The music coming from the speakers at the front of the Metro bus was unusually beautiful. Narin could make out a piano’s twinkling under the waves of blue static. It was grainy and much too loud, but it was some classical piece she was sure that she could name if she thought it over a minute. She let her head drop back slightly against the rattling window behind her seat, listening. It was 10:15 pm. Her shift always ended by 8, but it takes time for the Metro 46 South to wind its way up and down each quarter of the city on its way back to campus. There were few passengers now, only people who had business that carried them out into the dark of deep evening. Night-shift commuters huddled near the front, too tired to talk, headphones in. They slipped on and off at their stops like the orange drops of street light slipped down little cracks in the back window. In the glow of those beads of light at the back, a woman with frizzled red hair and seven coats on was selling trash bags from a roll for 27 cents. Narin thought her scratchy calling sounded like a chickpea vendor in the bazaar...noh-kow! hot noh-kow! only it was black bags! I got ‘em, black bags! In between crackles and squeaks from the beaten up old speaker, the notes went one, two, three, one, two, three, crackle crackle, three, one and Narin, eyes-closed, thought waltz. She sat next to Demetrius, an older man wearing a janitor’s uniform, who was loudly telling a story to some young men a few seats up. He had been a marine in his 30’s, he said, and now worked as a hospital janitor. “Mop or a gun, you still broke,” he chuckled low down in his chest, sounding like he must know about that sort of thing. Those boys a few seats up were certainly wide-eyed and hushed. Demetrius noticed Narin, listening, and lowered his voice down to a grumble. And then there was Slim, too, watching her. People called Slim funny. He liked to watch Youtube videos of spiders in a jar, killing each other. When Narin had first heard that from Demetrius, she had felt uneasy. But Slim was harmless. He had been locked up on a drug charge when he was younger, gotten out, had a kid, and now lived straighter than anybody. He was watching Narin like he often did, because she was his daughter’s age, and everybody knew when Slim said “I’d go back to jail for my girl,” he meant that he had realized a sudden, overwhelming protectiveness for all girl-children. It was part of what made him funny. Narin frowned as a particularly harsh bump of the bus knocked her out of her focus. There was the sound of a tire hissing, which was joined by the sound of Bag Lady hissing, and a chorus of male voices grumbling out “oh Jesus” and “goddamn” in the direction of the driver. The driver’s name was Leon. He was sweet enough to stop the bus when you got on long enough for you to slot in your quarters. Other drivers would start moving before the doors even closed, and you’d go flying down the aisle. Not Leon. He took up his mic, sweaty and exhausted, and pronounced, “We broke down. I’m sorry everyone. This’ll be a minute. I know, I know. We appreciate your patience. I’m real sorry.” And then he swung the doors open and walked out onto the sidewalk, trying to reach HQ on his phone. Narin looked at her own phone. 10:21 pm. She was so tired that she began considering walking back to her campus apartment. It was only a few more blocks, but the walk would take her through an area that she probably shouldn’t go through at night alone. She could always call her roommate Kana, or even ask Demetrius to walk with her, but she didn’t want to ask them to go out of their way. Besides, there was still the pretty, incessant one, two, three to put a name to. She was starting to think that it wasn’t one she had heard before, and the namelessness of it, and the beauty of it, held her attention. She settled in for a long night, as other people started to get restless. A squinty-eyed woman carrying several grocery bags walked out and started to harass Leon for an ETA while he was on the phone. A group of girls in nurse uniforms at the front took out their headphones and started recounting their day in the NICU. People talked, or cursed, or sat back in their seats dozing under the humming fluorescent lights. After a few minutes, a boy who had been watching Narin for a while came up and sat down on her left. “Hello!” he said clearly, maintaining eye contact with a big smile, as if introducing himself at a conference. The energy coming off him was a little much for Narin, so she nodded without saying anything. “Do you live around here? Are you a student up the street?” “Mhm.” “No way! Me too!” his eyes lit up with the joy of having hit the mark, and he scooted in a bit closer. Slim was watching with his head tilted, and the clicking of the beads in his dreadlocks was disapproving. “How come I haven’t seen you around campus before? What’s your major? You look like a science girl!” “Mhm,” she mumbled, trying to get him to take a hint. She didn’t want to be rude, but he was talking over the music, and the music was fairly loud to begin with. It had a right to be. One two three one two three He began telling her about himself, with a particular emphasis on the quality of his LinkedIn profile. She didn’t know what a LinkedIn profile was, and his confidence about his own made her suddenly afraid that she needed one. While talking, he had taken out some raw cauliflower in a ziplock baggie from the pocket of his khakis. It wasn’t so much the snack that freaked her out, people bring snacks on the bus all the time. It was the way he was crunching them so aggressively, like this was how he was going to win her respect. And he never broke eye contact, the whole time he was crunching. Narin found herself staring from the baggie to his face, unable to look away until he had finished all the cauliflower inside. Then, he reached into his shirt pocket, and pulled out another little baggie of raw cauliflower. She felt the same wave of alarm she had felt about Slim’s predilection for spider gladiators. “Right?” he asked eagerly, obviously having just asked her a question that she hadn’t been listening to. She blinked. He sensed that he was losing his audience, and he was starting to feel a little nervous about that big man with his legs spread wide eyeing him darkly from across the aisle. “Look, I don’t want to bother you, I just think you’re pretty.” “Thank you,” Narin said, quietly, automatically. He glowed at having gotten a response. “Yeah, yeah, you’re so pretty. You’ve got that ethnic look, you know? I really dig your diversity thing.” One, two, three, one, two, three, one “I’m sorry. Was that the wrong thing to say?” Two, three, one “I didn’t mean...where are you going?” Narin had stood up, expressionless. She turned around and pushed on the latches that held down the window. “Oh. Yeah, it is hot. Good call.” She lifted the window and stuck her head outside. “So, like I was saying -” Then she stuck her arms out. And then she stepped up onto the seat, curled her body through the frame, stepped onto the lower ledge, and heaved herself out the window and up onto the roof of the bus. “What the hell!” the boy shouted, not angry but almost frightened. Slim shot up, and the Bag Lady hocking her inventory went silent. Shouts and wide eyes drew the rest of the passengers to attention, and soon all the windows were being thrown up. “Narin! Narin!” “Morticia!” shouted Demetrius, who called her that because she was pale, thin, and had black hair, “Morticia! Get down, honey!” “Girl you best get down” “Lord Jesus” “Goddamn” She could hear the music still coming up from the windows. The air was cold and smelled like Chinese food from a restaurant nearby. And the stars were faint in the black, black sky. She felt incredible relief, being up there. Relief, and some anxious feeling as hard to put a name to as the waltz drifting up faintly through the air on static. She began to sway, with her hands reaching up to the streetlights. Bathed in orange on the blue roof, she hummed to herself over all the shouting, focusing on the urgency that had sprung up suddenly in her, and tuning out the pleas of Leon coming faintly get down get down get *** The small ecosystem of the bus was rioting. Bag Lady was shouting about how Narin could fall and get hurt and somebody call the cops. Slim and the young men up front all said no cops at the same time. A girl in nurse scrubs was standing on the sidewalk, her voice smooth and even, trying to reach Narin with reason, feeling hopeless as she watched the flashes of black hair swishing back and forth with Narin’s swaying. Leon looked sweaty and miserable, caught between policy and his easy friendship with all the people on 46 South. Demetrius settled the question when he gripped Leon’s shoulder and pronounced, “No cops” with his shoulders squared. Leon didn’t argue. They called Campus Patrol instead, who gladly came down three blocks and collected a student who must have had too much to drink. The officers made their rounds through the council of the 46 South, taking notes. “Nah, nah, she wasn’t drunk,” Slim insisted, “she was just fed up. This kid wouldn’t leave her alone. Said she was ethnic, that’s what did it.” “Are you reporting an incident of hate speech?” Slim closed up tight. “Not reporting nothing,” he mumbled, eyes narrowed. Bag Lady scurried up to them with her bags stuffed into one of her coats, looking shifty-eyed but determined. “That boy took off. He’s gone now, you never gonna find him.” “Ethnic?” asked Demetrius, arms folded, when they explained Slim’s account to him. “She is, ain’t she? I mean...maybe that’s not the word for it, but I don’t think she minds being ethnic. She got a ethnic name. Maybe he just said it like he meant something by it.” Later, in the Dean’s office, Narin would calmly insist that she didn’t mind being ethnic, and didn’t think the boy had meant it badly. They had taken her off the roof and away from her small council of defense; now the prosecution would have its turn. Their team consisted of the two security officers who had gotten her down, the Dean of Student Affairs, a secretary, the disciplinary officer, and Hannah from HR. It was only a hearing, they said. Narin was a Dean’s List student, and no one wanted her in too much trouble over the incident the night before. The problem was that none of them knew what sort of warning to issue. They asked was she drinking. She said no, and they believed it. They asked her if she had climbed up because she was afraid after the bus broke down in such a troubled area. She said that she rode through there every night, and there was nothing to be afraid of if you had common sense. They asked if the boy on the bus had made her uncomfortable at all, and she said yes, but not enough to climb out a window. Hannah from HR had snorted a little, as if she understood exactly how bad that type of interaction would have to be for a woman to use the nearest possible exit. The Dean frowned at her, and finally asked if the boy had used hate speech, and if she had climbed up as part of a political statement. Narin laughed. It was the wrong thing to do. The Dean pulled his chair up and leaned in with his palms pressed together. “Do you understand the dangerous and irresponsible nature of the actions you took last night? I’d like you to give us a reason. We’ll put it down, and you’ll sign off on receiving a warning. That is more than fair. But I am tired of hearing you avoid the question. Now, why did you do it?” Because she was not good at being in trouble, and never had been, she made every effort to tell them. Feeling anxious, and then angry, and then very silly, she told them about how orange drops slipped down cracks in glass, and the cauliflower reserve was so loud, and the calls of the chickpea vendor were so close, and the grumbling voices of the tired men and the urgency of the waltz that was twinkling under the blue of static and the horrible wonderful feeling that the music was strange to her after being sure she could name it. And they stared. And they mumbled. And she signed a confirmation that she had received a warning against repeated incidents of public inebriation. *** “I think it could be a new composer since it was on the radio,” said Kana sitting cross-legged on the coffee table of their apartment. They were listening to various waltzes, trying to see if they could discover the one that Narin had been humming all night. “It might not be a classic, it could just be a new composer who’s into classic, you know? I’m going to make popcorn.” Narin stayed on the couch, exhausted. Her copy of the warning note was on the table in front of her, and Kana had been using it as a coaster for her tea. “Stupid,” she had said, her eyes narrowed as she read it, “as if you would get drunk commuting. What really happened?” “The bus broke down.” “You don’t get warnings if your bus breaks down. What else happened?” “I’d tell you if I knew. Apparently I’m terrible with explanations.” Kana had dropped it. Their apartment was dark, except for the pale light filtering in from the kitchen. The pops of the popcorn dropped down over the Vienna Waltz playing on her phone like a tin of buttons splattering across the floor. Useless. Kana was probably right. She should let it go. It shouldn’t worry her so much that she couldn’t name the song. Narin heaved herself off the couch and into the kitchen, wondering why it was so hard to tell her roommate what had happened. Why it was so hard to tell anybody what had happened. She wasn’t even really sure of what had snapped inside of her, but there had to be words for it. “Ridiculous,” she announced upon seeing the havoc Kana was wreaking with their microwave. “You’re insane.” Kana was making several bags of popcorn, and distributing them between an assortment of coffee mugs and wine glasses. She took a handful from the newest bag and put it into a measuring cup, then pressed it into Narin’s hand. “We don’t have enough bowls,” Kana said solemnly, “drink your popcorn.” “Innovative. I love it.” “You better.” Popcorn was their tradition for bad nights. It was a small gesture, and Narin appreciated it. She hopped up onto the kitchen counter, munching seriously, humming the song to herself again. She wanted to tell Kana about the Cauliflower Boy, but telling a story usually means telling the end, and the end was too mixed up to tell. She had proven that at the hearing. So she hummed, restless. Kana went back to the living room, presumably to find her tea mug. She came back with her mug in one hand, and one hand behind her back. “I’ve got something for you,” she said seriously. “Remember my chowazar you gave me last month?” Chowazar is a charm shaped like a blue eye, designed to keep the wearer safe from jealousy. It was a tradition in Narin’s homeland to give one to a pretty friend, to protect her from people who would be jealous of her and call down the Evil Eye on her. Kana had worn the bracelet every day since. Can’t be too careful, right? Now she held out a little orange square of silk-covered wood. It was elaborately decorated with embroidery, and Narin wished she could read the Japanese characters stitched in gold. “What’s this?” “An omamori,” said Kana, pressing it into her hand, “I had my grandmother pick some out and ship them. It’s to protect you from bad luck.” “You mean, it’s to keep me out of trouble,” Narin teased. She slid her thumb over it reverently. “Like I said, bad luck. I picked one that’s supposed to keep travelers safe. So you can keep riding the bus without it breaking down at night again. What’s wrong?” Kana had thrown an arm around her, noticing even in the dark that Narin eyes were a little too bright. The apartment was still and very quiet. They stayed like that a minute, and then Narin smiled a tiny smile. “Come on, what?” “Nothing, I just. Um. I really dig your diversity thing.” Kana raised an eyebrow. “Excuse me?” “Your ethnic thing,” said Narin, now doing the over-sincere conference voice to match the words, “I dig it. I dig that diversity thing you got. That ethnic thing. Mmm.” It was late, and they were both tired, so the laughter rang in their apartment a little longer than the impression merited. “Oh Jesus,” Kana gasped, giggling, “that’s awful. What’s that from?” After her roommate fell asleep, Narin hunted down the fifteen wine glasses, six coffee cups, and one measuring cup of popcorn so she could toss them into the sink to be washed tomorrow. The apartment was quiet, except for the static hum and hiss of the radiator. In the soft blue light of early early morning, Narin collected her cups peacefully, her body heavy with the coming of sleep, humming the metro waltz slowly slowly, one two three one two three