large black man wearing an old-fashioned fedora. Inside, the place is tiny, tight, with too closely arranged displays of potato chips and lager beer. It smells like spilled beer; it smells a little like my bar. The wood floor is littered with a healthy scattering of abandoned lottery tickets.

I wait in line to buy a ticket to Boston from a cashier who may be Pakistani or Sri Lankan. On the counter, tucked between Slim Jims and condoms, is a cardboard box with bus schedules in it. I grab one and stand aside to let the line move forward. The lottery must be big tonight. The line keeps forming, filled with quiet people, fruitless dreams of a new life playing behind downturned eyes.

The next bus from Erie is at 8:40 tonight. It will take thirteen-plus hours to make it to Boston.

“One way to Boston, please.” I fish out my credit card and hand it to him.

“No credit card. Cash only.”

“You have a terminal, so why won’t you take credit cards?”

“Not for bus. Store policy.” He doesn’t even have the good grace to look sorry. “You go to Erie to use credit card.”

“I thought I was in Erie.”

This does get me a crooked smile, like the kind you’d expect from somebody who enjoys other people’s troubles because they make him feel momentarily superior. “No. You have to go to Erie.”

Suddenly, the logic of a bus ride fails me. By the time I limp into Boston, Artie will surely have turned around and headed home. I wonder if there’s a cheap flight, one of those thirty-nine-dollar specials. If I could fly, I might even beat him there.

My cashier friend offers no help, just shrugs and waits with a feigned patience for me to decide what to do. I move out of line again. The sun is setting as I sit beside the old black man on the bench outside the store. I hold my duffel on my lap and fight the urge to rest my head on it. In the fading September light, the shadows pool at my feet.

“Nice evening.” My bench companion says this quietly, as if afraid to mention it.

“Yeah. I guess so.”

“Don’t sound convinced.”

“How far is the Erie bus station?”

“You’re in Conneautville. Erie’s thirty miles away.”

“Then I guess I’m not walking there.”

“That’s why there’s buses.”

I know that I’m going to have to go back into the store, use some of my dwindling cash reserve to buy a ticket for a bus to get to a bus. I suddenly feel the lack of food and the exhaustion of defeat. I want to lie down. Mitch has failed me; he didn’t get as far as Erie. I’m in Erie County. I’ve been fooled by the same generalization that people from Boston suburbs use when they say they’re from Boston.