“You’re in a bus,” the boy pointed out, with infinite tolerance. He began to root around in his pack.
Mia pulled her sunglasses from her purse, put them on, and pretended to gaze up the aisle of the bus. There were three dogs and a couple of cats aboard. Up near the front two well-dressed Asian men were eating from boxes with chopsticks.
The girl opened her backpack, fished out a rattlesnake, and hung it around her neck. The snake was beautiful. Its scaly skin looked like tesselated pavement as seen from a great height. The snake stirred a little at the contact with warm flesh.
“Don’t get tight,” the boy said.
“I won’t get tight. Snakey’s not loaded.”
“Well, don’t load him, then. You’re always getting tight when we argue. As if that ever settles anything.” The boy pulled an enameled comb from his bag, and ran it restlessly through his tousled hair. “Anyway, that snake would look stupid in Stuttgart. They just don’t do rattlesnakes in Stuttgart.”
“We could do Praha. We could do Milano.” The girl toyed listlessly with the snake’s rattle. “It’s so slow here in the Bay. Nothing ever happens here. Darling, I’m miserable.” She let go of the snake and tugged at a hank of greasy brunette hair. “I can’t work if I’m miserable. You know I can’t work if I’m miserable!”
“What am I going to do with you when you’re miserable in Europe?”
“In Europe I’d never be miserable.”
“Sure.”
“You don’t think I know my own mind,” she said angrily. “That’s always been your problem.”
“You don’t know your own mind, and you never have,” he said bluntly. “Your mind is a pain in my neck.”
“I hate you,” the girl announced. She crammed the snake back into her backpack.
“You should go to Europe,” Mia said aloud.
They looked up, startled. “What?” the girl said.
“You should go. You might as well go.” Mia’s heart skipped a beat, then started racing. “You’re very young, but you have plenty of time. Go to Europe for five weeks. Five months. Five years. Five years is nothing. You should go to Europe together, and you can get it all out of your system.”
“I beg your pardon?” said the boy. “Did we ask for this?”
Mia took off her sunglasses. She met their eyes.
“Let her alone,” the girl said, quickly.
“It’s no use going later,” Mia said. “If you wait too long, then you’ll know too much. Then it’s always all the same, no matter where you go.” She began to weep.
“Wonderful,” the boy muttered. He stood up, grabbing the bus’s bamboo pole. “Come on, we’re leaving.”
The girl didn’t move. “Why?”
“Come on, she’s having some kind of attack! That’s not our problem. We’ve got problems enough.”
“You’re not old enough for real problems,” Mia told him. “You can run a lot of risks now. You’ve got energy, and you’re free. Go ahead and run a risk. Take her to Europe.”
The boy stared at her. “Do I look like a man who takes career advice from strange old women who cry in public buses?”
“You look just like the kind of man … A man that I knew a long time ago,” Mia said. Her voice was trembling. Her tear ducts ached dreadfully. They stung all the way down into her nose.
“You’re very free with advice for other people. When was the last time you took any kind of risk?”
Mia wiped her burning eyes, and sniffed. “I’m taking a risk right now.”
“Sure you are.” The boy scoffed. “Like it’s a big hazard for some gerontocrat to make fun of us! Look at you—you got your ambulances standing by for you around the clock! You got every advantage in the world! What have we got?”
He glared at her aggressively. “You know, ma’am, even though I’m only twenty-two years old, my life feels every bit as real and worthwhile as your life does! More real than your life! Do you think we’re stupid just because we’re young? You don’t know half enough to offer us any advice—you don’t know a thing about us, or our lives, or our situation, or anything else. You are condescending to us.”
“No, she isn’t,” the girl said.
“You’re patronizing us!”
“Oh, she is not! Look, she’s crying, she really means it!”
“You are being profoundly impertinent!”
“Stop insulting this nice lady! She was completely right about every single thing she said!”
The bus stopped. “I’m leaving,” the boy announced. “I resent it when old people deny the validity of my experience.”
“Go ahead and run off, then,” the girl told him, folding her arms and slumping back into the seat. The boy was startled. Slowly his face darkened. He slung his pack over one shoulder and stormed off, boots clomping down the stairs.
The bus started up again.
“I’m sorry,” Mia said meekly.
“Don’t be sorry,” the girl said. “I hate him! He’s holding me back! He thinks he can tell me what to do.”
Mia said nothing.
The girl frowned. “I never slept with any man more than twice, without him thinking he could tell me what to do!”
Mia glanced up. “How old are you?”
The girl lifted her chin. “Nineteen.”
“What’s your name?”
“Brett,” the girl announced. She was lying. “What’s your name?”
“Maya.”
Brett crossed the aisle and sat beside her. “It’s nice to meet you, Maya.”
“Likewise, Brett.”
“I’m going to Europe,” Brett announced. She began searching in her backpack again. “Stuttgart probably. That’s the biggest city for the arts in the whole world. Have you ever been to Stuttgart?”
“I’ve been to Europe a few times. Not in many years.”
“Have you been to Stuttgart since they rebuilt it?”
“No.”
“Ever been to Indianapolis?”
“I did telepresence there once. Indianapolis seems a little scary nowadays.”
Brett offered Mia a wadded paper tissue from the backpack. Mia accepted it gratefully, and blew her nose. Her tear ducts were all out of practice. They felt scorched and sore.
Brett gazed at her with frank curiosity. “You haven’t been around very much lately, have you, Maya?”
“No. I don’t suppose I have, really.”
“You want to come around with me for a while? Maybe I could show you some things. Would that be all right?”
Mia was surprised and touched. The invitation was not entirely welcome, but the girl was trying to be sweet to her. “All right. Yes.”
Brett led her off the bus at the next stop. They began walking together down Filmore. This street was rather heavily wooded. A giraffe was methodically cropping the trees. Mia was sure that the giraffe was perfectly harmless, but it was the largest urban animal she’d ever seen roaming loose in San Francisco. It was quite an exotic beast. Someone had been busy on the city council.
Brett merely ambled along at first, but then picked up her pace. “You can walk pretty fast,” Brett said. “How old are you really?”
“I’m pushing a century.”
“You don’t look a hundred years old. You must be really smart.”
“I’m just very careful.”
“Do you have, like, osteoarthritis or incontinence or any really weird syndrome stuff?”
“I have a bad vagus nerve,” Mia said. “I get attacks of night cramps. And I’m astigmatic.” She smiled. It was an interesting topic. She could remember when strangers made polite chitchat about the weather.
“Do you have a boyfriend?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“I was married for a long time. When it was over, that part of life didn’t seem very important anymore.”