After the Last Bus

The tail lights of the last bus vanished around the corner just as I reached the stop.

I stood there, bent over, catching my breath for a dozen seconds, then straightened up and stared at the empty street. Eleven-forty. A cab would take forty minutes to arrive at this hour. Walking would take an hour. Neither was a good option.

A man was still sitting on the bench at the stop. An old man, in a dark blue padded jacket, a red plastic bag resting on his lap. The bag bulged with something unidentifiable. He sat very straight, hands folded over the bag, as if waiting for his number to be called at a bank.

I hesitated, then sat down at the far end of the bench.

"Last bus is gone," I said. I wasn't sure who I was talking to. Myself, probably.

The old man didn't respond. I figured he hadn't heard, or didn't feel like talking. After half a minute, he said, "I know."

His voice was soft but clear, like that first rush of water hitting porcelain when you turn on the tap on a winter morning.

Another silence. I pulled out my phone and opened the ride-hailing app. The screen spun: "Few vehicles nearby, estimated wait 35–45 minutes." I flipped the phone face-down on my lap and gazed across the street at a steamed-bun shop, its lights off, empty bamboo steamers stacked by the door, the stainless-steel counter gleaming cold under the streetlamp.

"You waiting too?" the old man asked.

"No car's coming," I said.

"But you're still waiting."

It didn't sound like a question. More like an observation. I turned to look at him. He wasn't looking at me. His eyes were fixed on a slope at the far end of the road, where the side wall of an old apartment building carried a faded billboard for a Ferris wheel. God knows how old. The paint was peeling, the blue gondolas bleached to a strange gray-white, like washed-out jeans.

"So are you," I said.

The old man tilted his head slightly. The corner of his mouth twitched. I couldn't tell if it was a smile. "I'm not waiting for a bus."

I didn't push. He didn't explain.

A taxi rolled down the slope, its vacant sign lit. My hand lifted reflexively, then dropped. The cab drove past without slowing.

"You could flag the next one," the old man said. "If you want to go."

"I'll sit a bit longer," I said. I wasn't sure why. Maybe the fare was too steep, maybe the walk was too far, maybe I just couldn't be bothered. The shelter roof blocked most of the streetlight, leaving a single narrow ribbon of orange light falling precisely on the empty space between us.

"I used to drive a bus," the old man said. "This route. Fourteen years."

I blinked. "This route?"

"This one." He lifted his chin toward the road ahead. "Train station to the university town. An hour and twenty minutes round trip. Every hour at rush hour, every hour and a half off-peak."

He recited this like a weather report. No nostalgia. No emotion. Just facts.

"When did you retire?"

"Six years ago. The year after my wife passed. Stopped driving then."

I didn't know what to say, so I nodded. A motorcycle roared somewhere in the distance, drew nearer, then faded, like a needle stitching the fabric of the night.

"Your wife—" I started, then thought better of it.

"Breast cancer." He said it the way you'd talk about a tree. "She was fifty-four."

A gust of wind blew up from the slope, carrying the burnt-sweet smell of roasted chestnuts. This late, and someone was still selling roasted chestnuts.

"She used to come to this stop every night to meet me," the old man said. "I'd pull in with the last bus, and she'd be standing right here, holding a thermos. Even in winter. I told her not to. She said waiting at home and waiting here was the same thing."

He paused.

"After she was gone, I'd come back from my shift, and there was nobody at the stop."

I looked at the faded Ferris wheel billboard. Half the bulbs were dead. The ones that remained formed a broken circle in the dark.

"Do you come here—" I hesitated. "Often?"

"Not on a schedule. Sometimes I can't sleep. I come and sit."

"Is that often? Not being able to sleep?"

"Often," he said.

Neither of us spoke after that. The street was quiet, only the occasional rustle of plane-tree leaves scraping across the asphalt. The chestnut cart had moved on; the sweet-burnt smell was thinning out.

A question occurred to me. "How did you get here?"

"Walked."

"How long?"

"About forty minutes."

Forty minutes. Walk here, sit a while, walk forty minutes back.

"Is it worth it?" I asked.

The old man was silent for a long time. So long I thought he wasn't going to answer.

"It's not about worth," he said. "It's about not knowing where else to go."

He lifted the plastic bag off his lap and set it on the empty seat beside him. The bag rustled. He stood up, stretched his back. His joints cracked twice.

"I'm off," he said.

"There's no bus."

"I'll walk. Can't sleep anyway."

He picked up the bag and started up the slope. He walked slowly but steadily, the way you walk a road you've walked many times. The streetlamp stretched his shadow all the way to my feet.

I sat there, watching his back grow smaller and smaller. At the crest of the slope, the faded Ferris wheel billboard still glowed, its broken half-circle of lights hanging in the night.

My phone lit up. The ride-hailing app had finally found me a driver.

I looked at the countdown: "Driver arriving in 3 minutes."

Three minutes.

I tapped Cancel.

Then I stood up and started walking in the opposite direction. It would take an hour on foot. I couldn't sleep anyway.