The 3.52

I was late. Well, not late. But not early enough to be sure I wouldn’t be. The bus service around here is crap. They say you wait ages for a bus and then three come at once, but around here, you just wait ages for a bus. I was on the 3.52, according to the sequence on the timetable, but that bus was the 4.11, and there was no disguising it.

The up side was, there were seats. It was the middle of the school holidays, and the 3.52 was actually a viable option for once. When I was at school, we had a dedicated school bus. Do they even have those anymore? Maybe in other places they still have those, but around here, the kids just pile onto the normal buses and it’s like riding an ambulant circle of Hell. I bought a bicycle so I wouldn’t have to, but it aggravates my sciatica, and at least the bus ride doesn’t go on all night.

I sat in the front seat, the one where you can see out the front windscreen. Do you ever grow out of that? Liking to ride in the front of the bus? I’d prefer the top deck, obviously, but last time I went up there, there were three kids in hoodies doing drugs as if I wasn’t even there. It put me off. They might not have been doing drugs, but I think my top deck days may be over. Anyway, I was sat in the front seat, and we were trundling along, probably all of us worrying about being late for something, when out of nowhere this guy jumped out in front of the bus and before I could even register what was happening he was sprawled out on the road. Needless to say, we came to an abrupt stop.

At first I thought we’d hit him, but he had just laid down. Laid himself down right there in the middle of the road in front a bus. Not something I would do. I’d jump from the multi-story I think. In the night. I thought about it once. It probably crosses everyone’s mind at some point doesn’t it? I’d been having a bad time, but the weird thing was it all seemed to be coming from inside. It was like my life was having a perfectly good time without me. I mean, I wasn’t a millionaire with a party lifestyle or anything, but nothing was objectively wrong. Somehow that made it worse. My parents had been rubbish parents, and even though I was in my forties at that time, it was probably to do with that. Anyway, I didn’t jump from the multi-story, and I never actually thought I would, it just crossed my mind, you know?

So this guy, he was lying out in the road, arms and legs all neat and straight like he was imagining himself already in his coffin, we’d come to a stop, all the traffic behind had come to a stop, and on the other side of the road, all THAT traffic had come to a stop as well. It was interesting, because even though we were all probably worrying about being late, no one got angry, and I thought that was nice, in a way. And the cars on the other side of the road could have just driven off, and they didn’t, and it felt like we had kind of made a bit of a barrier around him so no one could run him over. Even though that might be what he wanted. So I think that was nice, but maybe it was a bit inconsiderate. It’s a difficult area, isn’t it? Rights, and all that? I suppose we all had the right not to run him over though, that’s for sure.

Where was I? Right. Lying out on the road, traffic all backing up, no one doing a whole heap of anything. Then suddenly, one car back in the queue on the other side of the road, someone opened a car door. It was one of those people carrier things. MPVs. I don’t know what the layout was like in there but a good ten seconds after that door opened, this woman appeared looking like she had done some climbing to get out of that door. To be fair, she looked like the sort that probably wasn’t too fussy about doing a bit of climbing to get out of a car door. She wasn’t “well turned out” as my mother would have said. Maybe she was on her summer holidays too, but she wasn’t wearing the kind of gear that might have inhibited a clamber out of a people carrier.

Anyway, this woman, she got out of the car, and she walked over to this guy in the road. Didn’t run, like it was an emergency, which it sort of was, in a way. Except now it wasn’t because all the traffic was stopped and no one could have run him over except for very deliberately, which no one seemed inclined to do. She just walked over to him, squatted down on her haunches, and started talking to the guy. I don’t know what she said, the bus driver had kept the door closed, it not being a proper stop I suppose. But she talked to him, and after a minute, he got up, and they walked to the kerb, and he plonked himself down like he was going nowhere, and she sat next to him, like they were old friends, elbows on knees, jutting into the road, and they just sat there and chatted a while.

At this point, I knew I was definitely going to be late, but I supposed that was ok really, when someone was so desperate that they lay down in front of a bus, to be a little late while they sorted themselves out. I didn’t get too worried. She didn’t seem too worried either, this woman. The man had his head in his hands and looked like someone had just told him his puppy had died, and the woman was sat beside him, just tilting her head a bit his way. She must have been asking him questions, because she would say something, and then her mouth stopped moving and he must have been saying something back, and they she would say something again. She looked a bit sad, talking to him, like maybe she had known the puppy too. I don’t think there was a puppy, its just that they looked like there was a puppy, and the puppy had died. Anyway, she didn’t seem in any rush, and it was interesting, sitting there, watching how the man’s fists opened up and how his head began to tilt to her, and how she began to speak a bit less, and he began to get a bit more, I don’t know, alive looking, like he was talking about how he and the puppy used to have fun together.

And all around, the traffic just waited. I think we probably could have squeezed past, if we had wanted too. I could see there was a whole family, kids, a man, an older woman, in the car the woman had come from, so I suppose they weren’t going anywhere without her. But we all just waited.

Someone must have called the police, because after a while a police car came zooming through, ignoring the vehicular buffer we had made around the spot where the man had lain in the road, and the police got out and the man stood up from the kerb, and the woman stood up too, and they talked to him a bit and then they put him in the car. The woman was talking to one of the police officers, and she didn’t look so calm anymore. Somehow she didn’t look as dishevelled anymore either, like she’d popped on an invisible blazer over her shorts and t-shirt. She looked like maybe the police officer was a suspect in the death of the puppy.

After that, the woman got back in her car, and I could see by the way she pointed herself in head first that she did not have the window seat, and the police car with the man in it pulled away, and the traffic just started up again like time had unstuck itself and everyone went on their way.

I was late, which I knew I would be, but not as late as the day the 3.52 had been the 4.19, and I didn’t mind really, under the circumstances. I said “thank you” to the driver when I got off, and he said “mind how you go” and I said “you too sir” and I really did wish him well, it isn’t his fault the buses are crap.