You Were Just on Time

To gawk, to ogle, to stare; there is more to looking than meets the eye, hence our nuanced language which allows for distinctions. Now, he wasn’t merely looking at me, but leering. He licked me up and down like an ice lolly, and every time I glanced up from my novel, or from the window and the rolling hills, those cloudy eyes were on me, something was rumbling, and lightning was bound to strike.

I’d later come to find that his name was Jose Luis and that his grip was uncomfortably warm.

Jose Luis looked to be in his late fifties, twice my age, and wore a beetroot purple tie smothered by his rooster wattles chin. His pudgy fingers caressed a paperback, his belly devoured the table between us—pink skin peering out from between struggling buttons like a timid child from a doorway—and his watery, bulbous eyes were like great big puddles.

And when he dozed off, head back, nostrils black and cavernous like the soulless eyes of a deep-sea creature, I could still feel him watching me. I don’t know how many times he undressed me or where he put his hands, his lips… but, as he awoke, I could sense in his sticky gaze—which shot out, a toad’s tongue, and swallowed me like a fly—that he had me internalised.

His fantasy played out on the wide white screens above his drooping cheeks, and I turned away, sickened, as though from a horror film. But it was hard to read my book when I could feel it happening, feel my dress straps removed, one by one, feel his fingers, his breath, his tongue – and whenever I glanced his way, his leer confirmed it.

I’d caught this bus a few times with Alex, and we’d sat right here, but never could I have foreseen his absence, never could I have foreseen this stifling stare. The grandma and grandson across from us were replaced by a toad in a suit, and I was all alone in this slimy simulacrum, our dear memory painted green, algae on wood. But I’ll never know what happened that day because I wasn’t alone for long.

Jose Luis introduced himself—encantado, se nota que eres una chica especial (vomit!)—and asked what I was reading.

The bus bumped along, an orange ray of sun dividing the table between us like some divine barrier.

“Murakami,” I said. “And you?”

He turned the paperback over in his hands. “It’s about quantum mechanics.”

“Anything about quantising gravity?”

He raised his brow, and together we fell down the rabbit hole. Admittedly, I was thrilled. For the first time in a long time, I was having a conversation that intrigued, until –

“Spacetime doesn’t really exist,” he said, his fingers trespassing on my side of the sunray, his hand like an inflated medical glove.

But that’s not what I heard. His expression hinted at a tacit understanding that, by extrapolation, there wasn’t anything separating us, not age nor the table, let alone my little ray of sun.

It sliced his hand in two, a golden wound, and I could imagine his fingers writhing about and falling into my lap like maggots. In fact, I could feel them as they slid between my thighs, and I gasped—he winked knowingly—as something entered me like a throbbing bolt of lightning. He was inside me, somehow, and I retched as the colours blinked, lights flickered, reality bent.

But I’ll never know what happened that day, and what happened next was too vivid to have been a dream. It was a memory, only it wasn’t.

There was a cosy silence, nestled by the steady hum of the engine. Outside, the sun set—blue, purple, black—and yellow village lights winked in the distance. We sat in the darkness, puddles of white light throughout the bus, Alex with an arm around his knee, looking out the window, looking at me.

The child across from us tucked his drawings away, his colouring pencils, and hugged his grandma with a violent affection.

“They’re just as cheesy as us,” whispered Alex, handing me an earphone.

Thirty-six questions, one stood out.

If you were to die this evening, what would you most regret not having told someone?

That I was falling in love with him; I would regret not having told him that I was falling in love with him. I could feel a tug in my heart, a slight pang, but we wouldn’t die tonight.

We wouldn’t die tonight, and he wasn’t ready to hear how I felt. Sure, the question had transported me elsewhere, but he could still very well be in the present, could still very well hear the murmuring of voices, feel the chair knot up his back, smell the offensive body odour of an unidentified passenger, the dirty stench of reality very much alive, assaulting his senses.

Instead, I slid my hand into his, leant my head on his shoulder and closed my eyes as we bumped along in that warm stillness.

When I came to, I was back in that grotesque and swampy simulacrum, under the sticky gaze of Jose Luis. I blinked away sleep? dreams? an alternate reality? but I could still hear a murmuring of voices, smell the stranger’s body odour, and feel Alex’s hand in mine. I opened and closed my fist, and the sun twinkled in my palm.

I could feel Jose Luis willing me to look. I glanced up and found I was still under surveillance, naked, seen, no privacy. I was a mannequin in a store window, and he looked to his heart’s content but still wanted more; he wanted my eyes, he wanted my soul. I stared out the window, aware that he was observing me, and it was degrading, as though I were a prisoner resigned to use the toilet in front of a guard. At least the sun was setting—blue, purple, black—and yellow village lights twinkled on the horizon. I very well could have been elsewhere if it weren’t for that suffocating stare; half of me still was.

I was in the bathroom, vomiting up coffee and instant noodles, as the bus pulled into Murcia. I don’t know how or why, but he’d been inside me, and my body was expelling him like poison. The lights switched on as I found my seat, and I pulled my carry-on from the overhead compartment.

…for passengers continuing onto Lorca… there was a toilet break.

Jose Luis unbuckled his seatbelt and rose, blocking my exit. “I would just love to cut my journey short,” he said with a wink, pulling on his fedora.

My skin crawled but I smiled uncomfortably—I was always taught to be polite—and opted for the back door.

Under the sterile white lights of the bus bay, I could finally breathe, and the air would surely disinfect me, cleanse my lungs of that polluted stare. I’d be hocking up phlegm for days.

As the driver opened the luggage compartment, Jose Luis alighted the bus and paused, scanning the small crowd. His eyes settled on me, and he shuffled over. He’d said he was going to Lorca, so he had no business here. He planted himself beside me, awkward and ominous, a looming tombstone, and as he opened his mouth to speak, a warm hand found my shoulder.

I’ll never know what happened that day but there he was, Alex in a green sweater I’d never seen, a new haircut, new glasses, and I gawked at him an instant, as though he might vanish again, as though blinking might erase him like an Etch a Sketch.

To study, to glower, to glare; there is more to looking than meets the eye. Jose Luis wasn’t merely looking at Alex. His penetrating stare, like sunlight through a magnifying glass, burned through him, willing him to melt and dissipate from this temporal and spatial plane.

But Alex persisted, pulling our bags from the bus.

“I thought I was late,” he said.

“You were just on time.”

But I’ll never know what happened that day. Alex walked me to the corner of my street, like old times, and then he was gone just like that, but his cologne still lingered, his fingers still warm in my empty hand.