Don’t, don’t, don’t, don’t, don’t, don’t, don’t, don’t, don’t, don’t, don’t, don’t, don’t get mixed up in this.
Lexi jumped out of her seat and rushed Tubby and knocked the cigarette right out of his hands and stamped it out.
This sent him into a rage and he spewed out, “You stupid bitch!”
Don’t, don’t, don’t, don’t, don’t, don’t, don’t, don’t, don’t, don’t, don’t, don’t, don’t get mixed up in this.
I got up from my seat and walked over to Lexi’s side. Not that she needed me.
Just then the driver came on the PA to announce, “Everyone back to their seats immediately! The police have been notified.”
Oh, damn. Just what I need.
“Lexi, this isn’t a fight you need to make,” I said to her as she shrugged me off with her elbows, nearly poking my eyes out. She was much taller than me.
“Stupid fat bastard!” she snarled as I wrangled her back to her seat.
At the Canadian border crossing, the driver pulled into the bus checkpoint area and was immediately pointed into the customs office.
Several U.S. Customs officers and an equal number of Royal Canadian Mounted Police boarded the bus, spoke briefly with the driver, and announced that we were to take our luggage and exit the bus. Tubby started yelling again.
“I’m a citizen of the United States of America, and I protest this treatment. What is this? Iran?”
The officers immediately stood beside him and asked who else had been involved, while the rest of the passengers tried in their disabled ways to exit the bus.
Although the bus check-stop at the border crossing normally takes about a half hour, this would, I realized, be considerably longer and would involve more intense scrutiny.
“These two,” he said, pointing to Lexi and me as we were trying to exit.
Goddammit!
“Not true,” said the lady who started all the trouble with the smoker. “This lady,” she said, pointing to me, “tried to break it up. He’s just pissed that she had diarrhea and ran on the bus ahead of him.” Great.
The cop asked for my identification, and I handed him the Alexandra Zaluckyj passport. I cringed as he inspected it, took off his glasses, looked at me more closely.
Which country isn’t a breeding ground for terrorists?
“It’s Polish,” I said, as though he cared. Then, worse, “My family was in the Holocaust.”
What? I made a face like my stomach was about to erupt again.
As the driver lowered the back ramp, the cop looked at me like I was just another crazy lady with the runs, and he dismissed me with a wave.
To make myself look even more innocent, I ran back to the lavatory, came out with a satisfied look on my face, and began unfolding wheelchairs and walkers and helping whatever passengers we could to get out of the bus, while making idiotic small talk with them. My heart was about to explode.
We had to put our bags and luggage on the ground outside the bus, and the customs agents pointed out several bags to go through, mine of course being one. Forty-two-year-old women with rooster hair are the most likely drug couriers.
As I presented my bag and passport again, the fat guy was being lowered from the bus’s handicapped ramp. How it didn’t crash to the ground, I still can’t fathom. He was still cursing and screaming.
The customs agent was so intent on not missing the action that he briefly glanced at my passport and asked only, “Business or pleasure?”
“Pleasure. I hope,” I joked. “Second honeymoon at the Falls. My husband was on business in Rochester, so we decided to meet up there.”
I could have said I was carrying a nuke for all he cared. The fat guy’s rage escalated when his wheelchair touched the ground. He then also lit up again and started yelling curses at the officers.
Thank you, Jesus. Or whoever.
The big guy was taken into custody along with Lexi, and the rest of us were allowed to board once more, and just like that the bus cruised across the border right into Canada.
“Stupid fat bastard,” I heard Lexi yelling just before we pulled out.
The Niagara Falls bus depot looked exactly as I’d expected it would and featured, in addition to other depressing features, a TGI Friday’s.
I paid cash for a Greyhound bus ticket (forty dollars) to the Toronto airport—which would involve another hour-and-forty-minute ride, according to the schedule, which left me a little more than five hours until departure. Figuring on at least two hours of travel time—without traffic—would put me at the gate three hours ahead of the flight, which left me roughly an hour to clear check-in.
If only.
Traffic was especially heavy—highway construction—and I arrived at the Delta terminal with only two hours and fifteen minutes to spare. I went to a kiosk, punched in the confirmation number of the prepaid ticket, said a thank-you to Donald somewhere in the world, and watched gratefully as the ticket slid out.