If I lived alone.
Her heels clip like a Clydesdale as she dashes across the road. She leaps over the curb and comes to a stop at a plastic bubble-topped bus stop. She’s out of breath and leans against an advertisement for a play that stopped running last week. It is not quite night yet though the sky is darkening quickly. Or at least she thinks so, it’s hard to tell while in the midst of another Wisconsin winter, when there are no colors just darkening shades of gray. She checks her phone, she’s not quite late. She drops a large canvas bag onto the wet pavement and crouches to scrounge for bus fare. A fur-lined hood falls over her head as she bends it down to scratch at the lint in the corner, hoping it will turn into a nickel. It doesn’t, so she stands and saunters toward the young man sitting on the bench. “Excuse me,” she pulls out her best sheepish smile, “I seem to be short five cents, can you spare me a nickel?” She pauses as he considers. “I’ve got to get home to feed my cat.” She sits and stretches one leg out as goosebumps spread across her bare thigh. He mutters something and puts his hand into his pocket. She crosses the other leg and leans back on the bench. He hands her a nickel and she beams at him, as the bus pulls up to a screeching halt a few feet from them. She jumps up quickly with a “Thank you Mister!” and climbs aboard. She sits on a cushioned seat and leans her head against the windowpane, feeling every bump and jolt of the bus along her temple. She closes her eyes, letting her mind wander erratically, like the needle of a broken compass. A baby begins to wail to the left of her. A woman sings in Spanish in a low crooning voice, and she lets the sound wash over her, her head filled instantly with quick violins and an acoustic guitar, and a warm breeze drifting through the open doorways and mud walls of the little house. There is a window with sand outside of it, and red rock giants hunching in front of an open blue sky, and a baby in the back of the bus, with a woman crooning softly in Spanish. The florescent lights on the bus flicker as she sits up on the pale blue seat and grabs her bag before it falls to the ground when the bus stops with tired wheeze of brakes. She hops off on to the cement curb, clutches her coat around her and tucks her head from the oppressive sky. Ducking through the crowd she runs up cold steps and out of the gray day into a washed out hallway. Her feet pound quietly on the faded carpet as she practically runs up the stairs and past the drab walls. Her key turns in the lock and her kitty meows a little welcome, weaving his soft furry body around her ankles. She sighs and leans against the door absorbing the warmth of her apartment. The walls are painted a dark red that she’ll have to paint over when she leaves, she tosses her coat and bag onto the peeling linoleum countertop and picks up the cat to cuddle as she wanders into her bedroom to begin the search for her favorite baggy sweater. She pulls her hair out of its restraint and lets it fall loose around her shoulders. Hot water pours into a mug releasing scents of cinnamon and clove as it hits the teabag. She reaches for the remote flipping on some background noise and plops down on the suede couch, arranging pillows of sapphire and emerald around her so that she is sitting on a cloud. Reaching over to the end table with a framed sketch she picks up the novel there and opens it to a page, and settles in to lose herself in a world brighter than this.
