counting backwards

The night after the tree went up, an empty X1 pulled up to my stop. I got on and took the first seat opposite the driver.

He said, “I’m an hour late.”

We crawled south down Broadway. It was the most miserable commute I’ve experienced so far. As people got on the bus, he said, “I’m an hour late.” For the most part, everyone just chuckled.

When cars cut him off, he leaned on his horn. Amid the clusterfuck near NYU, he opened his window to shout at a driver in the lane next to him.

He said, “Are you trying to get over? Are you gonna get over? Are you getting over? I’m an hour late.”

For the most part, no one minded. I heard no gripes from other passengers about the traffic or the wait. No one seemed to care, or maybe they’d been so conditioned to this sort of thing that they no longer noticed. We’d finally made it to the Financial District still plenty of stops away from the tunnel. A man got on the bus, now at capacity. Before he swiped his Metrocard, he looked at the bus driver and said, plainly, “I’ve been waiting over an hour.”

“I don’t know what to tell you,” the bus driver answered. “I’m right on time.”