I drive the last bus on Route 5765 — Sapopemba Terminal / Vila Mariana — every night, since March.
It's not the kind of job you choose. It's the kind of job that chooses you, after three firings, an eviction, and a conversation with your mother in her kitchen where she says: *“Renata, for God's sake, take anything.”* Anything, in the city of São Paulo, at eleven-thirty at night, is a thirty-eight-seat bus with a permanent smell of disinfectant mixed with old rain.
I'm twenty-eight. I have a degree in Literature — Portuguese and English — from PUC, a full scholarship, high grades, a diploma framed on the wall of my mother's bedroom. Nice diploma. A diploma that, when I look at it before leaving for my shift, does the same thing as a picture of an ex: reminds you of a version of your life that existed for eighteen months and then evaporated.
I'm not complaining.
I'm describing.
Route 5765 on the last run isn't a bus. It's a capsule of silence crossing the city between midnight and one-forty in the morning. The passengers don't talk. The passengers don't look at one another. The passengers exist inside themselves like fish in separate aquariums, and my job is to move all the aquariums from one point to another without breaking any of them.
On average: seven passengers per trip.
I know because I count them. Not because it's required. Because at two in the morning, when you're alone on a bus making the return to the depot via the empty Minhocão, the alternative to counting something is thinking, and thinking at that hour is dangerous.
So I count.
Passengers per trip: seven (rolling average of the last thirty nights). Stop with the most boardings: Sapopemba Terminal (obviously). Stop with the most drop-offs: Paraíso (makes sense — that's where the clubs are). Quietest stop: Liberdade, 12:20 a.m. No one gets on, no one gets off. The bus stops, opens the door, waits, closes it. Liberdade at 12:20 a.m. looks like a photograph of itself.
I keep the data in a little notebook I bought at Kalunga for R$4.90. Black cover. Spiral-bound. None of my coworkers at the depot know it exists, because if they did, I'd be *the stats-obsessed weirdo* for the rest of my career, and I'm already *the one who quit her Literature degree to drive a bus*, which is enough weird identity quota for one person.
Wednesday, May 14. 12:07 a.m.
Vergueiro Street stop, around number 1800. A night of fine drizzle — the kind of drizzle that doesn't wet you, just dampens you, as if São Paulo were breathing down on you.
I opened the door.
A man got on.
People getting on at this stop isn't unusual. People getting on *like this* is.
He was — how do I describe him? He was the kind of person you look at and can't put an age to. He could've been thirty, he could've been fifty. His face was smooth, but not young. His eyes were dark, but not black. He wore a faded denim jacket — the kind of fading that doesn't come from washing, but from time — and carried a grocery bag full of something that made a faint sound of glass against glass.
He tapped his transit card. The turnstile turned.
He sat in the back row, on the left, by the window.
I saw everything in the rearview mirror. I see everything in the rearview mirror. The rearview mirror is my television. Eighty-nine channels, all in black and white, all without sound.
I noted mentally: *eight passengers today.*
I followed the route.
12:22 a.m. Paulista Avenue stop, by MASP.
Two people got off. No one got on.
*Six.*
12:31 a.m. Consolação stop.
One person got off.
*Five.*
12:38 a.m. República stop.
Three people got off at once — two young men and a woman in a glittering dress who thanked me as she got off, which is rare enough for me to record. Thank-yous per trip: average of 0.4.
*Two.*
Me and him.
I glanced in the rearview mirror. He was looking out the window. The city passed over him like a film projected onto glass — streetlights, façades, a Claro billboard I'd memorized from seeing it so many times.
I kept going.
12:45 a.m. Santa Cecília stop.
No one got off. No one got on.
12:51 a.m. the Minhocão stop.
No one.
12:58 a.m. Barra Funda stop.
No one.
I looked in the rearview mirror again. He hadn't moved. The bag sat quietly in his lap.
*When is he getting off?*
It's not a problem. People miss their stop. People fall asleep. People simply decide to ride to the end of the line because the end of the line is better than wherever they were going. I know that kind of passenger. I've been that kind of passenger.
1:04 a.m. Lapa stop.
He stood up.
I slowed down. Stopped. Opened the rear door.
He got off.
I looked out the window. He was on the sidewalk, beneath a streetlight. The drizzle had stopped. He looked up at the streetlight, as if reading something written on it, then turned and walked toward a side street I saw every day.
I looked at the stop.
*Lapa stop.*
Except — I looked again.
There was no bus-stop sign.
I know this route. I drive it six nights a week. The Lapa stop is two hundred meters ahead, at the corner of Guaicurus, beneath a blue sign with the route number in white. I stopped before the stop. I stopped in a stretch of road that wasn't a stop.
Did he press the bell?
No.
I *stopped*. I stopped on my own. I stepped on the brake and opened the rear door as if it were the most natural thing in the world, and he got off as if it were the most natural thing in the world, and neither of us questioned it.
I stayed there for eight seconds. I counted.
Closed the door. Continued to the real stop — two hundred meters ahead, corner of Guaicurus, blue sign, white number.
No one waiting.
I recorded it in the little notebook when I got to the depot:
*05/14 — 8 passengers. Last passenger: man, denim jacket, bag of glassware. Got off outside the stop (Lapa, ~200 m before). Bell did not ring. I stopped for no identifiable reason.*
I underlined *no identifiable reason*.
Twice.
Thursday, May 15. 12:09 a.m.
Vergueiro Street stop, around number 1800.
I opened the door.
He got on.
Same jacket. Same bag. Same sound of glass against glass.
Transit card. Turnstile. Back row, left side, window.
*Him again.*
It's not strange. Bus routes have regular passengers. I recognize at least four people who take Route 5765 every night — the man in the Corinthians cap, the nurse who gets off in Paraíso, the guy with earbuds who never turns off the music, the woman who reads on her phone with the brightness all the way up and lights up the whole row as if she had a spotlight in her face.
Regulars are normal. What wasn't normal was the rest.
1:01 a.m. I was near Água Branca. Seven passengers had gotten off. It was just the two of us.
He stood up.
I slowed down.
Stepped on the brake.
Opened the door.
He got off.
I looked out the window. Sidewalk. Streetlight. Factory wall. No sign.
I looked ahead. The real stop — Água Branca, corner of Tomás Edison — was, by my estimate, a hundred and fifty meters ahead.
I didn't press his bell, because it hadn't rung. I didn't decide to stop, because I don't remember deciding. My foot went to the brake, and the bus stopped, and the door opened, and he got off.
I recorded it at the depot:
*05/15 — 7 passengers. Last passenger: same man. Got off outside the stop (Água Branca, ~150 m before). Bell did not ring. I stopped for no identifiable reason.*
I looked at the two entries.
Two nights. Two drop-offs outside the stop. Two places that weren't stops. No bell.
I know this sounds like the beginning of a horror story.
I'd rather it sound like the beginning of an operational-error story, because an operational error I can resolve with supervision and a route adjustment, and a horror story I resolve — I don't know how I resolve it.
I closed the notebook.
Went home.
Tried to sleep.
Couldn't.