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collapse in the seat beside me. She put a large leather purse on her lap. Her legs were clamped together but I could see strong thighs under the jeans. Go ahead , I thought. Talk to her. Say something. Say anything. Speak. She is here. You wanted her here. Speak .
    “Goin’ to Pensacola?” I said. Oh you dumb kid. You asshole. Asking a dumb-kid question .
    “I guess,” she said.
    “Me too,” I said. “I hear it’s beautiful.”
    “I wouldn’t know. Never been there before.”
    Her accent was Southern, but the rhythm was odd. It wasn’t like the corn-pone accents I’d heard in the movies or on the radio. Her voice was more slurred, like the voice of Billie Holiday. I looked at her face again. There were tiny lines around the corners of her eyes and a little pad of fat under her chin. The skin was pulled tight across her cheekbones. I couldn’t tell how old she was. And that excited me even more. All I was sure of was that she wasn’t a kid.
    “I never been there before either,” I said. “I’m looking forward, you know. See it …”
    “Well, you’ll be comfy there, I reckon. It’s all sailors, so I hear.”
    “One of the biggest bases in the country.”
    “Imagine that.”
    She was curt, in a polite way, but she wasn’t freezing me out. She just seemed to have something else on her mind. Then, without willing it, my eyes drifted to her chest and she must have felt my look and turned slightly to the left, pulling the leather bag close to her body. Even then, she didn’t cut me off.
    “You’re a Yankee, right?” she said.
    “Yeah. Well, I’m from New York. But we’d go nuts where I came from if you called us Yankees. I’m from Brooklyn and we hate the Yankees. The ball team, I mean.”
    “Well,” she said, and smiled, “you’re in the right part of the country f’ hatin’ Yankees.”
    Please, do that again. Smile like that again. And say “part” like it was pronounced “paht.” And smile that wide smile, with those hard white teeth. Please .
    She turned to me. “Mind if I smoke?” Saying it mahnd .
    “No, no, go ahead.” She took a pack of Luckies from the purse and lit one. The movement was pure Ida Lupino. But in the match’s flare, I saw that she had ugly hands. The skin was raw and her veins jutted up and she had chewed her nails down close. Then she took a drag and exhaled and the smoke drifted up into the darkness and I forgot the hands and wanted her to teach me everything she knew.
    “Sure don’t feel like New Year’s, does it?” she said.
    “It sure doesn’t,” I said, wondering What does my voice sound like? “How’d you get stuck on this bus tonight, anyway?”
    She turned and looked at me. Her eyes were dark brown and lustrous and she looked straight at me. Really looked at me. None of that flirting stuff that a thousand generations of women had been taught back home. “How did you ?” she said, a little annoyed curl in her voice. I smiled and told her I was assigned to Pensacola. That they gave me a Christmas leave but insisted I report to Pensacola on New Year’s Day. She smiled and glanced at my body and turned away and took another drag on the cigarette. I was right: she wasn’t wearing lipstick.
    “Who knows?” she said. “Who ever knows?”
    She tamped out the cigarette and put her head back and closed her eyes, holding the purse tightly. When her face relaxed, the lines at the side of her eyes widened. Under the eyes, there were bluish smudges. Fatigue. Or age. I couldn’t tell. The bus was moving into open country now and I could see her only in glimpses of light from passing cars. Suddenly, I wanted to draw her, defining her hair with a million pen lines, all curling, twisting, moving, making the shadows with a brush fat with ink. I wanted her to take off the turtleneck and stand before me and let me draw her. On paper, she would be mine. Her eyes opened.
    “Why are you starin at me, child?”
    “ ’Cause you’re beautiful. I guess.”