Taking a Trip Aboard

After five minutes people start fidgeting in their seats. But with no word from the drivers, nobody moves. Except the hardcore smokers. Two of them furtively get off and light up close to the bus and the gas pumps. A little girl walks up front to talk to one of the smokers but is careful not to get off the bottom step. The drivers come out of the office, and the smokers throw their half-smoked cigarettes away quickly and get back on board. A dubbed version of The Gods Must Be Crazy flashes on.

9:10 p.m.: Entre Monjas y el Diablo, a Fifties Mexican musical about an outcast cockfighter who makes good to save an orphanage, brings the bus into Colorado Springs. The movie automatically rewinds, and the bus is bathed in a soft blue light from the blank TV screens. The passengers are quiet except for one softly crying baby.

Seventeen-year-old Graciela, who came over the footbridge this morning from Juarez, stares out of her window at the dark landscape rolling by. This will be her first time in Denver, and she worries about what will happen if her sister doesn't meet her at the depot. Her English is not good, and she has heard that there is a lot of crime in the city. The only thing she brought on the trip is an imitation-leather handbag that says "Chivas Regal."

10:45 p.m.: The bus arrives in Denver just as the crowd from the LoDo Music Festival is dispersing. Passengers stare out the windows at the hordes of young Americans staggering along Market Street and at the people in new cars blowing their horns at one another. One of the drivers whistles at four blondes in front of LoDo's Bar and Grill. Guillermo wakes up and stares in sad amazement at the long lines outside the bars.

At a stoplight at 21st and Market, a lost tourist walks up to the bus and asks the driver where Blake Street is. The driver shrugs his shoulders and says, No se.

The driver pulls into the empty Turismos Rapidos parking lot, and the passengers file off somberly, searching for someone to greet them. Only one mother and her daughter are met. The noise from LoDo revelers faint but still noticeable, the other passengers gather their luggage and children and head into the office, sit down on the plastic chairs and wait.