The Last Bus of Summer

The Last Bus of Summer

I caught the last replacement bus from Town Hall one evening when the city seemed to have misplaced its own map. The new routes and replacement buses confused even the commuters who normally knew every stop by heart.

At the entrance, two employees in fluorescent vests hurried back and forth like wandering lanterns, and everybody seemed to be late. They answered people's questions before they had even finished asking them, yet somehow nobody seemed any closer to discovering where they were actually supposed to go.

The air smelled of old rain and warm pretzels.

I bought my ticket from one of the new shiny machines covered in cheerful little lights. It printed tickets in every imaginable colour, as though it wasn't selling journeys at all but elegant warnings.

It had been a long day. Meetings on top of meetings, and then, at the end, my colleagues had decided to celebrate the fact that one of us had become a father. I hadn't had the heart to refuse a glass of wine. Now the wine, the city and the day's conversations were still echoing somewhere behind my eyes. I was walking on autopilot, no longer quite aware of where my feet were taking me. Numbers and slide presentations are still dancing behind my eyes. Mind gramophone that keeps going on the same line like a broken record, my engineering calculations just kept swirling in my mind, and I passed through the barriers and sat down on one of the glossy green benches.

Above me, the station lights seemed determined to outshine the moon, and together they covered everything in a pale, almost glass-like glow.

TRAIN TRACK WORKS

BUSES REPLACE TRAINS TO SUNSHINE STATION

The platform was almost empty.

The replacement bus to Sunshine was running ten minutes late.

Then it arrived without a sound, even the brakes didn't sigh.

The doors simply folded open...like a tired library.

The driver was somewhere between middle-aged and timeless, soft as a cat, with the yellow eyes of someone who had survived too many winters. He wore a cap pulled low over his forehead and slowly chewed a toothpick.

"Getting on," he asked, "or just philosophising at the bus stop?"

I climbed aboard.

At the front sat a man furiously typing on his phone. Judging by his inexpensive but determinedly formal suit and his oversized briefcase, I guessed he was a salesman.

Every time the bus changed direction, he muttered under his breath.

Still trying to finish one last email.

Every bump ruins another sentence.

He kept correcting:

Kind regards...

became

Kind rag...

became

Kill regards...

I smiled.

I'd spent the entire day writing emails, too—important ones, pointless ones, replies to replies to replies—until eventually the letters had begun dancing across my screen and I could barely read them anymore.

I opened my bag and took out my glasses, and only then did I glance at my ticket.

The words were printed in tiny letters.

I rubbed my eyes.

Perhaps I was simply exhausted, or perhaps the wine had been sour.

Still, we had needed to toast. Then I looked again.

VALID UNTIL FORGETFULNESS.

I blinked.

Looked up.

Everything appeared perfectly normal.

I looked once more.

A few seats behind me, a university student wearing thick black glasses had buried himself behind a tablet and two enormous headphones. He leaned forward under the weight of a backpack that seemed to contain equal amounts of textbooks, worries and sighs. Every now and then, he glanced suspiciously at the other passengers, as though he feared someone might steal either his backpack...or his anxieties.

The bus continued gliding through traffic as a fine rain had begun to fall.

The windscreen wipers swept steadily from side to side, and as we left the city behind, they seemed to brush away the leaves...

...and people's worries...

...one by one.

I had barely sat down when a woman in a bright red coat called out in a shrill voice:

"Take Wind Street!"

"Nobody uses Wrong Turn!"

"I know a shortcut!"

The driver never answered. He merely flicked one ear.

For a second, I could have sworn he looked exactly like a ginger cat with his cap pulled low over his ears.

Beside me sat a little girl next to her grandmother, who was dozing peacefully as the bus rocked gently along.

Then I heard it.

A tiny...”meow” and I looked around.

The little girl, wearing a checked newsboy cap, looked at me conspiratorially.

"We're running a little late today."

I glanced around the bus. Nobody else seemed to notice either the meow...or the route we were taking.

The lights flickered, and outside, on the same street,the same pharmacy,the same cat.

The same advertisement for a nightclub that looked as though nobody had ever gone inside.

A few moments later, I noticed something odd on the electronic display.

NEXT STOP: LOST KEYS STREET

From the back of the bus, the ticket inspector stood up and began checking passengers one by one.

He stopped beside me.

Pushed his cap back and adjusted his glasses.

Looked me up and down like a particularly unusual exhibit in a museum.

"Where are you getting off?"

"I'm... not sure yet."

He nodded calmly.

"That's perfectly all right."

"People who don't know where they're getting off usually stay until the end."

Then he added quietly:

"But don't lose your ticket.

It's your last hope."

The electronic display no longer read Keilor Park, but instead, it announced:

NEXT STOP: WAITING ROOM BOULEVARD.

I walked towards the middle of the bus.

The inspector was standing there as though he had been expecting me long before I was born. He was tall and thin like a forgotten ruler too long to fit the school bag and left behind.

Black overcoat.

A ticket punch hanging from his belt like an old revolver.

He took my red ticket and studied it for a long time.

Then looked back at me.

"Where are you getting off?"

"I honestly don't know."

He nodded slowly, like a doctor confirming a rare illness.

"If you don't know...

You'll probably go all the way."

"And where is the end?"

He raised the ticket punch.

"Patience End."

Just then, the little girl whispered without opening her eyes:

"Don't get off there."

Then she curled up against her grandmother and fell asleep again, smiling at the dream she had just walked into.

I suddenly felt uneasy.

Holding onto the handrails, I made my way to the front of the bus.

The cat was driving with one paw on the steering wheel.

In the other, he held an old photograph.

It showed the same bus and the same cat, only younger...

driving through a snowfall so heavy it seemed impossible.

"How much farther?" I asked.

"That depends."

"Depends on what?"

"On how much longer you can."

"Can what?

"Wait...without becoming part of the furniture."

Outside, the night had grown a bit darker.

The road stretched quietly ahead while, somewhere on the old radio, a song played with an impossible chorus:

"Where have you gone, my love?

I'll always wait for you at the station..."

The cat chuckled softly without taking its eyes off the road that stretched ahead.

"If you want to know the truth...nobody waits forever.

That's just something composers tell crowds to give them hope."

He adjusted his cap with a smooth move.

"And if you really want to know...

Patience End isn't the last stop.

It's simply where all disappointments get off."

The doors opened.

Outside stood a single bench and nothing else.

Just a bench...and a coffee machine that dispensed only hot water...

and regrets.

Tiny coloured lights blinked invitingly around it.

For a moment, it looked surprisingly comfortable.

I almost stepped off to rest.

The inspector watched me carefully.

"Getting off?"

I looked down at my red ticket.

Its colour had begun to fade.

Then I noticed something on the back that hadn't been there before.

RETURN NOT GUARANTEED.

For the first time, the cat turned towards me with complete seriousness.

"If you stay here too long...

You start talking to yourself in the street, or when you look in the mirror, a stranger is looking back at you.

Suddenly, I remember all those morning glories with dreams packed tightly under the notebook covers when the summer days stretched endlessly to the horizon.

That frightened me more than I cared to admit.

"And if I don't get off?"

The inspector punched my ticket.

Click. Click.

Two perfect holes.

"Then," he said,

"You keep going."

"To where?"

The lights flickered once more, and suddenly, I realised I was the only passenger left on the bus.

Ahead, I recognised the familiar intersection with the kebab shop was glowing beneath its neon sign.

Sunshine Station.

My ticket was still in my pocket.

I turned it over one last time, but now it simply reads:

SUNSHINE STATION

I looked up, and the little red-brick house on the corner was waiting quietly for me, with the old poplar whispering behind the porch.

I stepped onto the pavement without looking back.

The asphalt felt reassuringly solid beneath my feet.

The bus was gone.

The ticket lay on the kitchen table, and I went to the end of the hallway, where the old cupboard still held the unopened stuff from Romania. It was opening easily because I was never locked, just forgotten.

Outside, the poplar whispered behind the house exactly as it had twenty-five summers ago.

I opened the first page, and the handwriting belonged to someone I still recognised...and someone I had almost forgotten.

For years, I thought I had carried that notebook across two continents. Not all cupboards are locked; some are simply waiting till we are ready to open them.

Only then did I realise...It had been carrying me.