Tales of Bus City

Matt Schnarr

It had been a long day at work.  Jack's sense of time had flown out the window along with all of his papers; never open your window on the seventy fifth floor when everyone else's are closed.  He had left work burdened down by humiliation, and after seeing all of his tires slashed flat he felt like he was standing before God with a leaf over his dick.  He had never ridden the bus home before.  This was his first bus ride ever in fact.  This man walked to school as a young lad; although to him it was never walking to school, it was a daily quest or adventure.  This bus ride was no adventure, all child like innocence was long gone.  Jack just stared out the window and watched as buildings and people passed by, ignoring the feeling that his life was doing just that.  This was a horrible day, a record holding horrible day, an unbreakable record; hats off gentlemen this ones a winner.  The bus driver called out the street name he had been waiting for, whether or not he actually heard it he got up and walked to the door.  On the last step his foot got caught and he tripped, bringing all the events of the day into one concrete wackaroo.  Jack got to his feet and looked around, so sheepishly he might as well have bah'd out of embarrassment.  This day couldn't get any worse.  While looking around he suddenly caught the ethereal sight of a smile, between two lush lips, on a moonlight face, around two pools of forgetfulness; Jack was a sucker for eyes.  Losing all embarrassment he smiled back in the utmost confidence, picked up his things, and started walking with a straight spine again; maybe the day couldn't get any worse, but it certainly could get better.

So let me tell it to you straight.  I'm really not from the city, I'm a country type, I was on my way to visit my friggin city cousin, Murray.  It had been a very strange day.  On the way to the city this bus almost hit me, I don't even think that motha lova of a driva even tried to avoid me; sixty nine, don't ever think I won't forget you, man, the nerve.  So anywho, I keep walkin', and I finally make it to the city.  Yeah, let me tell you that is a transformation of a life time.  Golden fields of angle hair wheat, and green gardens of love manifested in roses...to grey tall structures of men overcompinsating.  Alls they needed was copper statues of themselves with huge mounds in their pants and it would have been a man's land for sure.  Thank god no one thinks like I do.  So I walk by one building in particular, and this blizzard of flat papers just covers me.  Not just hits my face, no sir, but buries me, and I swear a pocket watch hit my head too...but I couldn't find a chronometer in sight.  I brushed myself off, and kept walking.  I walked by ghettos, and basketball games half played and half dreamed, and I was about a block from the alley where Murray was gonna meet me.  I stopped to sniff a hot dog when wouldn't you guess it, numero sixty nine pulls up right next to me, the friggin cojones on this guy I'm telling you.  So I figure the least I owe him is to relive my bladder on his front tire.  So I walk up and start urinating, I would have spelled my name, but I honestly can't even think how to spell Copernicus; especially when I'm urinating.  About mid-pee this wise guy puts his foot right into my stomach.  Sends me rollin', man, and I get covered in my own piss; talk about pissed, if I coulda I woulda given him a piece of my mind.  Sadly, he was lost in some dame's eyes.  I ditched the scene, and came here.  HEY!  MURRAY!  Give me that half drunk can of seven up!  Give me a break I just walked twenty miles for you!  Oh come on-ah whatever, the point I'm driving at is that it is hard has hell being a possum.

Ringing exited its insides again.  As the day had gone on it had ringed more than a hundred times.  Her mother was trying to reach her, but seeing as she was no where near it she never picked it up.  It being a cell phone, and having the only number she gives out to reach her it would be difficult to do so if she wasn't near it.  It didn't understand where it lost her.  It remembered the donut shop in the morning, snuggled up in her purse like a melting chocolate bar in a child's pocket; of course she ate the donut, not the phone. The conversation about the pile of papers she walked by; a pile of embarrassment and shame...with a breeze that could blow away the concept of time.  The picture she took of the mossy tree with frozen morning dew covering its wanting leaves; like an ignored prospect reaching out to you, sprinkled in romance.  Where the hell does it get these similes and metaphors?  It's probably due to all the conversation it conveys through vibrations and electricity.  Gossip and predictions, dirt covered reality and poetic fantasies.  Of course now she isn't in site, and the ringing does get on one's nerves; even if they don't have any.  It hears her voice, Thank God!  Back to its addictions; dramatic exaggerations dipped into a melted coat of lies, flies and alibis.  At one point it tired of this, but now it cannot turn on without surrounding itself with it.  She picks it up, "Oh God, mom?"  She presses its neglected buttons, rushed, but producing warmth within it.    "Mom?  Mom?  Are you-no mom, I can hear you...No I can't.  Mom?  If you can hear me I'm going to step outside for better reception.  Bye."  She walked down the hallway, and took a left into an elevator.  On the way down she swayed back and forth to the music; if it knew that Lucy In the Sky With Diamonds sounded good in tones it would have made it a default ring; it didn't, it didn't, and it didn't.  The elevator shuddered to an orgasmic stop at the lobby.  Echoed in her resilience she stepped across the hallway; drowning in voices that mattered as much to her as a shit coated pebble imbedded in a urine covered possum.  She stepped outside, and dialed her mother with excited, yet wary fingers.  "Can you hear me n-good, yeah I can hear you.  Hi.  How are you?  Good, I'm good.  Yeah, I'm coming over tomorrow, I've been looking forward to it all week.    Do I remember who?  No I don't, wait say the name again."  Suddenly it felt her left cheek curl up against it, she was smiling.  Why would anyone smile on the phone with their mother?  "Jack Fienes?  Yeah, I remember him.  Why am I laughing?  Its just weird.  I'm actually looking at him right now.  He just tripped on his way out of the bus." That’s concrete dirt covered reality for you.  "Yeah, he was always sort of a klutz.  What's that?  Mom, my battery is dying, make it quick.  You were looking at my yearbook, and saw him.  And you've been thinking of him all day up to now?  I have a feeling I'll be thinking of him for the rest of it.  Well he's really cu--"

You've been driving all day.  You've been driving since you were twenty one years old.  You eat, sleep, and drink driving.  Not only that, but a bus to you is a Twinkie to fat kid with pimples.  When you wake up you take a shower and make sure your smell matches up with the air refresher in the front of your bus.  No telling what obsessive compulsive freak will spaz over how your smell doesn't bode well with the atmosphere created by a paper thin tree shaped air mint.  You don't drive to work, you wish you could, but you don't.  You live right next door to your garage.  Every morning you walk over, and every morning you trip on the last step.  One day your bad luck will remove itself from you, and meld onto another.  You drive from the city to the country, and from the country to the city.  A fifteen minute summary of the road trip you'll never take.  On your way back to the city you see a possum waddling its way to your destination.  You hate possums.  You wish they would all die, and go to hell.  You don't avoid it, in fact you drive as close to it as you possibly can.  Don't hit it, you'll get possum butts and guts all over your bus, that would be bad, glorious, but the end result would be very bad.  You freak the shit out of it, and keep driving.  It better not have gotten shit on your car.  Stupid possum.  You drop everyone off at the first stop in the city and then you pull over for a two hour nap.  You love naps, not as much as driving, but naps are the proverbial marshmallows on your hot chocolate; representing driving, obviously.  You wake up, and look to your right, and you see a pile of papers.  Who the hell drops papers on a random sidewalk?  You step out and look at one of them.  Who the hell is dumb enough to drop a pile of papers with the names of everyone they're firing?  You look up and see a group of people surrounding a car.  Four of whom have knives.  You hurry back into your bus, safety in bus, knifes and cars never mixed very well.  Your break is over, and you watch people get on, checking for their money, or tickets.  A man steps out of the building next to you, and from your viewpoint looks like he might as well be standing in a public park naked.  You wait five minutes for the poor doop.  He gets on your bus and sits in the back, all depressed, like one of those weirdoes with tight pants; just makes 'em bleed faster.  You drive down a few more blocks, and call out the next street name.  The man in the back heads up to the front.  You stop, and start giving the poor man a hand down the steps.  Suddenly, without any warning at all, he trips, and falls face first onto the concrete.  Finally, your bad luck has transported itself to someone else.  You'd be ecstatic if it wasn't for the possum the rolled away from his foot, spraying urine right into your somewhat gleeful face.  You blink twice, hoping you'll wake up from your nap.  No luck, you watch as the man stands back up in the gaze of Aphrodite herself, and stroll away with a straight spine and the biggest grin since the old guy you saw that O.D.'d on Viagra in the back of your bus.  You friggin hate possums.

Memories, and cell phones in a sorrowful tune playing in a city by a countryside.  Playing backwards and forwards, carrying themselves to others through vibrations and electricity.  Falling papers, and an invisible Rolex.  Bad days, and mothers all cured by elevator music; addicting in sound, annoying in stature.  Shit covered pebbles and urine coated possums, their problems compared yours.  Echoed steps foreshadowing trips of love and loss.  Frozen dew over trees reaching out only to be ignored.  Sucking in the attention, a hurricane of time erasing wind.  Papers of neglect, and an open window can only cause more pain; in the form of sliced rubber under a metal frame of money.  A bus ride past half existing basketball games, and all too real alleyways.  A sudden stop past a half eaten hot dog; enjoyed for a few seconds but in the end neglected.  Urine slicing across more rubber, revenge served warm.  Dissension into a dream, followed by a drop kick of reality.  Embarrassment manifested in a concrete block.  A spiral of eyes from onlookers, and a smile in the swirl of suicidal indulgence.  Urine on a face, a heart out of pace, and a smile out of place.  Possibilities of love, and gossip twenty fold; destiny can go two ways.  A bad day can end badder, but its so lovely when it ends better.