Beside me, a woman has sat down holding onto a kid. No idea what age but it's the stage where they stick out their hands, full of jam and snot or whatnot, and point.
"Who are you?"
I smile as paternally as possible and say:
"Hello."
"Who are you?"
I smile at the mother. She smiles back and shifts the child in her lap. Both faces look back at me expectantly.
"Er. Hello."
I follow with a clumsy medley of guffaw chuckle smile. The child looks cross. I search the left side of my jacket for the book. And the right. I can feel the start of a rush of panic, like a geyser beginning to froth deep inside me.
"Who are you?"
The child is now craning out from the mother's lap to stare right into my face. Spit has begun to run sideways down it's jaw. It could fall onto my lap. I squirm away a little, pulling at the edge of my coat. The mother glares, hauls the child back into her bosom, then turns her back to me, bashing into me in the turn. A discussion begins with someone on the other side of the aisle.
"Who's a lovely little boy? You are... "
I still can't find my book. Not sure where exactly I was in it anyhow, not a whole lot seemed to be happening as far as I remember. Words broken by small spaces into which I insert daydreams. Often, I would start to read something, the character eating a cake say, and almost immediately imagine my eating a cake. Then perhaps start wondering what is my favourite cake. Then imagine being a pastry chef. Owning a restaurant. Being awarded prizes for the best restaurant, a reputation grown from serving stupendous cake creations. Hiring enticing glamorous Spanish girls to serve the cakes, all in tight black dresses. One of them stays late often. We chat. Switch off the lights together. Fingers brush in the dark. I feel her breath on my skin. Then the bus journey would end and the book would get put away.
Books are just the key into a daydream, something to unlock where I want to be. A place where there isn't a kid spewing gastric juices onto my knee, but some place with incredibly attractive Spanish women wanting to get to know me in exciting and intimate ways.
Assumpta doesn't look very Spanish. She has that Irish bad hair thing, like the remnants of cleaning brushes have been put together and put on a head. She's also very pale, "deathly pale" suits to a degree but there's something about life to her too, that fragile thing, the spider's web that grips with a fragile grace from one side of your door to the other, the one you walk into first thing in the morning and destroy. But then it's back there when you come home that evening. And this time you dodge it and leave it in place.