Encounter on a Bus by Constantine Gochis

 She was not a guy, as I had originally assumed when she passed me at the bus stop. It was the shaven head that misled me, though to be frank, I thought the legs were too creamily tanned and shapely for a guy.

The bus was very long in coming. We mounted together and dismounted again at Fairfax and Third Street. Both of us took the northbound 217 to Oakwood Avenue, where she was behind me when I got off.

"We meet again," I said. "Like ships that pass in the night." She laughed.

"We've talked before," she said, though the phase was more like a question than a statement.

"I should have remembered if we had," I said, looking at her intently.

She was gray-eyed and small fatured, and pretty.  Web-like creases at the corners of her eyes testified that she was approaching forty, or had passed it. She wore no make-up. She was trim and casually dressed.

"What do you do?" I asked.

"Do?" she queried.

"I mean, work."

"Right now, I'm not working."

"When you do?"

"Counter-work in department stores, when I have hair."

It seemed to me that work was not a major concern of her life style.  I probed. Though she was articulate, she had not had college. My impression practically screamed, "Berkeley!" Later conversation verified she was leading an unencumbered lifestyle, which would not be foreign in that environ.

"I don't have a TV, or a VCR, or even a radio," she told me. I was not surprised.

"Or a dress suit?" I offered. "Surely not an evening gown, or a family?"

"A sister in Florida, where I come from." Her accent was not Californian.

"My guess is that it takes only a slight wind to fill your sails," I ventured.

"I go when the urge comes."

"Where are you going now?" I asked.

"I'm going into this shop to look at some books," she answered.

We were standing in front of the Out of the Closet Thrift Shop, on Fairfax Avenue.

She offered her hand and I took it.  It was warm and friendly.

"I hope we meet again," she said.

"I hope so too. I feel we might," I responded. I thought she might make a fine addition to my collection of Fairfax Avenue notables who give the area its flavor. I did mention to her in passing that she was interesting enough for me to write an immediate five pages.

She laughed.

I watched her walk away. She wasn't a guy, but it was not a feminine walk.

Then a Thrift Shop isn't a place to look through books.