Nolan didn't know the G train wasn't coming. He peered dead at the tracks, grainy and somewhat orange in the glow of mercury vapor lights. A sullen Mexican man sat near him, cradling a red backpack. The air was blank and cold and the stink of exhaust gave him a headache. Spotting a bus, Nolan made his way across the parking lot towards it. A stringy woman in a wig that looked like greasy feathers climbed off the bus and shook a long hook of a fingernail at him, "Excuse me! This the last stop!" Nolan couldn't tell if she was the driver, didn't care, turned and walked back towards the tracks with cold toes.

After five minutes another bus came and Nolan climbed on board. The driver was clean cut, his coffee and cream complexion looked greenish under the fluorescent lighting. His hair was salt and peppered and his gaze fixed on some distant, imaginary ball game or church sermon.

"Sir, can you help me? The G train won't come and I'm trying to get to Rampart and Wilshire." Nolan handed the driver his train transfer.

"Where you say you're goin'?" the driver took the transfer and looked at his watch. The Mexican man stuffed a handful of change into the tollbox's unyielding metal slot.

"Around Wilshire and Rampart."

"You can come with me down 7th and Spring, cross the street and take the number twenty." The bus driver tore Nolan off a transfer. Nolan took it and the clammy sweat of his hands softened the newsprint.

"Thank you," he said, creaking into a blue vinyl seat.

"You don't want to get stuck out here," the bus driver said solemnly, "This is Watts, son. You make a serious mistake hanging around here this late at night. You the wrong color, you'd last about 5 minutes."

"I know, I didn't know the train stopped running at night."

On the street outside, a single heavy prostitute wag-assed on a corner and Nolan counted the stray dogs that sniffed at garbage or ran through the street in two's and three's.

"I swear, every stray dog come here," said the driver.

"People probably dump 'em here when they don't want 'em," said Nolan, happy to have someone to talk to.

"You see these projects right here?," asked the driver. Nolan was looking at the tiny black and white video screen that shot the sidewalk speeding behind them with infrared light, for a split second glowing dog-eyes regarded him and disappeared in a streak. The squeaking bones of the bus rattled as it hit holes in the road. "Last week a brother turned up dead here, them kids done fuck him before they slit his throat. Left him with his pants down in the gutter. Some of these young people are ruthless... evil."

"Jesus," muttered Nolan.

"You see why you shouldn't come here?"

"Yes, sir."

The bus stopped and picked up a large young man in gray sweat clothes. Nolan continued to watch the video monitor, watching a man on a bicycle ride circles in the middle of the street.

"You see that car that stopped to talk to me?" asked the young man, "He come up, ask me if I was a gang-banger."

The driver tipped his head back with interest, "What you say?"

"I say 'no'".

"Yeah," said the driver, "he waitin' to see what you gonna say then if you the wrong gang he shoot you."

"Yeah," said the young man with shaken eyes.

"I picked this guy up over at the G-train, woulda been stuck there all night, I say 'you the wrong color to be hanging out in this part of Watts all night'."

The young man managed a chuckle and relaxed against his seat. He looked like a giant, he merely needed a felt cap with a feather in it and a leather tunic to be complete.

"It isn't like I've got anything to steal," said Nolan.

"It don't matter," the driver and the giant said almost simultaneously.

"I had thought about coming here during the day and seeing the towers..."

"Is it worth it?" asked the driver.

"I guess I could just look at a photograph," Nolan answered.

"There you go," said the driver, "sometimes it's better to just look at a picture."

"Usually I think people are exaggerating when they tell me not to go to certian places," said Nolan.

"See, now you got to be careful."

"But you know, most people don't leave the same space, they go to work, drive home in their cars and watch TV. They look at everything through a screen or a window, they aren't a part of it at all."

The bus driver considered this, "Yeah, especially in this city people be like that, just go to church or go to work, but there's a reason for that sometimes."

The bus took a turn onto a larger street. Vagrants made epilleptic, stuttering paths down sidewalks with hands stuffed deep in rotten pockets.

"You need any crack?" the driver joked, "I make this trip four times a night and I see the same people walk up and down here."

"I guess this is almost about where I have to get out, isn't it?"

"Little bit further. I'll show you where you wait, it'll just be a few minutes 'fore that twenty come."

Nolan looked at the world surrounding him like a television station just out of tune, mute lips speaking secrets in an ocean of static. He hung out at two in the morning at a bus stop with pop music hanging in his brain like dead weight, keeping him from lining up his thoughts into something useful.

"You got a cigarette?"

"No."

He remembered something he had read Paul Schrader telling De Niro when they were talking about the meaning of his script for Taxi Driver, 'You know what the gun is, don't you Bobby? It's your talent. At that time in your life you felt you were carrying that huge talent around and you didn't know what to do with it. You felt embarrassment. You knew that if you ever had a chance to take it out and shoot it, people would realize how important you were, and you'd be acknowledged.'

Nolan cast an empty look across the street and listened to the buses heave exhaust like snoring monsters.

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