Damien Fry remembered nothing before the bus. He stepped to the wet curb as it approached.
The doors folded back, spilling green fluorescent light across the sidewalk. He shaded his eyes and climbed the steps.
Passengers dotted the low vinyl seats, faces bleached by the same light.
He dropped his coin into the box. The driver nodded, animated by the sound.
He took a seat near a window and placed his grey fedora beside him as the bus rattled forward.
Passengers filed on and off, silent but for the hiss of the doors and groan of the engine. Damien flipped up the collar of his overcoat, closed it around his neck, and settled into his seat.
Outside, houses passed in the twilight, each one lit with tiny stars, red, green, yellow, swaying on invisible strings, twitching behind drops of water that meandered down the outside of the glass.
Branches scraped along the length of the roof as they passed in the driving rain, and the driver swerved to dodge a fallen tree. Something yellow flashed across the headlights, making the driver slam the brakes. The passengers lurched in their seats.
In a flurry of leaves and rain, a tall young woman boarded the bus.
She wore a yellow slicker and hood, and carried a large shopping bag, which she rummaged through.
The other passengers watched.
"I know I've got it somewhere in here," she said, pausing to wipe a strand of red hair from her face. She scanned the passengers’ faces and gave a slight smile before returning to her bag.
When she found the coin, she held it where the others could see, but froze mid-gesture, and locked eyes with Damien.
“Well, here we are,” she said.
Damien had the sick feeling she was talking only to him.
She dropped the coin back into her bag.
Damien noted the driver’s eyes in the mirror registered no reaction to the unpaid fare. The bus lunged forward, and the young woman rode its motion down the aisle.
Damien shifted in his seat, squaring his hat beside him. He turned again to the window and watched her reflection in the glass.
Then she was there.
“Mind if I sit here?” she said.
Damien glanced at his hat, meaning to object, but had to snatch it away just before she crushed it.
She settled into the seat and sighed.
Damien looked forward. So many empty seats.
She dug again through her bag. “I don’t know how I ever find anything in here at all,” she said, then leaned back in her seat. “You got any gum?”
Damien shook his head, but she hadn’t waited for an answer. She had already found a pack and wrestled several pieces into her mouth.
“You want some?” she said, holding the pack too close to his face.
He shifted back in his seat. “No,” he said. Then after a pause added, “Thank you.”
For some time, the silence was broken only by the young woman chewing her gum.
“Aren’t all those stars just beautiful?” she finally said.
Outside the window, the storm had gone, replaced by a canopy of stars. Damien blinked.
He scanned the rest of the bus.
The driver’s radio was louder. Damien hadn’t noticed it playing. It was an old holiday song, one he thought he hadn’t heard before.
The young woman was watching him. She offered her hand. “I’m Meg.”
He shifted his hat to his other hand and returned the gesture. “Damien. Damien Fry,” he said.
“Pleased to meet you, Damien. Damien Fry. You live around here?”
“No,” he said, though he wasn’t certain.
Meg’s face brightened. “Oh? So you’re visiting.”
He turned back to the window. Nothing about the passing streets seemed familiar.
“What brings you here?” she said, in a way that made Damien wonder if she already knew the answer.
He faced her, but couldn’t find the words. He didn’t know the answer himself.
She put her hand over his. “Well, I hope we cross paths again while you’re here.”
Damien looked at her hand on his. He didn’t feel the need to pull his hand away.
“Well, I’d better not dilly-dally,” she added, patting his hand and breaking the mood. “That’s my stop ahead.”
The bus ground to a stop, and Meg rose to her feet.
“Goodbye, Damien Fry,” she said.
Damien watched Meg move back up the aisle, then depart, and the rhythm of the bus returned. Others filed on and off until Damien reached his own stop.
He stepped to the wet curb.
He scanned the square, empty but for the stray light reflecting against the wet red-brick pavement. A dozen storefronts, some boarded up but others gaping empty. Nothing stirred but the wind in this place that once brimmed with the excited voices of children and the dizzying lights of a carousel.
He had watched the children on the painted wooden horses there, trying to pretend he was not afraid. His grandfather’s grip on his hand was too tight. He wished his grandfather would tell him he didn’t have to ride, that his grandfather would know how even watching the wild wooden horses could be terrifying.
Soon the line carried them to the front, and his grandfather was lifting him to one of the horses, and Damien knew his wish would not come true. But his grandfather did not leave him alone on the wooden horse. He stood beside him, his hand pressing too hard against his back, and Damien’s fear crumbled into shame, the shame of his grandfather not thinking he could ride alone, that he could not maneuver this wild painted horse by himself.
He looked away so his grandfather would not think his tears were from being afraid, or realize they were the hot tears of once again being a disappointment.
The horses shook, chomping at their bits, dropping their foreheads to gain control of the reins as the music began. Damien’s heart raced. The horses jerked to a start, barely moving at first, rattling in place, then going faster and faster as the calliope music grew louder, until the world was a wash of colored lights and deafening sounds.
Damien pressed his face against the pipe that kept the horses from running off into the square. It felt cold against his cheek. He closed his eyes, feeling the churn of the wooden horse beneath him, forward and back, up and down. If he could just ride the motion, if he could just hold out, he would make it through.
His grandfather’s hand still pressed against his back. Not to propel him forward, but to keep him in place.
Damien opened his eyes and saw the other children swinging from their horses, holding the pipe with a carelessness he could not possess. They were screaming and reaching out into the passing square, trying to grab the brass ring each time it passed.
He was grateful his grandfather did not suggest that he reach for it himself.
Damien looked again. The square was empty, the sounds and the colors gone.
He started down the street, feeling he had walked this way before. The street was empty except for the sound of his footsteps tapping against the pavement.
When Damien reached the steps to the old house, he remembered them. They led to the dark front door he had been taught never to use.
He took a quick breath before climbing them.
He found the key in his pocket and turned it in the lock. The door folded open.
The lamp was lit on the small table at the bottom of the stairs, across from the door, and the house was silent except for the clock that stood farther inside, the clock Damien’s grandfather had never allowed him to wind.
Up the stairs, there were three apartments that never had tenants. Damien often sat at the foot of the stairs, imagining the apartments were not empty, that people silently came and went, only when he was not there. He never dared test the idea, afraid of meeting a tenant or something worse.
He returned the key to his pocket and passed through the rest of the house, the sofa reserved for company, the stereo he sometimes played when his grandfather was away, the curio cabinet full of his grandfather’s things. These rooms had never been more than a curiosity to him. He had lived with his grandfather in an apartment below, down the old wooden stairs attached to the back of the house.
He opened the door to the back porch and started down the stairs. They still creaked in the same old places, and Damien tucked his head as he always had done, never wanting to look at the lake behind the house when it was dark.
The apartment at the bottom of the stairs had always been cold inside, even for December. Now empty for weeks, it was cold enough that Damien could see his breath. But one thing had changed. Even when his grandfather was away, Damien had known he would return. Now, standing there in the cold apartment, he was not sure.
He could hear the clock ticking upstairs. It would chime on the hour and each quarter hour, a short tune noticed less and less as Damien grew older, now somewhere beyond what he could recall. He hoped the chimes would play again.
He looked at his grandfather’s chair, the T.V. tray that served as a stand beside it, the television that played whether anyone was watching or not, now as they always had been.
His mother’s grip had been cold when she brought Damien there, cold in a way he didn’t understand. She didn’t knock. His grandfather sat in that chair, younger, and he rose as they entered. Then two grownups were talking, words Damien couldn’t understand and didn’t remember.
He studied his grandfather’s face, kind, attentive. He watched it change as the talking dissolved into shouting, and again after his mother left, slamming the door.
Damien forgot he existed at all before that night.
The clock upstairs chimed, the full tune and a flood of memories. It announced the hour, one . . . then it stopped.
He expected more and wondered if the clock was winding down.
Damien removed his hat and crossed the room to the thermostat. As a boy, he never would have touched it, but now a man, he slid the lever until he heard it click. The rumblings of the heater somewhere deep in the apartment started almost immediately, a familiar sound synonymous with warmth. He sat in his grandfather’s chair, something he would only do when his grandfather was away, and balanced his hat on the arm.
There were small, unfamiliar things on the table beside the chair. A book of crossword puzzles with a pencil as a bookmark, a pair of reading glasses from the drugstore, and brown bottles with white lids and typed labels.
The labels were the one true change, not the medicine itself, but the instructions telling his grandfather how to live. How many, how often. With what, without what. This was not the man he remembered. His grandfather had grown old during Damien’s absence.
Now his grandfather was dying. That was the man he would see.
He switched the television on. An old film played, devoid of color the way shadows can be. It filled the room with light and sound, giving it life that had been gone for — Damien didn't know how long.