Looking at the Missing Link, but talking sideways to the Earl of Slander, Comrade Snarky said, “His beard looks like something Hemingway might've shot . . .”

The dreaming world, they'd think we were crazy. Those people still in bed, they'd be asleep another hour, then washing their faces, under their arms, and between their legs, before going to the same work they did every day. Living that same life, every day.

Those people would cry to find us gone, but they would cry, too, if we were boarding a ship to start a new life across some ocean. Emigrating. Pioneers.

This morning, we were astronauts. Explorers. Awake while they slept.

These people would cry, but then they would go back to waiting tables, painting houses, programming computers.

At our next stop, Saint Gut-Free swung open the doors, and a cat ran up the steps and down the aisle between the seats of the bus. Behind the cat came Director Denial, saying, “His name is Cora.” The cat's name was Cora Reynolds. “I didn't name him,” said Director Denial, the tweed blazer and skirt she wore frosted with cat hair. One lapel swollen out from her chest.

“A shoulder holster,” says Comrade Snarky, leaning close to tell the tape recorder in the Earl of Slander's shirt pocket.

All of this—whispering in the dark, leaving notes, keeping secret—it was our adventure.

If you were planning to be stranded on a desert island for three months, what would you bring along?

Let's say all your food and water would be provided, or so you think.

Let's say you can only bring along one suitcase because there will be a lot of you, and the bus taking you all to the desert island is only so big.

What would you pack in your suitcase?

Saint Gut-Free brought boxes of pork-rind snacks and dried cheese puffs, his fingers and chin orange with the salt dust. One bony hand gripping the steering wheel, he tilted each box to pour the snacks into his thin face.

Sister Vigilante brought a shopping bag of clothes with a satchel bag set in the top.

Leaning over her own huge breasts, holding them like a child in her arms, Mrs. Clark asked, did Sister Vigilante bring along a human head?

And Sister Vigilante opened the satchel far enough to show the three holes of a black bowling ball, saying, “My hobby . . .”

Comrade Snarky looks from the Earl of Slander scribbling into his notepad, then looks at Sister Vigilante's braided-tight black hair, not one strand pulling loose from its pins.

“That,” Comrade Snarky says, “is tinted hair.”

At our next stop, Agent Tattletale stood with a video camera held to one eye, filming the bus as it pulled to the curb. He brought a stack of business cards he passed out to prove he was a private detective. With his video camera held as a mask covering half his face, he filmed us, walking down the aisle to an empty seat at the back, blinding everyone with his spotlight.

A city block later, the Matchmaker climbed on board, tracking horse shit on his cowboy boots. A straw cowboy hat in his hands and a duffel bag hung over one shoulder, he sat and peeled back his window and spit brown tobacco juice down the brushed-steel side of the bus.

This is what we brought along for three months outside of the world. Agent Tattletale, his video camera. Sister Vigilante, her bowling ball. Lady Baglady, her diamond ring. This is what we'd need to write our stories. Miss Sneezy, her pills and tissues. Saint Gut-Free, his snack food. The Earl of Slander, his notebook and tape recorder.

Chef Assassin, his knives.

In the dim light of the bus, we all spied on Mr. Whittier, the workshop organizer. Our teacher. You could see the spotted shiny dome of his scalp under the few gray hairs combed across. The button-down collar of his shirt stood up, a starched white fence around his thin, spotted neck.

“The people you're sneaking away from,” Mr. Whittier would say, “they don't want you enlightened. They want to know what to expect.”

Mr. Whittier would tell you, “You cannot be the person they know and the great, glorious person you want to become. Not at the same time.”

The people who really, actually loved us, Mr. Whittier said they'd beg us to go. To fulfill our dream. Practice our craft. And they would love us when we all came back.

In three months.

The little bit of life we'd each gamble.

We'd risk.

This much time, we'd bet on our own ability to create some masterpiece. A short story or poem or screenplay or memoir that would make sense of our life. A masterpiece that would buy our way out of slavery to a husband or a parent or a corporation. That would earn our freedom.

All of us, driving along the empty streets in the dark. Miss Sneezy fishes a damp tissue out of her sweater sleeve and blows her nose. She sniffs and says, “Sneaking out this way, I was so afraid of getting caught.” Tucking the tissue back inside her cuff, she says, “I feel just like . . . Anne Frank.”

Comrade Snarky digs the luggage tag out of her jacket pocket, the remains of her abandoned suitcase. Her abandoned life. And, turning the tag over and over in her hand, still looking at it, Comrade Snarky says, “The way I see it . . .” She says, “Anne Frank had life pretty good.”

And Saint Gut-Free, his mouth full of corn chips, watching us all in the rearview mirror, chewing salt and fat, he says, “How's that?”

Director Denial pets her cat. Mrs. Clark pets her breasts. Mr. Whittier, his chrome wheelchair.

Under a streetlight, on a corner up ahead, the dark outline of another would-be writer waits.

“At least Anne Frank,” Comrade Snarky said, “never had to tour with her book . . .”

And Saint Gut-Free hits the air brakes and cranks the steering wheel to pull over.

Landmarks

A Poem About Saint Gut-Free

“Here's the job I left to come here,” the Saint says. “And the life I gave up.”

He used to drive a tour bus.

Saint Gut-Free onstage, his arms folded across his chest—so skinny

his hands can touch in the middle of his back

There stands Saint Gut-Free, with a single coat of skin painted on his skeleton.

His collarbones loop out from his chest, big as grab handles.

His ribs show through his white T-shirt, and his belt—instead of his butt—keeps up his blue jeans.

Onstage, instead of a spotlight, a movie fragment:

the colors of houses and sidewalks, street signs and parked cars,

wipe sideways across his face. A mask of heavy traffic. Vans and trucks.

He says, “That job, driving tour bus . . .”

It was all Japanese, Germans, Koreans, all with English as a second language, with phrase

books clutched in one hand, nodding and smiling at whatever he told the

microphone as he steered the bus around corners, down streets, past the houses of

movie stars or extra-bloody murders, apartments where rock stars had overdosed.

Every day the same tour, the same mantra of murder, movie stars, accidents. Places

where peace treaties got signed. Where presidents had slept.

Until that day Saint Gut-Free stops in front of a picket-fence ranch house, just a detour

to see if his parents' four-door Buick is there, if this is still where they live,

where pacing the front yard is a man, pushing a lawn mower.

There, into his microphone, the Saint tells his air-conditioned cargo:

“You're looking at Saint Mel.”

And, his father squinting at the wall of tinted bus windows,

“The Patron Saint of Shame and Rage,” says Gut-Free.

After that, every day, the tour includes “The Shrine of Saint Mel and Saint Betty.”

Saint Betty being the Patron Saint of Public Humiliation.