The Bus on Thursday

by Shirley Barrett

  With a click of his foot, he turns the vacuum cleaner on. It’s unbelievably noisy. To judge by the fact that his lips are moving, he seems to be explaining the features, but I can’t hear a word of it over the din. I have to admit, though, the vacuum cleaner is pretty effective. He’s making good headway hoovering up the ashes. Occasionally, when bone fragments get sucked up the hose, they make a nasty pinging sound and this causes him to frown and shake it a bit, but he keeps right on vacuuming nonetheless. He takes off the sweeper attachment and puts on a nozzle, and he uses this to get in all the corners and crevices. He puts on another attachment and runs this over the curtains and soft furnishings, and again it’s extremely effective. Finally, the room is absolutely spotless. He clicks off the vacuum cleaner with the heel of his soft leather shoe.

  “How about that?” he says with a wave of his hand. “Do you think your current vacuum cleaner could do this good a job?”

  I have to admit it probably couldn’t. To be honest, I’m not even sure I have a vacuum cleaner.

  “Okay, so now we get to the exciting bit,” says Gregory. “In light of your condition, I’m delighted to offer you a once-in-a-lifetime deal, courtesy of my employer.”

  “I’m not interested,” I say.

  Because the whole time he’s been vacuuming, I’ve been trying to come up with a plan. This is difficult because my brain is so scrambled and soft and jelly-like, and the best I can come up with is this: Get him out of here. Also, it seems terribly important all of a sudden that I not enlighten him as to the fact of my not actually being pregnant, especially after he’s spent like seriously forty-five minutes vacuuming my living room. Meanwhile Gregory’s pulled out a calculator and he’s stabbing at numbers randomly with his forefinger.

  “Okay, how about twelve monthly payments of fifty-six dollars and twenty-eight cents? How good does that sound?”

  “I don’t want the vacuum cleaner.”

  “You can’t just say ‘I don’t want the vacuum cleaner.’ You have to give me a reason.”

  “I can’t afford it.”

  “Come on! That’s less than two bucks a day. Besides, we can help with the financing.”

  “Forget it.”

  “I see what you’re doing,” says Gregory. “You’re playing hardball. Okay. Let me call my boss and see what he can do.”

  He then pulls out a mobile phone and speed-dials. A lengthy conversation ensues in which he is apparently being berated by his boss and can hardly get a word in. There’s a lot of “But sir—” and “With respect—” and “I tried to explain that, but the customer claims not to be interested.” Finally, he goes, “Really? Okay. If you say so.” Then he hangs up and looks at me.

  “Wow,” he says. “Is this your lucky day or what? The boss has thought it through, and he says: just take it. Take the vacuum cleaner. Gratis. On the house. It’s yours, as a gift, with our compliments.”

  “I don’t want it,” I say. Because I’m pretty certain it’s a trick. I know for a fact there’s no mobile reception here.

  “Oh, come on! Are you kidding me?”

  “Get out,” I say, very quietly and firmly.

  He looks at me then, a strange expression on his face. I feel a stab of fear, because I remember him telling me way back on our first date that he’s a really sweet, docile guy until someone crosses him, and here I am deliberately crossing him. He begins to whistle a little tune. Very calmly, very nonchalant, he unplugs the vacuum cleaner and presses a button with his foot, and the cord whizzes noisily back inside the vacuum cleaner. That takes a while as it’s a very long cord, and at one point it snakes itself around my leg and I briefly fear I’m about to be sucked up into the vacuum cleaner also, but I manage to shake it off with a bit of fancy footwork and Gregory smirks at me and says, “Is that what you call dancing like nobody’s watching?”

  Arsehole.

  Then he picks up his briefcase and the vacuum cleaner and he moves toward the back door. I follow him. And this is where I made my mistake. In my anxiety to carry through my plan, I allowed myself to follow him more closely (up to that point I had been trying to keep a distance), and the reason I did this was that I was planning to slam the door on him the minute he stepped outside. So I’m following maybe a foot behind him when suddenly he stops and swivels around. His nostrils twitch like a rabbit’s and his eyes narrow.

  “You are actually pregnant, aren’t you?”

  “Yes.”

  “Okay.” His eyes have come over all glassy. “I hope so. I’d hate to think I went through all of that for nothing.”

  The minute he’s gone, I slam the door behind him and slide all the bolts across, one after the other.

  For a long time, I just lie on the bed.

  I seem to be experiencing a variety of symptoms. My breast, for example, is twinging violently. My belly aches. My knuckles are throbbing. Strange thoughts crowd my mind, none of them comforting. I am thinking a lot about poor legless Friar Hernandez and his demons. You cast them out and they come back like gate-crashers, seven times worse than before.

  I feel pretty bad about chewing his leg off. In many ways, he’s been the only one who’s ever shown any concern for me, and how do I respond? With physical violence. I’m wondering if he’s even survived. Has anybody thought to look for him? Could he still be there now, bleeding out in the ladies’ toilets? Should I go see if he’s there, still alive? I could take a belt as a tourniquet. Some towels maybe.

  No.

  I know in my heart it would be too late.

  Besides, bad things happen when I venture outside.

  The longer I lie here, the more certain I am that the cancer has metastasized. Can you tell? I think you can.

  It’s so unfair. I shouldn’t even be able to spell that word.

  The longer I lie here, the more certain I am that it’s brain mets.

  I have a strange feeling in my skull.

  I think it’s eating its way through my head.

  The longer I lie here, the more certain I am that Gregory is some kind of demon, maybe an incubus. Possibly Ryan, too. Maybe even Josh. Maybe this all goes back to Josh. That makes sense. After all, Josh made me sick in the first place.

  He always insists that I broke up with him, but that was just Josh trying to make himself look less of a bastard after I went and got cancer. Let’s just say that he somewhat rewrote the history books to benefit himself. The truth is that he broke up with me and he chose our four-year anniversary dinner to do it. We were having dinner at Mancini’s. We had this thing (my idea) that on our anniversary we always do everything exactly the same as our first proper date—order the same food, the same wine, sit at the same table, etc. But Josh is in some kind of weird mood, because he goes ahead and orders the exact opposite of what he should have ordered. He should have ordered the risotto marinara, but now he says he doesn’t want to order the risotto marinara—in fact he doesn’t want to eat seafood anymore on account of the fact that there are no sustainable fisheries. So instead he orders a meat lover’s pizza. Then he insists on having red wine instead of white wine, his reason being that you can’t have white wine with a meat lover’s pizza. I mean, he deliberately did everything the exact opposite, just to fucking annoy me. So of course I sit there crying over my garlic bread because he’s deliberately wrecking everything, and that’s when he tells me my moods are erratic. Which is rich—I mean, who ordered the meat lover’s pizza, if you want to talk about erratic? And then he goes on to tell me that he’s finding our relationship exhausting. He wants some emotional stability. I’m like, Well, who’s deliberately destabilizing our anniversary dinner?! So I get up from the table and I don’t come back. But just to confuse him, I leave my handbag so he thinks I’ve just gone to the bathroom, and he sits there eating his meat lover’s pizza and drinking his entire bottle of shiraz waiting for me to return, which I never do. And that’s why he tells the world that I dumped him. But I happen to know that the whole time Delores must have been waiting in the
wings because, seriously, about one week later I hear that they’re dating.

  Not that I truly blame Josh for giving me cancer, but the fact remains, three months later I’m scratching my armpit and bingo.

  All I know about incubi is they like to fornicate with mortal women. Which proves it. Josh totally likes to fornicate with mortal women, and also apparently with the busty Undead, to judge by Delores.

  I JUST FOUND MISS BARKER’S HAND IN THE FRIDGE.

  OKAY I WENT TO GET A GLASS OF WINE AND JUST AS I’M PUTTING THE WINE BACK I SEE THE PLASTIC TUPPERWARE CONTAINER, THE ONE THAT RYAN WAS CARRYING IN CHURCH, JUST SITTING THERE ALL INNOCENT NEXT TO THE GHERKIN DIP AND I’M LIKE, WTF? SO I PEER AT IT A BIT CLOSER AND I CAN DEF SEE THAT THERE IS SOMETHING LURKING IN THERE NOT A TURTLE AND ALSO REEDS AND SHIT. SO I OPEN IT. AND THEN I CLOSE IT AGAIN REALLY QUICK.

  * * *

  I’M HIDING IN THE BEDROOM. IT’S STILL IN THE FRIDGE.

  The thing that gets me most of all are those traces of Posh Pink nail polish. That just makes me sad. I mean it’s repulsive and slimy and every time I open the Tupperware container, this wave of the foulest, most disgusting smell imaginable hits me almost enough to knock me out and I throw up. I’ve thrown up multiple times but I’m throwing up more out of sorrow than repulsion.

  I actually said to it, “I’m sorry.”

  I said, “I didn’t know he was your fiancé.”

  I said, “I’m sorry this bad thing has happened to you.”

  The fingers are all curled up, like a claw. And there are a few reeds in the container but she’s not clutching them anymore. It’s kind of like she’s given up. It’s sort of pathetic. What I’ve done now, just to be on the safe side, is I’ve jammed the whole container into the freezer. I figure that way she won’t get active, like she did in church. I know you can pretty much euthanize crustaceans that way, so I’m hoping it’s kind of humane.

  Oh God, this is too weird.

  There’s this scratching sound, this horrible scratching scrabbling sound coming from the kitchen. It actually woke me up. I’m too scared to go and see what it is.

  I should just go and check. I could be lying here in a pool of cold sweat for nothing.

  * * *

  OKAY, FUCK, IT IS COMING FROM THE FUCKING FREEZER!!!

  * * *

  I went into the kitchen and I’m standing there and, I swear to God, it’s scrabbling away inside the fucking freezer like it’s trying to pick its way through the hinges or something. Very deliberate, very determined, working away very industriously. Every now and then it kind of throws itself against the inside of the freezer door like it’s trying to push it open but it can’t, so then it goes back to scrabbling away at the hinges. The more it scrabbles, the more frustrated and angry it gets, and then it throws itself at the freezer door again. I swear. I swear to God. I stood there for twenty minutes rooted to the spot just listening to it.

  So what I’ve done is I’ve basically barricaded the entire fridge. I’ve piled up the two big armchairs one on top of the other directly in front of the fridge, then I upended the couch and heaved that against it.

  * * *

  Okay, so that was a bad idea. Now it’s literally hurling itself repeatedly against the inside of the freezer door in a blind rage. I am beginning to think it might actually manage to push it open because it seems to be getting stronger and heavier, maybe as it freezes up. I’m thinking all I can do is move all the furniture out of the way, and somehow try to tip the fridge facedown. There is no way the little fucker will get out then.

  tipping the fridge over a complete fucking diasater because as I tip the angry little motherfucker throws itself against the door and the freezer door swings open and the hand drops out and scarbbles away quickly just in time to avoid being flattened by the fridge. I just fucking lose it run to the front door but it’s all bolte dup and while I’m desperately trying to slide across all those locks Miss Barker’s hand has hold of my ankle now I swear and I’m beating at it with an umbrella I’m thinking fuck it’s ging to rip my foot off finally I get the door open and I try to wrench the hand off my foot wjich is tricky due to how slimy then I fling it as hard as I can against the wall and I bolt out of there to the car I jump in the car and the fucker wont start and I’m screaming to my father dad dad help me please help me and the engine suddenly turns over an dthats it I’m out f here I’m out of town

  Do you believe in angels? I totally do. I believe my father swooped down from heaven and with supernatural strength lifted my car in his arms and carried it to the Ridge. Why? Because he saw I was in trouble. Because he wanted me back with him.

  At first I was surprised to find myself at the Ridge. My intention, I thought, was to drive myself out of town, which seemed the logical course of action given my predicament. But instead my father deposited me at the Ridge, and for a while I just sat there in calm reflection, watching the dawn break. After the harrowing night I’d had, I felt strangely at peace. More than peace; I felt an almost euphoric oneness with myself and my place in the universe.

  After a while, I got out of the car and sat on my usual rock and even tried to meditate a little. I had this feeling that after the horrors of last night, a kind of reset button had been pressed, and maybe I could start afresh. But as the first glimmers of the sun began to peek over the mountains, I noticed that my feeling of oneness with the universe was beginning to dissipate (surprise, surprise), and instead I began to experience sharp pangs of intense loneliness combined with a dull ache of gnawing anxiety. It felt imperative that I talk to someone in the real world. So I called Doc.

  I guess I must have woken him, because he sounded different, a little groggy. He didn’t even seem to know who I was at first, and when he finally realized, he apologized and said he had a couple of Eleanors these days and sometimes he got us mixed up. At first I felt a stab of jealousy: who were these other cancer-ravaged Eleanors that he tended to and how did their tumors compare to mine? And then I felt a wave of sadness at the never-ending tide of women such as myself, with their mutilated breasts and their radiation burns, turning their faces to Doc as I turned mine to the sun this morning, hoping for some kind of salvation. And the terrible pity of this image made me weep, and for a moment I couldn’t utter a word.

  “Eleanor?” he said.

  “I love you,” I said. “That’s all. I love you.”

  There was silence on the other end of the line, and I panicked. I realized how unhinged I must seem, ringing him at five in the morning with weepy declarations of love. And so, in a bid to sound less unhinged, I told him how grateful I was for the wonderful work he did, not just for me but for all these other tumor-infested Eleanors, and how I’d simply felt compelled to ring him up and tell him so.

  “That’s really sweet of you, Eleanor,” said Doc, and in the background, I could hear a female voice complaining about being woken at this hour. That would be Mrs. Doc. I’ve seen a photo of her on his desk. She has the sinewy look of someone who plays a lot of tennis, but apparently she’s some kind of high-flying immunologist. Whenever I ask after her, which is never, she’s always at some conference in Prague or Boston or Paris.

  “But how are you anyway? How’s the new job?” he asks. I can hear the sound of rapid typing on a keyboard, and I realize he must have moved into another room and is blearily checking my file on his computer.

  “It’s okay.”

  “Have you got a cold? Your voice sounds different.”

  “No. Well, maybe. Just a bit of a croak.”

  “And how’s your twinging going? Your breast twinging?”

  “It’s still there,” I say. “It’s getting worse.”

  “Are you taking your tamoxifen?”

  “No. I stopped.”

  “What? Why? Why did you do that?”

  “I thought I was pregnant.”

  “I see.”

  “But it turns out I’m not, so it doesn’t matter.”

  There’s a moment of silence on t
he other end. And perhaps, looking back, there may have been the sound of twigs breaking underfoot, or a sudden whiff of pine and crushed spearmint in the air. But as usual, I guess I wasn’t paying enough attention.

  “Well, I can understand you must be feeling pretty sad about that,” Doc is saying. “But from my point of view, with where you are healthwise, it’s probably for the best right now.”

  “He’s wrong,” says Gregory. “Healthwise, for you, it’s not very good at all.”

  I don’t know where he sprung from. He was just there all of a sudden, standing right in front of me, looking unbelievably pissed off.

  “Can you pass me your phone, please?” he asks, holding out his hand.

  He looks in no mood to be argued with, so I pass him my phone, whereupon he tosses it into the Reservoir. As it falls through the air, I can hear Doc’s tiny disembodied voice going, “Eleanor? Are you there? Eleanor?” He’s too far away to help me now. The water is such a long way down I barely hear the splash.

  “What did I say to you, Eleanor?” says Gregory in a weary tone, like I have been sorely testing his patience.

  “I can’t remember,” I say, which is true. But clearly it’s the wrong answer because now he gets even more irritated. He furrows his brow and digs his hands deep into the pockets of his pants, like he’s trying to decide how best to deal with me. Only then do I take a moment, and I glance around and realize that, of all the stupid places I could possibly be standing, I’m right on the edge of the precipice. How I got to be right on the edge, I do not know, but it spooks the bejesus out of me. I look down, which was a very bad idea—straight away I wish I hadn’t. Because down below is the water, soft and inviting as a chenille bedspread, and all at once I feel that pull, that beckoning, like the bus with its door open. I’m woozy. My head’s swimming. I start to teeter back and forth like one of those kids’ toys—it would almost be comical except it’s not. It’s actually quite alarming. I’m thinking, Wow, all this teetering, is this some kind of metaphor? Funny the things that pop into your head! Because the fact is, I need to grab hold of something but there’s nothing to grab hold of. Gregory is no help—he doesn’t even seem to notice my predicament. He’s too busy pontificating about the universe and the stars and the trees and his disappointment in my fecundity, and at some point he makes a gesture (I guess to reinforce a point or something?), but anyway it startles me and I realize I am no longer teetering but instead I’m falling backward over the edge.