a lot better than feeling sorry.
So with this assurance, I tapped Carl’s reflection in the mirror once before leaving, and I turned the cartridge around and around in my pocket all the way to the front door.
7
Of course, Josie had already boarded the bus. She sat in the front passenger seat right next to Shawn, Centennial’s life enhancement coordinator and bus driver. He was a middle-aged man who had a comb-over and entirely too much energy, but we got on well enough because he always saved me shotgun. Except for today. The moment I stepped outside, he started waving at me through the windshield like a lunatic, pointing at his new passenger to make sure I didn’t get confused and accidently sit on her lap. I waved back in understanding, sour-faced as all get-out.
Nora’s protégé, Luann, waited at the minibus’s door for me, one hand jammed in the pocket of her scrubs and the other scrolling through her phone. As per usual, she looked bored. She’d confided in me weeks ago that her heart didn’t beat for geriatric care. I told her I didn’t blame her; mine didn’t either.
“We waited for you,” Alice chirped from inside.
“Appreciate it,” I said, pausing to admire her from where I stood. She looked to be made of flowers, with her lily white hair and rosy cheeks. How lucky was I to have springtime, anytime.
“Let’s move,” Luann said, emotionless.
I sighed and grabbed the interior bar in order to get up the first step. Like Everest, the ascent was the hardest part. Luann took ahold of the back waistband of my pants to help, but all she did was use my underwear to floss between my cheeks. Eventually, I made it inside and took the seat behind Josie, and soon after that the bus was zipping past the nearby prefab homes and fast-food chains at a good clip.
Alice, who sat behind me, hovered over my shoulder. “I can’t stop thinking about the renovation. You’re right about it, you know?”
I sighed. It hadn’t been my intent to burden her. It seemed ungentlemanlike to point out a hole in her fence without the means to mend it. The best I could do at the moment was give her a little hope, even if I didn’t share it.
“Don’t mind me. Reginald’s the one who’s right.” I could barely get the words out.
Alice absorbed this quietly. “It’s been a busy day, hasn’t it?”
“A circus.”
“Josie’s a nice addition, at least. I can’t believe her quick thinking at breakfast. She moved so fast you’d think she did that sort of thing every day.”
I nodded agreeably but didn’t turn around. My face would’ve given me away. Instead, I watched the back of Josie’s head bounce with each road rut while she charmed Shawn by playing a game of twenty questions with him. She’d even put her hand on the back of his headrest and twisted in her seat to chat him up better.
My gaze settled on that little mitt of hers as it clung to Shawn’s chairback, and once again it appeared she had the shakes. Those jitters from earlier were on the move, ping-ponging between her fingers and her toes. So far I’d written it off as nerves, but upon closer inspection I could see her fingertips moving at a hundred beats per minute. Almost like she had a condition.
I looked down at my own hands as a reference. They were lying still and obedient in my lap, but I remembered when that wasn’t always the case. I remembered a time when they were on their worst behavior: years ago, in my old apartment, middle of the day, the September sun blotted out by the blinds. The radio—which I’d turned on to hear Oil Can Boyd pitch his last game for the Sox—played nothing but static. And there I sat on the floor in the foyer, next to an empty whiskey bottle and a pile of mail that had come in through the slot, shaking like a shitting dog.
Those shivers went clear into my bones, but they hadn’t started like that. They’d started small at first, in my pinky, and the memory of that one quivering digit now replayed in my