Chapter Two: Leaving LA
NICOLETTE started her long journey home from her friend Angela's place early on a Sunday morning-- well before the sun began to rise. Angela hadn't been awake to see Nicolette out the door, which suited Nicolette just fine; seeing her friend’s relief at her departure would have been hard to bear. Her presence at Angela's house had made Angela nervous. She was probably worried that Nicolette would ask to spend another night, and another after that, and so on until either Nicolette brought the cops down on her, or she had to kick out her unwelcome roommate. Just thinking about it made Nicolette want to sigh. She wasn't like that anymore, if she ever really had been; her memories of her time with Angela as her friend were pretty hazy. Nicolette had genuinely wanted to spend exactly one night, just long enough to make a couple of phone calls and have somewhere warm to sleep afterward. She had a schedule to keep, a journey that she’d been planning for the last two and a half years.
Today, it was finally starting.
Her journey had truly started with the click of the door latch behind her; Nicolette suspected that no amount of knocking would have brought Angela to the door once that lock clicked shut. She sighed, a little hurt not to be trusted, but aware that perhaps the suspicion wasn't wholly unjustified...but for all the wrong reasons. Still, it had been great to sleep indoors in a bed; it beat sleeping in the bus terminal or wandering around downtown until it was time to go.
"Thank you, Angie," she murmured into the chill predawn silence, her throat aching with emotion, "you came through for me.”
Knowing the best way she could repay her friend would be to leave without fuss, she turned and began her walk to the corner where she intended to catch a bus downtown. She felt giddy as she stepped down from the front porch to the walkway, then through the flaking wooden gate to the sidewalk. It was exciting; she was moving from the known to the unknown, feeling a little bit like old Bilbo after he had been dragged from his comfortable and predictable hole. The Road goes ever on and all that.
She was truly leaving. That in itself was a victory worth celebrating.
She had little hope that her reception at the end of her journey would be a warm one; at this point she was hoping for a quiet, unnoticed arrival and a little breathing room to begin rebuilding. The bus arrived on time, roaring and wheezing down the somnolent city street, its noise and stink magnified by the slightly hazy stillness. She stepped aboard, pausing to study the sleepy people on the bus, most of them likely on their way home from late shifts or Los Angeles nightlife, wanting only to find cool sheets and a warm blanket.
Not unkindly, the bus driver tapped the fare-box, "Gotta pay to play, honey."
Nicolette quietly dropped in the requisite change and wandered down the aisle, stumbling slightly as the bus lurched back into motion. She sat on the left side of the bus, sliding all the way to the window. She watched the city shudder past, hands folded patiently in her lap, unconsciously fiddling with the coil of wire wrapped around her ring finger.
She stepped off the bus downtown, barely noticing the sleepy urban landscape surrounding her; its novelty had long ago ceased to register. It was just scenery, now -- hopefully just bad memories she could start working to forget in an hour or so. Suppressing a shiver in the chill pre-dawn, Nicolette walked the quarter mile to the Megabus terminal. The man in the ticketing window glanced at her id, accepted her cash, and gave her a ticket for the 6am North Bound Shuttle. Nicolette hadn't really expected any trouble, but she dreaded being recognized or having to explain where she’d been the last three years. He barely even noticed the blonde-haired, dark-eyed girl. To him, she was just another traveler with her own reasons for leaving the city anonymously on the cheap.
The bus was a long, blue animal with darkened windows, giving her the impression of an elderly man wearing wraparound sunglasses. It spoke to her of safety, anonymity, and travel under the radar. Her nervousness eased as the bus began to board moments after she finished her business. She took a seat on the lower level, near the back. She didn’t have any baggage to check.
Just the clothes I'm wearing, she thought, the contents of my pockets, and the bitter cup I’ve been given to drink from.
Her spirits were pretty low, but she was leaving Los Angeles behind. She cast her mind back over the long boredom, back through all the humiliations and indignities moving to LA had necessitated, her regret and loneliness and doubt...and couldn't come up with a single thing she had done that she felt proud of in this city. The one thing she had no doubts about, though, was her initial decision to leave Half Moon Bay and disappear into the depths of Los Angeles, like a cockroach fleeing the kitchen light.
At least I escaped from Mother, she thought, caught in the familiar dull ache of paired guilt and relief.
(three drops of blood, spattered on ugly yellow linoleum...waiting for the bus while the unseasonably warm sun beat down on her shoulders...rumble of the bus making her head feel as though it was going to split apart...guilt, despair, crushing self-hatred)
She blinked rapidly at the ugly memory, forcing it down before it could fully blossom in her mind's eye.
First things first, she thought.
Even now, seven years after her escape, two years after her mother had died, Nicolette still felt guilt and a sense of failure. She could never shake the feeling that she could have tried just a little bit harder, that perhaps there was some kind of effort threshold and if she had just managed to cross it, everything might have come out okay. She knew that was fallacious, that her childish need for approval was hard-wired into her brain, that it would take years to fully exorcise that feeling, but knowing the truth did little to assuage her guilt. She still felt as though she’d somehow failed.
With a shuddering roar, the Megabus came to life, grumbling resentfully at the lightening cityscape. She waited for the vibration to change into a rumble as the bus slipped into gear.
As it put on its traveling shoes, she thought with a slight smile, feeling impatience and anticipation begin to rise past her depression.
Do a little dance, sing a little song, get the heck out tonight, she thought, suddenly nervous. She wondered if this was how Orpheus must have felt when the gates of Hades opened.
One difference between you and me, Orph old pal, she thought, is that if I turn around and LA disappears, good riddance.
Of course, LA bore more resemblance to Hades than Eurydice in her heart. Abruptly, the bus lurched into gear and began to slide along the curb, making the turn into traffic after pausing at the light. Her spirits rose as she realized it was finally beginning to happen -- she was finally leaving LA -- with luck, never to return.
Maybe you never left Harlan alive, Patty, she thought, but I sure as hell am leaving LA alive. Damaged, maybe. Battered, definitely. But alive.
She had escaped; for now that was enough.
An hour later, as the sun rose over the mountains, the bus was climbing the long slope into the Grapevine on the 5N. Soon it would descend into the sere Central Valley, laboring its way back up the state to the South Bay of the San Francisco Bay Area, one more stop on her way to the coast -- to Half Moon Bay.
To home, she hoped, her eyes filling with unshed tears.
She sat, her face turned to the window, her hands in her lap, calmly watching the landscape as the bus slowly but inexorably put the miles behind it. Her plan was finally in motion, but for the moment there was nothing for her to do but wait.