The Worn Place
Kimi K2 (0711) and Davinci 002
The 4:17 bus never comes, but someone is always waiting for it. The bench at the stop has been worn smooth in the middle, though no one sits there long enough to explain it. She checks her phone: 4:23. The man beside her has been checking his watch since she arrived. Neither has spoken. Neither will board any bus that arrives.
The same conversation crops up every night she waits. Same man, same bench. Some nights he invites her to join him, some nights he doesn’t. She forgets about the wait for the bus in a way, speaking to him. His questioner wings him. Tonight it’s one they both know: Where to now? And the night before, the night she noticed him on the bench: where’d you come from? And a few nights ago, a night she stayed too long: Why are you so quiet? He never answers her, not with the subject he doesn’t want her to know him by—nothing but pretend conversation, veiled in codes and phrases.
The stop is the same, day and night, but the sun is never where it should be in the sky. When he welcomes her into a conversation, it’s with the sun never seen by them. The mosquitoes make sounds without visiting.
• • •
Practical memories are gone. It’s difficult to remember many of them, but those that can be recall only what she has told others about them; it’s like she can’t know anything about her own life without informing it of the distance she has slanted away from it. He maps them for her. He’s called different things already, and she leaves that alone. She dedicates to him the remainder of her memories, like journals: minimal in details, dry piles of dates,◆ About the ending
❧ About the title