The Art of Fiction — Writing Exercises from John Gardner (#2)

Prompt: Describe the same simple event (a man gets off a bus, trips, looks around in embarrassment, and sees a woman smiling) using the same characters and elements of setting, in five completely different ways (changes of style, tone, sentence, structure, voice, psychic distance, etc.). Make sure the styles are radically different.

1.

Bob took small steps down the aisle. As he moved toward the front of the bus, he held on to the leather straps that hung down from the ceiling, trying to maintain his balance against the bus’s fluid momentum. He was always apprehensive about touching other passengers. He didn’t like to touch the surfaces of the bus either, but that couldn’t be helped. The bus slowed. Bob braced himself so as not to go lurching forward into the windshield. “Lafayette,” shouted the driver. “That’s me,” Bob called out. Bob shuffled forward. He passed the last row of seats and then passed the driver, whom he acknowledged with a courteous nod that went unreciprocated. Bob started down the steps toward the opened door. On the last step, just as he crossed the plane from the bus’s dim interior into the bright afternoon sun, the toe of Bob’s shoe clipped the rubber gasket of the bus’s folded door, and sent Bob careening headlong into the street. Instinctively, Bob reached out to cushion his fall. When he struck the pavement, he felt the skin along the heels of his hands peel back like the top on a sardine can. He felt the wind knocked out of him. He struggled to take in a breath. Someone approached and offered Bob a hand, but Bob refused. He was mortified by his clumsiness. He was not an old man. He was not feeble. He was not to be pitied. Bob raised himself up, brushing the grit from his pant legs with exaggerated attention. He felt too embarrassed to look up, to meet anyone’s gaze. He tried to ignore the pain, but his hands were wringing, oscillating at two different frequencies of pain, a high pitch stinging, and a low pitch throb. He could feel small bits of gravel embedded deep in his palms.

“Sir” the driver called after him. “Sir, are you okay?”

Bob turned to face the driver. “I’m fine,” Bob said.

Bob turned away from the bus, towards the sidewalk, and saw only a single face staring back at him: a young woman with dyed blue hair, leaning against the bus shelter, looking tired but resolute. The young woman was smiling, not with pity, but with a kind of quiet kindness, as if somehow, Bob’s gracelessness had touched her, had comforted her in some unexpected way.

2.

You race up the aisle, no time to waste. Gotta get home. Gotta get home before she does, or else. Or else what? Or else bad things. Very bad things.

The bus stops. The driver mumbles something, the stop name, maybe. You whirl past him. You don’t bother saying goodbye or thanks or have a nice afternoon. You don’t care what kind of afternoon he has. You see him reach out and pull the lever to open the accordion style doors, but it’s too late, you’re already past, you’re already halfway through the opening, unable to slow down. Your left leg scrapes against the steel-framed door as your momentum sends you careening through the air, toppling end over end like a well struck bowling pin. There’s no bracing your fall. You slam against the street and when you do you hear a crackling sound like someone stepping snapping a pencil in two. The sound makes you want to vomit. You can’t tell how bad it is, or where it is. You can’t feel anything. Shock maybe. Or adrenaline. Or some mixture of the two. Either way you can’t move. You feel stuck to the ground, like a wad of chewing gum that’s been pressed into permanence by an endless parade of passing boot heels. You look over towards the curb, towards the crowded bus shelter. You see bodies moving towards you. One body remains still: a pair of running shoes, soles thick as nimbus clouds. Your eyes follow up from the shoes, up the stalks of legs, up the shiny, nylon stretch pants. When you make it past the sports bra that seems two sizes two small, the flesh around the armpits and the bust spilling over, you see that the woman is smiling and that she has blue hair.

3.

It was so typical. I told Bob to be at the bus stop at 3:30. “Don’t be late,” I said. “We’ve got to get there before four and it takes twenty minutes to walk there from the bus stop so we won’t have any time to screw around.”

“I won’t be late,” Bob said, “Don’t worry.”

I got to the stop early. I stood there waiting, leaning against the bus-shelter, reaching out with the toe of my shoe and smooshing old cigarette butts into the pavement. Where do they all go? Into the river probably, and then the ocean? But then where?

The bus was two minutes late. When it arrived, I sprang up and walked toward the door. I could see Bob making his way up the aisle, sauntering from side to side, his moppy curls bouncing around his forehead and making him look fifteen years younger than he is. The doors to the bus opened. Bob had a goofy grin on his face and he stuck his tongue out and pointed to his watch.

“Didn’t I tell you not to worry,” he said.

“Yea, yea,” I said, “let’s just go.”

Bob bounded down the steps. I turned to start walking but caught Bob’s goofy grin as it inverted. There was a jarring sound and the doors of the bus clattered as Bob’s left side bucked against the steel frame. Just like that Bob went airborne. He came soaring out the door, his body leveling off about three feet above the pavement, as if he were going in for a shallow dive. “Bob!” I screamed. Bob made a wordless, panicked sound, but it was too late. He smashed against the asphalt with an awful thud, the books in his backpack clapping together like the sound of a mouse trap snapping closed. Bob groaned loudly and I rushed to his side. I rolled him over to see how bad it was, but saw only that same stupid grin on his face again.

“Are you hurt?” I yelled.

He didn’t answer.

“Bob!”

“Well that was embarrassing,” Bob said, in a slow, pained drawl.

The bus driver leaned out of his chair, “Hey, is he okay?”

“Yea, he’s fine,” I said, smiling, and gave Bob a light kick.

“Bob, get up,” I said. “We’re going to be late.”

“Sheesh,” Bob said. “Give a guy a minute will ya?”

“I told you we don’t have time to dick around,”

“I’m not dicking around,” Bob said. “I had an accident.”

“You’re always having accidents,” I said.

“So what?”

“So after a while, it doesn’t seem so accidental.”

The bus driver leaned over again. “If he’s fine, get em out of the road will ya.”

“Thanks, sir,” Bob said. “I’ll just drag myself to the gutter and that will be a good place for me to bleed out and die. Don’t want to keep anybody waiting.”

“Is he kidding?” the driver hollered.

“Yes,” I said, “he’s kidding.”

“Get him outta the road then,” the driver said again, and he closed the doors and pulled away.

Bob looked up at me. “Hey,” he said, “You dyed your hair blue.”

4.

At 3:44 PM Bob Jacobs reached up and tapped the large red button above his window labeled PUSH TO STOP. On cue, the driver of the bus glanced up from the road and looked into the rear view mirror. He made eye contact with Bob who raised a thumbs up to show that, yes, he’d hit the button in earnest. The Bus slowed. Bob rose from his seat. He made a quick adjustment to the crotch of his pants and tucked the book he’d been reading, A Boomer’s Guide to Bitcoin, into the crook of his armpit. He walked towards the front of the bus and when he reached the last row of seats, directly behind the driver, Bob spoke:

“Thank you,” he said.

“You’re welcome,” said the driver.

The driver yanked a silver handled-lever, peeling open the bus’s accordion style-doors. Bob descended the stairs, feeling excited for some unknown reason.

At 3:47 PM, on the corner of Partition and Lafayette, the doors of the number six city bus opened. Ten feet away, sixteen year old Katherine Peroni stood leaning against the bus shelter, her blue hair fanning out over the greasy plexiglass, half covering an advertisement for low-cost healthcare. When the doors opened, Katherine Peroni saw Bob Jacobs come spewing forth from the bus, toppling out of open doors as if he’d been ejected, as if he’d been vomited up from inside. The man, Bob Jacobs, flew through the air with such speed and force, with such a look of utter shock and dismay, that young Katherine couldn’t help but burst into laughter, imagining a world in which every passenger was ejected in such a manner.

Bob Jacobs, miraculously unharmed but deeply embarrassed, rose to his feet, dusting off his slacks which had been badly torn at the knees. Rising to his full height, Bob looked around sheepishly, then met eyes with the young, smiling Katherine. Seeing her electric blue hair, and her large toothy grin, Bob forgot his shame, and broke into a hearty fit of laughter

5.

I was waiting for the bus, which was late, like always. I was scrolling through instagram, but there was nothing good. Even the dog videos weren’t doing it for me. I don’t know why I was in such a bad mood. I guess it was just one of those days. My clothes didn’t feel right. They felt too tight, aka I felt fat. And I couldn’t get my hair to straighten without it looking paper flat and totally stupid. Worse, all of the sudden, this morning, I woke up and had this disgusting pimple on my chin that I couldn’t hide no matter how much foundation I put on. When it rains it pours, right? Anyway: I was standing there at the bus stop, leaning against the bus shelter, trying to ignore Tommy and Jose who were going on and on about some stupid video game they play, when the bus finally rolled up. I was like, thank god. I’ll just get on, I’ll just put in my air pods, stare out the window, and disappear for a while. But when the doors of the bus opened, this old guy came flying out, like literally flying, and he went crashing down into the pavement. I thought for sure he was going to die. He fell so fast and so hard, and he looked kind of fragile. But somehow he was fine. It was kind of a miracle actually. He wasn’t even bleeding. He got up looking mostly embarrassed, even apologetic, like he was sorry for causing a scene or getting in the way or something. The bus driver came out and was talking to him, asking him if he was sure he was okay, asking him if he wanted him to call for an ambulance, just to be safe, in case of like, a concussion or something. The man kept refusing. No, no, no, he kept repeating. He said he was fine. He said he was just clumsy and he looked over at me and he winked. He winked like he knew what kind of a day I was having, like it was the same kind of day he was having, and without even thinking about it I smiled at him and that seemed to help him, he stood up a little straighter, and he smiled back, and when I got onto the bus and took my seat by the window I looked out and he was still standing there, looking a little wary, but still smiling, and he waved and I waved back and for a minute I felt better too.

On the bus Tommy and Jose were still going on about their dumb game in the seat in front of me and no matter how loud I turned up my music I could still their snorting. I looked up to see if anyone else seemed bothered by it and the bus driver looked back into the rear view mirror and for a moment our eyes met, and he made a look like, “tell me about it,” like these two clowns were just the tip of the iceberg for the kinds of people he had to deal with all day, everyday, and so I smiled at him too, saying like, yea you’ve probably got it rougher than I do, and he looked back at the road and I looked back at the window and we rolled down the street and I could, just barely, still make out the guy who’d taken the spill, and he was still waving and I thought, yeah, maybe he did have a concussion, but who knows. It was just one of those days.