She was not the main character, of this she was sure. Having boarded the bus a couple of stops away from where she’d spent her entire Sunday afternoon; enthralled in the sanctity the foam-lined walls of the cinema offered. She’d walked the extra distance instead of standing around at the closer stop waiting, wanting some exercise because her body felt unnaturally heavy from sitting in the darkened room for almost three hours. Turning her face towards the sky made her muddy puddle eyes achy from exposure to the mid-afternoon sun, dusk was approaching at a leisurely pace.
She’d taken her place, having sought out one of the few empty remaining seats near the back, the heat of the engine bleeding through the threadbare seats. She shut her eyes briefly letting the warmth seep through her thin jacket, its faint touch reaching her skin. Flickers of movement visible behind her closed lids, she rested her head gently on the cold of the window, condensation crawling and creeping higher as passengers breathed heavy sighs that came with from the threat of the end of the weekend. She enjoyed the conflicting temperatures and the brief moment of stillness and silence before the bus coughed a groan of effort and began moving.
The motion rocked her and she was overwhelmed with a strange sense of de ja vu. Like she was in the middle of a scene she’d lived before and it was unfurling around her. She hadn’t of course, she just felt like she had. The rush of momentarily being transported into the daydream role of the protagonist from her favourite film washed over her. The film she’d watched for roughly the fourteenth time less than an hour prior. Transported all because of that dirty bus window and the faint lingering scent of popcorn that followed her. She lazily opened her eyes and fixed her gaze outside. When she focused she could just make out the swaying velvet plush branches of trees sitting comfortably on the horizon as they grumbled along. The breeze stealing the leaves from their homes and sending them soaring up into the skyline as autumn crept in and threatened to strip the trees naked.
The wind was singing soft and gentle lullabies in her ear through the crack of the open window, just above her. Tickling her ears and sending her further into the solace of imagination. Lulling her into the movie set of her mind. She could picture the events of the film so clearly. Almost like she had it recorded. Her brain a personal portable DVD player. In that fleeting moment, she was the protagonist Elizabeth Foster. Foster had been traveling by bus, seeking adventure away from her dreadfully bleak home life. She had met the ‘one’, the great love of her life on that fateful journey and they’d travelled the world together on public transport. Living each day as it came, with nothing tying them down. All inhibitions disappearing as quickly as a whisper in a crowded room. Too wrapped up in silk scarves and the soaring of each-others hearts.
She was well aware things like that only happen in movies. Never in real life. Cliché as it might be and of course just as she was getting to the good part of her internal film replay the wind, in a more aggressive whisper spoke a wake-up call to her. And so, as things do, her daydream came to an end. An abrupt end. Rushed and half-hearted but still an end. Crushing the last remains of her fanciful wishes. It caused a mini ripple of cracks to form across her heart as if someone had thrown a pebble into still water. Because the hopeless romantic in her realised that deep down she longed for a similar storyline in her own life. She wanted to be her own version of Elizabeth Foster. She wanted her favourite film to be her reality. The perfect adventure, filled with endless summer nights, cherry wine, and no looming Monday morning paperwork. But she wasn’t the main character in a film and she doubted she’d meet her soulmate on the back-left hand seat of the number 43 bus.
The vehicle shook to a grinding halt, spluttering with the effort of submitting to the hand-break. With it, she jolted forward grabbing the sticky plastic handle on the seat in front of her to regain her stability. Now any hopes of slipping back into her head was truly gone. Reality had caught up with her and she had been thoroughly shaken from her dream world back to the mundaneness of reality. Disappointment making a home, creeping into her, causing a heaviness in the rise and fall of her chest. A chest that contained a yearning heart. She rested her head once again on the cool glass window feeling the condensation dampen her hairline. She let the last of her imaginings drift out into the vast expanse of open-air through the crack of the window and zoned out the shuffle of elderly feet boarding the bus. Focused on nothing in particular, shattered glass eyes empty staring out the window she almost missed what he said.
'Is this seat free?'
An impossible probability. She was no Elizabeth Foster and this was no movie. That very morning she’d decided that she didn’t believe in fairy-tale endings, and treated herself to one more watch-through of her favourite unlikely tale as a goodbye. But what if. Maybe she’d been too hasty re-writing the ending. Time to press pause on the remote control for a moment. Seems the universe was making one final attempt to make sure that doubt and disbelief were erased from her script by this rupture in time where everything stopped. In that moment under the turquoise chasm of this stranger’s eyes, life and fantasy finally collided. The worn, greying fabric of the empty bus seat next to her a catalyst. Four words that could so easily be the start of something.
She straightened her spine, taking a leaf out of Elizabeth Foster’s book and letting her self-consciousness disappear. Straight out of the movie that was beginning again in her mind with nothing hindering her, an answer that was barely a whisper of a return.
'Yes'
On those two seats of the number 43, where countless people had sat before her and watched strangers go about their lives she might not have been Elizabeth Foster, nor even the main character, but time had stopped for her for a moment, the wind had disappeared, the world had gone blurry, clocks halted. She couldn’t help but remember that they say it takes approximately six seconds to determine how you feel about someone. If that was true, maybe she was going to get her movie moment after all.
Comments