Friday, February 15, 2013

It's A Monday Through Friday Thing


It's a Monday through Friday thing.

She waits every day at the same place to catch a bus that remains parked down the street, within sight, obeying the almighty schedule. Cars pass by in the morning gloom, their tires a constant sussurus, their engines a constant rumbling flatulence.

By the fifth day it's routine, but the hundred and fifth a habit: walk to the assigned point on a map drawn be people who might've passed the corner once, stand in the cold, and look at the bus parked a hundred yards away, lit and warm. The cars have their own pattern, unchanged and ever changing. There are irregularities to witness amongst the patterns.

Every day the silver truck with the dent in the right front fender comes around the corner too fast, the driver is somehow perpetually surprised by this and brakes excessively. Some days an espresso from the stand up the street is in his hand, others his phone. Once he almost killed someone in a head-on collision, the portly old lady coming in from the ferry. She supposes that at forty you've probably lived a full enough life, but still.

There's the guy that rides his scooter like it's sport bike, everything so shiny he must think he's Tom Cruise or something. He's old enough to think Cruise is cool. He putters by every single morning at 7:52AM on his own personal highway to the some danger zone. She even set a borrowed watch by it once, then compared it to her phone later. It was strange; no one wears a watch anymore. Not anyone from this century anyhow.

In a strange way, though, these strangers are commonplace and familiar. The wait becomes like any other line, anywhere else. She amuses herself with a quick vine of the Seinfeld soup nazi. The solace is music. With the music on the wait blurs into choruses and stanzas, the ebb and flow of the bass, the songs on a constant rotation.

Every changing, always the same.

It's a Monday through Friday thing, after all.

1 comment:

  1. Finally got by to read this...and I love it. Your imagery is so good.

    ReplyDelete