The Chronicles of a Public Bus (part 2.06)

Thursday, 23:00, route 42

Everett glances both ways as he taps the gas pedal and sends the bus grumbling and rumbling into the street. The winter night is the solid back of a sheet of black velvet, all of its sheen chased away by yellow beams of streetlights.

From the corner, Everett can see dusty paint peeling from the side of the old shopping district and casting speckled shadows against the hidden bricks. Then, a wall of new paint glistens on the other side, blocking the advance of age. As he waits for the traffic light to change, he wonders if that new paint is from the much-talked-of office for old Mr. Talisman’s new business.

The light flicks from red to green, and Everett pulls his attention to the road again. On his side of the shopping district, only the most shady restaurants and the one fast food franchise unable to dig itself out of debt are still open, their storefronts glowing from the inside. The doughnut shop has its lights on for the night shift that pumps out the majority of the next day’s sweets, but it is so dimly lit that no customer can make the mistake of going in.

The first stop for the route is across the parking lot from the doughnut shop, and in the light reflected off the sign, Everett sees a head of blonde hair and white skin floating over a mass of darkness. Whoever this person is, they aren’t smart enough to wear bright clothing at night.

Everett brakes and flips the release lever for the door, savoring its hiss as it slides open. Once he graduates and lands a new job, he’ll miss the ambient sounds of driving a bus at night. The low salary he won’t miss as much.

The blonde turns out to be a woman. Her hair is tied up in a messy bun and partially tucked under a dark brown beret. Her leopard print coat is so puffy she looks like an angry cat, and her expression matches. As she pushes a handful of coins into the change box, the woman scowls so darkly that her cheeks turn purple. When Everett offers her a transfer slip, she rips it from his hand and crumples it in one fist. Then she stalks to the middle of the bus and hunches over in a seat.

As Everett closes the front door, he glances at the parking lot to see what might cause so much anger, but all he can make out is the blackness draped over the almost-abandoned shopping district. No conclusions jump to mind.

“Maybe she was dumped and left without a ride home,” Everett muses under his breath. He almost smirks as he turns on his signal and pushes the gas pedal, but he schools his expression only a second later. It’s not polite to poke fun at other people’s situations, even if the people in question can’t hear.

From what Everett can tell, the route is uneventful. After passing the shopping district, Everett skirts around the edge of a peninsula of Mr. Talisman’s former estate. Makeshift signs and giant scraps of cardboard stand like miniature fortresses in the inlet of sagebrush and tumbleweed, each one bearing colors that signify one of two sides. Half the signs push for the creation of a new city park, and the other half sing praises for private development.

The blonde woman in the back curses loudly but offers no explanation. Her face is turned down, beret half falling from her hair, and the blue glow of a phone illuminates her features.

By now, Everett is looking at the road again, so he does not catch the woman’s ensuing odd behavior. As she taps out a furious text, she leans over in her seat and peers out the windows on either side of the bus. Whatever she is looking for—or trying to avoid—is not there, but she fidgets in her seat anyways. Constantly, she brings up the camera of her phone and moves her beret to hide as much hair as possible.

The ritual of checking outside, adjusting hair, and texting continues in silent fervor as Everett drives past the shared campus of eastern Franklin City’s junior high and elementary schools. It continues when the bus groans through the grueling uphill slope to the nicest neighborhood in town, where the houses are all planned by a big-name architect, and delicate landscaping sweeps across vast yards. Even when Everett turns back onto the main road to head back to the station, the woman does not break her rhythm.

Then the bus screeches in a hard, fast brake, and the woman lurches forward. Her blonde hair spills from her hat, and her phone slips from her hand and drops to the floor with two ringing metallic clings. Bursting with fury and fear, the woman stands and points at the driver, inhaling to start off a bombardment of insults.

Once she catches sight of the new passenger though, she switches targets.

“You!” she shouts. “What are you doing here?”

The new passenger shoots the woman a murderous glare, his wrinkles deepening and his bushy white eyebrows rising like a cat’s hackles. “Why do you care? You have nothing to do with me anymore.”

Everett blinks. He didn’t know the Mr. Talisman rode the public bus.

“Oh, but you have everything to do with me,” the woman spits. “It was your offer that got me into the mess I’m in. Some old beast’s personal secretary is after me now, and I’ve lost half of my prize.”

“You could have given up quietly,” Mr. Talisman says. “You could have taken the defeat in stride and asked nicely for some kind of reimbursement. Or you could have gotten the job right the first time. Then neither of us would be in any kind of mess.”

“Maybe if you hadn’t trusted some fool alchemist’s recipe for partial immortality, I wouldn’t have taken the job in the first place.”

For some reason, Everett gets that gurgling feeling in his stomach that either means he’s hungry or learning something he shouldn’t know. In this instance, it might be both. “Sir,” he squeaks, “would you please sit down so I can stay on schedule?”

Mr. Talisman’s response is to bare his teeth, some of which are missing, and grunt, but he listens anyhow and plops into the very first seat available. From there, the old man plays another bellowing round of the blame game with the leopard print woman.

Everett’s face droops in glum exasperation. If only his two passengers had walked to the bus station.