A Mile in These Shoes

A woman was sitting across from Dancer with her eyes closed not in sleep but in an attempt to hide. She had long black hair, arranged in a thick plain bun under a purple velvet hat with black satin roses. She wore a black leotard top with a purple crinkled cotton skirt that reached nearly to her ankles and Dancer could see the bottom buttons of vintage black button-up boots. Her hands were elegant with many interesting rings on the fingers but the nails cut short and square and unpolished. She wore long dangle earrings. Her eyelids and lips and cheekbones were lovely as if carved in marble but her nose was thick and her neck wrinkled and gave away her age despite the look of innocence that her lashes lying on her cheeks suggested. Dancer instinctively felt sorry for her. Soon a man got on the bus, breathless from running and sat next to the woman. He had shoulder length blonde hair that appeared dirty and a large bushy blonde mustache. His skin was red and weathered and his blue eyes red rimmed from tears or a hangover, probably both. He was tall and lean and wore jeans and work boots and a blue denim shirt the same color as his eyes giving away some vestige of boyish vanity. He pleaded with the sleeping woman to come back home and all she said was OK in a tired voice and pulled the chain for the next stop. She barely opened her eyes but Dancer could see they were black as her hair. She got up with the man but held him back to allow others off first and she left her frayed black velvet drawstring bag on the seat. Dancer glanced at it and said nothing. The woman waited until the man had stepped off the bus and then said “Wait, I left my bag” in a loud voice and it was obvious she put all her strength into it. Then, as she turned back toward her seat, she cried to the driver “Close the door!” He did and took off while the blue-eyed man pounded on the glass doors and tried to force them open, shouting “Fuck you” to the driver who felt like a hero just then and the woman dropped into her seat and closed her eyes. She must have ridden to the end and Dancer never saw her again. But when the man got on some days and sat next to Dancer, smelling of whisky and talking up a storm, she knew who he meant when he told her his wife left him. “I know” she said "I was on the bus that day." He said "oh" sounding disappointed, deprived of the telling and the opportunity to embellish the mundane with more tragic details. He'd tried out several versions on several different women and any one of them showed considerably more concern. But most of the other women had stories of their own he really didn't want to hear and Dancer didn't talk at all so he started catching her bus on a regular basis and soon got past his wife leaving him and onto the problems of raising a teen-age daughter alone, how strict he was, how he loved her, how much like her mother she was and how he wouldn't ever let her date. What he didn't tell, Dancer guessed, and when he told her his girl had run away, Dancer knew she'd guessed right.