She is sitting at the back of the bus. She lives far from the heart of the city so she has the luxury of picking her seat from the empty rows. And she always sits in the center seat at the back of the bus.
She likes watching the commuters enter, the sleep still clinging to their eyes. She likes watching the back their heads, secretly cataloging the different way they pass the time between stops.
But today is different. They are on the freeway now and for the next fifteen minutes or so (depending on traffic) there will be no new passengers, no one will exit.
She loosens the clasps on her bag. She opens the top but then hesitates. She needs to decide between book and journal. The bus sways into a turn and she pulls out the novel she's been nibbling at for the last few weeks - a thriller, but a boring one. The author has lost his way in the second act, she thinks, but the premise was promising so she wades through the muck, hoping a surprising resolution will spring out of left field, perhaps out of one of the forgotten subplots.
Halfway down the page, she closes the book. She's read the same paragraph three times but it only rattles around her mind, disconnected, random, refusing to coalesce into meaning. Today is different from any other and no attempt at distraction will keep the vague anxiety at bay. She thinks about trading the novel for her journal, but she knows the results will be the same.
And so she stares down the center aisle, past the seat backs, through the window and on to the horizon. The sun is coming up but hasn't broken through. Soon though, it tints the high clouds orange. The city grows taller, closer. The cars condense ahead. Soon they will be caught up in the thick of it.
It's strange. She is anxious to get to the point of her day. She knows she will come upon it in due time but the mind plays strange games with the fabric of chronology. She is surprised that the bus has come this far this fast, but is frustrated at how far it has yet to go. Anxiety has been the cause of both conclusions.
No comments:
Post a Comment