He lit another cigarette. “Smoke?” he said.
Aida shook her head. “I only smoke clove cigarettes,” she said. This wasn’t true, but she had seen them in a head shop in Providence, where her sister, Terry, sold her homemade hash pipes. Terry and her husband carved the pipes themselves out of soapstone. One day, while Terry was dropping off a load of new ones, Aida had seen the small square packages of clove cigarettes, red and covered with Hindu signs and letters. Aida knew that if she ever smoked anything, it would be clove cigarettes. She had considered asking Terry to buy her a pack. Terry would have; she didn’t care what Aida did. Terry only cared about getting stoned. Her whole life revolved around scoring good pot, windowpane LSD, and magic mushrooms. She and her husband spent all their time at the pay phone in the gas station down the street from their apartment making drug deals. For this reason, Aida did not feel guilty for stealing their money.
“Clove cigarettes?” the boy said, sucking on his Winston. “Interesting.” Then he sat back in his seat and didn’t say anything else until the bus stopped somewhere in Ohio.
AIDA LOVED THE BUS STATIONS. They were dirty and gray and smelled like pee, every one of them so far. Usually a janitor was mopping the floor. Usually people were sleeping on the benches. Usually, the ladies’ rooms were out of toilet paper, or a toilet had flooded, or someone had left poop without flushing. Aida loved getting food from the vending machines: cheese sandwiches cut into perfect triangles, slightly stale and tasting of cardboard; watery hot chocolate that was tepid at best; M&M’s; Fritos.
Aida stood in front of the row of vending machines, making her choices. Across the room, a fat man with a wandering eye mopped the floor and sang, “Hit the Road, Jack,” in a booming baritone. She spotted a cheese sandwich and carefully counted out three quarters. Just as she reached to put in the first coin, a hand stopped her.
The Vietnam vet.
He was tall and broad-shouldered, like someone on a football team.
“Let me buy you some real food,” he said. He jerked his thumb toward a diner attached to the bus station. Through a plate-glass window, Aida could see uniformed waitresses, slouched and weary, pouring coffee for the passengers from her bus.
“I like these sandwiches,” she said.
“Ah, get one next time. We’re here for an hour anyway.” He tugged on her arm and she followed him, lagging behind so he didn’t get the wrong idea. He wore khaki pants and a blue button-down shirt. She could see the white of a T-shirt poking out behind the collar. She wondered how he could wear long pants and long sleeves in July. Wasn’t he sweating to death? Maybe he was wounded, she thought. Maybe he had scars. This made her like him more, and she quickened her pace to catch up.
He slid into a booth, red ripped vinyl with big strips of green masking tape over some of the rips and puffs of white filling popping out. The table was sticky, and the ashtray was dirty. The vet lit another cigarette.
“Those clove things you smoke,” he said, “do you get high from them?”
Aida rolled her eyes. “They’re cigarettes,” she said.
The waitress came over. She only had about five teeth in her whole mouth. Except for her great-grandmother, Aida had never seen a person walking around without teeth like that. She couldn’t stop staring.
“You gonna kiss me or order some food?” the woman said.
“Oh, uh, pancakes? And chocolate milk?”
The vet ordered three eggs and home fries and bacon and ham and a short stack of pancakes. “And chocolate milk,” he added, winking at Aida.
Winking was smarmy. She hated winking. She pretended not to notice.
“So,” he said, after the waitress walked away, “you going to college or something out there?”
Aida brightened. “Yes,” she said with too much enthusiasm.
“You have friends or something there?”
“An uncle,” she said. This was maybe true. Five years ago, her uncle Carmine had walked into the house and announced he was moving to San Francisco. He had seen on television that people there believed in free love. “I’m going to get me some,” Uncle Carmine said. He tied a plastic daisy to the radio antenna on his Dodge and drove off. No one had heard from him since. Mama Jo said novenas to pray for his safety, and once asked Aida to call Information to see if he was listed. But he wasn’t.
“He’s, like, seventy years old,” Aida said. “But he’s cool.”
Their food arrived and the vet started eating like he hadn’t had anything in a million years.
“Aren’t you hot?” Aida said as she carefully cut her pancakes into triangles.
“Yes, I am,” he said. “But I walked out of our double shower and this is what I was wearing. Walked out, bought a ticket to San Francisco, and here I am.” He shook his head as if he couldn’t believe it himself.