A Girl on the Bus Pt. 04

"Look at me, I'm drenched." Delilah stood beside me, her hair and shoulders wet from the pouring rain. Her blouse was clinging wet to her breasts, the lacy cups of her brassiere, also wet, curved shadows on her skin, revealing everything. It was cold and her nipples were hard. I looked away.

"This thing, it is useless, completely broken." She showed me a bent and torn umbrella, before dropping it into a bin. "This storm, it's frightening. I had to get out of my building using stairs. The fire exit. Four floors down."

She stood right next to me for security, for shelter. I couldn't say which.

"You're cold," I said. "And wet through. Here, take my jacket. It's wet on the outside, but the lining's dry. It'll be warmer."

"But you'll get cold, I mustn't."

"You must. I insist."

Delilah looked up at me. She was bedraggled, yet her eyes smiled. "You're a kind man, Adam. First you offer me a seat in the morning, but I'm silly, I don't take it. Then you wait with me on a bench under a tree, and we talk about this and that..."

And you blew me a kiss.

"And now it is cold, and you give me your jacket to be warm."

As she spoke, I realised something about Delilah, the way she talked. She had a slight accent, a very precise way with her words, a non English lilt to her speech. She wasn't a native English speaker, Slavic maybe, or east European. My mind suddenly flashed back several decades, remembering a Russian girl on a train, a blonde woman from Leningrad going west to model, to be in magazines.

"You are a proper gentleman, Adam. And I will look neat in your jacket."

"Better on you than on me, that's for sure." I slipped the jacket from my back, and held it open for Delilah to put on. She put one arm into a sleeve, turned a little, then slid her other arm into the other sleeve. The jacket was too big for her, so she doubled it across her torso, hiding those lovely breasts. I'd looked away, but of course I'd seen her curves.

"I can feel your warmth on my back. I won't be so cold in a minute." She looked around, and the queue was longer now. "But Adam, you will be cold. That cannot do. We will share your jacket for a little while."

And Delilah opened up the front of the jacket and quite deliberately stepped forward until her body pressed against mine. In her heels she was tall and she fitted perfectly against me, her hair against my cheek. She was so close. I smelled her perfume, or maybe her skin. I didn't know which was which.

"There," she said, "our bodies will now be warm, and we shall get on the bus together."

"When it eventually comes," I replied.

"When it eventually comes," she repeated. "But first, we are wet in this rain together. It doesn't matter now, because we look after each other. Protected by your jacket."

With your soft breasts against my chest and your thighs against mine.

I put my arms around Delilah to keep her warm. And she put her arms around me, and still the rain came down.

"We are perfectly wet together, you and me." Delilah tilted her head to look at me, and her gaze was the same steady appraisal she'd given when she'd asked if I'd wait in the square, on another afternoon. She smiled, and in that moment the street seemed to disappear. "I think, Adam, that we shall need to get dry. After the bus eventually comes."

At that moment the rain was relentless and everything moved more slowly.

A guy from the transit company came past, telling the queue that bus travel was free and they were putting more buses on, to clear the city centre as fast as they could. "Thank you for your patience."

"Go slowly," said Delilah, and at first I thought she was talking about us. But the queue was beginning to move, as first one bus filled, then two, and she wanted to be steady. Her breath was warm on my ear.

"Room for one more," the transit man said, as we reached the front of the line.

"No, we're together," I replied. "Ask someone else."

He looked at us, huddled together under our jacket. "Go on, squeeze on. Stay behind the line."

I got on first and backed up against the rear of the driver's space. I reached for Delilah's hand, and she leaned back against me, taut on her legs for balance. The bus moved away slowly, but even so, she swayed against me. She reached back and found my hand, placing it about her waist.

"Hold me," she said, "so I don't spill over."

I wrapped both my arms around her waist to stop her lurching forward every time the brakes grabbed. She rested one hand on my hands, and held a grab pole with the other. She pressed back against me, her body fitting against mine.

"Lucky we are used to a crowded bus," Delilah said. "Keeping my balance is easy, with my morning man to hold me."

I looked down at her long fingers resting on mine, and marvelled how still Delilah could be.

Out the front of the bus, the two long beams of its lights were the only illumination. The city was completely dark, the clouds lowering and closing in. The bus was a small isolated place, silent now, for the phones were still all dead.

"It's the whole city," said the driver. "Apparently."

"I wonder what the hell happened," I commented.

"I don't think anybody knows yet."

"At least you've got us out of the city centre."

"My job, just doing my job."

The bus swung on to the bus-way, and ahead of us I could see the tail lights of more buses, each one self-contained, a myriad separate stories. Ten minutes up the track, the driver slowed for the first stop.

"Adam," said Delilah, "you're getting off here, with me. I'm not going home by myself."