This bus has never been on time as long as I’ve been catching it. It’s frustrating normally, and especially now when I’m late for work and my phone is about to die. An inconvenience teetering on top of the others. It’s already a bad day, and on good days I’m not predisposed to socialising at the bus stop, so I’d like to think I can be forgiven for not engaging with the musty-smelling old lady beside me. I shuffled down the bench to give her room, she said “thanks,” I gave her that polite mouth-smile that says the interaction is over from my side, let’s move on.
Where the hell is this bus?
I’ll admit a fascination with old people smell. Fascination only; I know some people like it, the same way they like swimming in the rain or kissing someone with morning breath, but for me it’s more an equivocating passing interest. Neither here, nor there, but one day when I’m told the chemical secrets to why old people smell like a second-hand store was deep cleaned with baby powder, my life will be just slightly more whole.
“Excuse me,” she says. Here we go. “Do you know if the twelve-fifteen bus has come and gone already?”
“Not yet. I hope.”
“Oh, are you getting the same bus? Number five-seventy to Cannington train station?”
“Yup.” I raise my eyebrows to punctuate my fleeting interest with this coincidence.
“Oh, lovely. Well then, I’ll be sure not to miss it again.”
I pull out my phone. The screen goes dark. Not off, just dim, a precursor to the Big Sleep. They should really make a phone with better battery life, but then I suppose nobody would buy a new model if the old one works fine.
“Bad news?” she says, and I realise I’m puffing my cheeks like I just got told I’m on the weekend shift.
“Huh? Oh, nah, just a dying battery. Not the end of the world. Might be able to charge it at work, you know?”
“Me? No, I wouldn’t know, really. I don’t have one of those new smarty phones.” It’s a little endearing, I think, the way she’s straight-faced when she underlines those words. Smarty phone. “I do wonder, sometimes, if I haven’t missed a lot. My granddaughter is always sending her friends photos, and I don’t get to see, because I’m not online. Her name is Delia, do you know her?” That one takes me back a little.
“No, I don’t know any Delias. Should I?”
“Oh, well, she works at Gloria Jean’s, you see. Just up the road from where you work. So I thought maybe you two had crossed paths.”
I’m about to ask, then I remember the logo on my chest. There’s only one store and it occupies two gleaming glass-fronted floors in the middle of the city, in the busiest mall, and there was an hour-long queue when we opened. It actually made the news. She’s not wearing glasses, and she’s not squinting.
“Are you going to work, then?” she says.
“Yup. Well, trying to. If this bus ever turns up.” Just then the bus rolls into view around a bend. I try to duck away from her when we board, but there are almost no empty seats and I’ve learned it’s not safe to stand when the bus is behind schedule, so we’re sitting across from each other, knees almost touching when the driver swings out. In the corner of my eye, I see her pull out a lipstick tube, reconsider, and tuck it back into her handbag. The movements are sure but slow.
“Hot date?” I say. She chuckles, exposing teeth too stained to be fake, but not stained enough to need touching up, glistening with the sheen old people’s teeth get, like their glands are making up for lost time.
“Hardly a date, no. I’m going to the hospital, to visit a friend. Poor old duck.” She offers up the information placidly as though it’s a daily errand. Wake up, read the obituaries, water the plants, visit Margaret in hospital, early-bird dinner and bed. It’s been a big day.
“Shit — oh, whoops, I’m sorry,” I say. “Is it — I mean, is she ok?”
“Oh, she’s fine. She just likes the attention. This one time, when we were younger, she actually convinced a doctor she had cholera just because she found him handsome. I think he knew, but he let her stay another couple of days anyway.”
“No way, that’s hilarious. I didn’t know cholera was still a thing in Australia.” She waves a hand in a way that says she’s missed something important, or I’ve misunderstood. Maybe both.
“This was years ago, in Yugoslavia. Although, I guess it’s called Slovenia now. Anyway, the point is, the look on that doctor’s face said it all: he knew she was full of it, and he let her stay anyway. Couldn’t even speak the same language. She’s been tormenting doctors every day of her life since then.” Now it’s my turn to laugh. Politely, quietly, but I have to admit it’s an amusing story. My dad used to tell me stories like that before his memory went dim. He never travelled, but he collected stories from the local goings-on, like the one about his bricklayer friend who smuggled two crates of beer from a job site, ten at a time, tessellated inside a broken radio. The pub they were working on found the lifeless guts of the radio months later behind a storage shelf.
“I’ve never been to Yugoslavia, myself,” I say. “Although that’s probably because I was born the year after they broke it up. But, I mean, I’ve never been to the region.”
“Oh, it’s lovely. We didn’t spend long there, mind you, but I’ll remember how that air tasted as long as I live.”
What passes between us unspoken is this: which is probably not that much longer. I know it because we buried dad a couple of years ago, along with his stories, his foggy memory, and his intolerance for anything that needed a remote control. There are five years between them, at a guess.
“So, you travel a lot, then?” I say and check my phone. I should be on time — barely.
“Not much anymore. The city is about as far as I go, and that’s mostly to visit Gwen in hospital. That’s my friend — the wily one. But I suppose I did see a lot of the world in my time. I think every young person should get out there and travel, you know. Plenty of time for work and all the rest when you get older. It’s such a shame to waste your young energy sitting behind a desk or — sorry, I don’t mean to offend you, dear.”
“No, you’re fine. I totally agree. I’m actually planning a trip to Japan, I just need to save a little more first.”
“Go on a shoestring, I say. Things always work out.” If my snort-laugh comes across as dismissive, then good, I think.
“Yeah, maybe. It’s not so easy anymore, though. You know, rent, study loans, saving for a house. Bills.” I wave my dying phone to underline the point.
“Ack, excuses. I bet someone like you, young and healthy, intelligent, you could land in the middle of Tokyo with empty pockets and survive just fine.” The straight-mouthed smile comes back and I swallow the rest of the conversation. In the silence that follows, I wonder how many other passengers have been listening to our conversation. Then the driver lurches us away from another stop and the din swells over the whining engine.
“Anyway,” she says, almost like she’s chosen to forgive me some offence, “plenty of time to see the world. Just make sure you do. All this will still be here when you get back.”
“I’d like to buy a house before I’m thirty. So Japan is the goal, but beyond that I might be sticking local. Road trips to the shops, you know.”
“Well, there’s plenty to experience here, as well. You know, I’ve lived here nearly half my life, and I’ve never been up the coast.” Whether I’m listening for it, or she’s hamming it up to give me a clue, a lyrical accent comes through in the punctual and metered way she’s talking.
“You’re from Ireland?”
“Correct. Limerick, eventually, but we moved around a lot as kids. Wherever there was work, old da would go.”
“I’ve always wanted to go to Ireland. Guinness, Giant’s Causeway, the Blarney Stone, all of that.”
“You should! It’s beautiful.” She seems genuinely thrilled at the idea of me wrapped up against the blustering Galway sea breeze. “If you make to Limerick, to the pub there on the high street, tell them Maisie Dalton sends her regards. Although they might not be so friendly after that.” She winks, and I huff a laugh. The bus has made up time but I’ll still be cutting it fine. A premonitory flush rushes up my neck when I think of jog-walking awkwardly from the train station to the store. I try urging the driver with my eyes to run an orange light but he doesn’t, and we all lurch forward when he hits the brake just a little too late. Two more stops. If we don’t stop at them, we might even make the next train.
“Do you enjoy your job?” she says. I don’t need to think about the answer.
“It’s fine. It’s a job, I clock in and clock out. I don’t have to bring it home with me.”
“Oh, well, that’s nice. And you like your colleagues?”
“Yeah, they’re great. It’s a big part of the reason I’m still there.” The train station is in view now and I’m distracted. “Definitely makes it easier. To work with good people, I mean.”
I don’t hear what she says next. There’s a train decelerating towards the station. This time the driver, seemingly hearing my silently screamed appeals, goes through the amber light. He has plenty of time but pumps the accelerator anyway.
“Huh? I’m sorry, what did you say?”
“I was just saying, I hope they treat you well there. It’s important to enjoy your job. Otherwise, you’re better off not working. But you can enjoy any job with the right people around, that’s what I learned.”
“Yeah, totally.” I’m half-standing. Calculating distances. “Hey, look, I’m really sorry to be rude. But I’m going to leg it — try and make that train. Otherwise I might be late again.”
“Not a problem, dear. Good luck. And get out there and travel!” She says this like I have a choice.
“Thanks. It was really nice to meet you. I hope your friend gets better soon.”
Her plimsolls, those tinted teeth, the way her eyes look like deep green pools, the kind under a tropical waterfall. They evaporate as I sprint up the stairs two at a time and squeeze through the doors right before they close. But when I sit down in the empty carriage, they come back.
I’m still thinking about Maisie Dalton when I lock the doors a little after nine.
I shouldn’t have lied; I hope her friend keeps raising hell as long as she lives.
