Short Story Sunday: Human for a Day

You will meet me eventually. Sometimes we brush against each other when you take a corner on De Waal Drive in your car after a night of wine. Other times I cross your path as a postman, a shop assistant or a pensioner at a traffic light.

Today I am a bus driver. I wear his skin like a gabardine and peek out through his eyes. He is not aware that he is hosting me, except for the shudder I elicit when I join him. This man is heavy and the soles of his shoes are worn on the outside, forcing his knees to knock against each other as he walks. Sadness has rented the space in the suitcases under his eyes, and his hands are calloused from handling the steering wheel on hot days. Where a patch of hair once grew, a salt pan remains. There is one element of his face that redeems his features: a dimple on his left cheek which harbours part of his beard that resists any attempt at being shaved. The badge on his shirt, kept in place with a magnet, says his name is Charles.

Every afternoon, his bus pulls up next to the stop at Dolphin Beach and Simona steps aboard. She works at the hotel during the day and tends the bar at Stones every second night. Charles wants to run his hands through her hair and down her back until he cups her buttocks. He thinks about what this would feel like as he watches her walk to her seat in his rear view mirror. He imagines her taking a bubble bath with oils that leave her skin smelling of lavender. It’s actually furniture polish, but I have no way of telling Charles this.

Simona avoids looking up. Her mind is on her boyfriend Eric and his hemp forest in the bathroom of her flat. She knows she will arrive home to find him passed out in front of the television with beer bottles praying at his feet. It would be in her best interests to throw him out, but he last time she did that he gave her a black eye. He is a habit she finds she cannot break, which parallels his relationship with hemp.

Another passenger Charles sees daily is Ricardo, who plies his trade on the corner outside the Table View library. He’s usually there for the night shift and Charles drops him off before returning to the depot. I know his name isn’t really Ricardo. It’s Dilshaan, but he makes more money pretending to be a Latin lover. He is rarely without his sequinned handbag, a screwdriver and a string of rainbow condoms with extra lubrication. His clients tend to be bored, aggressive and straight. Fortunately, Ricardo has learnt to swallow his self-worth along with half a bottle of vodka. On a good night, he takes home three grand and a bruised body.

My favourite person on the bus is Lusanda. Her skin looks like an olive recently decanted from its preserve. I do not hear her thoughts, except through song lyrics that blast between her ears. They are defiant and smack of the confidence she has yet to cultivate. Unlike the others on the bus, her life will be lived rather passengered. She will pluck the fruit of happiness and take a bite. In fifteen years I will see her world through the eyes of a high court judge. I cannot wait. For now, she will rant her way through high school to the tune of the Top Forty.

I enjoy being under Charles’s skin in some ways. The route he drives is beautiful, but he doesn’t seem to notice. Table Mountain always hogs a corner of his vision and the salt on the wind and gulls swooping and screaming provide additional dimensions to his experience. He has an automatic approach to everything he does, from eating and breathing to stopping at the next point on his journey.

Charles has mastered existing, like so many of you. I wish I knew what made him this way. The truth is that there are so many variables that I cannot pinpoint one. When I meet him again, he will be clutching his chest after standing up too quickly to answer the doorbell. He will knock his soup to the floor and spend twelve minutes and forty-six seconds reaching for the telephone that will not budge from the kitchen counter. He will think about Simona in a diaphanous dress and smell lavender that isn’t there. I will bring his mother with me so that, when he goes, someone can hold his hand when I ask him the same question I will ask you: what did you make of your life?

From my experience so far he, like most of you, will answer: not enough.