In the moments that hang along 1st Street just before the bus pulls up, Charlie sits head down blowing smoke into the face of the thick black woman yelling at him for puffing on his cigarette too close to the curb.
Charlie takes orders from no man — and certainly no woman. Longhaired and stubborn, he waits for the bus and smiles into the face of a 22-year-old LBT virgin—or so she might seem.
In fact, her first ride was the day before, and she hopes to blend right into the crowd aboard the Downtown to CSULB straight-shot.
Charlie’s smile—full of teeth paled and rotted by the rough life on the streets of Long Beach— lands on a tense line of lips that marches military style across the newcomer’s face. He can see that she is unsure of which bus to ride and how to climb aboard.
When the 93 finally revs to drive away, Charlie and his dirt brown duffel bag are the first to find a seat.
His hands, leathered with age and hard lovin’, cradle his book of horoscopes like they’re holding a baby chick. Both palms face up beneath the weight of the falling-apart book as it cracks open with a spine so weak it doesn’t fight to close itself again. Like Charlie, this book knows the theories of love and the patterns of the heart.
When her single dollar proves too corrugated to cover the cost of her ride, the LBT virgin digs out a buck-twenty-five in change from a small black, butterfly-covered change purse that hangs around her neck
The woman who hates smoking taps her foot from her seat on the bus across from Charlie; her hardened, darkened eyes carve into him like fingers breaking open the shell of a peanut before throwing it on the floor. Her high cheek bones shift to the rhythm of her tongue and teeth sucking on her gums—are you allowed to eat on the bus, the business-casual, second-time bus rider wonders to herself.
As if satisfy her hunger, Charlie offers his book of answers.
“Are you European?” he asks, his voice flavored with a dash of out-of-town itself. Charlie breaks the kind of thin-spread silence that adds color to a 1st Street smile while waiting at a bus stop, and he breaks this kind of silence with urgency, and the laced-undershirt-wearing rookie on the bus shakes her head with a grin.
“Are you … a Virgo?” Again, she shakes her head. She tells him she is a Taurus, and feels guilty for encouraging the madness melting into the furrowed gap beneath his graying, two-ply eyebrows. The sunflower exploding at the heart of his clear blue eyes tells her not to worry—he’ll be leaving her soon, and she’ll be an unbending bundle of unbroken cold brew once again.
Not too long ago, Charlie’s recipe for bitterness would’ve sweetened the nerve endings of this LBT virgin’s forehead; but as he promises her freedom in the days to come, and warns that a true Taurus is too bold for building bridges in teams of two, she throws her stare to the street they are leaving behind and longs for the stops that are passed by.
The climb from Downtown to the local university passes with ease as Charlie leafs through the moth-eaten pages of his book of love and life for his audience of one. He nods when she tells him, no, she is not married. He laughs when she says, yes, she is seeing someone.
Charlie breaks her heart when he stuffs his light-green, barely bound book back into his bag and prepares to leave her. With a handful of winks and a faceful of grin, he tells her that he is wearing the same jacket today that he wore the first time he made love; he left it on while he rode because he wanted to break it all in at once. He brags that his body is still young, though he is a veteran of love as he nears his 63rd birthday.
Maybe none of this is true, but she dreams into his wake as he steps onto the curb and wonders if a Taurus truly is destined to be alone. Unsettled, she picks up her phone to call a Gemini.
The foot tapping across the aisle picks up speed to spite the soft laughter that dares Charlie to be wrong.