On Thursday, Nina put a poster down in front of June and said, “You have until I finish this orange.”
“For what?”
“A decision.”
The poster was for The Last Bus Home. Nina had brought it to the staff room along with her lunch, a clipboard and a cardigan she wasn’t wearing. June picked up the poster by two corners, careful not to get it in the wet mark on the table.
“Next Friday,” Nina said. “Small screen. Your introduction and a conversation afterwards. I can give you the slot.”
“People might not stay for the conversation.”
“They might not come for the film. This is the glamorous life we chose.”
“You chose it. I answered an advert.”
Nina dug her thumb into the orange peel. A bright spray caught the light.
June looked at the poster. The couple stood on opposite sides of a bus window, their hands nearly touching through the glass. She had first seen the film by herself, on an evening when she was tired of being invited to watch happy people misunderstand each other. The ending had made her cry, then feel unexpectedly better. It was funny before it was sad. People forgot that when they argued about it.
She wanted a room full of them arguing. She wanted to be at the front of that room without looking for Ruby to make the first joke.
Nina peeled off a long strip.
“You’re making this tense,” June said.
“I’m hungry.”
“Friday. Yes.”
Nina stopped peeling. “Yes?”
“Before you get to the eating part and I have another idea.”
“Good.”
She grinned, and June found herself grinning back. Nina was only four years older than June, and far more pleased by the things she organized than June had expected an events coordinator to be. A good crowd made her happy. A bad film with a good crowd made her happier.
“Can I try introducing something first?” June asked. “Something small. On Saturday?”
“The four o’clock?”
“If you don’t mind.”
“I’d be delighted. Saturday afternoons are usually three people and a very determined woman with her own flask. She’ll give you a fair chance.”
“That sounds worse than a hundred people.”
“One of the three is her husband. He sleeps. You can count him as neutral.”
June laughed, then looked at the poster again. “Do you think the idea is enough? Just talking about an ending?”
“It’s a film evening. They get a film. You’re allowed to like the thing you’re inviting them to.”
There was a knock on the open door. One of the other staff needed Nina. She got up, taking her half-peeled orange.
“Write me a few lines for the foyer board,” she said. “Your lines. I have too much admiration for buses and very little to say about love.”
June remained sitting after she left. Her phone held three messages from Ruby, spread over the last two days. The first asked whether she wanted to meet; the second said she was sorry about Sam; the third was a photograph of a terrible skirt in the shop, with You could get inside this and buy property.
June had answered the photograph with a laugh. She hadn’t answered the other two properly.
Now she wrote, Nina’s given me next Friday for the film evening.
Ruby rang almost immediately.
“The bus one?”
“Yes.”
“Good. Good, June.”
She sounded so pleased that June had to put a hand over her smile, alone in the staff room.
“I have to write the little thing that makes people come.”
“Do you have to say ‘little thing’ in it?”
“It’s my professional title.”
“I get lunch in twenty minutes. Meet me outside?”
June agreed. She went with the rolled poster under her arm because she hadn’t yet found anywhere safe to leave it. Ruby was waiting beside the shop window with her coat open and a sandwich in a packet. She took one look at the poster.
“You’ve stolen it.”
“Yes. My event is a criminal enterprise.”
They went down the side street where there was a low wall in the sun. Ruby spread her coat over it for them to sit on. June tried to leave space between them without making a display of it. Ruby put the sandwich in that space.
“Half?”
“What is it?”
“Something intended to reassure women who eat standing up.”
June looked. “Chicken.”
“Yes, but hopeful chicken.”
They divided it. Ruby unrolled the poster across their knees, holding one edge so the wind didn’t take it. A woman passing slowed to look at the picture.
“Oh, I hated that ending,” she said.
“Then you’re exactly who we need,” Ruby told her. “June’s doing a night about it.”
The woman glanced at June. “Are you?”
“Friday at the cinema,” June said. “The whole film, then a chance to disagree with me.”
“You like the ending?”
“I do.”
“He should have got on the bus.”
“That’s what everyone says.”
“Because he should.”
Ruby held up her sandwich. “Come and tell her. I’ve been trying for years to make her admit she’s wrong about a film.”
The woman laughed. She asked what time, then carried on toward the shops.
June watched her go. “You made that sound fun.”
“It is fun.”
“Usually I just make it sound like an argument I’ve prepared.”
“You enjoy your arguments. That’s the bit you need to tell people.”
June took the poster back. Ruby had a smear of mayonnaise on her thumb; she licked it, then realized she had left a pale mark on the black edge of the paper.
“I’m sorry.”
June wiped it with a napkin. “The director has survived worse criticism.”
Ruby leaned against her shoulder for a second. “You’ll be good.”
June looked down the street. It was possible to enjoy this and still be angry. She hadn’t realized quite how much she wanted both things to be possible.
“I’m trying a short introduction on Saturday.”
“Can I come?”
“Yes.”
“I finish at three. I can be there for your grand entrance.”
“I’m hoping it won’t be grand.”
“That’s how all the great entrances begin. An apology.”
They ate the rest of the sandwich. Ruby asked whether June wanted help with the words for the foyer. June said she wanted to try them herself. Ruby nodded and began talking about a child who had spent twenty minutes in the shop trying to buy a jacket for a dog that wasn’t there.
By the time Ruby had to go back, June had laughed properly, with her head lowered and her stomach hurting a little. The skirt in the photograph was visible through the shop window. Ruby stood beside it on her way in and mouthed, Property.
June held up a hand as if to refuse a viewing.
Back at the cinema, she wrote the invitation in one attempt and changed it twice. She sent it to Nina before she could turn it into a defence of every person who had ever left a bus alone.
Then she took the café receipt out of her coat pocket.
She had transferred Eli’s number to her phone on Monday. The paper had become a soft little square, which she kept finding while looking for other things.
She called him before she could decide a message would be easier.
“June?”
“How did you know?”
“You sent that message asking if this was Eli.”
“Right. Very good detective work.”
“I can offer that professionally too.”
She looked through the staff-room window at the brick wall outside.
“I’m doing the film evening. Nina’s said yes. I’m going to practise on a small audience on Saturday.”
“The bus?”
“A different film first. I’m saving the bus argument.”
“For your enemies.”
“Would you come? You don’t have to help. But you said something in the café that made it feel like a thing I could actually do.”
The invitation sounded more personal once she had said it. She waited.
“I’d like to,” he said.
“I haven’t told Ruby you’re coming.”
“Do you need to?”
“No. I just thought you should know.”
He was quiet for a moment. “Thank you for asking me.”
She told him the time and ended the call. Then she sat with the receipt unfolded on the table.
There was no reason for her to keep the paper. She put it back in her bag anyway.