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the bus. “Where’d the guy in the black suit get off?”
    “Mind stepping back of the line?” said the driver. A new driver, Eddie saw: a woman. She had frosted blond hair and a strong jaw. No reason it shouldn’t be a woman, but it stopped his momentum just the same. Eddie looked down at the white line in the aisle. “Do not cross when bus is in motion” was stenciled on the rubber. Eddie stepped back and repeated his question.
    “Couldn’t say,” the driver replied. “I’ve got enough to do with this storm.”
    Eddie glanced out. Flying things swarmed all around, like insects. Snow. No reason there shouldn’t be snow, but that threw him too, after fifteen snowless years. “Where are we?”
    “Just across the state line,” the driver said. She didn’t say what state and Eddie didn’t ask. What he wanted to do, at that moment, was get on a bus going the other way, back; back down south, to that shrimp boat. A much better idea. What the hell was he thinking, going home? Home was just snow, ice, afrozen river. Other than that, it didn’t exist and never had. He came from somewhere, that was all. Everybody came from somewhere. It didn’t mean a thing.
    Eddie made his way to his seat, past the woman in green curlers who was now wearing earphones as well. He needed a smoke. Didn’t have any, because that was one of the things he was giving up in his new life. What kind of a plan was that? These were his plans: 1) steam bath; 2) quit smoking; 3) take nothing with him when he went. So now he was hungry, hadn’t eaten since yesterday, and was forced to ask others for the time. Fifteen years to think, and that was it?
    Conscious of his hunger, Eddie wanted a cigarette all the more. But of course he had one: the cigarette El Rojo had given him. He reached in the pocket of his green shirt. Somehow the Bible man had missed it. Eddie stuck it in his mouth, took out the matches he’d found under the seat. On the cover was an eight-hundred number to call if you suspected child abuse. Eddie lit a match, held it to the tip of El Rojo’s cigarette, inhaled. The tip flared and he sucked in smoke luxuriously. Then the woman in green curlers was standing over him, gesturing. From her earphones a tiny voice shrilled, “Dance, dance, dance.” She mouthed something at him.
    “I can’t hear because you’re wearing earphones?” Eddie said.
    The woman didn’t answer. She pointed to a sign on the wall: No Smoking. The women on this bus seemed to communicate with him through the written word. This one stood with her arms crossed, waiting for him to do the right thing. I killed three men, you stupid bitch, Eddie thought, but he butted out the cigarette on the plastic armrest. The woman went away.
    Eddie was angry. In his anger he could have pounded the armrest, or ripped out a few seats, or smashed windows. Those images ran through his mind as he sat, motionless. His heart pounded like a war drum. He wanted to kill, not the woman in curlers, but whoever had ruined him. But there was no one to blame. It was just the way things were—the luck of the draw, bad break, Mother Nature’s way, God’s way; or the albatross’s way, he thought suddenly. Maybe you were supposedto see the whole thing through the albatross’s eyes. Maybe he’d read it totally wrong. Fifteen years, and he couldn’t understand a simple poem.
    Eddie saw his face reflected in the night and turned away.
    He still had the cigarette in his hand. About to return it to his pocket, Eddie noticed a green corner sticking out of the burnt end. Pulling at it revealed more green. With his fingernails he tore through the cigarette paper, peeled it away. Underneath, wrapped tightly around the tobacco, was a bank note. Eddie unrolled it, scattering tobacco shreds in his lap, and found himself gazing at the face of Benjamin Franklin; an intelligent face, somewhat amused.
    A one-hundred-dollar bill. He held it up to the overhead light, turned it over, snapped it. It