Juxtaposition in
Transit
AJ
She's sitting on the bus, number 22, southbound, towards downtown on her way to
a job interview.
Her boyfriend came to visit for the weekend but left a few hours before. That
morning the alarm went off at 7:30am; two slaps on the snooze button later he
got up. At 8am she sat up in bed and, after a few sleepy kisses, she let him out
and locked up the door behind him. She was too groggy to be sad when he left,
but later that morning when she found a note he had left her, she missed him.
Pulling out her hair brush from the drawer in her bathroom, she found a note
saying, "You have the most beautiful hair! [smiley face]." He told her there
were more notes hidden throughout her apartment, so she wandered around, pulling
open drawers, hunting down the rest, seven in total. A note stuck to the inside
cover of her personal cookbook read, "Why are you SO sexy in a chef's hat?" and
she laughed aloud, then suppressed a sob.
Now on the bus she sits thinking about the notes and missing his presence and
the smell of the shampoo on his hair. She lives alone now and misses the sounds
of her grandmother snoring down the hall, her bedroom window banging from the
harsh winds. She breathes in the recycled transit air, blowing out frost, and
considers that this bus ride might become routine if she gets the job. Twice a
day, five days a week. A man gets on the bus and sits in the vacant seat on her
left. He is in his 60s and wears a gray knitted cap and burgundy pinstripe
pants. The bus lurches forward, and the motion slides her knee against his
burgundy-clad thigh. Ordinarily her first instinct would be to jerk her knee
away from this stranger, but the touch is comforting, so she leaves it. It is
warm and strangely familiar; it reminds her of sharing a backseat with her
grandfather on car rides to church when she was small. She does not pull away
and neither does he, and they sit, leg to leg, for four city blocks.
If you're in the right frame of mind, she thinks, the touch of a stranger is
enough to break your heart.
Next:
"Untitled"
Rachael Kaniewski
Previous:
First Christmas
Sarah Carter Conklin