Just ten minutes in the late August heat has already melted my mind into a bubbling tar pit, so I’m only marginally paying attention to the goings on around me, but the deep grumble, as familiar as the growling of my own stomach, and the warm waft of diesel fumes tells me that a bus has arrived. I don’t bother to check what bus, any bus will serve my purpose, and climb up the steps, stumbling over the top one as I always do if I’m not concentrating on my feet. It must be a fraction of an inch higher than the other steps, or so I tell myself. The driver chuckles and says, “Careful there,” as I pour a rushing flood of change into the slot beside him and ask for a transfer pass.
Determined not to trip again as the bus bulldozes out into traffic, I cling to the handrail, unthinkably slick with the city’s summer sweat, and swing myself onto the far end of the first bench seat, cringing as the cold plastic collides with the backs of my legs. Across from me, against a backdrop of streaming buildings and quasi-stationary cars, is the only other passenger, an old woman with wispy white hair and indeterminate blotchy tan skin, the universal embodiment of “elder.”
I smile at her a bit, one of those twitch of the mouth corner smiles that always attaches itself to my face when I’m suddenly launched into close proximity with a stranger. The bus driver received not so dissimilar a smile only a moment ago. At first her mouth seems to flicker a bit in response, but then I connect the heavy black glasses and shaky hand grasping a red tipped white cane, and decide it was my imagination. If her hand shakes, why wouldn’t her smile shake as well?
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After examining the advertisements and the same safety notices that have wallpapered the bus for years, I find my eyes repeatedly drawn to the old woman. When I realize this, I try to look away, to interest myself in the school of cars darting around outside, in the shops and apartment buildings stretching up to meet us and shrinking down behind us. I can’t help feeling it’s somehow doubly rude to stare at someone who cannot stare back.
Soon the morning shadows of downtown reach their tendrils across the bus, strobe light flashes of brightness and shade, heat and comparative cold. I recall a half-formed desire to visit a shop on an upcoming side street and pull the cord for the next stop.
“What stop is coming up?” the woman calls out to the driver, disproving my hypothesis that she is asleep.
“Milvia.”
She tips her head slightly to the side, then nods to herself several times, as if the street has a meaning to her that she has just remembered. When the bus pulls over and I hop down the steps, down never seems to be a problem for some reason, she taps her way out behind me, instructing the driver to have himself a good day.
Reaching the sidewalk, she turns a methodical circle, then says, approximately to me, “Do you think you could do me a favor?”
I nod, realize that won’t do any good, and agree to help her.
The woman turns another twenty degrees clockwise, reorienting herself to face me.
“An old friend of mine once told me about a coffee shop around here. She said they had the best green tea she had ever tasted. She couldn’t remember the name, only that it had a dark green awning and was on the north end of Milvia. Can you see a shop like that? I don’t want to be walking in circles all morning trying to find a shop that might not exist any more.”
I can see what is probably a green awning with several sets of small tables and chairs beneath it, across the street at the far end of the block, and tell her so. She follows my footsteps and voice until the scent of coffee becomes so strong that she inhales deeply and says, “Must be it.”
I’m just considering how to tactfully make my exit, when she says, “Well, come on then. I’ll get you a cup of tea or coffee, whatever you want.”
I follow her through the open door, nearly blasted over backward by the air conditioning, and decide that a hot drink sounds alright after all. At the counter, I find myself ordering a green tea as well, though I usually just drink coffee. Maybe it’s all the green in the place influencing me, dark green table cloths, pale green dishware, predominately green paintings, huge leafy houseplants spilling out of every corner. Sitting at a two-person table near the door, she asks me what the shop looks like, and I describe it as best I can, ending with the framed photo of the city skyline that hangs behind the counter, strangely out of place in the garden surrounding it.
“I saw the birth of so much of that skyline.”
She gestures toward the bay. I can’t see it, through the coffee shop’s cream colored wall hung with flowered prints, and beyond that, miles and miles of buildings, but then neither can she.
“From our house up in the hills, I watched the city all day. There was nothing else to do really. And then when I got up the courage, I ventured out into it alone. Now it’s been more years than you could imagine, and I’ve spent the better part of my life observing this city. I can still hear and feel and smell much of it, some different, some the same, so I can tell the city is here around me, but I sometimes wonder what else has changed since I lost my sight. Someone could have painted the whole city pink and I would have no idea.”
I reassure her that for the most part, no one has painted the city pink, though there are a couple of new buildings on University that are a hideous salmon stucco with blue-green trim. Like Pepto-Bismol and Nyquil, right out of the medicine cabinet and onto the apartments. Not really worth seeing anyway.
Twin teacups on pale green saucers are hastily deposited on our table, and I only catch a flash of black and white cloth before their bearer disappears into the kitchen. The woman’s thin fingers find the cup handle and she takes a steamy sip, sighing gently and saying, “Just like dragons on the first misty morning of the world.”
The scalding gulp I take is bitter and tastes faintly of freshly mowed lawn.
“I know it’s self-centered of me, but I can’t help feeling that maybe the city needs me to watch it, or now that I can’t see, to pay attention to it at least. I don’t yet have the complacency about death that you sometimes hear about in old people, but the human body can’t last forever. It’s a good thing, really, but I wonder what will become of the city when I’m not watching it.” She shakes her head with a lightning flash of a smile and says to me, “Sorry, honey. You shouldn’t let old women start talking. There’s no telling when they will stop. Now where were you off to before I waylaid you?”
I don’t really have much to tell. I had been sick for most of the last week, and finally feeling healthy again, I discovered that I couldn’t stand being in my apartment a minute longer, and set off with no particular destination in mind. It’s nice to be out in the sun and air again, instead of just feeling the heat pounding against my windows and sucking all the oxygen out of my apartment.
She nods in response, sighing sadly over the perverseness of a summer cold. Taking another sip of lawn, she sits in silence for a long moment and seems to be probing my aura for some brittle shard of my personality. I’m contemplating the similarity between the unruly strands of her white hair and the steam rising from my tea cup, when her face tenses as she comes to a decision.
“Have you ever seen a dragon?” she asks, voice clear, but lowered to the volume of secrets, nearly blown away by the perpetual humming of the air conditioner.
Improbable as the question sounds to begin with, I can’t help clarifying whether she means a komodo dragon, which I might once have seen in a zoo, or one of those house-sized, metallic, fire breathing fairy tale dragons.
“Neither exactly. I once read in a book, in fact, the last book I read with these old eyes of mine, that the earth is an enormous sleeping dragon, and if you look carefully enough, you can see traces of it and its offspring. I never got to see a dragon, not even a komodo, but I can hear them sometimes, in storms or the subway roaring.”
I apologize and tell her I haven’t seen her dragon either.
“Oh, well. It was just a novel anyway. The idea really stuck with me though.” She carefully set her empty cup down on its saucer and slid her chair back. “My friend was right, that was the best green tea I’ve tasted.”
I’d noticed the “going out of business” sign on the window on our way in, but I had become distracted by the old woman’s wandering dialogue. Chugging the last of my tea and standing up too, I manage to stutter out the bad news that she might not have another opportunity to taste it.
“That’s alright. You can’t drink the best green tea every day of your life. Once is good enough for me,” she says, turning toward the door. “Well, I’ve taken up enough of your time. You have a nice day now, and keep an eye out for dragons.”
That said, she walks back along the street and disappears into the city. I examine the bottom of my cup, dark grains in wavelike patterns around the ceramic, sparse memorial to the earthy bitterness it recently held. Not knowing what else to do, I check the time left on my transfer pass and head back to the bus stop. This time I verify the route number before stumbling on board.
When I get home, errands once again forgotten and the taste of green tea still in the back of my throat, I stare out the window at the rigid backbone of city skyline in the distance, jagged skyscrapers rising from the water like armor plating. I close my eyes, and against the grainy red-gray of my eyelids, the fiery orange dragon slowly lifts its head from the bay.
Wonderful. Is any of this based on a true story? Ive given that smile myself. I use it every time I meet up with ppl I dont know that well. I might of flashed it at you a few times. Its cool. I know Ive seen your yours once or twice also. Great detail. Love it.
p.s. one time I met a women getting off the bus on University who asked me for a favor. She was in a wheel chair and she needed help getting to her hotel, and than she asked if I could just take her up to her room. It was one of the saddest moments of my life when I left her in the room without saying too much. Wish I could go back again, but for where I was at in life, Im just glad that I took the time out of my day to take her to her room at all. I was already late for class. So many connections I can make with this piece. I love how it makes me think of my own adventures in the Bay. Love it.
This is an alternate take on something from a long thing I'm working on. I've always really liked the concept of a blind seer, so this is just something that sprouted one day. Nothing is "real" except that smile and my inability to climb bus stairs.
Good thinking on the comments overflow!
You didn't go to school for nothing! hehe
I read this already! I want fresh material! GOGOGGOGO!
/em bites defmoose. In the butt. That's right, I'm cranky. hehe
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