At the Bus Stop

Nancy dragged the toe of her right sneaker in the loose gravel on the edge of the curb to hear the scraping sound it would make. It was hotter out than it should have been. And the bus was always late.

She lost her job today.

Her foot made a trail in the dirt. She stomped her left foot and erased the trail again with her right. Drag, stomp, drag. She shuffled a bit and made a new line with her left foot. Drag, stomp, drag, shuffle, drag, stomp, drag. Repeat.

Her boss had been such a funny looking man. He had thick glasses that made it hard to tell where his eyes were looking. Hard, but not impossible. She called him Mr. Holland no matter how many times he said she should call him Steve.

She added a tap of her toe to the curb to her rhythm. Drag, stomp, drag, tap, shuffle. She picked up speed. She hopped on the curb and off again. Drag, stomp, drag, tap, shuffle, hop. Without thinking about it, she clapped her hands on the stomps and spun as she hopped off the curb. She swung on the pole of a stop sign and froze where she landed.

“Mr. Holland was my father’s name, and he was an asshole anyway. Call me Steve. There’s no reason we can’t be friends.”

He lowered his voice when he said the word “asshole,” like it was a secret, like the ghost of the old man might hear them. His buggy eyes looked her up and down. They could have secrets together, those buggy eyes told her. His greasy hair was parted down the middle and he wore polo shirts tucked into his slacks.  

A street sweeper drove past, whirring and swishing and squeaking. Nancy stopped dragging and started kicking. Her green pleated thrift store skirt whirled around her legs. It was a long skirt, made of wool that was too thick for this heat. She hadn’t shaved her legs in a while. She’d been in such a hurry, and nobody was meant to see her legs today. She clapped and kicked and spun and shuffled.

They called it a garden level office, but that just meant it was in a basement. Quiet and dark and musty and too hot. Buzzing fluorescent lights. Smells of bleach and burnt coffee. A tiny restroom in the back with the cardboard and a door that didn’t lock so she sometimes held it shut with her foot when she was on the toilet. Mr. Holland kept a can of lemon scented room spray in a basket over the sink. It was just the two of them most of the time. When someone came down the steps an electronic chime that gurgled and wheezed like it was on its last legs went off. It never happened as often as Nancy would have liked.

The sweeper turned the corner and it was quiet for a moment. Nancy stood with her right leg forward. She wore no stocking on that stubbly leg that nobody was supposed to see today. It peeked out from the wool skirt and Nancy dropped her head and her arms, hinging at the waist. Her feet were still in a rigid pose and the top of her body swung down to the ground like a rag doll. She could see the sidewalk between her feet. Little pink sneakers attached to little dark legs came closer and stood still.

Mr. Holland couldn’t have known what was on her mind that day. He couldn’t have known about the late rent. Or Nancy’s brother going back to the hospital the night before. He couldn’t have known about her lack of sleep or her cramps or all the shit with her mom.

Mr. Holland certainly hadn’t known about the other Steve, the one that had not been short and buggy-eyed and creepy looking, but who had been beautiful and charming and a perfect gentleman until they were alone. He couldn’t have known about the miscarriage, and the sweat, and the shame, and the relief, and the pain, and all that mess.

But anyway, it didn’t matter what Mr. Holland knew or didn’t know. Ignorance was no excuse.

Nancy turned and her skirt turned with her and her rag doll body rose up and her arms flew up in a gesture to the sun and she looked at them like they surprised her and her feet shuffled faster and the dirt and gravel flew around her and she was faced with the little girl, the pretty little girl with the snotty nose and her long eyelashes and the dirty stuffed unicorn under her arm.  

Nancy kept a noisy little fan on her desk when the office got too hot. It creaked when it swiveled. She had unbuttoned her blouse just a little and leaned back in her chair. And when Mr. Holland came across the partition when her eyes were closed, her mouth was open, her most threadbare bra was showing, and a line of sweat rolled down her pale throat to disappear in between her breasts, which rose and fell as the fan moved side to side. His footsteps were always so quiet.

Her face was dancing now, too. She only meant to smile at the little girl, but she did more. She winked, she grimaced, she laughed, she pretended to cry. Spin. Hop. Stomp. Spin. Kick, shuffle, kick, spin, hop. Grin from ear to ear. Do a peek-a-boo thing with your hands. Nancy wasn’t in control of it anymore. The girl’s mother was arguing with her phone. She waved the girl over, get away from the crazy lady. But the girl stared at Nancy and Nancy struck a pose. Arms in the air, right knee bent, left leg stretched forward. Warrior. Eyes rolling, showing teeth. A statue. The little girl held her unicorn above her and mirrored Nancy. The mother didn’t care. The argument on the phone was too important.

Yes, she knew she’d been late a lot. Yes, she agreed that it would look bad if someone came in and saw her sleeping at her desk. Yes, she appreciated how many chances Mr. Holland had given her. Sloppy reports, a lost check, an embarrassing phone call, angry anonymous customers on the phone, and another one-star review on a website Nancy couldn’t believe that anyone actually visited. And dress code violations. And yes, Nancy understood that he was a male supervisor and she was a female supervisee, and that put him in a difficult position.

She was sympathetic. He didn’t know how to talk to her about her sweat-stained bra, which was still showing. And he just wanted her to call him Steve. And for them to be friends. There was nothing he wouldn’t do for his friends.   

Nancy straightened her body and dropped her arms. The little girl who was mirroring her did the same. Together, they dragged their feet. And stomped. And tapped. And spun. Together. Nancy and the little girl. The little girl and Nancy. They twirled and spun together.

And Mr. Holland put her hand on her knee. Through the green pleated skirt, she felt his stubby-fingered hand.

She remembered when she shook that hand, when they first met. It was strangely coarse. She had wondered then if it was scarred and warty. She wanted an up close and personal look at his palms then, to see why they felt so rough. She had forgotten. She only ever saw the backs of his hands. Squatty, spotty, with black hair on his weird knuckles and a sweat moustache above his thin lips.

Nancy jumped on the bench at the bus stop and off again, and the girl danced with her. The mother stopped arguing.

“Tiffany,” she cried out loud, “how do you know this dance? How do you know this woman? I’ve got to call you back, your daughter has lost her damn mind. Tiffany, come back here!”

And a man with a pickup truck opened the door and closed it with a slam and his keys jingled when he unlocked the newspaper stand and the papers went swish and thump and slam and swish and thump and jingle jingle jingle slam thump swish and soon the mother was lost in the dance, too.

All Mr. Holland did was put his hand on her knee. And yes, she agreed that it was an overreaction and yes, she agreed that maybe she was a psycho and no, she didn’t think they could be friends now that she had bloodied him and broken his glasses with a desk fan, and yes, he was right, she was probably just a bitch after all and no she didn’t expect she’d get another job working for that company ever again and goodbye to Mr. Holland and that office and that warty old hand and goodbye to Steves and Stevens everywhere and he could keep her last paycheck and her cell phone charger and the calendar with the cats she hadn’t wanted from him in the first place.

Nancy and Tiffany and Tiffany’s mother and the man who jingled the keys to the newspaper boxes danced until the bus arrived.

When it stopped, people got off. Some joined in the dancing. Some watched. Nobody got on the bus. Nobody asked why they started dancing. Nobody could explain how they all knew the moves. In a line, they shuffled and stomped and kicked and spun and twirled and froze and posed and sprang to life together. As one body.

Nancy didn’t know how she would pay her brother’s hospital bills. She didn’t know where rent would come from. She didn’t care. She didn’t care who saw her ratty old bra with her shirt all the way unbuttoned now when she danced down the street.

By the time the dancers passed through the farmers market, they were joined by street performers with musical instruments. There was a trumpet and a guitar and bona fide little drummer boy. And more dancers. Men and women and hands and knees and sweat and blood whipping back and forth and growing in strength until it became one flow, pulsing together, spilling on the street together, dragging in the dirt, together.

It went on for days. It couldn’t be explained. By the time Nancy collapsed, so many others were already being carted off, still kicking their legs and waving their arms and begging to be helped. She wasn’t the first to fall, and she wouldn’t be the last.

When she woke up in a bed that she couldn’t pay for after her insurance was denied, the dance was still going. Four hundred people were already in that hospital with their tapping feet tied to the rails of beds and chairs with torn up bed sheets and old rags, and tranquilizers coursing through their shimmying bodies.

The city had been quarantined. Maybe it was in the water supply. Maybe it was mass hysteria. Maybe it was the end times. It didn’t matter.

An older lady with a shaved head and a tube in her nose kicked her feet in the next bed and smiled at Nancy with tears streaming down her face. It was okay, anyway. Maybe the world should end with dancing. At least now we’re all friends, the old woman said. At least this way we all lose together.

And Nancy nodded her head to the beat of somebody’s heart monitor and kept nodding along even after it stopped.

She wondered about her brother and her mother and Mr. Holland’s broken nose and the Steve who had seemed like such a gentleman. And she hoped the little girl with the stuffed unicorn was okay because she had lost her in the crowd. And she knew that this bill would be mailed to an apartment that would be boarded up with the locks changed before the letter got there, and she knew that it didn’t matter, and that nothing mattered.

Her hospital gown fell to the ground and the staff were too overwhelmed to bother when the lady wearing nothing but plastic hospital identification bracelets and a grin on her exhausted face fell back into the crowd outside, fell back into dancing, fell back into the beat that took her body and mind and washed it out once more into the street with a drag and a swish and a stomp and a twirl and a kick again and again, all the way into darkness. All the way home.