Tom Brady’s ugly rat face wore a deflated expression.
“My net worth is $180 million. I don’t know how to use a bus stop.” He pleaded, and, wrinkling his ugly rat nose, added in a whisper, “And my wife’s net worth is $380 million.”
The woman, Jessica, nodded. A strange and terrible noise came through the speakers. Tom hoped Gisele hadn’t heard it.
“What was that?” He asked.
“I said, ‘maybe she knows anyway.’ You should try.”
The video chat window went blank. Jessica had signed off.
That was it. Tom Brady needed to learn how to use a bus stop.
The girl wanted to meet at a bus stop. There was a convenient, too convenient, too close bus stop near Tom Brady’s estate. He was surprised it existed, in fact, and annoyed. He didn’t want bus people around him. However, he’d decided an affair was in order. The anti-aging effects of affairs were widely discussed on a forum he’d stumbled across while trying to research if unbalanced pH water caused erectile dysfunction. He never found out. He found Jessica instead—or she, perhaps, found Tom Brady.
They had each accidentally installed Grinder instead of Tinder.
That was a good sign. Tom grew weary of playing second fiddle to Gisele’s superior mind, Gisele’s superior body, Gisele’s superior libido, Gisele’s superior funds—all of Gisele Bündchen was superior. She could play a fiddle. He could not.
“Honey? How does a bus stop work?” Tom Brady called out to wherever she was. They had a large house.
Her voice rang back from a mysterious if nearby-seeming location: “What?”
“How does a bus stop—” He blinked. Gisele’s long, willowy neck had already craned into Tom’s bedroom doorway.
Tom Brady’s face turned tomato red. The Brady family refrained from eating tomatoes to no avail.
“Don’t be such a humorless himbo, Tom Brady.” Gisele said. “Do you need bus money?”
A very long, very willowy arm proffered a fifty dollar bill.
From somewhere came a faint, familiar whoop: “It’s clobberin’ time!”
“My personal trainer is waiting. I should go.” Gisele’s said. Her head zoomed forward to peck Tom Brady’s forehead. “Have fun today at soccer practice.”
He’d need to ask Bill Belichick.
The process was simple. Too simple. When Coach explained, Tom Brady wasn’t surprised bus people were so lazy and useless.
“I don’t feel so much ‘trapped’ in my marriage,” Tom Brady remarked aloud to no one once Coach had hung up, “as I feel—” He paused a moment to think. “I feel entitled.” That was it, yes.
He stood waiting, continuing to wonder what neighborhood reprobates needed a bus stop. He tried to reconcile hatred of Brookline’s already excessive property taxes and wanting to price such persons out of town.
“Maybe someone’s hedge fund failed.”
He smiled a gaunt-lipped rat smile. The hedge fund families made Tom Brady feel inadequate. A retired hedge fund man could likely run a successful Senate campaign. A retired football player likely couldn’t.
One Bain guy, already preparing, had even hired a sensitivity coach. When Tom had informed Gisele and suggested getting one, too, she’d said no, “Tom Brady, you don’t need a racism tutor.”
“Maybe it’s someone’s maids.”
Tom Brady shrugged at a passing flock of feral turkeys, inciting a frenzy of squawks.
Seven hours later, a bus arrived. He had no way of knowing it wasn’t a regular T bus. He might’ve noticed it was an unusual model, maybe, if disposed to awareness. He wasn’t. As a rule, Tom Brady abstained from awareness because awareness was stressful and stress accelerated aging.
The doors didn’t open as expected. They spoke.
“Sorry, I was stuck in traffic. I am Jessica.”
The words, metallic and sonorous as a Moog, continued. “And I am not Jessica. My real name is Turbopummel. Jessica is my humansona.”
The bus was talking. Tom Brady was unprepared, and instinctively glanced around for Bill Belichick, for guidance, mumbling a prayer. “Help me, Coach.”
“Jessica is an animated avatar. I apologize for my deceptic—deception. I needed to meet you, you see.” Jessica-not-Jessica Turbopummel said.
Tom Brady, panicking, decided against getting creative. Creativity tended to mean trouble. He’d tried it once; it didn’t go well. The stress of panicking meant trouble, too. Aging. His cells were beginning to oxidize. His telethons were shortening, Tom Brady told himself. His DNA would soon unravel. The sensation was palpable.
He had to regain control. He had a plan and was going to stick to it, even if Jessica, or Turbopummel, was an Optare Solo SR midibus and not a pretty 21-year-old studying at Lasell College.
Tom Brady extended, admired and flexed an arm.
“I brought you a copy of The TB12 Method: How to Achieve a Lifetime of Sustained Peak Performance, my diet book. Twenty-nine, ninety-nine.”
The bus seemed perturbed. He’d screwed up, Tom Brady realized. He admired his arm again, this time while it was flexed, not before.
“Twenty-nine, ninety-nine is not my serial number, TB12.”
“Twenty-nine dollars and ninety-nine cents,” Tom Brady explained, delighted at an opportunity to do so, “is the price of the book.”
Tom Brady smiled, unsmiled, and smiled again more nervously. The book’s back cover had, in one corner, a black and white striped rectangle, and it brought to mind a referee. There were some digits, too—a serial number, Tom Brady guessed. His ghostwriter had never mentioned books’ serial numbers or referees.
“I don’t believe in money.”
Tom Brady unsmiled again. He was unsure what to do, and again glanced around for Coach Belichick—or Gisele, or a turkey.
“TB12.” The bus began, “I—”
“The TB12 Method: How to Achieve a Lifetime of Sustained Peak Performance—that’s my book.” He wiggled it. “This book. This is my diet book.”
The bus nodded by means of a delicate hydraulic kneel, which incidentally produced a 110 decibel sighing sound.
“OK.” Turbopummel said. “I’ll bite.”
The bus’s front end extended itself and pivoted toward Tom Brady, opening its grille somewhat. Their gazes met, and lingered in expectation and confusion, and what bore a striking yet unseen resemblance to a second and much smaller bus’s front end—except it had sharp, glinting chrome teeth, like a roboshark—shot out of Turbopummel’s open grille, chomped down on The TB12 Method and a smidgen of finger, and shot back in. Tom Brady blinked.
Turbopummel chewed thoughtfully, reading, shredding and recycling Tom Brady’s book into fuel pellets over a period of 30 or so seconds, during which Tom Brady became aware of a painful sensation. He found its point of origin, a red smear on one hand. The desired information, as Turbopummel already knew, remained at large. An upending of physics on so great a scale wouldn’t be easy to come by.
If even a remote chance of Tom’s somehow mindlessly sublimating Gisele’s work existed, it needed to be investigated.
There were signs of such sublimation. His book’s title suggested a conquering of thermodynamics. The Bündchen Machine, however, in contrast to an alkaline diet, held genuine promise.
Turbopummel’s homeworld was wracked by carnage. Energon ran low, tensions ran high. If Gisele Bündchen had discovered perpetual motion, she couldn’t be permitted to secret it away for commercial gain.
Tom Brady felt woozy. He wanted to drink a gallon of water, take some electrolyte supplements, meditate. He wanted to talk to Coach.
There was no coach, only Jessica.
“Jessica? Can I call you Jessica? 'Turbopummel’ sounds kind of, you know.” He glanced down and counted to nine and a half. “How many fingers are normal?”
“By definition, most, TB12. You can call me whatever you want except for 'Turbopum,’ because only my closest friends can call me that.”
The bus was starting to sound like Gisele. Tom realized he’d once more been ensnared by a superior woman’s wiles. Woman?
“You are a lady bus, aren’t you?” He asked.
“I don’t believe in gender, TB12.” The bus said.
Tom Brady’s brow furrowed, or tried to. If brows could wheeze it would’ve wheezed. The BOTOX® injections were hard at work. His mind grasped at memories’ fraying threads, wishing it’d paid more attention in biology class so many years ago.
Where were a bus’s tits supposed to be? He couldn’t see any.
Turbopummel decided now was as good a time as ever. The bus reversed as if to make a multipoint turn. Two cars, one heading each way, suddenly appeared and started honking. Turbopummel had company.
The bus gently ran over and swallowed Tom Brady, just as a third car, an 18 wheeler and a tape deck pulled up.
“Let’s go back to my place.” Turbopummel suggested, firing up a vertical takeoff thruster.
“There’s one more thing I should tell you. I didn’t grow up in Wayland. I grew up on Cybertron.”
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