The Lady at the Bus Stop
This story is about a young man who meets an older lady in the rather prosaic setting of a bus shelter. The story does contain anal sex, so if this isn't your thing then please pass on by.
Comments welcome, as always.
Sylviafan
Meeting Carol was a really low probability event, even though we lived in the same village. I mean I never take the bus; why would I? I have a perfectly reliable car and if that breaks down there's always taxis and hire cars or a lift from a friend or neighbour.
Except this one time. My car was in for a service and the garage had found a few expensive extra things they said needed doing and for which the parts wouldn't be available until the next day. The garage I use is a big BMW dealership near where my office is. And yes, I know the big franchises are stupid expensive but the convenience of dropping my car off in the morning and walking to the office and collecting it again in the evening just outweighs the financial penalty. For me, anyway.
They called mid-afternoon to give me the news so I booked a taxi home, which is in a village about seven or eight miles from the city centre, where I work. I should, of course, have booked a taxi for the following morning but I didn't, otherwise this story would never have happened.
At eight-thirty the next morning I found that all the local taxis, and there weren't many of them, were on school runs or taking pensioners to the hospital or day-care home. Eleven o'clock maybe, was the best I could get out of them which was a bugger because I had a client meeting starting at ten.
I walked out onto the drive and looked around at the little estate of desirable detached residences that sits at the attractive end of the village. No other cars in the drive, which meant that everybody had left for work or shopping or something; nobody put their cars in the garage. Shit!
I went back in and Googled the local bus services and found that a bus was going through the village headed for the city centre in about twenty minutes. I hadn't been on a bus since I was at school but needs must. I even knew where the bus stop was because I drove past it every day and occasionally thanked my lucky stars that I was cocooned in a luxury saloon instead of standing waiting in the cold and the wet.
The bus stop was at the other end of the village, about a ten-minute walk away and it was a pleasant spring morning as I set out with my briefcase in hand. I got there in plenty of time and discovered that there was already someone waiting in the Plexiglass shelter. A woman in fact.
She had her back to me as I walked into the shelter but I said: 'Good morning,' and she turned and smiled at me and said, 'Good morning,' back and that was the first time I set eyes upon Carol Mason. But that first impression is indelibly fixed in my mind.
In the few seconds before she turned away, I registered two distinct impressions: firstly, she was middle-aged, which nominally put her outside my interest zone, and secondly she was not very attractive. She had big, full lips and a hooked nose and dark eyes with heavy lids. But in those crucial few seconds I realised that she was sexy. To me, anyway.
I know that you can have conventionally attractive, even stunning, ladies who do nothing to tweak one's libido. Equally, I believe in the concept of ugly-sexy. Some barely definable quality that says, 'She's not much of a looker but I bet she's red-hot in the sack. I'm sure it's a very personal, very individual thing. Someone else, seeing the same lady, may just think: 'No thanks.'
Anyway, here I was, standing in the bus shelter, looking at the back of this ugly-sexy lady and feeling my stomach churn. A surprisingly strong reaction from such a short exposure.
From the back she was unremarkable: Tallish, about five feet six or seven with long, wavy, dark-brown hair just starting to show a few strands of grey. She was wearing a belted fawn raincoat so it was difficult to tell what her figure was like, but her legs, or at least what I could see of them, were nice with slim ankles and nicely shaped calves. Black pantyhose and low-heeled, sensible shoes completed the ensemble.
I stood quietly looking at her for a few moments. There was no one else about apart from the odd car that drove past, reminding me that I was on foot. I wanted her to turn around again so that I could examine her in more detail and I cast around for some conversational gambit. Eventually I looked at my watch and saw that the bus was due in three minutes.
'Is it usually on time?' I asked.
'I'm sorry?' she said, half turning.
'The bus. Is it normally on time?'
She appeared to consider this question carefully.
'No,' she said at last. 'It's normally five or ten minutes late. Sometimes it doesn't come at all and you have to wait for the next one.' Her accent had a local burr to it, although her diction was clear and precise.
'When's that?'
'Nine-thirty.'
'Nine-thirty! What time does that one get into the city centre?'
'About ten past ten. Depends on the traffic.'
This wasn't exactly encouraging news. My ten o'clock meeting was important, the first with a new client, and to be late would be a disaster. In my anxiety I forgot to look at my fellow passenger's face and she turned away again to look down the road for the bus.
And bless it! There it was. Lumbering up the road, pulling into the layby, only two or three other passengers on board. The doors hissed open and she got on and handed the driver a bank note. The change machine coughed and she took the coins and started walking to the back of the bus.
I got out my bank card.
'Sorry,' said the driver, a hugely fat, lugubrious looking man. 'Cash only. The card reader's not working.'
'But I haven't got any cash,' I protested. I mean who carries cash nowadays? People who travel on buses I suppose. I started to say that if the card reader wasn't working then I should be allowed to travel anyway as it wasn't my fault. The driver just shook his head, jowls wobbling.
'Here,' said a voice at my elbow and I turned to see the lady from the bus shelter offering the driver a couple of coins. I should have protested again but I was just so damned grateful.
'Thank you,' I said, taking my ticket and including the driver.
I followed the lady half-way up the bus where she sat down in an aisle seat and put her handbag on the empty window seat. I took the seat across the aisle.
'Thanks,' I said again. 'That was really kind of you.'
'You're welcome,' she smiled at me showing white, but slightly crooked teeth. For some reason this seemed to enhance her sexiness rather than militate against it.
'You've really saved my bacon,' I went on, studying her face as I spoke. 'I've got a meeting at ten which I'd have missed if it hadn't been for you. You must let me pay you back.'
'Don't worry about it, really. It was only one pound fifty.'
'Well, thank you again.' We lapsed into silence and I pretended to look around the bus while stealing surreptitious glances at my fellow passenger.
She sat quietly, very upright. Not reading or fiddling with her phone but just looking straight ahead, her face relaxed, her hands clasped in her lap. Her whole countenance had a sort of lived-in look: I noted the small mole on her upper lip and the fine wrinkles at the corners of her eyes. I noticed the chipped red varnish on her fingernails and the absence of a wedding ring, or in fact of any jewellery at all. I thought her eye makeup was a little heavy and her lipstick a little too bright red for the fullness of her lips.
Somehow, the overdone makeup and the chipped nail polish gave her a vaguely wanton air. A tiny bit sluttish perhaps? No, that wasn't the right word. It came back to the ugly-sexy thing. Whatever it was hidden deep in my sexual psyche that responded to such looks, this lady had got it in spades. If only she'd been in her twenties or thirties, or even forties...
I turned and looked out of the window, forcing myself to think about the forthcoming meeting. I took my phone out of my coat pocket and re-read some preparatory notes I'd made.
In this manner the time passed until we pulled into the bus station in the city centre, about ten minutes from my office. The passengers all stood as the bus came to a halt and I motioned to my benefactor to step into the aisle ahead of me. She smiled and I followed her off the bus and across the terminal forecourt and into a subway.
I drew alongside her and she glanced over at me, looking faintly surprised.
'Don't worry,' I reassured her. 'I'm not stalking you. I work in Richmond House, it's down this way.'
'Oh, I know it, I'm next to you, in Midland House.
'What happened this morning?' she asked me after a pause. I got the feeling you don't use the bus much.'
I explained about my car.
'Do you come in every day on the bus?' I asked.
'Five days a week,' she replied with a sigh. 'Rain or shine.'
I said goodbye to her outside Midland House, a ten-storey office block across the road from Richmond House and watched her walk through the turnstile into the foyer and head for the bank of lifts. I felt a twinge of sadness that I would probably never see her again. She had seemed like a nice person. I'd liked her. Or maybe it was just sexual attraction. I didn't even know her name.
That changed early the following week.
It was Tuesday morning and spring sunshine had given way to leaden skies and torrential rain. My windscreen wipers were going full speed as I drove out of the village past the bus stop. And there she was! A solitary occupant again, dressed in the fawn raincoat. Huddled in the shelter as the rain lashed down and rivers ran down the gutters.
Acting on impulse I pulled into the bus stop layby, drew to a stop by the shelter and powered down the passenger side window.
'Can I give you a lift,' I shouted over the drumming of the rain.
The lady leaned down to see who was in the driving seat then, after a brief hesitation, she came out of the shelter and got into my car. I rolled the window up, engaged drive and accelerated up the road in the direction of the city as she fastened her seatbelt.
'My turn to thank you,' she grinned. 'It's a horrible morning.'
