Does This Bus Stop at 82nd Street?

The last time she was here there hadn’t been such a thing as buses, or electricity. This city had yet to rise up from the earth, cutting the people away from land and sky. She sighed. And people, there had been less of them as well. She made her way through the jostling crowds, pressed in by impatient bodies always so much more concerned with where they were going than where they were.

At the stop she waited, listened to the voices and sounds of so many different lives. She tilted her face up and felt the sun warm her aged face. The brakes of the bus hissed and the doors slid open and she waited for everyone around her to bustle on before she climbed slowly up the steps, her old bones creaking.

“Does this bus stop at 82nd Street?” she asked.

The driver didn’t look at her but he nodded.

She worked her way to the back, sat, and braced herself for the moment that the bus lurched forward, a sensation that she had never managed to adjust to.

It wasn’t a long ride but stepping back out of the bus and into the air felt good to her. She shuffled down side-streets and alleyways until she came to a door, almost hidden amongst the old stone walls. She rapped her knuckles on the stone, ignoring the sting of it.

A stone moved and a masked face appeared in the opening. The mask was black and the eyes showing through were very blue. The voice was dry like twigs snapping in the forest.

“He’s been waiting for you.”

“You always say that, as if I don’t always take care to arrive early. Just open the door.”

He looked at her for a long time, his blue eyes unblinking. “You aren’t looking too good out there either. Are you going to ask him again?”

She didn’t answer. Living as long as she had, she had learned the art of patience.

He grumbled and slid open the door and as she passed over the threshold from the human world and into her own and all the long years of her life melted away until her body was young again.

She knew where she was going and what she was meant to do. The room opened into a foyer and two large doors. She passed through them and into the ballroom. She heard the murmur of voices, was aware of others in the room. She didn’t even glance at the dais at the far end. She went to the left, to a small raised platform and she sat on the small stool, her fingers already itching to get started.

The weight of her harp was familiar and a comfort to her. It settled perfectly against her and she knew she didn’t need to check the tuning. This wasn’t the human world. Nothing degraded here.

She plucked the first chord and felt the deep resonance of the thicker strings, she plucked another and then played the melody over top, the thinner strings providing bright tones to overlay the depth of the thicker ones. She played as she never had before, putting the whole of her heart into it.

She played and played, for hours or maybe days. Folk danced and they brought their suits to the king and still, she never once looked at him.

When she was done playing she touched the strings one last time with reverence. She caressed the wood frame softly, the familiar grooves fitting against her hand perfectly. She took this moment for herself, knowing it would be another 200 years before she saw it again.

She pushed the harp up from her shoulder and balanced it back onto the base. She got to her feet and for the first time in all the times she’d come here she didn’t approach the dais to ask for her pardon.

She should have known that he wouldn’t let her leave this way. He called her back and she approached slowly, her eyes still downcast.

“Will you not pose your question?” His voice was hard but after a moment of silence he spoke softer, “Will you not look at me?”

“I do not wish to do either. You will not hear me, no matter what I say.”

A long, long time ago she had run from him. She had chosen another man and that man, a mortal. In his pride, he’d banished her except for these days, when he brought her to the court and used her skill and then humiliated her by refusing to let her come home.

“You will not ask and I will not give,” he said. After another pause he asked her something that he had never asked before, though she knew the question must have haunted him. “Was he worth it?”

She thought about how her man had been both rough and soft. His acceptance of life as it was and his calm ways. She thought about his laugh and how warm he was. Her life here, in this realm, it had been beautiful. The man on the dais before her was beautiful, but it was a cutting beauty, everything here had an edge and everything was so cold, everything but the music.

“Yes. He was.” She turned and left and this time he didn’t call her back.

She rode the bus back and made her way out of town. She walked across the fields, slow and aged again. She smelled the sweet grass and heard the music of the birds. She went back to the house she’d shared with her man all those years ago.

She opened the door and paused. In the middle of the sitting room sat her harp, a note woven through the strings. She couldn't understand what prompted this, only perhaps it was the way she had played this time. She read.

“The next time you speak I will listen. The next time you ask, I will give.”

Prompt ▼

Bruce Springsteen, one of the most prolific singer-songwriters of our time, was born on September 23, 1949 (yes, in the USA). When Springsteen was 23 years old, he released his first album: Greetings From Asbury Park, N.J. While not a huge success in its time, many of the tracks on it were covered by other performers (notably Manfred Mann), and after the world-sundering success of some of his later albums, this first effort of his received greater public attention.

Your mission for your story or poem is to use one of the titles of the songs on Greetings (listed below) as the title of your story or poem; that is, at a minimum, we'll want to see the title in the Title section of your Static Item. It should be an exact match (e.g., "Growin' Up," not "Growing Up.") The story or poem should then somehow relate to the title. As you might expect, the required genre is Music.

Choose from the following titles:

Blinded by the Light
Growin’ Up
Mary Queen of Arkansas
Does This Bus Stop at 82nd Street?
Lost in the Flood
The Angel
For You
Spirit in the Night
It’s Hard to Be a Saint in the City