This is the third part of a three-part series. Read parts two and one first.

Alroy was only on the periphery of my consciousness as I ascended the escalators up through Tower City and made my way to Prospect Avenue where I boarded the Megabus. Once the Rapid had lurched to a stop in the steaming, hissing bowels below the mall, I just sprinted off the train without looking back. I have no idea how he got on the bus. I don’t think he really even showed up again (maybe he was on the first level) until about 2 a.m., after I convinced myself that contacting Diana was a lost cause. He just kind of appeared next to me, with his fingers actively digging into his hair, gouging and picking at those impossibly tight coils so close to the skin. And then he started that thing where he was licking his fingers and rubbing his scalp hard, periodically looking at me and nodding, like we were in on a secret together, expecting me to say something.

–Well, he said.
–What? I had my little journal out and was making notes, jotting down ideas.
–It’s just that I’ve told you my name, but you haven’t told me yours.
–Again, sir, information that I’m not entirely comfortable giving out.
–It’s a long drive.
–What’s that supposed to mean?
–Just sayin’.

He’s got that oily sheen in his hair, which seems to reproduce from nowhere, and which, because of all the rubbing, has gotten onto his hands and smells funny. He’s rubbing so hard — the hair is so short and stubborn. And for some reason, the repetition of it is setting me off. I just want to scream that it won’t do anything.

–I’m Alroy, if you’ve forgotten.
–I know. I know. I know. And I can call you just Roy if I’d prefer.
–That’s right, but I don’t know what to call you. He turned to face me, hair bizarrely askew. A perfect buttcrack of a part down the middle of his head with one side, the side nearest me, pressed flat to his scalp, and the other side jutting out in little bumpy puffs. A portrait of asymmetry. What’s your name?

–…
–Come on. What is it?
–…
–What’s your name?
–…
–Name name name? What. is. your. naaaaaa-
–Hal, for Christ’s fucking sake. It’s Hal. Okay. Harold Llewellyn Baudrillard, if you want the details; formerly Harold Llewellyn Coby-Baudrillard, but I officially dropped the Coby at 18, to my mother’s persistent angst, because the whole thing was just too cumbersome. But who she (my mom) is really upset with is my oldest brother Peter, not me, because he was the one who went and set the precedent. And she knows that I pretty much do whatever Peter does and Clement really does do just about everything that I do (Luke, the thumbsucker, has elected to keep the Coby.) My mom is especially affronted, Peter told me later, because she was secretly hoping that after the divorce, if anything, we’d just adopt her name. And if you’re still curious, my parents settled on Coby-Baudrillard only after bickering for the duration of the painful, almost-10-month gestation period resulting in the messy birth of my brother Peter who I just mentioned, and then discarding the hideous amalgamations they’d conceived therein, the likes of which, by the way, rarely appear even in the detritus of teen sci-fi fiction: Cobrillard, Baucoby (and its shortened cousin BoCo), Drilloby, Cocollard, Cobra.

–Lotsa “l”s.
–A great many “l”s, yes.
–I’m calling you Cobra then.
–Oh please don’t do that.
–Cooooobra.
–Just STOP man!

I said it louder than I had intended to. All eyes from the front of the bus instantly turned to me. Through the darkness, they were beads. And then it was extra quiet. It was as if something dense and constant had been sucked from the atmosphere — the sudden silence of basement water heaters. A man removed his Dallas Cowboys baseball cap and offered me what appeared to be a salute. He was saluting not me, I soon discovered, but my unconscious derring-do, which had silenced the beast. The dreadlocked behemoth had, at my shout, emitted a series of gastrointestinal gurgles which suggested the consumption of something large, hot and foul. He then coughed a violent, terrifying hack, but was afterward at peace. The catlike sets of beads all seemed to rise from the front of the bus in unison, perfectly round and glistening and thankful. A standing ovation.