NICK
The sheikh might’ve been an honest-to-God douchebag, but the operative word was honest. Just as he’d promised, he dropped all the charges as soon as the North Star was returned. Now I stood in the jail parking lot and squinted up at the California winter sun. I didn’t have my wallet, and I didn’t have my phone. What I did have was $153 in cash that I’d had on me when I was booked, a wedding ring on my finger, and eight hundred miles to go until I was back in Stella’s arms.
I walked across the bleached parking lot and headed for a bus stop across the street. The shelter was made of Plexiglas, pockmarked by blowing sand and yellowed from the sun. There, I waited. I don’t know how long I waited, really. Could’ve been ten minutes, could’ve been an hour. I just sat there, with my knees and boots in the sun, and looked up at the sky, so glad to be alive, and so fucking glad to have another chance at life, that I let the tears roll right down my goddamned cheeks.
The bus arrived in a cloud of fumes that smelled like old french fries and possibly shrimp. The side of the bus said THIS VEHICLE PROPELLED BY BIODIESEL!
California. It was the weirdest.
The driver wore pink glasses on a pink chain, and she stared at me over them. “Getting on, or just gonna stand there and contemplate your navel?”
I stepped onto the staircase and pulled my cash out of my pocket, sliding my fare into the automatic slot. The first dollar bill went in fine, but the second kept getting spat back at me. As I smoothed it out, she plunged her hand into a grocery sack that she’d tied to the arm of her chair and handed me a small box of Valentine’s Day hearts. I stared at them in my palm. She took the crumpled dollar bill from me. “It’s Valentine’s Day, hon. Sit down, enjoy the ride.”
Valentine’s Day already. Christ. That was the strangest thing about jail. The days just went on forever, one endless routine of the same damned thing that numbed minutes into hours into days. It had felt like Valentine’s Day for weeks on the cellblock. But now here it was.
And honestly, it really didn’t sound like the worst idea, taking a spin around LA while I ate candy hearts and thought about Stella. But I had shit to do; I had a life to make. I had stars to bite. I’d spent enough time away from her, and I wasn’t going to spend one minute more. So I shoved the box of hearts in my back pocket, leaned toward the driver, and said, “Listen, I need to get to New Mexico. As soon as humanly possible.”
She adjusted her glasses. Affixed to her uniform was a pin that said HELLO MY NAME IS: NOT A LADY YOU WANT TO MESS WITH. “Hon. This is a municipal bus. I can take you to the mall and that’s it.”
I scratched what used to be my stubble but was now a pretty full-blown beard. “I need to get to a pawnshop outside Albuquerque. I need to buy a ring, and then I need to go and ask the love of my life the most important question I’ve ever asked anybody and hope like hell she says yes.”
The driver’s glasses slid down her nose, and the door automatically swung shut behind me. “Three bucks isn’t gonna get you to Albuquerque.”
I pulled out a fifty. “All I need to do is get to the Greyhound station.”
She poured a few candy hearts into her hand from a box she had tucked into her sweater pocket. Crunching down on them, she studied me. Her eyes moved past me to the jail on the other side of the street and back to me again. “You just get out?”
“Yes, ma’am. Just this morning.”
“And the first thing you think to do is go buy a ring and propose to your lady?”
“That’s right.”
She chewed her candies thoughtfully. “You must really love her.”
Enough to take the fall for her, the heat for her, the twenty-to-twenty-five for her without a second thought. Love. Adore. Worship. “You’ve got no idea.”
“Well . . .” she said, trailing off. Using a small key on a lanyard around her neck, she unlocked the back of the fare collection column. She took out the dollar I’d put inside it, along with the one she’d taken from me, and handed back the cash. “Keep your money, young man. Sit tight. I’ll make sure you catch your Greyhound. Even if I have to make like Sandra Bullock in Speed to do it.”