A Strange Cookie

“Life must go on, change is inevitable,” he philosophized under his breath, then added, “but according to calculations dis cyan’t be de end, dey gonna bring back de yellow buses.”

He refused to believe the little voice inside his head telling him it was indeed the end.

A little old guy dressed like a night watchman got onto the bus carrying a tiny radio/cassette recorder that was squeaking out at its maximum output, lovely golden oldies, and the last traces of Calco’s sadness gradually dropped away like waves doing a moonwalk retreat from a sandy beach due to a change in tide.

A nice looking buxom lady followed de old DJ into the bus. Calco looked at she and immediately a popular saying jumped to he mind – thick like butta – and he licked his lips. The lady plumped she thick buttery self, right next to Calco, startling he, not with she closeness, but with the realization that she not only looked like butter but also smelled like it. He glance down at de little brown paper bag she was holding and see de oil stain. According to calculations, she got toast or hot bake in dey, he told himself. The lady noticed his downward glance and mistaking the direction of his gaze, clamped her bared and obviously creamed knees together while side eyeing him with a pretend chide, betrayed by the slight smile on her smooth brown face.

A minute later, miss buttery leaned sideways and whispered to Calco: “Yuh ever notice that every oldies lover does feel that everybody else love that genre, and they does feel dey doing you a big favour by blasting it in yuh ears, given the opportunity?”

Calco was more taken aback by the word ‘genre’ than by the lady’s intrusion. He didn’t expect a big word like genre from miss buttery, and so early in the morning.

“According to calculations, dey right … well, almost,” Calco said.

“Whah you mean, what calculations?”

“Aaahm … just something I read in a magazine. They say that ninety-five percent of people like golden oldies. De five percent who don’t is people who life is and was always miserable, so dey got no nice feelings to look back at and don’t care fuh de music from the past,” Calco lectured.

“So you saying somebody do fancy research and calculations and come up with that… hmmm…interesting… but come to think of it, as you say, dey right…I like oldies,” butter baby said, shaking her head in time with the music.

She continued, “You like oldies too?’

“Yes, bad, bad.”

“And you does read a lot too, eh?” she asked.

“All de time.”

“Me too, I love meh books” she declared, and exited the conversation to begin a soft humming and gentle swaying.

Just before the bus turned into Regent Street, Calco’s dairy seating companion pulled the cord to signal her stop. She turned and extended a soft hand to Calco and squeezed his with a meaningful eagerness as they shook.

“My name is Elaine Bunbury, I work at the Agriculture Ministry…nice to meet you.”

“I am Cal…,” Calco said, barely stopping himself midword.

“Cal what? The lady asked.

“Aaah … Henry Weeks,” Calco replied, giving her his full name.

“Cal Henry Weeks…weird name but it sound good tho… yuh could drop in sometimes and we could exchange magazines or novels,” she said, smiling sweetly as the bus slowed to a halt.

“Yuh going to work early,” Calco ventured.

“Some mornings I does go to mass before work… just around de corner.”

Miss buttery got up and daintily stepped toward the turnstile, her lush derriere bouncing seductively under the wine coloured ministry uniform. Calco smiled inside, thinking, ‘Boy, according to calculations, yuh ugly, but yuh damn lucky.’

When the bus finally reached the terminus at the Stabroek Market square the sun was out and life was on the hustle, and Calco had more than an hour before clocking in to work. An idea formed in his head – one that he hadn’t calculated for the night before, when he’d come up with the plan to ride the first and last bus of the day. Without thinking twice about it he jumped onto another bus that was just pulling off, this one going to Kitty, the village adjoining, save for a bisecting abandoned railway track, the one he’d just travelled from. He chuckled like a young boy as he squeezed through the narrow space, barely beating the in-swinging door.

With a satisfied smile on his face he sat down in the seat near the door facing the other passengers. Over the years sitting that way had become a habit to him; he liked looking at the faces of other passengers and trying to guess character, thoughts, problems and kinks by their expressions and body language. It was even more satisfying when the face he was ‘studying’ was that of a pretty female, especially if she looked back at him with interest. He quickly dragged up from his memory-well some of the faces he’d ‘studied’ and in some cases gone on to date.

As the bus reached the Lamaha Street/Vlissengen road junction, his mind flashed back to the first morning on his way to high school when at that very junction, on a plot of peasant farm land across the canal and parallel to the railway line, he saw his first dead body – a man hanging from a rope around his neck, slightly swaying in the wind from a limb on a Jamun tree. He remembered how he’d looked at the lifeless figure without being horrified or in the least disturbed. Over the years, in retrospect, when passing by the spot, he’d often wondered how at the tender age of twelve he’d just accepted it as one of those things and calmly strolled on nonplussed, showing more emotion and concern towards the fishes swimming in the canal and the farmers’ fruits, vegetables and flowers threatened by the prevailing drought season, than to the harsh reality of actual, engineered death.

Across the aisle down to the back of the bus there was a young lady with the looks of a school teacher eying him steadily, but he didn’t try to hold her gaze or return the slight meaningful smile. All he wanted to do was to relax and enjoy the bus ride and passing scenery. But he couldn’t help thinking that according to calculations when it rained it damn well pours – fus was miss buttery and now this nice slim sweetie. When the young woman got up to disembark at the Kitty Market stop, she kept her eyes on him as she made her way along the aisle, and animal instinct, twice evoked for the morning, kicked in, tempting him to get up and follow her out. Instead he looked at his watch and made a mental note of the time.

“There is always tomorrow,” he told himself, but then shockingly realized that there would be no bus for her to be on tomorrow.

He started to get up but the bus had already pulled off, severing him from the promise of romance which had been missing from his life for the last two months, following a bad break-up. For him two months was a drought.

He clocked in for work ten minutes late, and as he went about doing his job, he knew that there was no way he could work all day while his yellow friends were out there breathing their last; he just had to be with them at this critical time. He began plotting his escape by complaining to his work mates and grumpy supervisor of headache and a progressing dizziness.

An hour before the lunch break he went to the washroom where he put water in his hair and as it streaked down his face and neck he bypassed his supervisor and went straight to the manager feigning a sickly face as he whispered a convincing tale of unbearable pain in his stomach.

“According to calculations this should work,” he thought as the manager looked him over, a bit suspiciously – he’d had dealings with Calco before.

It worked though; the manager, albeit with reluctance

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