Nelly

A short story about a man who liked to drive buses

Nelly was a horribly boring man. All day he drove a metro to and from the same street corner. Five blocks up, stop at Elm, six more, Harris, five once again, Washington, and so on and so on until finally, Cherry, and then he would return by the same route. Five times a day, six days a week he would make this Oddysey. His works hours were not too bad everything considered, he had after all been working for the city for years now and so had some leeway in choosing routes. When he started so long ago, the idea was to find work, any work, and do that until a painting career could be launched. Painting never really panned out.

Every night after driving for about seven hours, Nelly returned home to his apartment and watched TV. He always felt like he should probably be painting, but never quite got the guns together to run out to the store and grab new materials. CSI Miami was his favorite. Sometimes while he watched he would pay attention to the story, but more often than not he just liked to see the expressions on the faces of the actors. After a few hours of television and a dinner of raman or pasta, Nelly would go to sleep and set his alarm for the next day.

As you may have guessed by now, Nelly was a man of few passions. He was content enough to live one day to the next, and even his strongest ambition, to paint beautiful works that all the world might look on and sigh, was at it's strongest an afterthought. Some of you may find this a repulsive plot, but to Nelly it wasn't so bad, really. To him, why not? He ate, he slept well, he had leisure time, what more could a man want?

There was one thing peculiar though that sometimes rather pleased Nelly. He loved to close his bus door. He would slowly approach a stop, easing into the brakes and hearing that familiar squeal that accompanied the feeling of deceleration, and glance at the assembled bus riders waiting for him to open the door. After stopping, Nelly always glanced back behind his bus to see if anyone was frantically huffing and legging it towards the front door (he ran a pay as you enter route). On spying someone late, or even better several someone's who were late, Nelly's mouth would curl up into a big smile.

Quickly he would usher the riders onto the bus, and then with a flourish, Nelly would close the door, and start the bus slowly crawling off. Often the people who had just been running, Nelly's scorned commuters, would jog up waving their arms to his door, looking at him imploringly, smiling and trying to give their winningest expressions. Nelly would look at them knowingly, grin, and shake his head side to side, continuing to accelerate away. Some people would yell, some would slump their heads, some would look at their watches or the route schedule to see when the next bus could be expected, and Nelly's favorites, they would scream profanities at the top of their lungs, muffled out by the glass and receding away in his rear view mirror.

Why it was that this ritual so tickled Nelly, he could never quite tell. Maybe the years of commuters treating him like a stone object had planted in him a general disdain for public transportation users. Maybe the day was usually boring and emotionless, and the glimpse of their honest reactions was refreshing. Maybe Nelly just didn't like people.

Over time, leaving would-be riders by the stop developed into a nuanced performance for Nelly, and Nelly became the leading star. Sometimes he would add a gesture into his rejection, calculated to be confusing. “Dear rider”, he seemed to say, “I am sorry that you cannot get on my bus, you must understand that it is because” … “hand swirling in circle” or “two hands open, then brought quickly together with a shaking head”. That would leave them to wonder for a bit.

After punching his time clock, but before going home, Nelly would usually go to a local sandwhich shop and grab a mayonnaise, chicken, club, with the swiss cheese. Biting into it, he would reflect on the most interesting encounters with his late riders, and relax his shoulders, sometimes almost giggling to himself.

One day after finishing his club, he finally found the care to head to the art supply store. There he picked out some fresh canvas to go with the empty aisle in his apartment, and a selection of drably colored oils.

He bustled down the sidewalk towards his home, very close to work, holding an armful of supplies that oddly contrasted with the unbroken gray of his urban setting. On entering his apartment, he set to work.

First he drew the silhouettes of three running men, screaming at something, in pencil outline. Then a bus. Then he colored the scene. This process took the greater part of his evening, and he was hungry by the time he finished. He sat there looking at his finished product with a bowl of raman in hand, and thought that it was handsome enough.

The next night Nelly painted again. This time he took a more careful approach, slowly sketching his outline and painting meticulously. The subject was again men and women chasing a bus, but this time in vibrant yellows, oranges, and reds, with a cold blue bus. He only finished about a third of his work before it was time to sleep, and over the next several days he polished away the work. On finishing he was quite satisfied.

That Sunday he had the day off and painted all day. He chose again the same scene, and tried to make a vivid, lifelike illustration.

As the days passed by, Nelly continued to paint. He still watched television, and did so more often than he painted, but this was still a great shift in his use of time. He began to diversify his subjects, working on people waiting in a line, someone being tax audited, a grocery clerk mopping up someone's spilled bottle of pickles in a supermarket, and many more. The walls of his apartment filled with works little by little.

One day at work, his boss Steve talked to him. This was normal in that every morning they exchanged the usual pleasantries, but never had they really had a conversation. They talked about the recent baseball game, which Nelly had watched, about food places nearby, and about their families briefly (Nelly choosing not to mention his in any detail). At the end of their talk, Steve asked if Nelly had any plans for Saturday evening, and that if he didn't, would he perhaps like to come eat with the family?

Steve's slightly worried and patronizing tone told Nelly that his boss found him a lonely man, too old to have no real connections, and that Nelly was to be something of a charity case. He resented this, but at the same time thought that it might be nice to get out a bit. Considering, this was actually an honor of sorts. Nelly resolved to bring a gift.

When he arrived on Saturday night, it was with a painting in hand. More specifically the first he had done, of the men and women chasing a bus. It occurred to Nelly that it would be a funny work for his boss to have lying around, seeing as the man oversaw public transportation and all. He found himself wondering if the gesture might be too much, and realized his palms were sweating slightly at the edges of the frame he held.

Steve loved the painting, and introduced Nelly to his wife, daughter, and a family friend who had also been invited over, Estella. Looking at Estella, Nelly noticed the clear, angular nature of her jaw line, and pretty brown eyes. The company chortled and talked away the evening, and when it was time to return to his apartment, Nelly went with a measure of sadness.

Nelly and Steve didn't say more to one another until the next week, when Steve walked up to Nelly looking like he had something on his mind. He told Nelly that Estella was a curator of art exhibits, and had been quite interested in Nelly's painting, asking if he had any other work. Nelly was surprised, and then anxious, wondering how a curator might judge his projects, but at the same time, she had been interested had she not?

Nelly took pictures of all of his paintings and gave them to Steve the next day. Two days later, Steve told Nelly that Estella would like to talk to him directly. She called him later that night, asking if he would like to do a small exhibit! Nelly jumped a little at the news, and after some confused babbling agreed.

On opening day, Nelly came in a suite, the first he had worn in who knew how long. There was a substantial turnout, evidently Estella was well connected, and Nelly could overhear the various attendees talking. Many of them, Estella informed, were art critics.

Nelly's paintings evidently possessed, a subtle undercurrent of angst, the soul of oppressed urban society, postmodern satire against the something or rather, ironic criticism of the system itself. They were a hit!

The next week, Estella mentioned that there was a buzz about his work going around the city, and that many potential buyers had emerged. Nelly considered what she said, and after a while consented to selling some of his work. Every piece that he listed was gone the next day, and a beaming Estella handed Nelly a tidy stack of checks. Nelly was impressed, this was much more money than he made driving buses.

The next week Estella asked if he would like to paint more works for sale. Nelly said he would consider. Steve even mentioned selling paintings to Nelly, saying he might like one now before they got big, and that maybe Nelly might consider cutting back or even quitting on the whole bus driving thing, seeing as there was this opportunity of a lifetime presenting itself. It sounded like a lot of work to Nelly. The next day Nelly told Estella and Steve that he was out of paint, and would prefer to drive buses, but that they had been very kind.