On the Bus

Catching the Bus by Edith Vonnegut

There she was, on the bus, when the college student was rummaging through her handbag for change to pay for her ride back downtown from the beautiful university on the hill and caught herself saying, “I can’t believe how much junk I have in this purse!” (she had stopped hitch hiking to and from the university because three corpses had been recently found right on the campus, near some California redwood trees along the single road that wound past golden meadows dotted with majestic oaks and a shaded coastal forest fragrant with the scent of pine and California bay trees—the work of a serial killer, police said—and they were the bodies of girls her own age, students who had hitched rides back downtown in the killer’s car, a white van, it was reported, with a university sticker on it, no doubt giving the girls the illusion of safety), which made her remember that when she was a little girl playing dress up, she had always been so displeased with her almost-empty handbag (it held only a comb and a few coins) but back then she could never figure out what grown-up women actually carried.

by Nina Zolotow


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