On my way back from a lunch meeting, my cab took me past the Greyhound bus terminal at Bay and Dundas. It’s an unlovely structure, that terminal. Squat and colourless, it resembles nothing more than a Soviet era parking garage.
Everybody standing out there beneath the cement canopy, waiting to get on a bus that would take them to Thunder Bay or Detroit or Ottawa, looked miserable. Long, damp lineups of people wishing they were somewhere else, wishing possibly, that they were somebody else.
When I first started to see Rachelle, I took the bus from Ottawa to Toronto about twice a month, and I have to admit, I kind of liked it. I always found my trips on the bus interesting. The means of transportation imposed a certain sort of intimacy on the passengers that was kind of charming and eccentric in its candor.
At the terminal itself, I grew used to seeing one particular Greyhound employee. It was his job to help load and unload the luggage into the belly of the bus. Short and proudly muscular, he was always dressed in a Polyester uniform that was at least one size too small. His shirt was always undone, revealing a matt of curly, black hair and a crucifix that hung from his neck that was the size of a kitchen knife. Always chewing gum, he walked like a tough guy, swinging his shoulders from side to side.
He never said anything, instead just nodding whenever somebody spoke to him. With shocking agility, he would bend down and grab some luggage, and then just toss it into the trunk of the bus, as easily as if he was flicking cards into a hat. I would see him in winter or in summer, and regardless of the brutality of the weather, he would be there, amidst all the fumes from 10 idling buses, happily pitching luggage around as if somehow, the rules that governed the rest of us, did not apply to him.