3/2/12

Rain at the Bus Stop
By Michael Plesset


Dark clouds filled the sky that day, so waiting for the bus meant wondering whether rain would be arriving before the bus did.
“I see you were smart and brought your umbrella” a woman next to him said.
“Yes, always planning ahead, watching the weather forecast, I must not have enough to do.”
She moved closer to him, “I’ll just stand over here in case it starts raining, if that’s ok.”
“Sure, even though I know you only love me for my umbrella.”

It did start to rain a little, so out came the umbrella, and they shared it.
She was quite voluptuous, shapely, stacked or whatever you want to call it, and he was always intimidated by women like that. It’s too bad, they might be very nice, but he was always way too nervous to talk to them long enough to find out.

The bus rolled up, and they got on, and were sitting next to each other.
After a few minutes of silence, she said “I’m Karina.”
“Adrian” he answered, “With the umbrella.”
“It was dumb of me to not bring mine” she said.

Minutes with just the sounds of the bus, stopping and starting. Since it was now raining he said “Hope you don’t have far to go after you get off, I’m headed to that building up ahead” pointing to a tall building a few blocks away. It had the name of a computer company, and she said “So you work with computers?”
“Yes, I’m a programmer” he said, with a note of embarrassment, figuring it stamped him as a geek.
“Hey that’s cool, maybe you could figure out what’s wrong with mine,” she said, “it’s driving me nuts, just slowing to a stop.”
“Well, I could take a look at it, I’ll give you my number and you can call me later.” He hastily wrote his number on the back of a business card just before he left.

She did call that night, and tried to describe her computer’s symptoms over the phone. He liked hearing the sound of her voice, and it didn’t make him as nervous as seeing her in person, but he couldn’t make sense about what was happening with her computer, so he said “If I could see it maybe I can tell what’s wrong.” She gave him her address, and between them Saturday afternoon was a good time.

He came to her place, and she showed him to the computer, where he felt right at home and started typing immediately. “I think there’s just a lot of simple little things” he said, “it looks like the recycle bin hasn’t been emptied ever, and the huge folders in the e-mail program haven’t been compressed, tons of temporary files, and all that’s a problem because it’s an old machine with a pretty small disc which is almost full, so that’s why it’s slowing down.”

“So no ugly virus?”
“No, I don’t think so, give me a few minutes and we’ll see how it is.” She went to the kitchen while he worked. He needed to write something down and looked for paper and pen in the desk drawers, and was startled to see a gun in one, with several magazines full of ammunition along with it.

When she came back he said “It’s going to be ok, I can show you how to keep it tidied up if you want.”
“Ok, but another time, I have some people coming over in a few minutes.”
“I’m almost done” he said, “I’ll be out of your way in a few more minutes.”
“No hurry, you’re welcome to stay, it’s nothing special.”

Before he was through he could hear people coming in, and in a few minutes there was music playing. When he finished up and went into the living room there were 8 or 10 people there, some dancing to Latin music, including Karina with a good looking Hispanic guy. She had a lot of curves, was a great dancer, and he was totally engrossed in watching her, when suddenly the front door banged open, and a loud shout of “Police, nobody move.” Several police came in, the first one with his gun drawn. They lined everybody up, handcuffed and frisked them, then said “We’re taking everybody to the station, come outside and get into the vehicles.”

Adrian said to one officer “Sir, I think there’s a mistake in my case, I was just here fixing the computer, I don’t even know these people.”
“We’ll sort it out downtown.” the officer said, like he’d heard that one before, and didn’t believe it.

At the station they were put into big group cells, men in one and women in another. One by one they were taken to a room for questioning. Adrian’s turn didn’t come for a couple of hours, and the whole time he was thinking about how to convince them he had no idea what this was about. The other guys that were arrested along with him were talking together in Spanish, which he didn’t understand, and he thought they kept looking at him. He was thinking they could be planning to blame him for whatever they were all accused of.

When his turn came they led him to a bare room where he waited for what seemed like a long time for whoever was going to question him. Then a detective came in, along with Karina. “Adrian” she said, “I’m really sorry, you can go.”
“What on earth ..” he started.
“I’m a police officer” she said “and we’ve had an undercover investigation going on into a drug distribution group. I didn’t know the arrests would be this afternoon, or of course I wouldn’t have had you there. We can have an officer drive you back to your car.”
“Ok, I understand” he said weakly, still shaken.

He headed to the door, and she followed him, “Adrian, I really am sorry, and honestly, I do appreciate your fixing my computer.” Somehow that detail stuck him as hilarious in the context of what had happened, and he burst out laughing.

She said “Please, come over tomorrow and let me fix dinner for you, ok?”
“You don’t have to do that …” he started.
She moved closer to him, put her hand on his arm and said “Adrian, I’d like to see you.” This was an even bigger shock than what had already gone on.
He looked at her for a minute, and then smiled a different, bigger kind of smile then he’d ever had before, looked her in the eyes, and confidently said, “Sure, I’d really like that.”


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Michael Plesset did undergraduate and graduate work in mathematics, philosophy, sociology and English literature, and attended seminary at one time. He has published poetry, short fiction and non-fiction articles. He has worked in the space program and the computer industry, wrote material for a stand-up comedian, and has taught English to Chinese students for the last 10 years.