Bus Report #701

When I went out to wait for the 22, Sunnie was already in the bus stop. She waved to me as I crossed the street, flagged me down, really, and I waved back, before I even returned to the sidewalk.

“Oh, honey,” she said, as though we were continuing a recently interrupted conversation, “I swear my cousin is driving me crazy.”

I remembered a conversation from a week ago. Sunnie’s cousin’s son was supposed to visit, someone she didn’t know well and didn’t need staying on her foldout sofa.

“What’s he doing?” I asked.

She rolled her eyes. “He won’t go out on his own and keeps calling me at work, which is really disruptive.” She fiddled with the large silver charm on her necklace. “He was also badgering me about not paying attention to him but honey, you know I can’t hear anything without my hearing aids!”

I laughed. “That’s probably a good thing sometimes, huh?”

The bus came and we saw it was our usual driver – a man who always flirted with Sunnie, to the point that if she wasn’t there he would ask me where she was.

We got in and she sat in her usual spot in the back of the bus. I slid in to a window seat next to a woman who spent the whole ride barking into her cell phone in Russian. A steady stream of da, da, nyet, da.

I hopped out at Geary, tossing a wave back at Sunnie as I continued on my way.