Love

There's only one time W. has seen any love on my face, he says. It's in a photo Sal took on the Greyhound bus from Nashville to Memphis, W. looking forward into the camera, full of amiability, and I, head turned, looking at him, looking at his ear, in perfect love. Was it love, though?, W. wonders. Was it just an accident of photography, capturing in a split section a facial expression on the way to its usual apish sullenness?

Ah, but we really did learn about love on that Greyhound. I'd forced us onto the back seats, W. remembers. We'll get less travel sick there, right at the back, I'd said. And where did we end up? Next to the toilet! Next to the bus toilet! You'd have thought with my belly, I would've known to avoid the toilet, but no, there we were, next to the toilet, which reeked.

We had to press orange skins to our noses, didn't we? We had to eat up our oranges – part of the packed lunch Sal'd made for us – and cover our faces with their skins. The stench!

Then a passenger came to try the toilet door. – 'Don't do it!', we told her. But she opened it a crack, and the smell worsened. – 'My God', she said. She went back to her seat and returned with a portable air freshener which she sprayed in the sign of the cross as she went in the door.

We looked at each other. She went in! Is she mad? Minutes passed. We heard humming inside. And then she emerged, smiling. No sound of a flush. She cleaned the loo, W. says. She cleaned it for us, for all of us. For everyone! We looked at one another in awe. That's love, W. said.