Greyhound
This is a story I wrote a little while back. I’m pretty proud of it. I know I’m a horror buff and it’s odd for me to delve into the romance-like area but this was just something that needed to be done.
Perfect Strangers
They met in a line. Funny thing is a line would also be the definition of their entire night together. She approached him, almost like a lost child would come up to a stranger who looked like their mom. She asked him in a barrage of broken English if this was the place to meet and handed him her pass. He glanced down at it and nodded. He really disliked talking to people at these things. He would rather just get it over with and leave in the morning. However, after minutes of ignoring her crystalline gaze he finally asked her who she was and where she came from because her accent was clearly not one with a tex-mex drawl.
She began to speak and he looked into her face. That face was so beautiful that it caused him to catch the “Mar-“ part of her name and only allowed him to know that she was from a far away place which he may never go to. They began to talk. They had the world in common from Bob Dylan songs to Horror Movies; although due to language barriers he had to refer to the killers by their masks not their names.
By the end of the first hour he liked her. No lust, no sexual attraction whatsoever. Just like. It was the feeling of ease that one may feel after years of embarrassment with the same person, he thought. After all, he was in no position to offer an ounce of passion, so ‘like’ would have to be the final straw.
The call came to sit at ease, but there was no ease for him as long as she occupied the seat to the left of him. He felt her cool gaze and her shattered accent mix into something strange in his mind. He had to get away, but the doors had already been locked, so he put on his head phones and greedily listened to an old Broadway musical. Seconds passed by, the minutes seduced him and finally the music and her eyes took over.
He leaned in close and whispered so as not to bother the others, “Do you want an ear bud?”
“I’m not accustomed to your American music,” she whispered back, her breath a faint minty smell. “May I?”
Most of the night went by, the sounds of Weezer, Saves The Day, and Manchester Orchestra, stealing her European sound virginity; her radiant eyes smiling the whole time almost in sync with the beats.
Barely a word was exchanged, but it was clear to him that they were both at ease with the situation and this prolonged shared moment was okay.
He woke up from a violent dream hours later something about airplanes crashing into a sea of fire. He was half expecting the moments shared with his foreign beauty to be moments dreamt, but her silent breathing near his shoulder proved otherwise. It was almost as if she was actually sleeping towards him. Like he was some sort of comfort zone. He smiled to himself, a bit guilty for sharing this night so close to his next anniversary.
She awoke. He could feel her eyes opening and silently engraining the moment in time. Little did she know the impact that this meet would have on him. She didn’t know that some random acts of sincerity would help show him the world was still graceful, even when half of it was falling apart to wars and poverty.
They both leaned back, gazing at each other, once again sharing ear buds. Ear buds. The connection that now brought two oceans together and knew no language barriers. They fell asleep connected, until morning broke.
The sun split open their eyes and the ear bud had fallen out of her ear. There was the usual awkward silence and then a strained ‘good morning.’ He smelt his morning breath and quickly popped a piece of gum in his mouth. She may or may not have taken that as a hint, which it wasn’t; and proceeded to shove a mint in her mouth.
The doors unlocked and she was free to go to her wedding and he to his rocky but steady relationship. They parted, not before giving a friendly hug and walking away, both of them knowing that they would probably never see the other again.
He had a new experience that night in the desert. Who would have guessed that such intimate moments could be shared guilt free for a night with a person whom he barely new? A person met on a Grey Hound bus from Arizona to Hollywood nonetheless. He shrugged the night off, storing it in the back of his mind for a rainy day.
She walked through the empty glass doors into the musty light of Hollywood. Her mind still replaying the night; and she then realized that she could define a new, more literal meaning to the term: Perfect Strangers. She smiled, and walked off. The Grey Hound bus pulling away in the distance as two more almost perfect strangers boarded; Though she knew that almost perfect wasn’t the real thing.
