Someone died at Granville today.
She doesn't know the details. What she does know, however, is that as the rain beat gently and silently against the glass, she hears a flurry of mobile phones being retrieved from purses and bags and the adjusting of pockets. Several languages come, and accents too. Voices emerge, defining the personality, status and disposition of each individual. The woman beside her was surprising, her voice said she was a morning person.
She can't understand what most are saying, but she knows exactly what is communicated to the beyond.
I'm running late...
There's been an accident...
There's been some big accident...
Apparently some guy...
No one cares to discover more of what occurred to cause this delay, their main concern is about that nine o'clock appointment beyond all else. She ponders if her mother has been affected, hopes, that within this rain, it wasn't a train crash. She sits. Perhaps the most still, the only one who has no one to call. No one relying on her. No one needing her. No one. She wonders if she can ever learn how to be independent again, but there's a fine line between independence and loneliness. She misses the person she used to be, the perpetual vibrance, the dreams, the friends. Perhaps she took them for granted. She needs them now, perhaps they don't need her. She feels like a leech. Or a parasite.
She opens a page. Legal feminist theory. She reads. She doesn't think about Granville.
37 minutes late. Mostly, she doesn't care. All she can do is damn the rain and damn her shoes for chaffing her hastening feet. Her own fault, she supposes, they were cheap.
She waits in the rain, alone, drowning in a rainbow a sea of umbrellas. She casts a brief thought, not to her health, but to her books. A glance at her dampening bag and she concludes that they'll be safe. The rain is as relentless as the taxi drivers on George street. They're always so eager to maul her at the knees, even when the man says walk.
The sky is grey, like her mood.
She waits again. Another sea of umbrellas. The rain drums.
A hand reaches out, and a shy voice whispers. Somehow she hears it overpowering the insatiable beat of the rain, the spray of cars rushing past and the distant cacophony of honking, beeping and yelling. The machinated rumbles of the city are drowned amidst this quiet offering. She figures, God is smiling at her. She smiles back as she steps under this woman's umbrella. It's a tiny sphere, obviously only fit for one, it's new apparently, but cheap. It'll do, they both think, it'll do. The moment could have been awkward, but somehow there's comfort in knowing that in the non-discriminate onslaught of the rain, strangers can be united in one of the most basic and humanistic way: in the simple quest for shelter.
Perhaps there's sunshine after all.
--------------------------------------------------------------
She sits. She waits. She's here again, her home away from home. It's cleaner than she remembers, but on days like this, such is the norm. The pavement is still decorated with the historic polka dot formations of discarded gum, blackened by time and the shoes of blind people. The metallic seats are still icy and empty, except for the random delinquent truanting from school, the mother with a double stroller and six bags of groceries, or the most unsavoury character she hopes won't steal her earrings because they shine. Her purse and phone are clutched in a vice-like grasp.
The rain continues the beat across the pavement. It's beautiful. The droplets land in waves, arbitrary patterns, ribbons of water against the surface. They dance like a harp player's fingers across the strings, she can almost hear its music, see the notes written in the patterns of precipitation diving to the floor. It's gentle and daring, and soft and vibrant. Orchestral.
A gutter is leaking. Rain splatters constantly downwards. No pin prick landings of light droplets, the chaotic splatter screams of death. She thinks of Granville. It's an incessant and annoying clap. The moist splattering of this broken construction is juvenile and immature. She frowns, it cannot match the sophistication of nature's symphony across the road.
A bus careers past, sending two distinct streaks across the delicate magnum opus. The moment is gone. She realises there's a hideous side to pulchritude, and that beauty comes in waves.
She alights the bus and proceeds uphill and onwards to home. She's trudging through mud and murky water flowing downstream. Exhaustion steals across her limbs, and her bag diggs ever so voraciously into her shoulder.
But she doesn't mind, because on this side, the sky is blue, the colours a bright, and the roses are blooming.
