Three At A Bus Stop
An exercise in writing the absurd.
“The number 6 is always late on Thursdays,” muttered Mrs Nel Gardner under her breath in perfect English to no one in particular as she peered down the street willing the bus to magically appear and rescue her from this horrible weekly ordeal. With a shiver of her shoulders she resigned herself to waiting in the queue with the other two.
Try as Mrs Nel Gardner might to avoid looking at the lout standing next to her, her eyes were irresistibly drawn to the ear she could see; which, in her considered opinion, had far too many studs and rings in it - far too many - and try as she might to not count them, she found herself beginning to count.
The lout, hearing the metered whispering, turned and yelled at her, “What you lookin’ at?” She immediately stopped counting and looked at him in surprise. She noticed that despite the anger in his voice, his face wasn’t angry. He had a soft face, and he had the eyes of a boy. She noticed that his hair, though bleached to straw, complemented his green eyes. His nostrils, however, had more studs and rings and little spikes than there were in his ear, and she instinctively started counting again. She stopped when she remarked to herself that he reminded her of a fancy pin cushion she once owned. Embarrassed, she looked down the street again to see if the number 6 was coming.
A tramp, who had been sleeping on the bus stop bench now stirred. His newspaper blankets fell off him as newspaper blankets do, and he sat up. “‘Ello, ‘ello!” he said, smiling cheerily to reveal his last available tooth - a tobacco-stained peg in a vacant rim of bloodshot gum. In complete contrast to the boy, the tramp was ugly. As ugly as ugly can get.
It was but a moment before the tramp’s ghastly stench affronted delicate Mrs Nel Gardner who instinctively recoiled in disgust. My God, he smells like a sewer, she thought. Even the lout put his hand to his pin-cushioned nose. “Exc-h-use me...,” the tramp said indignantly, “But I ’appen to live ’ere. Now, if you don’t mind, I must be abaht my hablutions.” And with that, he spat wetly into his cupped palms, slapped them together and pasted the moist gob carefully and evenly over his matted filthy grey hair as carefully as would a hairdresser. “There. That’s better,” he said. Then, he bent forward slightly to draw in a long, guttural, snotty, nose clearing down the whole length of his throat and, with his eyes closed, he swallowed like it was sweet wine. Mrs Gardner’s throwing-up muscle issued its final warning.
“Right,” he continued, “Da’n to business. Where’s. My. Money?” Mrs Gardner rummaged frantically in her handbag and, extending her pitifully short arm as far as it would go, gave him a bundle of notes. “Fank you, my darlin’,” he said with genuine affection, again showing his peg. As he took the wad of notes from her, he tried ever so gingerly to touch the tips of her fingers. This was too much for poor Mrs Gardner’s throwing-up muscle. From the pit of her lower back she launched an enormous propulsive retch, projectile vomiting onto the pavement every last mouthful of what had been her last two meals with such force that the chunks, bile and slime spattered out like a surprised painting. The tramp and the boy looked at it quizzically for a moment and then looked at each other. “It’s always the same, in’it?” said the tramp. “Every bloody family-reunion-Thursd’y …always the bloody same. Don’t mind y’muvver, son, she’ll get over it. She always does. Now, tell me, son, how you been keepin’?” Before he could answer, the number 6 bus arrived and parked directly over the vomit.