The Geezer who'd carried all the vinyl luggage onto the bus yelled at the bus driver when she pulled in at a scheduled rest stop that he'd lost his cell phone. I watched him zip and unzip the many compartments of the luggage, rifling through congealed clusters of dog eared and wrinkled unsorted papers and return envelopes, medicine bottles and toe nail clippers searching for the portable device.
The driver looked in her rear view mirror at the Geezer. "What would you like me to do for you sir?" she asked. In the mirror I could see that her eyes were lit with a glee that spoke volumes about what not to have for breakfast.
"I lost my cellphone" the Geezer repeated. His voice warbled like a thin wire stretched between two roof tops.
"I would call your server and get your ass another phone" said the driver, drumming her fingertips on the banquet-sized steering wheel" otherwise some mofug gonna run up yer bill and you'd then be in a world of hurt chicken parts."
The Geezer sat down again and seemed to allow gravity make him slide into his own ruined flesh. There were several bags of things he had with him, and no way to call for a ride or pizza after a good stroke.
"Hey, Geezer, what's your phone number." This was a Fat Samaritan, sitting across the aisle, offering a hand to the Geezer's depressed situation. The Geezer looked up at him, mentally twisting this corpulent facsimile of useful body parts into a hungry question mark.
"Wha..." he demanded.
"Gimmee your number, I will call you, your phone will ring, and then you can find it, and presto, you got your phone and your cootie catcher back again."
The Geezer neither nodded nor said yes, but rather gave the Fat Samaritan the number. As if in the movies , the Geezer's phone chirped a catchy portion of a familiar theme, and the Geezer reached deep into an exterior pocket of one of the pieces of luggage, pulling out a small, cheap cell phone, chiming happily away like an idiot new born. Everyone paying attention smiled, said their thank yours and you're welcomes. The bus driver looked again into the rear view, her eyes suggesting a hand holding a hot piston.
Two miles later, I heard a conversation in the seats behind me.
"Hello"/
"Hi, who is this?"
"Uh, wait, who are you? You called me..."
"No, no, you called me. I looked at my missed calls and this phone number is there with no name and I don't rememEvery corner was a ghost town, all the bistro seats upside down on the tables, a good many neon signs still promising "open." Traffic lights continued their three-bulb cycle, stop, stop, go, wait, commanding even spirits to wait their turn. The main street was slick with recent rain, and the lack of cars made it possible to hear the sticky hiss of tires three blocks away, rolling through the downtown area. This is a boulevard of locked doors. There was no one crossing against the lights, looking in store windows , cracking their knuckles, and rubbing their necks. The lack of cars racing from one stoplight to the next made the lowest tone and timbre louder, brighter, more definitive in how the sound seems to explode with expressiveness. The breeze sang shrilly over the rooftops, the power lines snap like whips in the draft. A car alarm screams bloody murder in a strip mall parking space. It all becomes orchestral, arranged, discordant sound insertions over the asphalt, cement, and short-circuiting neon signs. Each building was for sale, and there was no cure.ber this number at all and I pushed redial to see who it is and so who are you?"
"Back it up, Jack, I never called you, now who are you and why are you so demanding with people you don't know?"
"I have a right to know who it is I don't know who are calling my private phone number on my phone and what it is they have to tell me, and it might be important, like someone died in my family, you could be the police or the coroners office or someone from a sweepstakes I entered, so who are you and what do you have to tell me?"
"I don't have to tell you fuck, you decaying stain monger."
"Don't you swear at me, goddamn it all, don't you swear at me and ignore my demand. Who the hell are you?
tell me or I will report you."
"You called me, you brick-layered fuck face, making all this shit up. I was minding my own business when you called me and started this shit..."
"Answer my question..."
"Fuck off and go watch professional wrestling, Geezer..."
"Show some respect, punk..."
"Respect my testicles, Iron-sides."
I pulled the cord and got off the bus at the next stop, walking past the driver, who again was looking in the rear view. Her mouth was twisted in contradicting responses.
Under her breath, "White folks, damn...."
Return envelopes are filled with all the heartaches in the world, which is to say, nothing. When the shunned man is rousted at the Arby’s booth behind you and asked to do the Spanish Dance out the door, he is inevitably leaving a trail of return envelopes behind him, ironically marking his own path to oblivion from which he will never make a postage-paid comeback. In my dreams, a stack of return envelopes sit on a desk in a dusty room above a Laundromat on the somnambulant side of town, next to an off-the-hook bakelite phone receiver out of which crisp white static marks the eternal frozen termination point of a good-will solicitation call from a political candidate who died in jail while serving out a double-nickel sentence for sexual harassment of a platinum vending machine so many, many years ago…the envelopes bear automatic postage machine markings with numbers long since retired by the U.S. Treasury as unsuitable for “modern capacities”… in a fit of blind boredom, a kid breaks into the room, scoops up the envelopes and mails them… they are filled with dust, pencil shavings and flakes of old skin and make the mailbox groan…Further nightmare of compressed voices of Pat Benatar and Lou Gramm sent through the mails in tiny little sample boxes; shrieks of faux rage and ecstasy blast out when the cardboard seal is broken…
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