Olivia Daven was running for the bus. She looked harried and desperate as her short heeled shoes clacked on the side walk. She kept pulling the black leather straps of her purse over her shoulder, while trying to keep hold of her jacket in the other hand. The ruffs on the collar of her blouse bounce with each step. She usually had her jacket on and was holding a sack lunch instead, but not today.
She had ran past all the apartment complexes and turned into Boulevard, Blvd, a busy street lined with shops. It was five blocks up Boulevard to her bus stop, she had already ran two and had two minutes to run the last three and the bus driver was as timely as Olivia usually was, he never came late.
Olivia looked back to see if the bus was coming. She saw it stopped at a light, its wide tinted black window shield looked menacingly at her. The digital sign above the window shield flashed the green letters: E-24 Downtown. Olivia put on an extra spurt of speed. She squeezed between a biker and the boxes a man was taking out of his truck, careful not to bump either one, only to bump into a lady coming out of her car. She vaguely heard her yell, “Hey!” but Olivia muttered a sorry and kept running.
She looked back again and saw the bus moving from the stop light catching up with her. One block down, two more to go. The bus’s dirty front smudged with brown stains was now neck and neck with her and passing. She glanced at her watch, “One minute early. Figures.”
A block and a half away the bus stopped at her stop. Olivia started to yell, “Wait! Wait!” But as she crossed the street the bus puffed out a plum of black smoke from its muffler, but it didn’t go. The bus driver must have seen her and stopped. Olivia sprinted the last block and with a wide grin started toward the door of the bus and was met by a crowd of people coming off the bus.
She asked a man in front of the crowd, “What’s going on?”
The man was holding a newspaper and coffee in one hand above his pop belly covered by a blue shirt and a walking cane in his other hand. He puffed as he climbed down the stairs of the bus, “Bus just broke down. At least Fairfax could replace it’s busten buses.”
“When does the next bus come by?”
Once on the sidewalk, the man looked at his watch. “Not for another half hour. 8:35.”
Exasperated she said, “Thank you.”
He smiled, “Tough morning?”
“Yeah.”
“It will get better.”
“Yeah.”
Olivia wasn’t sure if she believed him. Fate had already sent a sure sign how this day was going to go. She turned to sit on the bench by her stop and found it already full by those coming off the bus. Instead she walked across the side walk and leaned up against the brick wall of the little candy store. The little book store she owned, The Spiral Stair Case, would just have to wait for her. Tim would be there to open too any way. She signed and thought, “If Mike hadn’t stayed over last night none of this would have happened.”
After their movie last night, Mike decided he was too tired to drive home. So he slept on the couch. It was the first time he slept over. They were dating but Olivia just couldn’t get into an intimate physical relationship until she knew it was safe to commit, till they were married.
The next morning, Mike got up earlier then Olivia and got ready for work at her apartment. Olivia got up at the first buzz of her alarm at 6:50, giving her a perfect hour to get ready and out the door at 7:50 to catch the bus at 8:05 getting her to the book store at 8:35 to open for 9:00, but as she went about her routine she found a trail of Mike’s disturbances to her order. She unveiled herself from under her big green comforter and made her way to the bathroom.
First off, the toilet paper roll was out, Mike must have emptied it without putting on a new one and she had to reach around the cabinet from the toilet seat to get one. Still in her light blue pj, she shuffled into the kitchen and opened the cupboard. Her Corn Checks cereal box was missing. She opened a few more cupboards, thinking where else she would have put it, and saw from the corner of her eye the empty box sitting in the trash. Mike must have eaten the last of her cereal she was planning to eat. With a deep breath Olivia thought, “At least I can rely on my coffee makers.” After Olivia washed out her favorite mug that Mike must have used, she pour herself a cup of coffee and took a sip and promptly spit it back out. The coffee was cold and tasted awful. Mike must have messed with the coffee maker which usually had a pot of coffee ready for her by 6:55.
Olivia restarted the coffee maker and made toast instead. She went in the living room on her big brown couch to eat while watching the news. She finished with her toast and went to get her cup of coffee. When she went into the kitchen her mouth gaped open. While the coffee maker was pouring coffee into the pot, coffee was spilling over the pot onto the hot plate and counter. She had forgotten to pour out the full pot before starting the new pot. As coffee poured off the counter and onto the floor she grabbed a wash cloth from the sink and found it dripping with milk. Olivia stomped her foot and yelled, “Mike!”
After the coffee fiasco, it was already 7:30 twenty minutes behind her normal schedule. Her tooth brush and tooth paste had been misplaces and after looking in every drawer and cabinet for it she tried not to grimace at the thought Mike had used her tooth brush. She quickly striped off her clothes and took a shower. Ordered by body wash, shampooing and face wash. After turning the water off she reached around the corner groping for her towel, to find nothing there. She peeked her head around the corner and the towel rack was empty. Her other towels were in the closet outside the bathroom. She bowed her head in dismay, took a deep breath and ran out to the closet dripping water everywhere. Once Olivia got out of the shower dressed, makeuped and blown dry there was no time to make her lunch. She usually made her lunch the night before, but Mike messed with her routine last night too and she forgot.
Now she was leaning against a store at the bus stop waiting for the next one. She had never not been at her store to open since it had opened three years before. She was a biology major in college and like so many gradates decided she was sick of it by the time she left school. Her sister Monica, living in Fairfax, had tried to convince her to move there for ages, and after finding the store space on Timpa road for sale, she got out a loan and bought it.
Mike had randomly walked into her store nine months ago and was perusing the science fiction section, not something Olivia was necessarily interested in, but he did have Jane Austin’s Emma in his basket. Mike had been eyeing her the whole time while in the book store. She was standing behind the front check out desk, leaning over the desk and writing in a note book. As another worker was checking him out, he asked the clerk so what’s your favorite book in here.
She smiled and answered, “The Dawn Treader of the Chronicles of Narnia is a personal favorite.”
He nodded. He then looked at Olivia.“How about you?”
The clerk looked back at Olivia, but Olivia didn’t hear him and kept writing. He tried again, “What’s your favorite book?”
The clerk looked unsure what to do and whispered, “Olivia.”
Olivia looked up. “Huh?” She saw Mike looking at her with a wide grin, sat up and asked, “Oh may I help you.”
Mike nodded seriously and asked, “Uh, yes. So, what’s your favorite book in here?”
Olivia smiled, “They are all good. I see you bought Emma already, that’s a good one. Do you need help finding a particular one?”
“Oh, Emma’s not for me, it is for my sister. I am much more an alien heads getting blown off kinda guy. No, I just wanted a reason to talk to you.”
The clerk girl, now helping another customer chocked in a laugh. Olivia smiled, “Well if that is all.” And went back to writing. She ignored his other attempts at conversation. He stayed twenty minutes more and she declined three offers to dinner and two requests for her number. Within the next two weeks she avoided his many visits, declined eight more dinner dates, twenty-four requests for her number two coffee invites and one teddy bear, but she did take the new book, Suzie, and read it too. It was good. It was about a little girl’s survival in World War II. Of course it was sci fi, so the German’s were controlled by aliens unbeknownst to the rest of the world, except the little girl Suzie and a small band of people that saved the world. But it had depth and was tactfully done, even with alien heads blowing up.
Olivia was shocked. She agreed to one lunch to discuss the great implications of the book.
Mike smiled, “You must have enjoyed it.”
Olivia did not smile back, “One lunch, one hour.”
“So what got you most the adorable Suzie with her impeccable morals or Mr. Smith with his proven ways that work?”
Olivia still did not smile back, “One lunch, Wednesday, and it is not a date. It is an academic discussion.”
Mike smiled wider, “Bold and up front I like that.”
She repeated, “One lunch that is all you get.”
And that was all he needed.
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