The girl that doesn't speak (I)

It is an insignificant Thursday morning, you look out your third floor apartment window to see her across the street, a buttered-up dinner roll in hand, step onto the first bus that stops in front of her. She has not brushed her teeth or washed her face. Her long hair is tied up in a low pony tail, and she is wearing her old gym sweats, bundled in a red down vest. She has an athletic body. You don't know where she comes from, where she lives. But you know she takes this bus, gathering and dropping off people on their way to work, until it reaches the terminal station, where she transfers onto the bus that brings her back to the same bus stop, across the street, outside your third floor apartment window. She does this every Thursday, and feigns significance in ritual.

She takes the seat in the back of the bus, her chin rests upon an open palm, her elbow propped onto her knees, and her feet supported by a bar connecting the legs of a side bench. The soft contours of her face is two inches from the cold wet of the glass, condensation dripping. She is thinking about Max. Actually, that is not his real name. But that is what she named him for now. You can tell she is already whispering his name. She used to whisper the names of men she thought about, frosting the windows of buses and taxis with her breath: Alex, Jeff, Jean, Daniel, and Dominic. Lovers she never knew well, so it makes no difference that she renames them Max.