In The Company of Deceit

Chapter 2 - The Company

Kate Semple watched the countryside swish by through the streaked windows of the bus, fields of fallow land, gently rolling hills looking spot lit in the afternoon sun with cattle grazing lazily, and then the sudden interruption by a scruffy service station lot with sorry looking pumps and cars in various states of assembly.

She wiped at the corner of her eye and resettled her sunglasses, looking forward as the bus slowed and pulled off to the side of the highway right in the top corner of Arizona, between Mesquite and St. George, in front of an even sorrier looking shed with an unlikely sign proclaiming, Good Eats.

Kate hadn't given much thought to her choice of ride, the fastest way out of town being her goal. The path she did choose seemed typical of others recently made - hasty and ill-conceived. There was a small group of nine passengers, and they all filed off the bus like a string of automatons under the bored direction of the driver.

Inside the diner a glass case with a curved front greeted them, its contents resembling children's plastic pretend food, priced to make any thought of a purchase doubtful. The woman behind the short counter had a pile of red dyed hair bound with a clashing red ribbon that matched her large lips.

She chewed something that required an effort and her greeting came out in a flurry of mumbled sounds. Kate had a quick look, decided she'd rather die, and went back outside, wandering around the dusty lot stretching her legs.

Three weeks ago she had been comfortably ensconced in a fourth floor loft in an up market section of the city, held a well paying position with a leading bookstore chain, and the prospect of an engagement ring from a two-year relationship with her first and only boyfriend. She kicked at a pebble on the lot and moved aimlessly toward the grassy culvert at its edge.

Broken clouds cluttered an otherwise brilliant blue sky and the horizon boasted a line of irregular tree tops in an almost black green. Kate stood at the edge of the culvert and stared down at the thread of slimy water, dotted with empty cans and plastic containers. Like my life she frowned, a collection of ugly litter.

It began nearly a month ago. A visit to Richard's office in L.A. to surprise him on his birthday with a gift-wrapped, signed edition of his favourite mystery author, found him straddled in his chair, by a young woman riding up and down in eye-closed rapture. She hurled the gift across the desk startling them both into toppling onto the floor in a noisy heap, then leaned across the desk and warned Richard never to call or speak to her again.

Her retreat from his workplace had heads popping up like mushrooms from the cubicle lined hallway, as she announced his activities in loud, extremely profane terms. The incident sent her into a nosedive of depression and self-pity that saw her skipping work, and the few times she managed to go in, error-prone and unproductive. This was presented to her as the reason for her dismissal, further citing her still declining attitude.

With three weeks' severance, Kate holed up in her loft apartment, barely eating or caring for herself, neglecting her bills and other responsibilities, leading to a vacate notice for non-payment of rent. She gathered the things she felt she needed most, sold the rest to a clutter disposal company, paid her landlord and bought a bus ticket on the first bus heading east, the destination, Las Vegas.

After a few wasted days of minimal effort job hunting, she decided that Vegas was not where she wanted to be so with her dwindling funds she indifferently bought another bus ticket, this time to Salt Lake City.

******

The driver jogged back across the lot to the bus, opened the door and climbed in. A second later the horn tooted twice, and the passengers filed out of the diner, some still eating their purchase, and headed for the bus. Kate gave a last weary glance at the culvert and joined the short line. She settled into her seat once more and considered the other travellers.

Two seats behind the driver, a pair of elderly ladies, possibly sisters, sat erect and attentive as the driver languidly announced the time for the next stretch of the trip, and where they would be stopping for dinner. She had watched them outside, heads together bobbing anxiously and darting looks at the other passengers in the line, their single pull along bag protectively between them.

Across the aisle and back a row was a James Dean wannabe, knees up on the seat back and a battered Stetson down over his eyes. He wore a faded denim jacket with a red patch on the back; something about a rock group, matching faded jeans with holes in the knees, boots and a backpack jammed in the overhead rack. Behind him sat another couple of men that looked like labourers, both sleeping almost immediately as the bus pulled back onto the highway.

Kate turned slightly in her seat and looked at the woman across the aisle. She had joined the bus at a service station several miles out of Los Vegas. Her short dark hair supported a pair of expensive Serengeti sunglasses, and she wore an equally expensive looking top and pants.

The high heels were on the empty seat next to her and Kate spotted the trademark red soles. Wealthy, although strange, to be riding a bus she reflected. She seemed intent working on a laptop, but her eyes kept drifting to the passing scenery and when she looked back she would frown and hit a number of keys.

Behind her, a man with an executive haircut and moustache pored through a financial magazine. The open briefcase beside him held file folders, a cell phone and charger. She noticed the scuffed brown shoes, incongruous with the navy blue trousers. The visible leg had a double crease and Kate figured this guy did his own ironing. He was rather attractive for an apparent loser, she thought.

She couldn't see the person directly behind her, but it was another man, the one she had seen still eating his purchase as they straggled back to the bus and earlier she had heard him snoring. He was Mexican, she guessed from the outfit and the colouring, that and the beat up briefcase with the Spanish stickers he insisted on keeping with him; a strange crew to be heading to nowhere on a rattle trap bus in the middle of summer.

It wasn't really to nowhere, eventually they would all end up in Salt Lake if nobody got off earlier. She turned her attention to the magazine she had been reading and lost herself in an article on the advantages of timeshare in the Caribbean. The scenery slid past the bus windows unnoticed in its bland unbroken display of low hills and brown colouring.

A hum from the tires became a drone and soon more of the group had slipped into awkward looking naps. Kate tossed her magazine aside, bored with the lifestyles of the young perfect couples splashing in azure seas and sipping cocktails, under brilliant star-studded skies. The night outside was darkening, and the interior lights came on making it difficult to find the first stars in her own sky as they blinked in and out of view.