©1989

Gerald strode down the narrow leafy street to the bus-stop, trying not to look furtive. No one was about. Anxious, he sat on the flaking, distantly familiar bench and waited. He attempted to take an interest in his surroundings but the street was all the same. The bench was loose on its concrete legs with a thick wire protruding from beneath like a bone. Damned vandals. He kept still in case the seat overbalanced. Five minutes, going on the timetable he had read over and over, so more like fifteen. Best not to miss it, this time. He strove not to glance at his digital watch too often. He drummed his fingers on his knee. He tapped his foot. Footsteps compelled him to stare at his watch again, fixedly, not daring to look up. A lady was coming across the street; she sat next to him without a word, and took something out of her bag. He strained to see it out of the corner of his eye. It seemed to be a women’s magazine in a foreign language; she began to study it under the overhang of a spindly ash tree that he had barely noticed. He ground his bad teeth together. A double seed fluttered onto her curly black hair. He had a foolish urge to brush it away. He wrung his hands till they hurt; the palms were sweating. The day grew hotter.
The waiting, in the sun, nearly killed him. He felt his pulse covertly as his heart pounded in his ears. His chest tightened with fear. Would it fail? Somehow, he managed to root himself to the wobbling seat. Apparently aware of the problem she countered his more dangerous fidgets by shifting her weight. It was like sharing a surfboard. He smoked.
The bus arrived at last, thin walls of sheet metal whispering, rubber-sheathed doors puffing open, passengers hurrying down the divided steps. He bent double. She stood up and he almost fell. He stuck to his seat as she climbed up to the driver, clenching his fists. Stay and stagnate : go gracefully. He had no proper choice. Every position tortured equally.
He saw the driver glare out at him, then reach forward for the lever that closed the doors. A burst of devil-may-care determination drove Gerald to his feet, made him drag out his money, and rush headlong into the shuddering bus.
He gave the driver twenty dollars, unintentionally.
“Exact fare, matey.”
What? He fumbled in the pocket of his unfashionable trousers, found a coin, and inserted into the slot the driver indicated.
“Thanks.”
Gerald walked down the aisle as though on foam rubber, and was called back for his twenty dollars. Aware of eyes on him, he stumbled to the back, where he settled with forced leisure and chewed gum as it was forbidden to smoke. Catching the dark woman’s eye, he made a show of flicking a bit of lint off his white flares. Kids had in fact dropped lollies all over the place. He shut his eyes a moment, listening. The traffic was not heavy, it would not take long. He sighed again and again. It had been so long.
He mustn’t sleep! In the street, he noted hotted up Holdens that he remembered new, beside youths with upsticking hair; he saw expensive-looking station-wagons parked casually on the wrong side of the road, fat men in shorts dutifully shaving neat lawns in concentric circles, rangy dogs and tiny that skittered almost beneath the back wheel of the bus which rose before his knee, his own suburban mélange. He consulted his watch once more, 1:45, 1:46, 1:47 … He checked the date. He sighed. Was it going to work? Either way, he felt, he would be lost. This crosstown bus would pass the shops he once knew so well, then head out toward the lonely ring-road. There – no, he could not bring himself to think of that, not yet.
The flowerbeds of front gardens that flashed past like images in a zoetrope were exquisite, miniature as in a viewfinder, arrayed like fruit in stalls, orange, crimson, wine-purple. He might have relaxed a little but for his jealous, vengeful boredom, his desire to sweep away their artfully-animated still-life and create, fantastically, a more intimate illusion. Afraid of another meeting of eyes he did not move his head naturally, but his mind was free to see that the low red walls were scrubbed, the hedges clipped, the brick veneer had always been agleam in oblique eternal sunlight: all safe in their inaccessible mundus alter. Turdless, too.
Gerald strode down the leafy street out of a past which in memory was a timeless nothing, underneath trees of regular height which shed pools of shade with respectable precision. The short walk from his sister’s house was the longest he had known. Too strong-willed to face their mockery of progress except on his own terms, he hid from their sight till accumulating frustration propelled him down that street. He sat fidgeting now on the back seat, rationalising, ashamed, more committed than ever to his plan. But was it not again on their terms, the terms of things, yellow plastic car vaccuum cleaners, pink-wheeled tricycles, old ‘Aid for Africa’ tee-shirts, glossy computer gadgetry, mock-Spanish porticos, aluminium solar panels, very special things, that he returned alive but desperate to the land of invisible blight?
He wished badly to open the window but dared not draw attention to himself again. Sweat pasted him to the vinyl. Out yonder, Mum had finished washing up and sunned herself in brief shorts on the stepo, yakking at or past invasive neighbours. Dad, bearded, mobilised flabby pectorals and pottered. Miss Two ran under the hose shrieking. He wiped his face. Life was hypnotic. The authorities slept easily with the giant. But he must escape. He rose, jolted as the back wheel went over a bump. He nearly fell once more. Stop the bus. But where would that leave him? What better plan? He lowered his arm. Then in a furious and dextrous motion he opened the window.
People – no, they weren’t looking. Cooler air fanned him; he was glad no one had joined him. Bored with the uniform scenery repeating outside, he found the courage to study the passengers. But they were all very similar. For an instant he thought they were dummies. Then the globular light behind the driver’s box turned blue and he heard the soft bell. The bus drew gently into the kerb. The remaining commuters disembogued, except for the lady with the black hair. Gerald watched her surreptitiously, fiddling with his timepiece, and stuck his gum beneath the seat.
She was still reading. The magazine was propped up on the black net bag in her lap. and while he could not even make out the print from here, each flick of her painted forefinger brought to view a repeated house, a car, an expensive dress on a emaciated model, stiff and unmoving on the page. She, plump, played absently with one plastic earring with the other hand, and it glistened as if just cut out of coal. He unwrapped another pellet of gum, not dreading the time ahead any less but for the moment no longer bored, nor a shaking wreck. He was not sure why, though he was sure of nothing. Of course he preferred to have the bus virtually to himself, but – he realised he was interested, and in a perfect stranger.
They had passed they shopping centre. Had enough? No, see it through, see it through. It would work. It was working already. Just a matter of waiting patiently.
The bus slewed to the right, down a hill of steadily poorer houses, past an open stormwater drain enveloped in standing clouds of mosquitoes, and onto the ring-road. At least, so he rehearsed in his mind. The woman rolled up her magazine as if to have it ready for swatting, and stuffed it into her bag. Gerald felt his stomach go into free-fall. The driver jerked the clutch, put the vehicle into low gear, and down they went. No trees. The hill seemed longer in reality than in imagination. Dust spattered the windows as the wheel bounced off the ragged edge of the tarmac, dust floated past the sliding pane that Gerald had yanked back. The bus rattled in anguish. He tasted panic, and tried to picture the driver, hunched over his flat wheel in the brown formica booth, whistling through his teeth, perhaps. The woman was ferreting about in her bag, unconcerned.
They descended leaning forward. Now they came among the shabbiest, saddest shanties so far, whose roofs were level with the bus’s. T.v. aerials poked up skeletally. It amazed him that life yet survived in this forgotten pothole. He smelled beer amid the road noise. Things were everywhere, falling down. It was not hard to resist leaning across the mouth of the rear door to press the rubber strip that worked the bell. He gritted his bad teeth and gazed at battered Holdens that had once belonged to the people up the road, youths with tattoos and unkempt long hair, utilities and old trucks parked at all angles off the road, black men in shorts going over dusty triangles of couch grass with spluttering two-strokes, yellow dogs, windows broken, metal chimneys tilting with the slope of each roof. Deplorable poverty, but interesting.
A stone chipped the window near the dark girl and she, so imperturbable, jumped.
She pressed the rubber strip zestfully and the blue light glowed like Rigel and the soft bell chimed. The bus drew over roughly.
Would it work? What a stupid question. What was he doing here? The idea was to cure his ‘agoraphobia’ by sitting alone at the back of the bus and travelling every day for what used to be called miles on a deserted ring-road. He might as well sit in his sister’s split-level lounge quaffing vodka all day, in comfort. He lurched forward, caught at the back of a seat, and gravely floundered down the aisle. She turned, bemused. The driver stopped, revved the engine and the bus hawked. Gerald charged out the door after her and the bus bolted in a pall of dust and mozzies.
She glowered at him, suspicious. He must speak, at last, to the first person he had met in fifteen years.
“Er – “
“Yeah?”
“Er – ” His brain flicked over picture after picture of perfect suburban niceness, all useless contexts for what he wanted to say. Panic dismembered his thoughts, but desperation made him recover his tongue. ” – er, goin’ up the hill?”
“No, down?”
“Oh.” He dried up.
“You don’t live round ‘ere?” she asked.
“No. Er – wrong stop. Heh.”
“Where did you want?”
“Shops.”
“Up the hill.” She jabbed upward with her magazine, Elle.
“Wasn’t sure – heh – sure you’d understand me.” He surprised himself, saying so much.
“Eh?” She frowned. “Oh, this? Saw it in the papershop. Nice pitchers.” Now she smiled, pretty, snub-nosed, black-eyed.
He had to get away.
“Er, see you then.”
“Oh – yeah, see you. Maybe on the bus, eh?”
He strode rapidly up the long hill. He glowed with elation. Even the gang of young men hanging around a stripped-down old truck didn’t bother him,. It had worked. He had done better than he ever expected. A spontaneous, continuous, unrehearsed, honest-to-goodness conversation! He reached the top and practically ran to shops. Papershop, she said. Probably one in town; now he did not feel quite ready for that yet. But he had broken out of the circle by a sheer effort of his autonomous will. He was free.
He breathed deeply, and held up his head, examining the crowds of office workers in magazine clothes flowing from buses and up and down the leafy street. The world rushed off in all directions forever. It seemed to warp, space shutting him out. Nauseous, giddy, he staggered. They all avoided him. He may not have been there. He dashed into a shop that looked empty.
It was a little supermarket with a semicircular bottle shop near the door. A short sharp man lounged behind the counter. Gerald pointed out a quart of vodka, hung on a wheel of fire as the man wrapped up his purchase with superfluous precision, and paid for it without speaking. He tooked it and ducked round the back of the shops, creeping home by a roundabout maze of back-streets that he hoped would be fairly empty. With his paper bag of alcohol under his arm, horribly conspicuous, he trod again the nature-strip of his own road, and raised his eyes only once, to peer at the seat of the bus-stop from which he had set out. It had fallen over, but nobody was there.
No doubt they would fix it again. He hurried on, a commuter in a crowd, alone. Then the door closed behind him, and he groaned aloud, and flopped in a chair, and lit a smoke, and poured a drink, happy to be home.

There was always next time.