THE BUS HAS been double-booked. Greyhound offers four dollars off any domestic bus trip for passengers willing to take the following bus, which is at 5:30 P.M. next Thursday or Friday; they’re not certain. No takers, so they implement their “Emergency Lap Plan.” All passengers are weighed and assigned a lap buddy. Since I have lost 47 pounds in the hospital and weigh in at 94 pounds soaking wet (they don’t explain why they needed to hose us down), I am paired with a tracksuited man named Levy who is 336 pounds. He shakes my hand and tells me to call him Grabby, that everyone calls him Grabby.

“Where’d you get such a nickname?” I ask, forced casual-like.

He hesitates for a moment, then tells me that when he was a little boy, he’d always grab an extra cookie from the cookie jar. I do not believe that explanation for a minute, but I am not staying at the bus station until next Thursday or Friday.

It’s not too bad, in truth. Levy has a soft, warm, comfortable lap and keeps his hands mostly to himself. We engage in a brief, awkward conversation in which we try to find common ground: