Lost In Thought (On the 7:00am Bus to Downtown Louisville) by Alycia Davidson
7:32am.
I’m on the 7:00am bus. Lost in my own head. The old beast rolls on slowly down I-64 into downtown Louisville with a squeal. Like it does every Thursday, and had and would continue to do. Every. Single. Thursday. From the moment it was shoved out onto this cruel world ‘til the day its wheels inevitably burst, birthing a cataclysmic accident in which high priced mouthpieces would calmly state the rotation of the earth and time were to blame. Not our fault.
A common phrase.
A mindset.
A way of life. ‘Not my fault’, ‘don’t blame me’, ‘Mercury was in retrograde’, ‘wrong place, wrong time’. Deterrents. Lies. And yet… the inability to take ownership of the lifestyles we kill for and the faceted depths of this social media age allow us to continue to believe these trivial things. Wrong place, wrong time.
Story of my life. It is pitiful, yes, and it sounds like I’m complaining. I am. 7:33am. The bus stops at a small portico-like structure with a tangle of ivy wrapping around its old metal framework on the western side. He enters. My heart skips a beat.
A venti blonde roast latte, extra shot of espresso, soy milk, hold the whip with two cardboard holders around its circular casing to stave off the heat against my fingertips lifts from my lap. I let the overpriced narcotic rest against my lips to hide the quiver in their form from his entrance. This is getting ridiculous.
His hair has grown out since the first time I saw him. Curled chestnut hued locks, buzzed down on the sides with a bit of scruff on his triangle shaped visage and sharpened cheekbones. Flesh an earthen color like the clayed ground of the most untouched places on earth after a rainfall. Eyes so deep a hue that one could only assume that looking into them up close was akin to gazing down into the Grand Canyon from space. Winding textures coated those lovely irises, wrapped up in bloodshot veins behind expensive, designer prescription frames. He looks tired.
Salim. At least that’s what was listed on the badge that he dropped two months ago out of his shoulder bag when he tripped leaving his seat. He’s a tour guide at the museum down the road from my firm. I know this because I heard him say it to someone else who inquired. Not from any internet sleuthing or inappropriate measures so commonplace in this day and age. I’m not that desperate.
His sling bag is always over his right shoulder. A laptop covered in stickers shoved inside, a copy of A Midsummer Night’s Dream that looks heavily annotated with its cover curling in the inner pocket. An actor? I bet he’d look good in tights. I shift uncomfortably.
The bus rolls onward. 7:35am. He waves to me. I don’t think he works regular hours. A normal nine-to-five like us common folk. I only see him on Thursdays and Fridays. The highlights of my week. We’ve never spoken, but it’s hard not to notice the consistency in the scheduling and small gestures are shared as courtesy.
I’m always in the third seat from the back, on the left-hand side, head against the window looking disheveled from an all-nighter brought on by last minute changes thrown at me from some idiot who can’t make up their mind. Bolder text. Brighter colors. Make it louder. Tablet in my hand, a half-assed design for some big shot company’s new campaign on the screen. I’m bored. It’s October. Black Friday deals for products that were just announced. Consumerism.
My life is funded, run, and owned by the women with the ‘I need to speak to your manager’ haircuts and men with mistresses and unhappy home lives who prefer their cash be spent on lingerie and vacations than food on the table for a crying babe who will amount to nothing in this world.
I am pale with bags of deep purple beneath my eyes, hands jittery from over caffeinated systems. My face is round, unappealing, stature short and not much to behold. Pale straw colored hair with a sad wave in its strands and eyes of blue. The unappealing early spring morning skies kind of blue.
If one were to liken me to something I suppose a plump Renaissance portrait where the skin is near translucent and the rolls are abundant would suffice. Surrounded by an overwhelming mass of meaningless items to give the appearance of luxury that translates more to that of a hoarder with no direction or purpose. Dull colors, forgetful features. The dramatic woe of a life of monotony that leaves you unsettled. Something not to be in the presence of for long. A forgetful piece to gaze at for a moment just to move on to a Monet with wide eyed wonder.
He’s the Monet. Meules. Soft colors of an autumnal palette.
This is why I’ve never spoken to him. I’m downright depressing and he… well, he is the very glory of the sun that echoes off the barren landscape of smog and peeling billboards and cracked pavement that make up my universe. I bet he has a partner. He could have anyone he wanted. How could he not with a smile like that? Sheepishly hidden beneath an oversized infinity scarf of sandy tones thrown over a tattered green army-style jacket. Skinny jeans and combat boots and a smart watch with a sunset for the background.
He sits down in the seat across from me two rows up, right by the back door. He slides his earbuds in. I bet he’s listening to a podcast. He seems the type. Constantly learning. Bettering himself. A real boy scout.
I bet his partner is beautiful. He. She. They. It doesn’t matter. With a face like that anyone would swoon. I bet if my body was slimmer and I had a button nose and a shapely face and more Instagram followers I’d catch his eye. A well woven tale accented by portraits with lens flares and nostalgia inducing text, a relatable word, a well-placed hashtag. I am the grainy Polaroid from a bygone time with motion blur and an unreadable face.
The bus hits a pothole and I’m shaken from my thoughts and jealousy over a fictional person I hate for no real reason.
He laughs. It’s cute. He’s embarrassed, sliding down in the seat to hide his smile. He throws a coy glance over his shoulder at me as if to ask if I am still interested in his narrative. Well? Are you?
Of course I am. There’s little else to invest in. Nothing as gripping and lovely. Life in Louisville is as dull as the existence I find myself in. It’s no grand story of Daisy and Gatsby with magnolia trees and lavish parties in the summer months. I am no well-regarded Fitzgerald creation with lilts of soft accents and blissful ignorance.
I am the Nick Carraway. Quiet, meek, just a plot point to progress the story. This is no city of glamour and debutant balls. It’s full of sports-crazed lunatics and old money that refuses to move onward, refuses to change and adapt. The kind that lets the minorities suffer while horses and bourbon are praised as gods. The masses ask for it to be better. It never is. No one leaves. We wallow in it and wonder why life is so hard.
I think of what would happen if I said hello. How would he respond? What would he even say? He’d probably feign kindness, chat a little bit, then hurry off once we reach our destination. A dreary place lost amongst old buildings that are lacking upkeep, the notion of change causing angered cries noting historical significance that simply cannot be touched. My mind falls elsewhere.
A scenario I conjured up only God can remember when that won’t leave me. I bump into him getting off at the stop, I apologize. He spills my coffee, offers to buy a new one. We both end up late to work, laughing like immature children skipping school as we stand in an overly long line for an addiction that needs curbing. I smile. I haven’t done that in a while.
We meet up at the sub shop down the street on our lunch break. By accident, of course. Talk music, the incoming dreariness of the skies. I note I like the clouds and the mugginess, the sound of the rain as it patters down on broken old buildings. He says that’s fine. Opposites attract.
I think of the art fair a few weekends from now, in the old district, and wonder what he’d wear if we walked the stalls in the consistent gloom of autumn that lingers over this damned town. Everything smells of wet earth.
He looks at a self-portrait painstakingly crafted by an art student from the local college. Somehow it ends up in our overpriced, tiny apartment lost amongst hand-me-down furniture of Swedish design and fraying pages of thrift store books and popular plant life neither of us know how to care for. He loves that painting. It’s too bright. Too airy and colorful.
It's only a scenario but it stays with me. When I get home on Thursday nights I ponder that painting from my self-indulgent narrative. I’ve recreated that image so many times, in so many mediums. My apartment is littered with recreations of an image I myself conjured and I am angered by the attractive person that looks back at me from every corner. It is not my face. It is gorgeous. No wonder he cherishes it so. It’s lovely and light.
Meules. He is a nova. That coy look over the shoulder like the sun behind the haystacks before he turns back to his book. Shakespeare. Pretentious. I find it charming. I wonder what would be on our nightstand. What song would play on his alarm in the morning and how many times those long fingers would hit the snooze button. He turns a page. I can almost hear the paper rustling. We’d have cats. He looks like a cat person. A yellow umbrella leaning up against the door, a mattress on the old warped wooden floors and a record player designed to look vintage that was bought on Amazon. Pretentious. I’d like to be pretentious. I’m not attractive enough to be pretentious.
The sunlight clips through the clouds, it hits his face at just the right angle through the hand print covered window of this disgusting public transport. His eyes look like glasses of whiskey. My coffee has gone cold. I daydream too much. My therapist said so. My mother said so. My teachers and employers and exes said so. It’s always colorful in my head, so much so that oftentimes I wonder if I’m colorblind in reality because nothing ever looks quite as lovely as it does when I ruminate. Maybe I am pretentious and just not good at owning it. Caught unaware by the lack of confidence and the self-loathing I have been so invested in since middle school. Am I the very thing that makes me cringe? Perhaps. Aren’t we all the faults we publicly disown at the end of the day?
7:45am.
The smiling, over-sexualized woman in the ad I had been drafting looks up at me with a taunting gaze. The man beside her, dressed in a sharp suit with an expensive watch grins with teeth so white it borderlines on offensive. He has his hand seductively gripping her hip, they have wine flutes in their perfectly manicured fingers. Perfection. Illegitimate and fabricated perfection with accentuated lines. Lies. And yet I find myself jealous of them both.
I am uncomfortable.
Five more minutes and this train of thought will end. Reality sets back in and I will step off the bus, coffee shaking violently in my hand and eyes drifting downward as I race by him to the door. I go left. He heads right. I’ll sit at my desk, its modernized design meant to make us look impressive. Spotless. White. Cubes and straight edges and Photoshopped smiles and firm handshakes to sell that lie that makes the city run. And. And. And.
Always more, always a surplus and never a stopping point to breathe. There is always an ‘and’. I feel lost amongst them.
I’ll go home. Eat leftover Chinese and watch the same sitcom I’ve seen six times in the darkness because I am too anxious to go to the store to buy a lightbulb, and I'll force myself to finish the project I had put off while on the clock, ignoring the angry texts from my boss and lengthy, misspelled emails from my contractual obligations. At some point my mind will drift to him and I’ll feel like a fool for, once again, staying quiet as I have every Thursday for much too long.
Wrong place, wrong time.
Too busy. Too much work. Not enough cash or confidence or career-focused energy. Maybe when I lose weight. Cut my hair. Buy a new jacket. I forgot deodorant. Forgot to brush my teeth. I didn’t sleep well. I drank too much last night. Always an excuse and lingering regret that resets on Friday morning with a false confidence I force into my brain to satiate the hurt I have inflicted upon myself.
I am lonely.
Friday. I always claim I’ll be better on Friday. I’ll smile more. Sit up straight and put my device away. Maybe if someone takes my seat I’ll have no choice. Move to the empty place two rows up. Introduce myself. The bus breaks down and we have to walk in the same direction. Life isn’t that simple.
Friday could bring new issues. I could lose my job and never get on that bus again. The museum could close and he’ll move onto better things. My firm could collapse. He changes shifts. Gets hit by a car. I take an actual vacation. I move. He moves. We both get out of this city and never see each other after today. They could finally fix that broken faucet in my bathroom, discover a body bricked up in the walls and arrest me for a crime I may or may not have committed.
He could be outed by a trusted confidant, whispers flow through the office and a disgruntled security guard’s homophobic slurs could crescendo into assault, leaving him for dead in the back alley on a lunch break. That cataclysmic event with exploding wheels and local news headlines of casualties on a worn down public transport comes much too soon. A blizzard. A quarantine. A riot. The literal apocalypse. Ticker-tape events that scroll on with little fanfare like the relationship my mind conjures up every Thursday morning when I see his face. Wrong place, wrong time.
Hello, Salim. I think I may fancy you. Simply ticker-tape thoughts.
By the end of it, in all realities both fantastical and actual, we are but two strangers who’ve never shared a word, passing like proverbial ships in the night only to never give the notion another thought once 8:00am says hello.
Goodbye, Salim. I hope the waters treat you well.
I want to follow his route. I want to take my little tugboat alongside the waves his glorious charter sails and find that sunrise on the horizon, the one that crests the place he goes to, the one that allows him such joy and honesty in his smile and gaze. I want that. I crash upon the jagged rocks and drown in the dark waters while I watch him vanish over the curve of the earth. Chinese food and sitcoms and isolation and… and… and…
And just like that it’s 7:50am. The bus stops short, sending the passengers shifting forward like a wake up call that reality has returned. Get the hell out.
He puts his book back into his shoulder bag, hand reaching back to grab the headrest for support as he stands. He pays me no mind. He’s in a hurry today. I put my tablet away, a red line absentmindedly struck through their perfect porcelain faces from my stylus shifting against the glass. Who cares. My coffee is disgusting now. It always is. I need to stop getting such big cups but I’m a creature of habit. Tablet in bag. Sunglasses fixed. Backpack slung over a tired left shoulder. Right hand in pocket. Heart racing, coffee shaking. I dart to the door and step out into the chaotic morning air of downtown Louisville on a dreary October morning.
I feel small and realize none of this really matters. My ship has run ashore and I am heavy. Taking on water much quicker than I can scoop it out. They say to drown is a peaceful death and honestly, the suffocation is nice. I understand my folly. The existence of this narrative does not impact the flow of time. My racing to work to satiate the demand for a culture of more is not fulfilling.
The water. That ocean I crave and its sunlight rippled surface is fulfilling. I need change. I need a new city and perspective. A salad and a drama and a new bulb in my lamp and someone to talk to. More ‘ands’. I am selfish and quiet and tiny and my hormonal, near adolescent fascination with the handsome man on the bus makes me chuckle dryly at my own stupidity. My racing heart sounds like war drums against the panic I feel from watching the clouds roll overhead. I don’t move. I stay still for five seconds longer than normal. Maybe I should just go home. No one needs a new watch. The shiny models on my tablet are not my problem. Maybe I’ll go to the park instead. Find my own water. Something small. Like a pond. I can’t handle an ocean just yet. Someday.
I am lost in my thoughts. 7:51am turns to 7:52am. The bus continues rolling ever onward, the hiss of its weight shifting is lost on me this morning. I don’t go left. Neither does he. A coy look over the shoulder. Sunshine over haystacks. A Monet in a world of digital chaos and oversaturated layering on a computer screen and pixels. He’s a breath of fresh air and I feel my cheeks grow warm against the chilly autumn breeze grazing my flesh. He smiles.
“Hi.”
“Hey.”
Wouldn’t that be nice? Maybe tomorrow. Tomorrow is Friday. I’m always better on Fridays.
“This piece is titled "Lost In Thought (On the 7:00am Bus to Downtown Louisville)" and it has been in my "unloved" folder since I wrote it. There was something about it that felt almost pretentious and whiny and, at the time, was incredibly reflective of my own lack of satisfaction and purpose in life. Lost in Thought was the first short story I ever wrote and it was written a year after I lost my job due to COVID, which was also a year into rediscovering my passion for writing stories. At the time I was basically floating listlessly through life after a lot of heavy changes and needed an outlet and a faceless soul to shove my woes onto. I've submitted it to several places and no one wanted to claim it, which felt reminiscent and appropriate considering the nature of the character in the story. It was tragically poetic and lonely. Despite the lack of a home, the story kept finding itself being opened on days when I felt moody. Even though I've grown as a writer and a person since its creation, this pretentious little story means a lot to me.”
Alycia "Al" Davidson (she/they) is a writer who specializes in massive space operas and tiny disturbances. She writes stories about ghosts, grief, isolation, space exploration, eco-horror, the human condition, and queerness. She lives with her cat, Jukebox, in Kansas City. You can find her on Twitter @MayBMockingbird.