by Jay Bennett
There was nobody about him. He sat in a core of silence.
“Eddie.”
Her shadow fell across him. “Eddie, please look at me.” Her voice was soft and appealing.
Slowly she sat down beside him. And the ache for her began within him. He wanted to tell her of all that had gone wrong with him. How everything he had touched had turned sour. How he had walked a million miles away from the man who went to see Joey Alcan’s widow.
A million miles.
“Eddie, you gave the money back,” she said.
The sun fell on the oval face. Her dark eyes were large and pleading.
“You’ve got to forget.”
He saw the bus in the distance. He felt her tremble, and her fear went through him.
He kept his eyes pinned upon the approaching bus, watching it get larger. And as he watched, he kept seeing Laura and Al as they were at the end.
“I’ll never forget them, Mia. I can’t forget them.”
But when the bus stopped, he found that he could not get up to board it. He sat there, close to Mia. The driver honked the horn angrily, then drove on.
And when the bus had gone the figures of Al and Laura went with it.
Only that of Mia remained.
THE END