Mack is still skeptical, but the man is his only connection to Justine. Then Artie utters the magic words. “Let’s go find Justine.”

At once, Mack leaps over the rail as if it’s one of his agility obstacles and lands at Artie’s feet. Artie is taking him to Justine. Finally!

Then one well-aimed kick sends him down the steep grade. Stones and twigs catch in his coat as he rolls out of control and lands at the bottom of the slope, his breath knocked out of him. By the time Mack is back on his feet and up the embankment, the truck is gone.

8

I am wide-awake to Buffalo, drowsy by Rochester, and sound asleep by Syracuse. I miss Albany altogether. I wake cotton-mouthed and cramped in a window seat. I need to pee, and the person beside me has stretched out her legs and sleeps with her cheek propped up against her hand. If I try to slip out, I know I’ll step on her. We haven’t spoken and I can’t remember when she got on; the bus has gone on and off the highway so many times, I can’t remember each little town or hole-in-the-wall bus stop we’ve pulled up in. The whole of New York State is a tangle of sodium-lighted pauses along the way, each one a delay in my pursuit, and I try not to think about how much longer this ride is taking than if I could have rented a car. I would have been there by now. I would have found Artie by now.

I guess I can hold on for a little while longer. I’d like to go back to sleep myself, but now I am wide-awake. The dim interior light of the bus turns everything a vague green and I feel like I’m underwater. Outside, the pinpricks of light from houses unfortunate enough to be located along a highway remind me that I am not home, tucked beneath the patchwork quilt that I have moved with me everywhere I have been. The quilt that Tony peed on as a baby, and that Mack inevitably chooses to lie on when he’s wet. This quilt that is the only possession I have that came from my mother, who, by being blessed by sudden death, is forever my ideal of motherhood. An ideal I was never able to achieve. I’ve sorted through my memories of her, and keep only those that appeal to me. Each of my recollections corresponds to one of the four pictures I have of her: Easter morning, Christmas morning, my fourth birthday where she bends over me helping me to blow out candles, and the random photograph that isn’t of her, but of my father. She is caught in the background, but it is the only one of her pregnant. In each photo she is idealized and that’s how I like to keep it.

The house lights move by and the bus moves back into deep countryside. I have no idea where I am.