At first, the woman sitting in front of the old man made it appear as though he could be talking to someone. More to the point, that he could be talking to her. And that they actually knew one another. The moment she exited the bus, however, it became clear to Angela that the man was, in fact, speaking to no one. Unless it was some spectral presence he was tapping into as a result of being close to death. They say you can “tap in” when you’re close to it yourself…or so Angela thought she had heard at one point or another (then again, maybe she was just letting certain aspects of Yellowjackets infiltrate her logic). Whatever the case, this man, who she would refer to throughout the bus ride as Wet Lips—because that’s what his lips were as a result of the constant spittle involuntarily emanating from them—was having the conversation of a lifetime. It appeared. Being that Angela did not speak a word of French (apart from the usual American staples of “croissant” and “merci”), she was spared what were likely the both inane and unhinged details of what he was saying.

Nonetheless, it seemed as though, no matter how loud she turned the music on her phone up, nothing was going to drown out the sound of his animated, one-sided tête-à-tête. Oddly enough, this wasn’t the first time she had heard an elderly man gabbing with himself this week. Just a few days ago, when she was still back in San Diego, she was merely waiting for the bus when a similar situation transpired. Being among the approximately three percent who actually used public transport in the county, perhaps she shouldn’t have been surprised by the dubious clientele. After all, Angela was only deigning to use it because her car was in the shop and she had no reliable friends to ask for a ride from. Such was the tragedy of living among the flakes of California. Not to say she couldn’t help but forever remain enamored of the Golden State. A warm place where everyone seemed to exude an emotional coldness.

Angela supposed that was why she got it in her head to “run away” for a while. Or at least for as long as her scant amount of savings would let her. That meant about one month in Paris. It was on day three of her sojourn that this encounter with Wet Lips occurred. Having made her way to the Eiffel Tower like the cliché cunt that no one could avoid being upon initial arrival into Gay Pair-ee, she had decided to “live like a native” by taking the bus back to her Airbnb. What an ill-advised experiment. Boarding the 42 bound for Gare Saint-Lazare, Angela sat in a seat located at the front of the bus, with her back facing the driver.

Because it was one of the earlier stops on the route, she was able to secure a seat. Wet Lips himself was already aboard, positioned in front of her with just one seat in between them. What’s more, to further establish some safety net of distance, her seat was constructed at a more elevated level than his—almost as if she were the queen and he her subject. But with subjects like these, who wants a kingdom? The aforementioned similarly-aged woman was already sitting in the spot that separated them when Angela arrived, thus her misguided assumption that they knew one another. But, of course, not all old people know one another, do they? Angela shouldn’t have been so…discriminatory about the matter. And she paid the cost for it when the old woman got off the bus—perhaps solely to avoid any further dealings with Wet Lips. And yes, his wet lips were more prominent than ever without the old woman to block out the vision of them glistening in the sun. Which they did all the more after he took an obscene sip from his bottle of Coke. The white shine of his lips was practically as blinding as the sun after his makeout session with the bottle.

As he kept carrying on with his “conversation,” perhaps in the vain hope that someone might be obliged to join in, Angela felt a brief pang of guilt over her disdain for him. Was it really his fault that he had grown so lonely and isolated? To the point where he had lost all self-respect and decided to jabber on in a public space. For all Angela knew, the same fate might befall her when she grew older. She might get so desperate for conversation that she could delude herself into thinking anyone else was listening to her as she yammered away while sitting on a bus. She then remembered some article she had come across recently that said something about how roughly a million elderly people in the UK ride the bus just to strike up a conversation with somebody. Likely an unsuspecting young person simply trying to listen to the music blaring through their headphones in peace. But this was Paris—surely there was more attention and care given to the elderly here than in the cold, far more capitalistic England, n’est-ce pas? Yet Wet Lips’ droning presence appeared to indicate otherwise. Namely, that callousness toward and disgust with the elderly was a worldwide phenomenon.  

As she kept ruminating on this while the bus made another stop, she decided to just do it. To take the plunge on “being nice.” So she sat down in front of him (no one else had wanted to occupy that seat after sizing up Wet Lips) and acted like she was genuinely interested in what he had to say. Even so, he still stared through her, rather than looking at her. And Angela’s kindness was soon only met with being sprayed in the mug by his unwieldy spittle, which made a direct hit into her own mouth. It was a lesson she had already been taught repeatedly when making attempts at “being human”: no good deed goes unpunished. What’s more, Wet Lips truly didn’t seem to care if anyone was sitting in front of him or not. His “captive audience” was ultimately himself. Angela reckoned, since most men were already that way to begin with, it only got worse with age.

The next day, Angela awoke with the most dreadful body aches and an unbearably dry throat. Fumbling for the glass of water she had placed on the nightstand of her temporary bedroom, she consumed its contents in one gulp. She then dragged her body to the bathroom, where the mirror confirmed that she looked as shitty as she felt. Angela had no doubt in her mind that Wet Lips’ saliva had infected her. Maybe with the flu, maybe with COVID—but it was something she wouldn’t be fully cured of until her trip was over. Go fucking figure.

The next time she deigned to ride the bus, back in America, she kept her headphones on (along with a surgical mask) and her nose buried in a book. Angela refused to ever again make the mistake of styling herself as the “B” in an “A”-only conversation. Wet Lips had cured her of any such feelings of guilt about not “engaging” the lonely. Who seemed most content with the sound of their own voice anyway.