I am on a small bus full of passengers; near the ocean; near a beach. Andrea walks across the road instead of using the bridge. Everyone yells at her "You're supposed to use the bridge! It's dangerous!" She ignores them. The bus moves on and leaves Andrea behind. I look at the back of her as we drive away. She is wearing a white t-shirt, her curly, collar-length reddish hair picks up the sun as she blends into a crowd of people standing, gazing at the beach.
I'm sitting in the front seat, with the driver, a young man who resembles Paul Garland, and Irene. The radio is on. Irene and I are singing along to a popular song. Some old people in the back seat are astonished that we know all the words. They don't know the song we're singing.
Frank Zappa's "Montana" comes on the radio. I think this is very cool because the radio doesn't play Frank Zappa songs, ever. I remark about this, nobody seems to care.
Irene says, "You know this song?!" Clearly she does not. I begin to "sing" (Zappa doesn't sing, he talks),
Movin' to Montana soon, Gonna be a dennil-floss tycoon, yes I am.
Movin' to Montana soon, Gonna be a mennil-toss flycoon.
No one else seems impressed. I stop singing. The song ends. I'm not having fun.
The bus careens around Massachusetts town streets. Houses dart the landscape. Roads are wide with sidewalks. The driver is careless and a few times it feels as though the bus will tip over. I am scared.
I spot a place called "The Purina Store." I exclaim, "The Purina Store! What's that?" The bus pulls into a small parking lot on the side of the Purina Store. The Purina Store is in front, lit up, large glass windows, huge. "The Purina Store" sign blazes on the roof in humongous red illuminated letters. The bus is parked alongside and a bit behind the store, at the entryway of a small, beige house probably built in the late 1960s. There are no other cars in this parking area. I say to the driver, "Oh, you don't have to stop here. I was just wondering about the store."
Everyone gets off the bus and goes inside the house. They promptly disappear, and I am alone in a dark living room with a very pleasant elderly woman, small in stature, wearing a dark blue dress with tiny flower print, covered by an off-white sweater draped over her shoulders and buttoned at her breast. She has short, poofy, gray hair. She wears no eyeglasses. Her skin is smooth and young-looking. Her mouth always smiling, lips closed. The woman welcomes me inside the dark, tiny, sparsely-furnished house. "This is not the Purina Store." I think silently.
The woman leads me into a small, not-so-dark dining room, where a couple of other elderly ladies are playing a game at a small dining-room table. The household furnishings are antique, early 20th-century, and in impeccable condition. The decor is simple. All the shades are drawn, or there are no windows. The ladies greet me and I ignore them. I begin to walk about the entire house. It is small, and dark everywhere. The shades are drawn. There is no dust in the air. There are no smells, sights or sounds. Occasionally, the pleasant woman appears in a room. I ignore her, and she disappears.
I find myself in a basement area with cheap wood paneling, yellowed lighting and not much else. There appears to be no exit, and I begin to worry. I apparently cannot leave this house. With great effort, I climb several flights of stairs and reach a bedroom where I lie down and sleep for what seems a very long time. I awaken in a very dark, bland, beige bedroom. The only brightness a tiny flowered pattern on the curtains and bedclothes. The shades are drawn, or there are no windows.
I get up, and am in a beige hallway with several closed doors. The pleasant woman is with me. She tells me, "Come in here, young man." and opens a door that leads to the first part of the house where I was originally. I go to a different, closed door. "Where are you going?" she asks.
"I want the Purina Store. Where is the Purina Store?" thinking I am heading in the right direction. The direction where the Purina Store ought to be.
"Why, it's in here." she mews in a saccharine way, and points at the original door.
"No, it's not. That just goes back inside. I want the Purina Store."
I walk into the first room of the house. I don't want to be here. I wanted to go to the Purina Store, not some dark, drab house. Where is everyone else who was on the bus? They must have gone to the Purina Store. I must leave. I am desperate to escape this drab, locked-up house.
The pleasant woman and her friends try to tell me to stay. I do not listen, and begin tearing at a window. I pick up an object and reveal the window all the way through to a screen. I tear, tear, tear at the screen repeatedly, but cannot break it free. The ladies just stand quietly by in the background and watch. No one tries to stop me. I puncture the screen sufficiently to be able to escape through the window. I open the window full, but it becomes smaller in my efforts. I will not be able to fit my body through the opening.
And then, I realize, no one is trying to stop me, I can just open the door and leave. The front door is right next to the window I've destroyed. I open the door. The pleasant woman steps forward, as if in warning. I glare at her, and she steps back, smiling, hands folded across her dark blue, floral-print dress below her hips. I open the door, and am prepared to destroy the screen door as I did the window screen. But the screen door opens effortlessly. I step outside.
A 1950s police cruiser pulls up with two policemen inside. The cop on the driver's side gets out. There is an abandoned bicycle on the sidewalk. The bus is gone. The outside of the house is no longer just a parking area. It looks more like "Main Street U.S.A." The sun is shining brightly.
The cop addresses me, "You're not supposed to be out on the streets. Women and children only."
Keeping one eye on the officer, I scan the area. The entire street is deserted. 1950s cars in faded bright colors, green-pink-blue line the streets. There is no sound, no movement, no activity. The cop is out of the car now; the other cop, still inside the car. A man appears out of nowhere and throws something that looks like a pink soda can at the cop car, smashing the windshield. Cop-in-the-car drives off in pursuit of the man, who takes one running step and then disappears into thin air.
The cop and I are alone in the street. He starts to say something. I hear a dog barking. I recognize the dog's voice. It's Hobie. My Hobie! I whistle, loud, and yell his name in a happy sing-song voice so he'll come running. "Hobieeee!"
My beautiful yellow dog bounds out of the shadows to be at my side. He is wagging his tail, smiling in his wonderful way, and being very quiet. Ignoring the cop, we run.
"C'mon Hobie. Let's go find the Rainbow Bridge." And we jog up Main Street U.S.A. together, forever and happy.
All original material copyright © Kathleen S. Mueller. All rights reserved.