Fiction

by Scribes Stories · 4 min read · 2 views

The Last Bus to Merrow Genre: Fiction | Reading time: approx. 6 minutes The 11:47 to Merrow only ever carried people who had missed something. That was Priya's theory, anyway, formed over four years of driving the route six nights a week. People who missed the earlier bus, missed a dinner, missed a chance to say the right thing at the right time. The late bus collected the leftovers of other people's evenings. Tonight there were three of them. An old man in a damp coat clutching a bouquet of carnations that had seen better hours. A teenage girl with headphones in but no music playing, if Priya had to guess. And a man in a suit too sharp for the hour, tie loosened, staring out the window like it owed him money. Priya pulled away from the curb and watched them in her mirror the way she watched most passengers, not out of nosiness exactly, more out of the quiet loneliness of night driving, where any human face becomes a small event. The old man spoke first, to no one in particular, the way people do when the silence of a near empty bus starts to feel too large. "These were meant for my wife," he said, lifting the carnations slightly. "Fifty two years married today. I was going to surprise her at her sister's, where she's staying this week. Missed the earlier bus because I couldn't decide between the pink or the white, if you can believe that. Stood in that shop like a fool." "Which did you choose?" the teenage girl asked, pulling one earbud out, apparently curious despite herself. "Both," he said, smiling faintly. "In the end I bought both, and now I'm an hour and a half late for a woman who has waited fifty two years for me to be exactly on time for nothing." The girl almost smiled. "I bet she won't even notice the time." "You'd think that," the old man said, "but Margaret notices everything. Still. Better late with both colors than on time with the wrong one." The man in the suit finally turned from the window. "I had a meeting tonight I should have cancelled a week ago," he said, mostly to himself, though the bus was quiet enough that everyone heard. "Sat through two hours of nothing so I wouldn't have to go home and tell my brother I can't lend him the money he asked for. Missed his call four times tonight. Now I'm going home anyway, having accomplished nothing except being a coward on a schedule." "Are you going to call him back?" the girl asked. "I don't know yet." "You're on the bus that only carries people who missed something," the old man said, almost to himself, and Priya, listening from the driver's seat, felt a small shiver at hearing her private theory spoken aloud by a stranger who had no way of knowing it. The girl was quiet for a moment before she spoke again. "I missed my own leaving do. Moving away tomorrow, first time out of home, and my friends threw me a party tonight and I couldn't make myself go in. Stood outside the restaurant for twenty minutes and then just left. I don't even know why." "Fear dressed up as forgetting," the old man said gently. "I've done that dance a few times myself." "What do I do now? The party's probably over." "You call one of them," Priya said, surprising herself, speaking for the first time all night from behind the wheel. "Doesn't matter that it's over. Tell them you got scared. People forgive scared faster than they forgive silence." The girl looked at her in the mirror, considering this, then quietly put her phone to her ear as the bus rattled on through the dark toward Merrow. The man in the suit watched her for a moment, then pulled out his own phone and, after a pause that seemed to cost him something, dialed his brother. The old man simply held his carnations a little tighter, pink and white together, and looked out at the passing streetlights with the particular patience of someone who has learned, after fifty two years, that lateness is survivable as long as you show up in the end. By the time the bus reached the Merrow stop, the girl was laughing quietly into her phone, already forgiven. The man in the suit was still talking, voice low and unsteady, saying something that sounded, from where Priya sat, like the beginning of an apology. The old man stepped off last, thanking Priya with a small nod, carnations bright even in the streetlight. "Tell your wife happy anniversary," Priya called after him. "I intend to," he said. "Fifty two years and I'm still catching the late bus to get to her. Some things you never really improve on. You just keep showing up anyway." Priya watched him walk off into the dark toward his sister in law's house, and thought, not for the first time, that the 11:47 was not really the bus for people who missed things. It was the bus for people who were, in their own late and clumsy way, still trying to arrive.