Imaginary Apostles

The 2:01 bus, as usual. Seventh row from the back, right side, window seat, as usual. Three stops, four. The bus fills but no one sits next to me. Fifth stop, people are standing in the aisle, still no one sits next to me. Maybe I smell or maybe nobody can see the empty seat or maybe I just have a look, unknown at least to me, that screams ‘don’t sit next to this guy.’ Sixth stop though, somebody approaches. Small and roundish, dark skin covered by a faded teal sweatshirt, curls of wire-y grey hair stuffed under a tattered canvas bucket hat. Various bags of various sizes clutched in one gnarled hand and a cup of coffee in the other. Steam whispers upward from the thick papered walls of the cup.
“Mind if I sit down here?”
“Not at all.”
“Thanks.” He slides into the seat, carefully marshaling his bags and coffee. His eyes are old and watery. Pale corneas that have somehow lost most of their opacity, pupils that long to be vivid with youth. Nestled into his seat, he thanks me again. I convey my response with a shrug of my shoulders and return attention to the book in my hands.
A minute passes. Another. Again he strikes up conversation.
“I tell ya, there’s nothing like a plain cup of joe. None of this decaf business. Sugar-free. No, straight joe is my beverage of choice.”
I nod, mumble mock interest.
“Some guys, they go to a bar after work. Not me. I’m a busy man, but I’d rather go to a coffee shop and sit down with a good newspaper. Yep. But it’s all about moderation. That’s my motto. I had a coffee in the morning, this one in the afternoon, and I’ll probably have another this evening. No more though.”
“Yeah,” I say, my head half-cocked towards him. I notice he is looking directly at me and not off into the distance as he chatters on.
“I can understand why women would avoid the caffeine, but us guys, no problem. I mean, a young guy like you, and I can tell you’re young and active, can drink a Coke or Pepsi every now and then, cause you’re going to work it off. It just gets dangerous when you’re having as ix-pack a day. Same goes for beer.”
Slightly troubled and mostly annoyed I look at him, say “yeah, you really gotta be careful about that stuff,” turn back to my book.
“Now, do you go to school up here?”
“Yes,” and I’m being as curt as possible in hopes of squelching his curiosity. Instead he doubles his efforts, engaging me in an intense series of questions that ends with a detailed explanation of the decline of a mall in the suburb where I live. Then it’s back to my status as a student.
“What do you study?”
I surprise myself by telling the truth. English, creative writing, and not architecture, the usual response to bus-borne queries.
“Oh, yeah? I’m a minister now, but I minored in English Lit back in college.”
“Weird coincidence, huh?” There isn’t a shred of sincerity in my response. He continues on about his days in college and how they led him to a successful career in scriptwriting and I’m just waiting for the religious sales pitch but he never gets to it. More talk of college and how he majored in English Theatre and how he moved to L.A. to write for film and television before he was called away to be a minister.
“Well, I majored in English Lit and English Theatre and went to L.A. about a year after college, to work on film and television scripts. I bet you’d be surprised to know that writing for television and writing for the screen, which is film, are very different.”
I’m about to say that I’m not surprised and that I actually have quite a bit of experience writing ‘for the screen’ before I’m distracted by what he just said. Earlier he had mentioned a minor in English Lit and now, not forty-five seconds later, it’s reversed. Probably just misspoke. Then it gets worse.
“Yeah, I had a major in English Lit, European History, and Philosophy, and a minor in English Theatre. Yeah, I had a double major and a double minor.”
I let him run with it, egg him on. “Wow, that sounds like a lot of work.”
“Oh, it sure was. And I had grades too. 3.7 for my minors. 3.5 for my majors. No, 3.6 for my majors. But you know, I also worked. I put myself through college. I had two part time jobs and one full time job. While my friends were on summer vacation I was working.” He finishes his coffee and I notice the tattered pages of an atlas in his other hand, the kind you’d find in a high school geography textbook.
“That’s cool though, that you did all that yourself.”
“Sure is. Oh, and I had another minor. You’re not going to believe it. Can you guess?”
“Uhhh, architecture?”
“I also minored in Pre- Law.”
“Wow, you sure were busy,” I say, though it’s almost “you’re right, I don’t believe it,” except at the last second I decide not to call him out but to encourage him. I want to know how far this will go.
He rambles for a few minutes, recalls his decision to move to Los Angeles some more, tells me all about his successful, rich industry friends, and again mentions how he was called away from film to be a minster. Except, he doesn’t say minister. He says apostle. A record scratches, the needle bumped out of the groove in my head. Static hiss, confusion. Before I can recover, put the needle back in the groove, he’s moved on, deep into an explanation of why so-and-so is the most accomplished cross-over novelist slash screenwriter and why his name will be the one we’ll be talking about in the universities years from now. Too startled by the apostle comment, I fail to catch the author’s name, though I can’t imagine it belongs to any actual human being, alive or dead.
“But you see, the Lord called me away from all that. He made me an apostle and what I do as an apostle, see, is I have authority over nations and countries and people.”
“Really?” trying to sound as authentic as possible.
“Yep. I work with prime ministers and congress and presidents. And I go to these countries and nations and I work with their leaders and provide protection, if they acknowledge my authority.”
“Protection? From what?”
“Pestilence, plague, famine, drought. Those things. But only if the leaders choose to accept my authority over their nation.”
“I see. How do you communicate with these leaders?” Now I’m trying to stump him, probing him to see how though out his delusions are. His response is pure verbal lightening, fast and precise.
“Correspondence. And telephone. I work directly with the prime ministers, so I use the telephone with them.”
“Wow.”
“Yes, sir. You can read my license here.” He hands my the atlas. Across the bottom of the pages, scrawled in an impenetrable cursive, are words and sentences that I could never hope to understand. The map itself is a world political map and I notice many of the countries are highlighted. Maybe he notices my eyebrow twitch and anticipates my question or maybe he reads my mind, but either way he offers an answer before I can ask.
“These are the countries I have authority over.”
“I see.” The United States, Canada, Greenland, Australia, New Zealand, North Korea, many others too small to see. One stands out. “Antarctica?”
“Yep. And up here, too,” he indicates the top of the map, where the entire Arctic Ocean is a mess of blue map ink and yellow highlighter. “That’s the Arctic. I’m recognized there.”
“By the polar bears?” I try to sound genuine but I know some sarcasm must have bled through. He’s unfazed.
“You know it,” he says, and I want to ask if he communicates with them via correspondence too, but decide to ask him if any countries have denied his authority. Again, I hope to catch him or throw him off guard, but his reply asserts the kind of confidence one can only have if they believe they are telling the truth.
“Well, the U.S., of course,” he laughs. “And New Zealand. Australia too, at first, but then they saw what I did for all these other countries and changed their minds. And the U.S., that’s just a racial thing, because I’m Afro-American. That’s all Congress there. And that George Bush Jr.”
When I ask him how he provides protection from pestilence and the like, the bus comes to a stop The driver announces the stop and my mystery apostle tucks his atlas away, stands up.
“Well, good talking to you. Good luck with school. Remember, you just have to put yourself out there.” And he’s gone, down the aisle and out the door and into the anonymous sea of people boarding and de-boarding. I spin around to the two kids sitting behind me, my eyes wide.
“Did you guys hear any of that? What that guy was saying?” They just star back, their faces blank mirrors reflecting the same look I must have had when the apostle initially spoke to me. “Okay, I guess not.” I turn to a girl across the aisle, but she’s engaged in a cellular conversation and isn’t paying attention. Nobody is in front of me. “Anybody hear that guy? He was crazy!” I say as loud as I dare. Almost a yell, but not quite. No one even looks at me.
Two stops later I get off the bus and walk to my car. I open the door. I get in. I drive home.

Preview

Soft at first, then louder. Hard hoof-falls echoing down the dim hallway. Click clack. Click clack. Four doors away, maybe three. Each step accelerates his heart rate by twenty beats. Click clack. Click clack. Two doors. Click. Clack. The hooves slow as they draw near their destination. Click. The impact is heavy enough to rattle dishes in the sink. Clack. A long shadow slides under the door...

That Girl In Class--You Know The One

Patches of skin peeked through tattered denim and
bleach-blonde locks splayed over obscure
necklines, a belt of rainbows, wrapped waist,
thin, pelvic bone pushed against taught skin--opposing mountains
and a tattoo, crawled and curled over lean
shoulders. She makes a fist around a pen,
writes like she's etching stone.

Visuals