Connections: As the Jitney Turns

The Hampton Jitney is a great leveler. Other than the media moguls and Russian oligarchs who come and go on private jets or noisy helicopters, most of us 99 percenters — when we eschew our own automobiles — are apt to find ourselves crowded into a true cross-section of East End residents and weekenders on the Jitney. And something crazy is always happening there, isn’t it?

I’ve been riding the bus since its first year of existence, and I’ve seen it all: fights between riders, quarrels between riders and attendants, even a rider booted from the bus and left by the side of the road by the old Grace’s Hot Dog truck. But the set-piece drama that played out when I was coming back from New York one recent afternoon really took the cake.

We had barely pulled away from 40th Street, and I had just picked up my Kindle, when my attention was drawn to a woman of a certain age sitting behind me who had started whispering.

My first thought was that she was rehearsing a script. There’s a lot of theater here at this time of year, after all, and it seemed to me that her conversation was somehow too clichéd, too Hollywood to be the stuff of real life. After several minutes of nosy-Parkering, however, it became clear that the truth was less glamorous: She was on the phone.

 Calls on the Jitney are supposed to take place only in emergencies and be limited to three minutes. You are advised to “let your fingers do the talking” (that is, text). The woman behind me was on the phone for almost the whole two-and-a-half hour ride. The attendant never seemed to notice.

Naturally, when someone starts whispering, one’s interest is piqued. Blatant attempts at secrecy only draw our interest more strongly. What can I say? I haven’t much excuse. Does it count that I’m a journalist and am supposed to be ever on the alert for news? No? Well, the fact is, I was losing interest in the book I was reading and felt that, besides, someone who talks for two hours on a crowded bus when specifically asked not to rather invites eavesdroppers.

I’m a certain age myself, and it’s possible that my hearing isn’t the sharpest, so I can only surmise that if I heard the whole thing, many of my fellow riders did, too. I missed words here and there as the bus rumbled over uneven pavement, but I got the gist of the conversation.

“How could you do this to me?” she stage-whispered. “You know how I feel. How could you do this to me?”

I couldn’t believe my ears. Someone was learning about a lover’s infidelity on a phone call on the Jitney. It sounded like her husband had just told her — by phone — that he was in love with someone else.

I attempted to focus my attention elsewhere. I picked my Kindle back up. The drama continued to unfold.

“How long did it go on?” I heard her ask. “Three years? No, I can’t keep it to myself. My sister will take one look at me and know something’s the matter. No. Don’t come to Amagansett.”

Hmm. Maybe it was a cheating boyfriend on the other end of the line, not a husband. I couldn’t help myself; I wanted to know more. I actually pondered getting up to go to the lavatory (as it is referred to on the Jitney) to get a look at the speaker, but I didn’t. I think a few others on the bus might have.

After quite a long time, it sounded as if she was crying. Oh, dear.

The whispering stopped. She had hung up. Everything was quiet for a while.

Then she dialed someone else. “I just have to tell somebody,” I heard her say.

The whole episode would make a good cartoon in The New Yorker, I think. I can visualize it now: A busful of Hamptonites snug in their Jitney seats, snacking on free pretzels, slyly rolling their eyes and bending their ears toward a damsel in distress, as she tearfully exclaims into an iPhone: “I just had to tell someone!”

 This anecdote doesn’t having a moral, unfortunately, and I admit it doesn’t make me look terribly good. But it does inspire a couple of tidbits of Hamptons advice. The first is: “Everyone can hear you on the Jitney. That’s why they have the three-minute rule in the first place.” The second is: “If you’re looking for a reality-television concept, consider the bus.”