ask the woman behind the desk: Is there a bathroom on the bus?
There is.
I ask the woman behind the desk: Is there a television on the bus?
There is.
Are you sure? I ask.
She is sure.
The woman behind the desk is annoyed by my questions. She wears big, Eighties-style glasses that swallow the top half of her face. She points to a poster of a shiny red bus hanging on the wall behind her -- "There's the bus," she says -- as if the bus I'm taking is actually the one pictured there. As if the bus I'm taking is so famous that they've made posters to celebrate it. As if I don't know better.
Still, what can I do? Gotta get to Vilcabamba somehow.
I board the bus: Check, television. Check, bathroom.
I settle in, a prisoner for six hours. No stops, no mercy. I am subject to the driver's teetering turns, the sounds and smells of my fellow passengers. I am subject to the music, which plays loud and endlessly -- bright Spanish-language songs, like aerobics music -- BOOM, shakalakalaka, BOOM, shakalakalaka -- that make me want to yell, "Ay-yi-yi! Fiest-ahhhh!"
The bus winds along the curving roads. It sways left, then right. It's too difficult to read. From the wheels down below comes a low grind followed by a high, dropping torpedo sound: Grrrrrrr-PING! It's like a mechanical snore. The bus turns, and I lean into the woman beside me as if I am her child, our thighs and arms smashed against each other.
I stare out the window, watch the mountains change.
Mountains like patchwork quilts of brown and green. Mountains covered in furry stems of broccoli. Mountains covered in blond hair that waves in the wind. Mountains like a man's stubbly chin. Mountains stacked high with houses. Mountains with one lonely lean-to, hovering near the top. Mountains of shiny slate and mountains of white rubble and dark, wrinkly mountains like an elephant's leg -- I watch them fade into each other, watch the sun drip down their sides, as the bus turns and turns.
I need to go to the bathroom.
The bus keeps whirring along its bumpy, deranged path -- Grrrr-PING! Grrrrr-PING! -- as I wobble through the aisles, pulling myself forward by the tops of the seats to keep from falling over.
"Tasty," says one guy as I pass, accidentally brushing my ass against his arm. I can feel his eyes following me, and I flip him off over my shoulder.
I reach the bathroom. It's locked. Shit.
I wobble back through the gauntlet and to the front compartment of the bus.
"I need the keys to the bathroom," I tell the guy sitting next to the driver.
The guy shrugs. "There are no keys," he says.
"What does that mean: There are no keys?" I ask, a bit desperate now.
"Bathroom doesn't work," he says, and shrugs again. We didn't tell you? Oops!
I want to argue, want to tell him to stop the bus now, dammit, because I have to GO. But I'm all out of words, and I'm shit for confrontation anyway.
"The television?" I ask.
He shakes his head and shrugs again. "Doesn't work," he says, as I stomp back to my seat, accidentally stepping on the foot of the woman beside me.
There is no television on this bus. There is no bathroom.
There is only two hours left.
The bus keeps grinding. Grrrr-PING! Grrr-PING!