#69

A steady hiss as bus bows to woman pushing metal walker, its impaled tennis balls silently scuffing the concrete sidewalk. Delicately, she shuffles aboard, dropping heavily into a seat next to her source of balance in the front of the bus. The vehicle dreams of roaring along to the next stop, but a voice calls out through the closing door. Wait, it croaks. The voice belongs to a woman puffing hastily at her cigarette. She waves to another unseen, beckoning. I lock eyes with the driver in the rear-view. He looks tired. The woman drops her cigarette and stands, grabbing her own walker, limping along towards the bus still bowing. The unseen woman comes into view pushing a walker of her own. The driver checks his watch. As the two trek towards the entrance of the bus, a man sits down in front of me. His hair is whispy-white, with stragglers of blonde and gray and black, as if in mutiny from the great transition. He smells of alcohol, a smell at the very core of his essence, like if nothing was left but bone he would still smell so. One of the two women makes her way aboard. The bus driver takes a deep breath and holds it. The third woman with walker climbs aboard, but has no way through—the other two have blocked the way with their own. The second woman on board with a walker, dark sunglasses covering half of her dry, canyoned face, croaks about not wanting to move hers, but it is clear she must, and the first woman aboard with a walker helps from her seated position. As soon as all three women are on board and seated, the bus driver zooms from the stop, glancing at how much time he's going to have to make up as we crest the hill and amble down. The first woman has a dog in her walker. A weiner shnitzel, she boasts loudly to the other newcomers. The woman with the dark sunglasses speaks to the dog in her best baby voice, slurring her words. The third woman just smiles. They all sit, staring at the dog together, as the bus comes to another stop and people board, turning sideways to move past the tangle of walkers.