Today I think I’m not going to work, Page 2

stealthily past me. It’s Mrs. De Lotti, a still attractive sexagenarian with a strange habit: every day, at the same stop, she will catapult forward to sit in the second pair of seats, right side.

  At this point, the question comes naturally: since she is often one of the first to get on the bus, why, I wonder, doesn’t she sit down immediately in that coveted spot?

  Mysteries and urban legends of ordinary daily madness.

  Still there’s something I've forgotten... Did I have to bring some papers with me and I left them at home? I check in the bag... no... everything is there, even the excess, if you will. What then? What can it be? Patience. I’ll wait for the memory to come back.

  To kill the time left, I keep observing. After all, today I just can’t concentrate on reading.

  I turn back for a moment, just to take a look, and my eyes fall on a particular point.

  Almost at the bottom of the bus, sits Miss Tarantini.

  She’s a thin girl, so thin that, if I were an illustrator, drawing her would make me save pencils. The lady in question doesn’t do anything special, to be honest, still she represents a particular type, at least for me. Her face is thin and a bit wrinkled, her mouth shaped into perennial faces that accentuate when, by chance, she smiles.

  I think she lacks a couple of teeth, or maybe a few more, and this imposes to her certain expressions – still I don’t understand why she, who in addition to being an old maid is said to have a lot of money, made no efforts to improve her, so to speak, dental apparatus. If only because she looks comical when she wants to, or necessarily must, smile.

  Beside her lies – no, I didn’t use a wrong term, because the person in question doesn’t sit on the seats of the bus, she seems to sleep the eternal sleep – Miss Elfini. A sample of the most dangerous species of nosy people.

  Beware, travellers sitting next to Miss Elfini! Starting from the moment you sit in your seats, seemingly innocuous, any word you say can and will be intercepted by her antenna and used against you!

  Finally, in pole position grabbing with their buttocks the first two seats and almost arm in arm with the driver, two ladies who long ago I dubbed the twins.

  They are two nurses working at the same clinic. They are not even distant relatives, but since they have been working together for, I believe, over twenty years, they have achieved a symbiosis of thought, speech and movements, that seem to be the result of a twin birth. They sit in that position since the beginning of the journey, it almost looks like they want to be the first to go off, but since they work in an area close to the line end, I think they are the last to leave the bus.

  I remember that once a man sat in one of those two places. One of the twins – the one that seems the most harmless – sat on one of the neighbouring seats, visibly annoyed. You wouldn’t believe it: she stared at that poor man from the beginning to the end of the trip, when he got up to get off. If looks could kill, that man would have been slaughtered for sure. And I would not have been surprised if I had come to know, later, that the same man that day had suffered some serious... let’s say... physical displeasure.

  In the meantime, almost everyone has left. The eyes that I can’t keep on my book, still open at the same page, rest on the digital clock of the bus. It’s a black dial illuminated by some LEDs forming the digits of the time. This device gives a strange touch of modernity to the inside of the vehicle, pretty outdated aside from it.

  What a coincidence, today not even it works properly. Just think that the only lit LEDs form the following statement:

  What does it seem to you? To me it seems a foreign language. I understand that most of the clocks in circulation are of foreign manufacture, including even those in public means of transport and those scattered around the city, but that, in order to know what time it is, us poor people should learn their mother tongue, too, seems honestly too much to me.

  Ah... how absentminded I am! I should have gotten off three stops ago! For a moment I think this is the thing I thought I had forgotten. But no... it can’t be, since I’ve been having the doubt ever since we left... I put the book in my bag in a hurry, ready to squirt out of the bus at the first stop.

  SPAFF!!!

  No... don’t be scared! I just remembered what I had forgotten! The noise you heard was just a slap on my forehead with the palm of my hand. Even another traveller sitting near my place turned to look at me, surprised. You weren’t the only ones to hear it.

  I let myself go on the seat in discomfort. I let the bag drop and begin to curse between my teeth, so clenched it hurts.

  Today I really think I'm not going to work.

  The bus stops. Mine is one of the few mandatory stops. No need to book it. Why I’m not going to work? Why, you say? I understand your curiosity.

  Yesterday, after yet another blunder that I made, I was fired. That’s why. The reason seems good enough. Not that I care much, because sooner or later I would have left anyway. But there’s one thing that bothers me: at least today I could have stayed in bed a few more hours.

  Out here, this morning, it's freezing cold. Never mind! Now I’ll go to the bar and have a second breakfast. Then I’ll run to the centre, around the city. After all, it is not written anywhere that today must necessarily be a bad day.

  The author

  Enzo D'Andrea was born in Potenza in 1972. He has a degree in Geological Sciences and a PhD in Earth Sciences. He nurtures various passions, including music, writing, drawing, literature and sport. He published a collection of poems entitled "Ocean of Sand" (self-published), and a short story entitled "That day, when evening came." He also wrote three novels, awaiting publication.

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  TRANSLATOR

  Carmelo Massimo Tidona, employee, writer and translator in his spare time, has been reading and writing since as long as he can remember. Some of his short stories have been published in various anthologies.

  For 0111edizioni Carmelo Massimo Tidona published:

  “Trittico Oscuro”, collection of urban fantasy tales (2009, Italian).

  “Riflessi d’Ombra”, urban fantasy novel (2009, Italian)

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