The Notebook at the Last Stop

Fiction

By the time Mara found the notebook, the bus had emptied and the driver was checking beneath the seats for gloves. It lay open beside the window, its elastic strap trailing across a page covered in small, careful handwriting.

“Yours?” the driver asked.

“No.”

“Someone's always leaving something.”

Mara lifted it to look for a name. On the inside cover, in larger letters, someone had written: IF FOUND, PLEASE RETURN TO THE PERSON WHO NEEDS TO FINISH THIS.

“That helpful?” asked the driver.

“Not particularly.”

There was no address, no telephone number. Mara handed over the notebook, then hesitated when the driver placed it beside a crushed umbrella in his compartment.

“Where does lost property go?”

“Depot. Eventually.”

The word sounded like a place where unfinished things might remain unfinished. But it was the proper place, so Mara thanked him and stepped down into the rain.

At the shelter, an old man was searching the pockets of a coat that appeared to contain several other coats' worth of belongings. He produced a folded shopping bag, two envelopes, and a spoon.

“Have you lost a notebook?” Mara asked.

He stopped searching. “Blue cover?”

“Green, I thought.”

“Green,” he said quickly. “Yes. Of course. Is it here?”

Mara waved at the bus. The driver had closed the doors, but he saw her and opened them again with a sigh that carried clearly through the rain.

The man climbed aboard and returned holding the notebook against his chest.

“You've saved me,” he said.

“I didn't do much.”

“You asked the right question.”

They stood beneath the shelter while the bus pulled away. Across the road, a bakery was turning off its display lights. One tray remained behind the glass, holding three buns arranged with unnecessary optimism.

“I thought it might be a novel,” Mara said.

The man looked at the notebook. “So did I, once.”

“Isn't it?”

“Shopping lists, mostly. Things people say. Descriptions I don't want to lose.”

He opened it carefully, as though checking that its contents had survived the journey. Mara looked away, but he turned a page towards her.

There were dates down the left-hand side. Beside one was written: Woman at crossing tells impatient dog, We both have to wait, Leonard.

Mara laughed.

“I liked that,” he said. “Giving him the whole explanation.”

“Is Leonard in the novel?”

“There isn't a novel.” He smiled, then closed the book. “That's what I'm finally trying to accept.”

The rain began arriving sideways. Mara shifted further under the narrow roof, and the man moved his envelopes to a drier pocket.

“For years,” he said, “I thought I was collecting things for something. A story, perhaps. Something worth showing people. Every time I wrote a sentence down, I wondered where it would fit.”

“And now?”

“Now I'm trying to let the sentences stay where they are.”

Mara glanced at the message inside the cover as he checked it again.

“The person who needs to finish this,” she said.

He gave a small, embarrassed shrug. “An old instruction.”

“What will you put instead?”

“My telephone number, apparently.”

They both laughed. Then he searched another pocket and found a pencil so short that it seemed mostly to consist of the effort required to hold it. He wrote beneath the message, shielding the page from the rain.

“There,” he said. “A useful sentence at last.”

Mara was waiting for another bus, but the man had only come back to the stop to search. He pointed towards the bakery.

“I think I should buy one of those.”

“They're closing.”

“Then I should be quick.”

He crossed at the lights. Mara watched him speak through the bakery door, watched the woman inside consider him, then disappear and return with a paper bag.

Her bus arrived before he came back. Through its window, she saw him beneath the shelter, opening the notebook again. The bag stood beside him on the bench.

Mara wondered whether she would become a sentence. Perhaps she already was: woman asks stranger if he has lost something.

She hoped he would mention the spoon.

Then the bus turned, and the shelter went out of sight. The man remained there a little longer, writing slowly while the rain softened the edges of the road. When he finished, he ate a bun and read the sentence once more.