The bus past my stop

The 720 was not full, which is rare enough that I noticed the empty seat beside me and didn't put my bag on it, in case the next stop changed the math. The next stop didn't. An older man got on and sat across the aisle. He had a newspaper folded to the size of a book. People still do that. I don't. I had my phone and I turned it face down because the light through the window was hitting the glass and I wanted to look out.

My stop came. I recognized the pharmacy and the chair someone had left on the curb three days running. I stayed seated. The woman behind me rang the bell and got off, and I let the doors close. Two more stops. That was the deal I made without saying it: ride while the seat is mine and the bus isn't arguing.

Past my stop the street changes character in a way I like and don't need. More trees, then fewer, a school with a mural I have never walked up to, a lot where a man was selling oranges out of a truck with the gate down. The oranges were in boxes with the names of places printed on the cardboard, which doesn't mean they came from there. I didn't get off for oranges. I had some at home, or I thought I did. I didn't. I remembered that at the second extra stop and it was too late to make it a reason.

I walked back. Twenty-five minutes, maybe less, because walking my own street backward makes it shorter in my head. The chair was still on the curb. I didn't move it. Whoever left it has a plan or doesn't, and the plan is not my job. At the house I checked the fruit bowl. Empty, except a rubber band. I put the rubber band in the drawer where rubber bands go, and felt, briefly, like a person with a system.