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With a sinister hiss of compressed air, the bus doors open on our tale with a half-bent old woman hobbling aboard the 4:23pm No. 17 bound for Marina. Laden with plastic bags filled to bursting with old issues of National Geographic and Cat Fancy, she is grateful to escape the cold December air of the Edgewater Transit Exchange bus shelter.

Finding a seat directly behind the driver on the empty bus, she busies herself organizing the plastic bags of glossy, dog-eared treasures. But it is hot in the bus and before long our heroine’s nut grows a wee bit warm beneath the floppy tartan hat. She doffs the quilted cap and absentmindedly rests it on the seat beside her. The bus roars through the night and our bareheaded bus-rider reads a particularly engaging editorial on decreasing cat dander exposure, mindless of the developing crisis.

And that’s when it happens. Realizing the driver has passed her stop she emerges from her dander-induced reverie with a shout of alarm. Sufficiently startled, the driver performs an emergency stop 30 yards past the bus shelter. Gathering her bags and mumbling apologetically, she scuttles off.

Alas, it is only when the doors wheeze shut behind her, the engine revs and the busses’ taillights are disappearing into the fog that she feels the cold nip of night air at her wispy-haired skull. It is a moment of gnawing terror and profound loss. The old woman stands destitute in the cloud of dissipating exhaust and feels more familiar with the inevitability of death than at any other time in her 86 years.