Bus Story

This is a story about three people and a bus. It is a short story, with an ambiguous moral, and the bus does not explode at the end.

The first person is a woman. She is a middle-aged woman, in her late 40s or early 50s, unassuming, who speaks quietly, dresses in modest business wear, and is usually reading a book. She has a fabric purse, and a string of dull ivory pearls which is usually part of her attire, whatever that attire may be. I see her almost every day, and have for the past five years, as she rides the same bus line I ride into the City of Mists. I have often chosen to sit beside her, because she is thin and quiet, and does not smell, and makes hardly any noise. But I do not know her name. Or her profession. Or anything other than what I have already related, because in that entire time, I have never had any occasion to speak to her, nor she to me. She fainted once, or fell, at Central Terminal, as I was stepping up the stairs onto the bus. By the time I turned around to look at her, there were already several people in a crowd around her, looking after her and waiting to help her back onto her feet. I turned front again and got onto the bus.

The second person is a man. We shall call him Dell. He, too, is in his early fifties. He is tall, but pot-bellied; balding, but not unappealing. He wears plaid short sleeve shirts tucked into Dockers and carries a leather tote. He works in Sales, and has only recently moved to Sealand, following the death of his parents and stepparents, the departure of his long-time girlfriend and certain turns of fortune inherent to his chosen career. He introduced himself to me at the bus stop after soliciting my opinion about the technical requirements of hooking up two monitors to a single computer, a conversation he had started with another gentleman, then parlayed that introduction into dialogue for the entire trip. He is intelligent, and friendly- and despite this, he projects a peculiar and contradictory set of vibes, both of which send up red flags. One is the faint stench of lameness: that indefinable lack of refinement or gracefulness suggesting that he will never have his act together well enough not to be an embarrassment. The other is the lurking sense, common to salesmen, that he wants something from you- your time, your attention, your effort. And that he is sizing you up considering how he can get it, possibly to both your benefits, but certainly to his own.

The third person, of course, is me.

This then, is the story: yesterday the bus was full, and I had to sit not where I willed, but where a seat was available. And the seat I wound up in was not the seat next to Dell, nor to the woman. Because Dell and the woman were sitting together– and they were laughing and talking and enjoying the ride, as if they were old friends.

The moral, if any, I leave to your own consideration.

***

There are a million bus stories on the Net, of course, ranging from the hilarious to the speculative to the horrific. Here are a few short funny ones (including a good one in the comments, if you read down.) Here are quite a few more, of every sort.

For the exploding bus story, click here.