‘Damn park and rides’ Sam thought to himself as he pulled into a parking lot that was rivaled only by major sporting event venues.  Driving down two aisles, he finally settled his faded blue 1979 Mazda 323 between two super-sized, fat people lugging, gas guzzling SUVs.  The problem with SUVs is that they are wider than most cars, being wider they take up more horizontal space in a parking lot.  Lines for parking lots are typically drawn based on a 40 year old model, take a 1960 Buick, add 2 feet on either side for door clearance and there you go.  When you drive a tiny Japanese import, the room is ample, luxuriant..almost like flying first class.  However, when you park between line hugging SUVs, you find that unless you are willing to share paint with your door and theirs, the room allocated for safe door opening if properly centered in the parking spot is compromised and you realistically have about 2 feet of space to squeeze out of  your car.

Sam looked at the late 90’s style Hummer from his window, it was like looking up at the Sears tower.  Carefully opening his car door, he managed to come within millimeters of the post apocalyptic civilian attired military throwback vehicle.  This allowed him exactly 18 inches of space to squeeze his body and laptop bag out.  Sam didn’t care if he dinged the car, his own little Mazda had enough divots to rival the lunar craters.  Instead he feared the owner of such vehicles.  Typically some man with a military wannabe complex, always ready to shout or throw a punch if their precious aluminum refrigerator on wheels sported the tiniest scratch.  If Sam weren’t late, he thought he might just slap a bumper sticker on the back of the Hummer that said, “My other car has a Vagina”… or course he didn’t have the time or a bumper sticker.  Sam figured he should write that down in the event he wanted to start creating and selling bumper stickers.  They would be perfect for those cowboy high-riding 4x4 pick-up truck riders who sported sexy naked lady profiles on their mud flaps and a pair of distended balls from their trailer hitch, just in case you couldn’t realize that their truck was an extension of their penis.  Of course pen and paper were in Sam’s bag and he didn’t have time to pull it out.  He could see his bus pulled in to the loading area about two football fields away and if Agnes was driving, she would only give passengers 30 seconds to load before she started to pull away from the curb.

Agnes was a bitter old woman, nearing her sixties as best as Sam could guess.  Of course she could have been forty but years of smoking and drinking left her wrinkled and evacuated of any innocent beauty.  To punish the world for her own mistakes, Agnes chose a profession working with the public.  She drove bus number eighty seven, and her route ran from the Bothel Park and Ride direct to the tunnels under the city of Seattle.  She was a stickler for time and in her twenty years as a driver had never fallen behind schedule.  Quite an impressive record is often plagued with years of formal and written complaints from riders, service people and management.  But like a misshapen mole on your shoulder, if you ignore it and let it go it can’t bother you.  It’s not until someone tries to remove it that you either find its malignant or it grows back, bigger and with hair.  No, management decided to let their shoulder mole keep her route and let the passengers decide to continue to ride number eighty seven or wait for number eighty nine which would arrive an hour later. 

Sam had ridden number eighty seven for two years, not because he liked Agnes nor did he like any of the cross people who were attracted to number eighty seven.  He rode number eighty seven because he was too lazy to catch number ninety two which leaves ten minutes before number eighty seven whose driver has been rumored to sing parodies, tell funny stories and would sometimes even stop at McDonalds to allow his passengers to pick up coffee.   The bus of dreams was even rumored to wait for regular passengers if they hadn’t made it to the stop in time.  Sam even heard once from the underworldly minions that rode number eighty seven, that Bob, driver of number ninety two drove his bus two miles out of the way to pick up a passenger whose car was in the shop and couldn’t make it to the park and ride.  In Sam’s world, in most things, the only difference between Heaven and Hell was ten minutes.

Running at full tilt, Sam clumsily spanned the lot, dodged a few cars autonomously driving as their drivers were busy putting on makeup and occupied with the review mirror for one last glob of mascara, and even jumped over a stray dog who made the lot his home surviving on donut scraps and wild game.  Sam could see the passenger side mirror of the bus and envisioned Agnes’ withered face and steely eyes telling him that if he didn’t make it to the door in thirty two second, the doors would close and he would be one sorry SOB.  Panic flushed over Sam trying to remember if he had his bus pass in his bag, as Agnes who had seen him on the bus for the past two years and acknowledged his pass with scrutiny every day, would not sway for a moment to allow him to ride without presenting it.  Reaching in his bag while he was running, Sam made the mistake of looking down into the darker recesses of his bag and…

“What the hell is wrong with you asshole,” said an agitated woman’s voice as Sam felt himself summersault through the air hoping beyond hope that he could pull off a Nadia Komaniche or Mary Lou Retton or even a Christina Yamaguchi and land on his feet still running.  He was sure if he could the patrons waiting for their busses would applaud him and would have something to tell their co-workers over coffee this morning, ‘It was amazing, he was like a gazelle’.  Of course, in the real world the conversation was more likely to be, ‘He was like that Apple Computer guy on Dancing with the Stars…’.  Sure enough he heard an audible umph and ooohs and he thought he could even hear some winces from the onlookers as he splayed out on his back, his bag unceremoniously opened and exposed six feet from his head.  It was the audible crunch that shook him from his situation as a woman applying one last dob of hooker red on her lips drove over his bag and his new Dell XPS laptop.  It wasn’t his own machine, it was a company provided unit.  That meant that he’d have to face the IT group.  After the long minutes of staring down, humbly asking forgiveness and kissing the ass of every computer geek in the department, he would have to fill out a damages form that would allow finance to deduct money from his paycheck to pay for the unit.  The IT group would then issue him an intern laptop that was at least ten years old and ran Windows 98. 

“Stop the bus,” Sam heard himself say outloud as he attempted to sit and then rolled on to his side holding his head with his hands, fingers touching across the back of his skull.  Sam could feel a little warm ooze on his finger.  “Oh my God, I’m bleeding,” he said again audibly.

“No you shit, you smashed my jelly donut with your massive sized head,” said a woman in a gray business suit with a modest knee length a-line skirt.  Sam pulled his hands away and looked at his middle finger on his right hand.  The gel that was on it was red indeed.  He smelled and then tasted it, gravel, oil and indeed the semblance of strawberry or cherry.  With fake jelly, it was hard to say which chemical offered the flavoring and why anyone would even bother making things taste like other things when you could use the thing itself to make the flavor.  “So idiot, are you okay,” said the voice that was no longer shrill and sounded a little less agitate.

“I’m fine I think,” Sam said as he rose to his feet slowly keeping one hand to the side of his head and looking around for his road killed laptop bag.  Spying it, he walked sideways to it and picked it up.  He could hear metallic and plastic shifting inside.  Straitening up to his full height of 6’2,” Sam began brushing himself off and looking around for his assailant.  Sure enough the woman in the gray suit had received how own bag yet left the partially smashed donut and empty coffee cup on the ground.  She had her back to him as she looked in the direction of bus number eighty seven which had mindlessly ignored the happenings of the parking lot just behind it and pulled away and out of the lot.  Sam thought he could hear Agnes’ evil chuckle that she reserved for kicking people off the bus who could not present a pass or those who managed to get their arm in the closing door while the bus began its trundle toward the onramp of I-95.  The brave hung on for a while, the foolish hung on longer banging on the door believing for a moment that the Grinch driver would expand her heart and stop the bus.  Either way, eventually they let go and watched the bus leave as this woman was doing now. 

Watching the bus’ progression around the lot and onto the onramp, the woman came into full profile of Sam who was now embarrassed that he couldn’t care less about the bus and was transfixed on the woman’s soft lips, small nose and long lashes that beat evenly.  “Now how am I supposed to get to work, I almost made it,” she said now turning and giving Sam a glare.  Even her angry look was beautiful as Sam stood stupidly, his mouth still open and he could feel a progression of saliva toward the end of his tongue and to his bottom lip. 

Sam quickly closed his mouth and sucked in the saliva emitting a small slurping sound he wished she hadn’t heard.  “You can wait for ninety four, it gets here in fifteen minutes and takes you to the Seattle Center, then you can take the monorail into the downtown area,” Sam said as though he were giving directions to a tourist.

“Thank God you’re not retarded.  I was beginning to feel guilty for giving you a tongue lashing until you closed your big slobbery mouth and began talking,” she said walking toward him.  “But you see here is the problem….,” she paused.

“Sam,” Sam interjected believing that was what the pause was intended for.

“Samuel,” she said proving to Sam that indeed she was waiting for him to introduce himself.  Of course, the name Samuel was reserved for his Mamie and the rare times that his mother was curt with him.  He had no doubt she intended the later as he envisioned her face over his Mamies body.  He shook his head and stared at her again.  “Then again, maybe you are retarded, are you?”  This time she kept talking not waiting for his answer.  “Samuel, I have a new job that starts this morning at 8:45 am.  I have been unemployed for six months and I finally managed to take a low paying, morally demoralizing position as an assholes assistant.  My guess is that I will need to wipe his ass and clean off drool from his mouth,” she said as she reached up with her thumb and expertly wiped some drool that had previously escaped the corner of Sams mouth.

Again, Sam stood dumbfounded thinking for what seemed like hours, ‘she touched my mouth’.  Nearly aroused he shook himself to consciousness.  “I could drive you.”

“What,” she said.

“I could drive you.  Agnes enjoys leaving me here all the time and I often end up having to drive into the city.  With you I could use the carpool and express lanes and we could probably even beat number eighty seven into the city.”  Sam stood proud of himself presenting to her what he thought was a winning and manly smile.

“How do I know you are not a park and ride serial murderer?  You obviously miss your bus often, perhaps you make it a point to fall over women.  Or maybe this is your sick way of picking up chicks, is that it?” She said with as much disgust as the first words from her mouth suggested just moments before when he laid on the ground.

“Look…” he paused as she had waiting for her to interject her name.  Instead she stood there with her mouth pursed and continued glaring at him.  “My name is Sam Clements, and no, it’s not a coincidence, my parents had aspirations that I would be a writer some day and named me after Mark Twain.  I live at Hacienda Heights, I have a cat and I drive a lame car which only proves that I have no motivation at all despite my name.”  Sam felt as though he were babbling, and in her mind he was an idiot so it probably sounded that much worse to her.

“Okay Marky Twain, let’s get to your car and get out of here.  I’m Jessica and we don’t need to make small talk, just get me to town as quickly as you can,” she began walking into the parking lot with purpose even though she had no idea where he parked.  Sam quickly caught up with her and walked on her right as he directed the both of them to his car, still wedged between the behemoth rolling metal crates.  At first Jessica looked a little pleased, at least she had a half smirk on her face.  It quickly disappeared when she realized that he was not walking to the driver side of the Hummer and instead walked to its passenger side.  All hope was not lost in her eyes until he realized that he should open her door.  Sure enough there it was, the look of bitter disappointment as she, without a word, liquidly squeezed through an 18” gap in the door and found her way on a worn and cat hair covered passenger seat.  The seat hadn’t been used much as Sam seldom had passengers and it had been five years since he even dated a woman who was willing to ride in his shame box.

“It’s not much to look at but it rides smoothly and gets you from A to B.  I am thinking about restoring it or putting on that car makeover show where could put some mag wheels on it and paint it some crazy metal flake midnight blue.”  His chatter started to affect him, he knew he was going beyond small talk and was on his way in to annoying talk.  Of course she probably only heard a portion of his babble as he had closed the door and walked around entering his own tight cubby talking the whole while.

“Really, I pegged you for candy apple red,” Jessica said snidely.  She smiled for a fraction of a second and then as if realizing that she barely wanted to touch the car much less sit inside it sat lightly and tightly holding her knees with clasped hands.

“Buckle up for safety,” Sam said sounding like an idiot.  He started the car and watched over his shoulder as he began backing out barely avoiding yet another lipstick-on-my-tooth-must-look-in-mirror-and-get-it-off-while-not-watching-where-I’m-driving barely missed his rear end.  Proceeding toward the onramp he instinctively flipped on the radio as he heard the funky tones of Frankie Smith singing:

There's a double dutch bus comin' down the street
Movin pretty fast
So kinda shuffle your feet
Get on the bus and pay your fare
And tell the driver that you're
Goin' to a Double Dutch Affair
Fe Fi Fo Fum
Well I'll be darn here it comes
The Double Dutch Bus is on the street
You'd better get off the curb
Move your feet

Bus fare trans-pass
That's the way my money lasts
Ain't got no car to get around
When I go to work I've gotta go downtown
Now I've missed my train
That's a darn shame
When I'm running late no sleep's to blame
If you've gotta wife you know I'm right
Gotta special man well I can understand
Uptown, downtown everybody's getting down
Say uptown say downtown
Well I've missed my bus I know I'm late
I've gotta do something I know I hate
I'm gonna walk to work fifteen blocks
I already got a hole in my socks
Go ahead and laugh that's okay
Cause what I really wanna say
I got bad feet my corns hurt
To top it off I'm lost for work
Let me tell you what I say
When I'm dealing with the funky sidewalk
Let me show you how to walk
When I gotta do my funky walk
Let me tell you what I say
When I'm dealing with the funky sidewalk
I say sssssssss-sugar[1]

Shamin