Public Manners
At the next stop, three people got off and five people tried to get on.
The door hissed open. Cold daylight spilled across the rubber floor. The driver called for people to move back, though there was nowhere to move except into one another’s regrets.
Marcus lifted himself halfway from the seat.
Patricia’s foot stayed planted on the armrest like a flag.
A new passenger, an older man with a folded newspaper tucked under his arm, paused beside the row. He saw Marcus. He saw Patricia. He saw the foot. His face performed three separate calculations and chose survival.
He shuffled past.
The teenager finally cracked.
A laugh escaped him—tiny, bright, impossible to take back.
Patricia’s eyes opened fully now.
“Is something funny?”
The teenager straightened so fast his knees hit the seat in front of him.
“No, ma’am.”
“Good.”
Marcus watched her settle back again.
There were people who were rude because they were distracted. People who were rude because life had worn them down to bone. Then there were people who made rudeness into architecture and invited everybody else to live inside it.
Patricia Doyle belonged to the third group.
The bus lurched before the doors closed. Her foot slipped. Marcus caught his sleeve before it dragged across her sole.
“No,” he said.
It was not loud. That was why it worked.
Several faces turned.
Patricia blinked.
Marcus stood all the way up, careful not to brush her. He gripped the beige handrail above him and looked toward the front.
“Driver,” he said. “I need you to address this.”
The driver met his eyes in the mirror again.
For a second, Marcus saw the arithmetic on her face too: schedule, complaints, conflict, cameras, paperwork, a bus full of tired people, one man who might be blamed for sounding angry, one woman with her foot on an armrest acting like the injured party.
The driver swallowed.
“Everybody keep the aisle clear, please.”
The words had nothing to do with anything.
Marcus let out a short breath through his nose.
The tote-bag woman shifted.
“That’s not the aisle,” she said.
It was the first clean sentence anyone besides Marcus had offered.
The bus changed temperature.
Patricia sat up a little.
“Excuse me?”
The tote-bag woman looked terrified of herself, but she held on. “Her foot is on his armrest.”
“I have eyes,” Patricia snapped.
“Then use them,” the gray-cap man said.
Now the teenager made no sound at all. He simply pressed both hands over his mouth as if holding back applause.
Patricia looked from face to face, discovering, with visible offense, that the furniture had developed opinions.
May you like
Marcus remained standing.
For the first time, the foot twitched.
