It was now the sixth day in a row that David saw her. Always at the same hour, at the same place. He had been doing the same routine for almost two years now: leaving his home at 6:45, walk down his narrow street filled with small gardens and small alley ways, reaching Main Street and arriving at the bus stop 5 minutes later. Then, since the bus was only due at 7:00 he would fill his time with something, a book, a magazine, a newspaper....in the early days he'd pass time observing the traffic, the people and the remaining persons at the bus stop. Always the same people. There was the usually over concerned and worried-like business man or executive heading downtown to some big corporation (David never figured out which one), always with the Finantial Times under his arm, altough he never read it. The nice lady with the little boy by her hand, both more asleep than awake and Mr. Johnson the beat cop, a widower of years, with no sons, always ready for early duty.
But, except with one or two conversations he had with Mr. Johnson (after all he lived three doors up his own house), there was usually silence among them. All had been said in one way or another. And strangers they all have remained. There's something about the early hours of the morning that didn't make people that talkative. God knows David rarely felt the need to communicate at that hour. He, like the others probably, just needed a few hours to get his bearings right and in order. A coffee always helped of course, but he had to wait until his stop.
So, that goes to say that, by now, David was already set in that routine, the routine of the clock, the same steps, the same people, and nothing much changed. Until SHE came along, changing the usual business.
She was different. Sometimes she would already be there, other times she would appear later and one time she actually came late, and it was David who asked the driver to wait a few seconds. He did. She got on the bus, but she never knew it was David who held the bus. And he never told her of course...it would be a bit awkward.
She always looked lost within herself, shielded by the ever present walkman and some book. She read all the time. Different kind of books. Novels, romances, detective stories, History books, one or two scientific volumes, you name it. She puzzled him.
She dressed casually most of the times, confortable, but with a distinguished class. Nothing too fancy, but with that type of class that she seemed to achieve almost with no effort at all.
She wasn't exactly an astonishing woman. She was a bit skinny, and had proeminent cheek bones, giving her face a bit of a "square-ish" feel. But, she was really beatiful in her own way and she definitely had something that made her very, very interesting and appealing. At least to David. Her eyes were hazel nut brown, the same colour of her hair that cascaded over her small shoulders in the sexiest ways possible. She smiled a lot, to herself, maybe because of something she heard in her music, something she read or something she saw through the window. And that smile was simply enchanting.
She always sat in the back with her book and music and got out of the bus one stop before David's.
With time he found himself always looking for her as soon as he got to the bus stop. He did his best not to stare at her face. But it was difficult, because he felt mesmerized by her. But while doing his best not to stare, he also strived to provoke some kind of eye contact, in order to...God knows what...He always sort of expected that she would drop something that allowed him to strike up a conversation with her. But then again, maybe not. Anyway, it was pointless to think about those "ifs". The fact was that she never seemed to leave her own world, and no, she never dropped a thing, not even the bus ticket.
The bus ticket. That should had been enough to kick start him in any direction. But, as usual, he failed to grasp the meaning of it. Not that it would have done any difference, but then again, one never knows. David, as a regular user, never used those tickets. He had an all purpose general ticket, for the entire transportation system.
She hadn't one of those. She was there temporarily. Unfortunately David realized that too late. And while he mentally scratched his head with: A) the subject of acting upon the right moment, B) waiting for that right moment, and mostly, with C) how the hell would he recognize the right moment, she was gone.
One day,just after three weeks, she just didn't show up. Simply gone, vanished in the haze where she came from.
Gone, the bus stop being the only place in time and space they had, in a way, shared. Their weird common ground. At least it was common ground for David, who was painfully aware of the misuse of the word "common" here. He didn't even know if she had ever noticed him at all.
He kept going to the bus stop to take his bus, but she had already taken another bus out of his life.
