Ghost of the Chinatown Bus

A few summers ago I took the Glorious Century bus from New York City to Philadelphia to see a friend, N., who was working as a continuity assistant for the latest movie by a director whose career was careening on the shoulders of his last two bombs. The pressure on the set was the size of a foreclosed McMansion.

It was N.’s job to make sure that the handsome bruise across the lead actor’s eyebrow stayed the same color of hurt and that the handle on a cup of coffee saluted the same direction from scene to scene.

I waited on the curb in front of a duck joint on Division with the other travelers, including a tall white man cracking gum, a Puma duffle bag slung over his shoulder, and an African couple with a very young baby who stared gap-eyed at the people around her as though she were searing our faces in her mind to match the brutality of our crimes.

A loud argument broke out between one of the Chinese women who collected money for tickets and a bald Dominican. The woman seemed to relish the sport, swiveling her fanny pack hump and waving her hands in front of his face like switch blades. The Dominican held his ground for as long as he could, then turned angrily on his heel, his dome spackled with injustice.


In real life, N.’s existence could only barrel down two narrative paths: He could be the obsessive who insisted on keeping every item and feeling in its place, or he could be the terrible, ironic opposite of his professional self, failing to connect the consequence of one action to another, scornful of sentimentality, leaver of socks in the cryptic memory crack between a woman’s bed and the wall. Both were insultingly predictable. This was why he spent an inordinate amount of time orchestrating evasive maneuvers to throw people off their executive summaries of how he lived.

Read the whole report, he’d say. Deflate your lassos.

This was one of his more subtle maneuvers: mixed metaphors.

After some confusion involving the eerie proximity of another, identical bus headed for Boston, we clambered on to the one bound for Philadelphia, inserted our earphones, peeled open our magazines, and set our faces squarely in the manner of people who expect nothing to happen but time.

The bus rumbled out of the city and onto the broad flanks of the highway.


Ordinarily, I avoid the public toilets at all costs. At Obama’s inauguration, I plotted out a winning strategy of dried fruit (apricot and cranberries), nuts, and a modest draught of water before setting out into the cold. Not once did I feel twinge or pang from my bowels. I confess that I succumbed to some measure of smugness when I gazed upon the souls lined up two dozen deep for their turn at the Honey Bucket, their participation in history marred by the plaintive desire to expel waste.

But I did feel not so smug now, shooting glances at the clap-trap, fake wood-paneled door in the back of the bus. The baby, who hung from the arm of her mother in the seat across from me, took in my predicament with the cool appraisal of an expert.

I made my way to the toilet, lurching with the movement of the bus.

As soon as I bolted the door, I felt a chill steal over me. It was not a change in gradation of the actual temperature, exactly, but a precipitous drop in my temperament from nagging physical discomfort to the bone of despair—a despair that I alone could not have manufactured from the modest dung heap of disappointments that had accumulated in my life up to that point. This wave of emotion was followed immediately by a sigh right next to my ear so grotesque and terrible, I hear it even now.

The intake was barely audible, but in that breath-pause harbored the hand lowered after an arduous run at one’s own genitals, the death-rattle of crumbs at the bottom of a bag of Funyuns devoured over the sink, the six rings, Volumes I and II, it takes for someone to register your digits, neglect your overture, and brick you up in the message center.

The much longer exhalation that followed was No Forwarding Address, the thump down the air shaft, fire twisting metal, an impenetrable chorus of voices from recording devices that no longer have corporeal hosts.


I returned to my seat, shaken. I could do nothing for the rest of the trip but stare out the window like an invalid.


When I finally worked up the nerve to tell N. about my supernatural experience, we were eating beef noodle at a Chinatown restaurant near the bus depot. My story was interrupted by the discovery of a moth floating face down in his soup.

Fucking Mothra, he shouted, pushing himself back in his chair reflexively with both hands.

I jumped, too, but seconds later our heads were bent, peering into the bowl. We prodded the drowned insect with our chopsticks like a pair of U.S. coast guards encountering a swollen corpse in the churn of the East River. N. swore he would never eat at the restaurant again, but within the year, on a particularly frigid day in December, he found himself gravitating back there like a sleepwalker, or one hypnotized to respond flaccidly to the exercise of judgment.

This is the first time I have told anyone else, besides, N., about the ghost of the Chinatown bus. It is impossible to separate the story of the ghost from the moth; typically speaking, the moth wins.

When people ask how big it was, we tell them it had eyebrows.

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With thanks to W, R, and J.