Bus Stop

Every morning, I wake up, get ready for the day, and make sure my cats are properly spoiled before departing my condo. It took me over a decade to settle into this morning routine. It’s ordinary, warm and comfortable, like mashed potatoes for the soul. Nothing fancy or exciting, but stable. It’s a lungful of fresh air after what felt like an eternity of grieving and wallowing amongst a bedrock of grief and endless sobbing. After I thought I lost everything. Marjorie.

I turn the key in the lock, ensuring my cats are secure while I’m away. To be clear, I’m not worried about burglars. I have insurance and can replace whatever is taken if a burglar were to break in. I’m most concerned that my cats would get out and unleash havoc on my neighbors’ properties, the likes of which my liability insurance could not begin to cover. They’re content to laze about in the sunbeams and cat trees within our home, but they have a ‘scorched earth’ policy when they explore new territory. Destroy everything, leave no survivors or hope for future generations. And pee everywhere to salt the earth.

I stroll through the courtyard, pondering what today’s conversation with my bus stop buddy will bring. Aside from the consistency of my morning routine bringing me joy, talking with Clyde is a true highlight of my mornings. He’s retired, and happens to ride the same bus as me to head to a food pantry where he volunteers each day. Clyde and I arrive at least fifteen minutes earlier than the bus so we could chat. We’ve never been to each others’ homes or exchanged phone numbers, but we know each others’ histories and humors and wants. This bus has been part of our routines for quite a while.

It started to drizzle as I approached the bus shelter. Not unusual, but it made Clyde seem incredibly grim. He was sitting in his usual spot, holding a damp umbrella and pretending to do a crossword puzzle while he waited for me to arrive.

“What took ya so long today? Cats bein’ bastards?” Clyde inquired, with his usual charming smile and laugh.

“Yeah, my asshole cats wanted to talk me into buying them product starter kits for some sort of makeup-selling pyramid scheme. They wouldn’t let me leave until I promised to think about it.” I elucidated.

“Well, that seems like a sound investment. Cats are good at groomin’. They oughta know a thing or two about cosmetics. Can I toss in a little starter capital?” Clyde asked, grinning from ear to ear.

Seeing his shit-eating grin, I bantered back, “Hell yeah, I was definitely messing with them earlier. They’re going to be so big, I can just live off their profits. They’re too smart to fail. I only see them roll over and fall off their cat tree like, once a day.”

“I thought so. Well, here’s a little somethin’ for ‘em. They’re gonna have some needs early on as they launch their empire. This might help get ‘em started.” Clyde quipped as he passed me a black notebook.

I laughed. Clyde had joked like this before. I pushed the notebook back toward him, but he forced the notebook onto the bench between us.

“Clyde, what is that?” I asked, perplexed. He gazed at me for what felt like an hour before saying anything.

“That’s yours. You can give it all to the cats if you want, but they probably won’t give a shit,” he rasped.

The bus was rumbling about a block away and the cars were zooming along our street. Clyde stood up to stretch, as always, before our bus thundered into view. And then he sprinted into the traffic as fast as he could. His death was immediate, hopefully painless, and traumatizing to witness.

A few weeks later, I was weeping at his memorial service. I kept the black notebook on me at all times as a mourning rite. If I had the notebook with me, I had Clyde with me. It was exactly the way he left it. Everything could be fine, if things were just the way they had been.

My morning routine hit a snag for many many months. Many snags. My eyelids became too heavy to open in the mornings. My cats grew restless, demanding my attention when I could barely summon the energy to hit snooze on my alarm. They didn’t care what I was going through, they just wanted breakfast. They didn’t fucking care, these bastard-

Something about verbally abusing my cats reminded me of Clyde. A warmth washed over me, and pulled me toward a black notebook sitting on my coffee table. A black notebook marred with signs of living and spilling from the outside, and untold wisdom and mystery on the inside. Well, as mysterious as Clyde could be, anyway.

I got out of bed immediately, which was a feat in itself. I had fallen off the morning routine wagon since Clyde’s demise. I thought losing Marjorie would be the hardest loss I’d suffer, and then Clyde turned up and made me feel all the things I hadn’t felt since I turned dead inside to fortify myself from crying more about Marjorie. Minus the sexiness, of course.

I sat on my couch, turning the plain, black book over and over in my hands. It was slim and beckoned me to make its acquaintance, despite me being a hardcore composition notebook fan. I knew it was time to put all of my excuses aside. Clyde slaughtered himself in traffic, that was wild and perplexing, but he gave me the notebook first. That was clear when nothing else was. I opened the enigmatic black notebook, and a thick strip of paper fell out of it and drifted lazily to the floor like a forlorn piece of confetti. It was a check. I picked it up, read it, and immediately felt my body clench. None of the past few months had felt real. Decade, really, when it came down to it. This check in front of me was a joke. A snarky joke from a dead man. It was payable to me for $20,000. I was in disbelief.

I spent weeks with the check attached to my fridge, thanks to a magnet shaped like a friendly bunch of grapes. It could NOT be real. The check and the whole situation, not the grapes magnet. That was from my aunt. But who leaves a notebook and a check, and commits suicide in front of their friend at the bus stop?? Grieving Marjorie was horrible, but she had been killed in a freak accident. Clyde was a freak who created an accident, albeit a freak I considered a confidant. I needed . . . so many things. ‘Answers’ were at the top of the list of things I needed most, so I dug.

I rushed over to the notebook. I honestly forgot about it. Turns out, a $20,000 check falling from any type of paper-bound medium will do that to you. I was full of energy and confusion. Why had I left this entire notebook when I found the check? Was I that motivated by money? Or was I distracted by utter grief?

My inner monologue was trying to delve into the weeds, and distract me from what I miserably sought. Answers. I took deep breaths to calm myself, and opened the notebook to the first page.

“So ya finally got my book?” was scrawled across the page, and nothing else.

Well, it’s clear he wasn’t going to make it easy to unpack everything, but what could you expect from a person who had lost the love of their life and was trying to guard themselves from the trauma? Damnit, Clyde. I had Marjorie, he had Annie. We got each other. That’s why we bonded at a fucking bus stop. Real shit. But he couldn’t be real enough with me to let me know why he was trying to give me a boatload of money.

I flipped through more pages of the notebook. It started as journal entries, and evolved into something like stats. Numbers with forward slashes, dates, temperatures. All types of charts designed to track moods and energy levels. He was on dialysis. Terminal cancer. The most recent entries showed his prognosis. The expected time window got shorter and shorter as the entries bore mercilessly onward.

Clyde had never once mentioned cancer. We talked about our first loves, our greatest loves, our struggles, dreams, favorite ice cream flavors, napping positions, and mundane details of our daily lives. For some reason, he felt compelled to give me tens of thousands of dollars before obliterating himself.

Damnit, Clyde.