Paper (Chapter 1)

                                  Prologue

                           
                            1    Lovetoxication
 
                            2    Matrimony

                            3    World Order
                           
                            4    Seer Affair

                            5    Mirror Mirror

                            6    Father
                           
                            7    Dianne's Voice

                            8    Mother

                            9    Love Cancer

                          10    Big Day
                               
                          11    Chapter Two

                          12    Pedagogue

                          13    Prequel Weekend
       
                          14    Shennaid

                            15    Time Travel

                            16    Nightshift

                            17    Bigamy and Rhapsody

                            18    Covetousness

                            19    Tour Guide

                            20    Dress-Ups

                            21    Bounce

                            22    Egg Bounce

                            23    Aftermath

                            24    Homecoming

                            25    The Argument

                            26    Absolution

                            27    Pretends 





PROLOGUE


The narrator is a bus driver who imagines Dianne into his life. His figment turns into an enigma incapable of a conventional relationship. His one-sided love affair becomes an insatiable appetite for inscrutable mystery.

The storyteller’s father and mother were distant, uninvolved and dissimilar; explaining perhaps, our character’s formation of an awkward love affair. Or perchance, his fantasy is informed by two past relationships; the bag lady and an old school friend.

He writes a story, the authorship of which he attributes to Dianne as evidence of her existence and engagement with their liaison. The tale is an odd reflection of their own and fills in the gaps for him. However, as he reads more he senses a prophecy.


Everyone has a forlorn space that he populates with his imagination. Like Henry’s woman in the bottle-green dress, Dianne is what the narrator needs rather than what he has. And he may not see things as they are but instead, as his Henry sees them.

Such is the black comedy of self-disenfranchisement.





1.           LOVETOXICATION

In another world, Dianne’s cognition of a paper’s stock and age from its scent would be lauded. And she makes silhouette puppets out of card to perform shadow plays. She does this with a bedside lamp behind our bed sheets pegged to a curtain rod propped with bamboo garden stakes. Huddled in her tiny bio-box, she performs love stories of maidens courted by princes from fictitious lands. These performances she never sees. I am neither invited to, nor excluded from the plays. She is saturated with talent but like a superhero in civilian dress, her true power is known only to herself.


When I first met Dianne it was late at night and I was ordering fish and chips to stave a craving. She sat on a chromed steel and vinyl chair waiting for her order with her face in an open magazine; I mean with her nose pressed against its spine and breathing deeply. I recall that the front page featured the frowning face of a monarch. Dianne lifted her head from its pages when her number was called and revealed to me a countenance of guilt on soft ash-white skin. I had a moment of confidence, believing that I could win over the mind that forged that face. Most uncharacteristically, I blurted out an invitation to join me to eat her meal but it fell on shy ears. She declined, turning her blushing head away and as she snatched her order from the counter, its newspaper wrapping unravelled and spilt four fried crab sticks onto the linoleum floor. She gathered them into the hip pockets of her tunic and pressing the oily newspaper to her nose, immediately left the shop.

This was no ordinary event for me; it more than extraordinary. The counter attendant paid no attention to her fumble or my look of impuissance.

But something had shifted in my centre. There was nothing I could do to contain the fallout of that twenty-second contact with a stranger. Not a minute passed over the next two weeks when I didn't picture her eyes catching mine as she left the shop. And there was always a voice; a hoarse whisper that summoned me to look for her. I thought I should face this divine opportunity and promised myself I would find her.

I drive busses for a privately owned bus fleet contracting to the government public transport service. We have twenty-three buses, none under fifteen-years-old but all in excellent working order. I know my way around a bus engine too and I work in the depot garage when the guys aren't coping. I expect I am ideally suited to my career or at least, I am very good at working contrary to my God-given typology. While the latter might seem less likely, it could explain my enduring disquiet. It would be a curious talent; to work way out of character, and it would have to be stressful.

On the other hand, I may have gravitated towards a career that fulfilled my natural shortcomings or mollified my paranoias? Do we do that? 

I knew the guy that did the route through the neighbourhood where I met Dianne and after a week of deliberation, I arranged to swap rosters with him. That way, I increased the odds of seeing her again.

But three more weeks passed and the closest I came to seeing Dianne was her sleepy eyes in my head and the ‘find me’ mantra that droned in my ears in an increasing urgency. Then as probability would have it, I was returning to the depot from an evening shift when I saw her. The weather had turned to cold and rain that day and the streets were wet. Shards of light split by shadows flitted from traffic, spilt from buildings and fell from street lights; all amplified in reflections off wet paving like apparitions dancing to a symphony of tires in water. This level of visual noise has always challenged my concentration and I know I will die in such a strafe of light and sound one day.

Carefully negotiating a corner by watching the curb closest to me, my attention was caught by a woman in a bus stop on the other side of the street. There would be no bus heading her way at that time of night but I suspected she was sheltering from the intermittent showers. She held a wad of paper to her face and in the short moment I afforded to look closer, I recognised her.

I then did something so out of character that my presence of mind took leave of my body to float in space and look back. For some distance ahead there was no oncoming traffic and there was nothing approaching behind me, so I hauled the steering wheel into a u-turn, pulling up a short distance before her stop. My heart beat like a bass drum and my skin felt prickly. I was foolish for even going this far but it felt good in a way that was totally unfamiliar to me. I had licence and this intimate stranger had signed for it. Concerned that she might leave, I edged the bus forward without knowing what I would do next. The scene was adrift.

She was dressed sans serif in what appeared at first glance to be a nurse’s tunic. It fit snugly over voluptuous flesh.

I opened the bus door. “Where you headed Lady?" I yelled over the whirr and clatter of the old Foden engine. Would she recognise me? Would she not get on the bus? Was this the wrong way to meet her again?

She climbed up the steps and shuffled past without paying or looking at me. Of course, she was not to know it was me and far be it from me to ask her to pay. I was in a new zone. This was somewhere very foreign and I was cogitating cautiously in case it was a dream.

But I was being reckless with the reputation I had earned at work. Only the month before, I had received the Employee of the Month award for the second time in the space of a year. The district manager reminded our section of this fact at the presentation and announced that as far as he could recall, the last driver to receive the award twice in twelve months was himself, seven years previous. He could foresee my promotion. That was the day after I met Dianne. I remember thinking that a man on such a career path should have a wife and of course for me, that woman was her.

She sat seven rows back and hung her head into the paper she held; a few foolscap crumpled pages of handwritten notes. I had to see the route out and that would get me back to the depot quite late depending on when she alighted.

I hoped she would press the stop bell when she was near her home but I suspected she would not. I took my boldness a step further and slowed the bus down so I could briefly turn and talk.

“I’ll only go as far as your stop. Where you getting off Dear?"

The familiarity in calling her ‘Dear’ was all mine, and facilitated by the rhythmic surging of the bus at low speed, it was enough to get me a little hard in my pants. I thought she must have felt some amity. Her eyes lifted slowly and met mine as I glanced back again. I had to look forward. I pulled over and stopped the bus. When I turned back to her, our eyes locked again. Hers had the same tone as the voice inside my head that implored me to find her. Things were happening so rapidly and a month of preparation for this moment had done nothing more than compel me to take full advantage of it. Of all the scenarios I had played out in my mind, this was not one of them. I turned off the engine to listen for her reply.

“Bodine Avenue.' She sounded husky like that voice and like a child; like a Dickensian child.

There are eleven consecutive avenues heading east between Kingsway and Railway Parade and Bodine was one of them; in the light industrial area. She smiled behind her eyes. Was she asking me to continue the conversation or just being pleasant? I didn't want to scare her. If I lifted out of my seat she would feel trapped and I would lose momentum for sure. Then she held the top rail of the seat in front of her and lifted herself out of her seat. She walked towards the front of the bus and sat four rows back from the front. I turned to aspic.

“You are the man from the fishy chip shop,” she loud whispered. “Sorry I left that night. I had dirr’ea and didn't want to talk. That was nice you ask me for drink."

I couldn't speak. I heard a subtle melody in her talk and I wanted it to go on. I willed the moment to be suspended in oil. I left my body again so that I could move closer to her and saw her décolletage; shiny with rain and framed in white cotton drill. I was winded by her beauty and the moment.

“Are you feeling better now? “ My voice tottered behind me. My overself sprung back to my seat to attend her response.

“Much better. It fatty food what does it. I like fatty food but it give me pimples, make me sleepy and makes dirr’ea. But I even eat it when I’m sick a’cause I stupid, an’ sometime I do… ye know… in my pants.”

Melody threaded through her words and I wanted to take her to a protected place and feed her vegetables and low fat food. I wanted to wash her soiled underpants and grubby white tunic. It was my turn to talk. I had to keep the ball in the air.

“I have a friend who works in a laundry,” I said in disbelief. I wasn’t up to the conversation. My communication with her was on a different plane and one of us would have to move to the other’s plane for the dialogue to become meaningful. Or I could feign a timetable urgency and end this intercourse. She spoke too soon.

“Wha’s your favourite food?” She seemed genuinely interested.

“Lebanese, Middle Eastern… that sort of thing. I have a friend who sells Lebo. Would you like to go to his shop with me for some?” There, I had done it. It was perilous but I couldn’t risk not seeing her after I dropped her off. “I have to get this bus back to the depot; it’s due out on a night charter. Excuse me.”

I turned quickly in my seat and started the engine. I could feel the drag of my unanswered invitation. Thin wires attached along my backbone being drawn into the void where an answer should have been. And the answer should be in the affirmative or else my future would be dismal.

Five footsteps clunked in the aisle towards me. In a low resolution reflection in the windscreen, I saw her stand and cuddle the stainless steel pole at the end of the front row seats.

“I’m Dianne Hillary Smith and I tell paper by its smell. I’m not asked what I do but if I am, I don’t talk. I embarrass. I tell them that I work in a sandwich bar a’cause that’s the other thing I’d like to do.

I wanted you t’ know that night in ‘e fishy chip shop but I ran away a’cause I was scared I’d tell you. I din’t have dirr’ea. I only said that so you’d not angry at me bein’ shy. I did have the runs yesterday but. An’ the other things I said are true and so is this: I will go to the Lebese shop with you.”

The drag against me snapped free but my skeleton was sore. As we slowed down to turn into Bodine Avenue, she wrapped her leg around the pole and put her foot on the seat to steady.

“Just ‘ere,” she said. I turned to her and she pointed to a small unkempt weatherboard house in an overgrown yard without trees. The security lights of two storey sheds on both boundaries made it like daylight across her property. No fence and only sheer curtains. I stopped so that the bus door lined up with the concrete path to her front door and she descended the steps of the bus.

“So maybe I could pick you up here tomorrow… at midday?” It was easier to talk without her looking at me.

Then she turned to face me. Framed by the bus door she said,
“Not ‘ere. At the same bus stop as tonight but.”

Anything was okay if it meant seeing her again. I nodded slowly. A Mona Lisa smile breached her deadpan face and she grabbed a hold of the sides of her open neck tunic with each hand. In slow motion I watched her pull the dress apart, pulling two buttons from their holes. This revealed the straps of a stained practical looking bra that she collected with her fingers in the same downward motion, revealing her bosoms.

That was it; I wanted her to go before I moaned aloud. She twirled as she gathered back her tunic and started up the garden path. I pulled the bus out into the empty street and into the driveway of a salvage yard almost opposite. Reversing into the street, the view of her searching her pockets for her keys brought a lump to my throat. I knew what had happened but I didn’t know what it meant. She turned her head over her shoulder but we didn’t wave. I was spent and wanted to lie down.