This is the second part of a three-part series. Read the first part here.

The Megabus had worked out a lot of its kinks. One short year ago, a scheduled departure time of 11:59 p.m. usually meant an actual departure time of somewhere between 12:45 and 1:00. Back then it was fashionable to talk trash, affectionately, about the Megabus’s evident disregard for promptness — in much the same way that for years, it had been fashionable to talk trash about Cleveland’s own RTA, without the affection — sort of how you might talk about an offbeat sister who always forgets to set her clocks back for daylight savings. Riders entered into a casual understanding with the Megabus that went something like: for prices that cheap, it matters very little what time you decide to roll in and out of town.

Ridership shot up when college students started telling their friends and families. Double-deckers were purchased. Destinations were added, all jumbled within the interstate artery system pumping buses in and out of Chicago’s beating heart. Cleveland got a midnight bus to tack on to its morning and afternoon departures. And the late ones were usually a pleasant reprieve because there were fewer passengers to deal with — you were practically guaranteed your own two-seater. This is what made the man’s sitting next to me so discomfiting. He was frightening in sort of a Denzel Washington-when-he-means-business-type way, but people didn’t say anything, or really even pay much attention. They probably just assumed he was an uncle or family friend or something. And by that point, the two of us had had a few hours of history, such that his sitting down where he did, trapping me, made me feel like his prisoner.

Earlier in the evening, I had taken the Rapid to Tower City from W. 65th. My older brother Pete offered to drive, but I was just sort of in the mood for the train, I guess kind of interested in comparing it to the El or something. The first time I saw the man was when he got on at the W. 25th St. station, the cathedral of giant glass windows and firetruck-red steel beams, like he was looking for somebody. He kind of stood in the doorway for a second, peering in like he was looking for somebody, and then seemed to decide that it was me who he was looking for and sat in the seat directly behind mine. Except for the woman near the back in heated conversation with her grocery bags, we were the only ones on the train.

(There has to be a system, doesn’t there, for the amount they ask you for? Some formula or function must exist which they all have memorized based on age, appearance, and Lord knows what else. Because he sized me up for only a second before he seemed to have me figured out.)

–Can I get 70 cents?
–Sorry, I said. I opened up Ulysses to a random page and began pretending to read in earnest.
–Just 70 cents man.
–I really don’t have any change on me.
–Sixty-five cents?
–Look man, I promise you I don’t have any change. If I did, I really would give it to you.
–Yeah yeah. Okay, okay. whatever.

I just had a duffel, as far as bags were concerned, sitting on my lap; and Ulysses which was open, and a little cream-colored notebook speckled with woodchips or something in one of those plastic covers open beneath the book.

–Alroy, the man said, suddenly extending a sword-like hand sideways between the top of the seat and the metal bar over it. I took it and shook it briefly and nodded. Alroy then nodded at the doors of the train, which seemed to close at his command.

And then it started with a jocular jolt–a punch on the shoulder, the ascent of an aging roller coaster that you still ride for fond memories’ sake. Then it started moving, fast and loud, with purpose.

–Just 50 cents.
–Look, man-
–Alroy.
–Alroy. Look, Alroy. I’m really sorry, like I said-
–Or if you’d prefer, you could just call me Roy.
–Yes. Roy, yes. I’m very sorry. My knees were shaking bad and my duffel was doing that thing where it slides from a position of security to insecurity with agonizing slowness.

–Where are you headed?
Oh God. -–Chicago
–Chicago? Airport’s the other way my friend.
–Well, I’m not flying.
–Hitching a ride with a friend, eh?
–No. Megabus.
He paused. –You gotcher ticket on you?
–No. I mean, it’s just a number. There’s no…it’s not a ticket really.
–What kind of a number?
–It’s a code. A code sort of. Like a reservation thing. There are some letters in there too.
–You got it on you?
–Yes.
–Don’t be scared. Why you look so scared?
–I’m not…not scared. It’s just been a long weekend is all.
–Why is that?
–Many, many reasons, Alroy.

We stopped suddenly, the train I mean, over that rusting iron Tinkertoy bridge before the tunnel into Tower City. Sometimes it would just sit there for awhile.

–Sometimes the train just sits here for awhile, Alroy said, like it’s making some kind of a big decision.
–Yeah, or like it has to psych itself out every time before it goes underground.
–Then that makes two of us then. Alroy stretched and yawned. So can I get that code?
–I really really really need to get to Chicago tomorrow morning man.
–Can’t you order a plane ticket online or something?
–No. I just don’t have the money right now.
–Well I’ve got tons. He got really close to my ear at this point. I’ve got millions man. Then he got an idea. Why don’t we share it?

–That doesn’t work. The driver is standing at the front of the bus and marks down the ones who board.
–All of ‘em?
–Yeah of course. There’s like a clipboard or something.
–Then can I please get it.
–Why do you need to get to Chicago? It’s not even worth anything. It’s not. I pulled the printed paper from my pocket and held it in front of my face. I paid eight dollars for this. Eight dollars.
–Can I get eight dollars then?
–No! Man-
–Alroy.
–I do not have eight dollars. I do not have any change.-
–Do you swear?
–What? No. I’m not going to…I don’t…how can you feel so entitled to-
–Ah ha! See. So you do have something then.
–My mom just died.
–…
–…
–Whoa whoa whoa. Easy there friend. Take it slow. What’s happenin?
–I go to school in Cleveland and I need to get home to Chicago tomorrow for the funeral.
–Where, Cleveland State?
–Case.
–Good school my man. What’d she die of?
–It was cancer…heart…cancer issues.
–She had some heart cancer?
–No. It was heart problems. There were complications or something which led to cancer because…because she was a diabetic.
–Sounds like she had quite a few issues.
–Yes.
After a knowing pause. –Was she obese?

The train started to screech forward, like it was navigating through a Sleeping-Beauty-style wall of thorns courtesy of scary-ass Maleficent only made of barbed wire, not actual thorns. And then it reached the tunnel and everything was black motion.