Chosen Child

1 her bus came grinding to a halt at the bus stop and he said, "One last kiss," not knowing that it really would be. She laughed and gave him a flurried little peck on the cheek. He took hold of her hand as she started to climb the stairs of the bus and tried to pull her back. "Come on, I don't have all night!" the bus driver snapped at her. The doors shut with a sharp pneumatic hiss, and Jan was left at the kerbside while the bus bellowed away to Mokotow in a thick cloud of diesel smoke. He briefly glimpsed Hanna waving at him, but then the bus was lost in the traffic, and she was gone. A small fat woman in a headscarf came hurrying up to him, puffing and sweating. "Was that the 131?" she demanded, as if it were his fault that it had left without her. "Don't worry. There'll be another one in five or ten minutes." "That's what you say!" she protested. "It's worse than the old days!" He laid a hand on her shoulder and gave her a wide, movie-idol grin. "Where are you going?" he asked her. "Czerniakowska. What's it to you?" He turned his back to her, crouched down, and extended his hands behind him. "Hop on. I'll carry you there myself." This enraged her even more. "Idiota!" she spat at him. "What do you take me for? I'll give you 'hop on!'" But he was in such a good mood this evening that he didn't care. He left her at the bus stop and started making his way north on Marszalkowska with the confident, unhurried stroll of a man for whom everything is going right. It was just past nine o'clock on a warm and windy August night, and the center of Warsaw was brightly lit and busy. Taxis banged and jolted past him on worn-out suspensions, and half-empty buses blared diesel into the air as they headed out for the suburbs of Zoliborz and Wola and east across the river to Praga. Newspapers were tossed by the wind and tangled around the legs of the people walking past the brightly-lit shops on Jerozolimskie Avenue. That afternoon. Jan's producer Zbigniew Debski had told him that his idea for a new weekly satirical program had been approved, and that Radio Syrena was going to increase his salary to 950 zlotys a month. Jan was going to have enough money to save up for a car, and the chance to do what he did best, which was waspish, irreverent investigations into political scandals. Zbigniew had celebrated by bringing out vodka and platefuls of chocolate biscuits. At least he hadn't hugged him and kissed him, which he was occasionally inclined to do. Zbigniew had a mustache like a bramble-bush and boar-like body odor. Best of all, though, Hanna had at last agreed to move in with him (her eyes shyly shining because she thought it was so daring). On Saturday he would borrow his friend Henryk's van and transport all of her belongings from her parents' apartment on Goworka to his own new apartment overlooking the river at the Slasko-Dubrowski bridge. He knew that Hanna's mother would complain, but mostly because the family would now be deprived of Hanna's income. Although she had graduated as a doctor of microbiology she worked as a fashion buyer at Sawa department store, and made almost as much money as Jan did, 650 zlotys a month. Hanna's mother might miss the money, but she couldn't deny that he and Hanna were suited. They were both twenty-five years old; they both liked Blur and REM; they both enjoyed dancing and nightclubbing and pizzas and staying up most of the night talking about what they would do when Jan was famous. They could both collMasterton, Graham is the author of 'Chosen Child' with ISBN 9780812545333 and ISBN 0812545338.