A Vast Present
Two men in black T-shirts and black boots boarded the bus. One stretched out on a seat and closed his eyes. The other sat facing the first one.
“I love fucking fat women!” the second one said. “What a line! And what a fantastic, big arse she had as well!”
The stretched-out man leant his head on his seat’s backrest and closed his eyes.
The long-haired talker continued: “I bet you couldn’t get your face out of those tits of hers as well? They were flesh footballs!”
A mother and daughter were staring out a window. Old things new in a skeletal-bough world of returning buds coloured the world.
An Englishman was on a back seat. The sneering talker said: “Look at that guiri. That bone-white skin isn’t natural. It’s like a disease.”
The stretched-out man folded his arms and smiled weakly.
“Look at those freckles on that white pastiness,” the talker said. “That’s disgusting.”
Thorny, spiky cactus arms, like tentacles with sharp points, rose from the cactus’s crown-like base that was studded into a green bank, like a tumour. Speckled daisies in winter green, like emblems of bright possibilities, surrounded the plant.
“He’s a crab,” the talker grinned.
The sleepy man didn’t look. No one wanted to look at anyone else except the talker. The talker loved looking at other people.
“He’s oblivious,” the talker smiled. “He doesn’t understand anything!”
Easily thrilled, the Englishman thought, by anything except real opportunities.
“How can anyone have hair that colour?” the talker grimaced. “That’s not natural. What a pasty-faced guiri git; and he’s oblivious!”
The bus whined away from traffic lights. An ambulance’s siren wailed. A motorcycle’s roar rose then disappeared.
“He doesn’t understand anything,” the smiling talker repeated.
Frustrated drivers were blowing horns. The talker’s excited smile didn’t elicit any enthusiasm from the sleepy man who shut his eyes.
“That hair,” the talker said, “looks like fairy floss.”
The sleepy man didn’t respond. The talker screwed his face up, disgusted.
The bus stopped beside some road workers who were up to their necks in a hole. A pile driver started making a din. The road workers put on headphones.
“He’s oblivious!” the talker said.
A man was pushing a trolley down a footpath. A woman was selecting fruit from a fruit-and-vegetable shop, her baby in a pram beside her.
The mother and daughter left the bus and went into a post office. A waiter was taking an order in an outdoor café. People were minding their own business. They had business to mind.
“He looks like a snowflake,” the grinning talker continued, “sprayed with shit.”
The talker’s frog mouth resembled parallel rubber rings. The sleepy man didn’t respond.
The Englishman stared out the window, happy that the talker thought that he couldn’t understand Spanish.
“He’s oblivious,” the talker repeated.
An amazed smile split the rubber rings apart.
He acts, the Englishman thought, as if his desired future has already arrived. But his truth is the present – and he has no idea that that’s true.
The two men got off. The talker waved at the Englishman who looked away. The grinning talker’s waving arm described an arm’s-length circle.
“He’s oblivious,” the talker repeated, smiling.
The talker’s futureless present was so vast that every tiny thing in it was enormous.
*Kim Farleigh has worked for aid agencies in three conflicts: Iraq, Palestine and Kosovo. He takes risks to get the experience required for writing. His stories have been accepted by 41 different magazines.