I read from Apollonius’ The Voyage of Argo, as the nearly empty bus rocked through the shadow-fraught dark, under another starless Harm City night.

A tattooed breeder mumbled drunkenly as her neglected but well-groomed 6-year-old asked questions forever unanswered concerning the strange world that passed by as the bus plunged deeper into the night.

There was another passenger behind me, a young man, looking to offload, peering suspiciously out the windows as if his killers lurked behind each and every untrimmed shrub.

The voice of the Civic Goddess then intoned over the speaker system:

“The MTA asks that you stay aware of your surroundings at all times while using public transportation.”

The apparently hunted man then groused:

“Is yo serious, Bus Bitch?

Y’all mechanical shits think a nigga retarded out in dis bitch?

Shee, dis muvafuca spray WD-foaty on ‘is neck!

Shid gettin’ real out hea—dare it is, nex’ stop, driva, ged me dat connect!”

And so the driver stopped a few yards short—a once unheard of courtesy—so that a man whom an honest urban anthropologist could only name Yoserious, achieved a running dismount from the back door onto the curb and darted around the back of the bus, shouting to the bus revving its engine and about to depart Overlea station, “Ma ride, Yo—hold-up, yo!”

The little girl, her tiny tanned hands clasped hard around the top bar of the empty seat before her, looked bemusedly out the widow toward the station where various dark figures, slouched lazily, perched menacingly, slumbered dirtily and one danced like the last devil to be released from hell on some terrible occasion, furiously insisting that the departing bus run him over rather than leave him behind, limned in its white headlights, adamant in his fright.

As our bus pulled off and her mother nodded, mumbled and drooled, the tiny thing looked back fearfully up at me, then peered fearfully into the ever-passing night.