I can hear her, over my iPod.
“Does this go all the way to Northtown?”
I’ve written this in lower case, but the reader should not take that to mean the question was asked with an “indoor voice” but rather that to begin this post in CAPS would be to paint one’s self into a font-ish corner.
The bus driver answers her in a tone that is not – and should not – be audible from where I am sitting.
“OK!” the woman says, holding a phone to her ear. “I just gotta go all the way to Northtown!”
I take out my little book and write this down: Buscommuter’s gotta go all the way to Northtown.
And I wait. No point putting the book away at this point.
We long-time bloggers know a story when it’s hollered at us.
“Hello! HELLO!”
Ah, there we are. Didn’t have to wait long.
“That apartment still open? What? WHAT? Yeah, I’m on the bus now.”
From my seat eight full rows behind her, all of this is very clear.
Across the aisle from me, a young woman with a blue streak in her hair looks up from her iPhone.
“I should prolly tell you somethin’, though. I mean, when you run the background check, well, I’m charged with a felony.”
Blue Streak and I look at each other.
“But it’s just a CHARGE, not a conviction. I mean, it’s not anything you can hold against me. You have to show me the apartment.”
Several more heads pop up to inspect the back of the head of The Person Without Boundaries.
“It wasn’t even mine! It was my boyfriend’s. IT WAS LESS THAN A GRAM!”
It is at this point that I laugh out loud. I mean, come on! Whatever it was, Potential Landlord, it was less than a gram!
Blue Streak grins at me.
“Yes. YES YOU DO!” There is a slight pause as the woman on the phone listens. “Two dogs. TWO DOGS. Look. I’m gonna be there in 30 minutes. I’ll see when when I see you.”
She turns her phone off, and for the next five minutes stares out the window, silently.
And I de-bus.
But even now, two days later, I wonder: Did she get the apartment?