SERODISCORDANCY:

I spot Chad a few minutes later, a dark-eyed waif on the sidewalk. It’s been three weeks he’s been gone, and he’s lost so much weight. Everything about him looks burnt-out, the way refugees on TV look with farms smoking behind them: translucent skin, an uncertain balance something like shellshock. I notice he’s wearing a necklace, one he wasn’t wearing last time. A ring and a small cross.

I tell the driver, “That’s him.”

The bus slows, but the doors don’t open.

“Five hundred dollar fine!” the driver shouts.

“What?”

“Five hundred dollar fine for entering or exiting the vehicle at…” (here I have no idea what he says) “…designated stopping point.”

“So he can get on at the stop?”

“Five hundred dollar fine!”

Chad studies me through the plexiglass of the bus’s doors. Perplexed, panicky from lack of sleep, obviously trying not to show it. I do my best to motion him down the road, try to mouth, “wait there.” The yellow and black paint of the stop is at just such an angle I can’t point at it through the doors. I keep pointing as the bus keeps moving. It stops 20 feet away; the doors hiss open.

“Can he get on here?”

“Designated stopping point!”

Chad reaches the stop a few seconds after the bus. I can’t think of anything to say but, “Hey.”

We collapse into seats next to each other, he with a bag over each shoulder. His lips taste like seawater; his mouth is dry. I later learn that he took a shot, his last shot, in the bathroom at Dulles. This is quite valuable, actually, seeing what he looks like still high, on the tail-end of high — it’s a look I’ve yet to see on him again.

“I parked at the wrong gate,” I explain. “We have to go back around.”

He seems euphoric to just be able to rest.

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