When the Bus Stopped

Chapter 13

Lucy jiggled quickly from one foot to the other, hoping that the abrupt movement would pump warm blood through her frostbitten limbs. Her lips had turned blue in the crisp morning frost which (to avoid getting even more concerned looks) Lucy had covered by dabbing on some deep pink lipstick, but it only made them look an unnatural shade of purple.

She cast an eye over her impromptu table, it took up nearly the whole pavement and was littered with a mass of tie dyed clothing with large peace signs sewn tidily onto the front, short denim cutoffs with tassels, long flowery maxi dresses, all of which screamed "Viva la hippie resistance!"

So far no one had bought a single thing, even though the stall had been set up for three hours and every single woman walking past had stopped to lift a garment and say, "Wouldn't my husband think I'd gone barmy if I wore this?" Each of them thought that their joke was completely original, off the cuff humor. Lucy had almost been driven mad by the constant tittering. She really couldn't expect too much more from them. After all, given the choice she would never have tried to sell Summery hippie clothes in an alpine retreat, but these were tough times and she would try anything.

"Screw this." Putting an honesty box on the table she wandered across to the store over the road.

#

"Lucy." Daniello stared down at her from under his baseball cap.

"Oh hi," she smiled. Lucy wasn't the kind of woman to hold a grudge. If the unthinkable happened and she was provoked to the point of anger she erupted like a volcano but then once it all calmed down she was amicable again.

"How long have you been standing here?" He quickly pushed his sunglasses back up his nose.

"I moved aside to let an old lady past and I've been stuck here ever since." She stood stiffly, wedged between the sliding door and the small cattle like steel lane which herded people into the supermarket.

Daniello motioned for her to join the fray in front of him. "With your height, it seems remarkable that no one has spotted you."

"It is just these dreadlocks. Sometimes people don't notice me because of them." They wandered into the store, while not completely comfortable they were far more amicable than the last time they'd seen each other.

"I take it your dreadlocks have magical powers. Do they make you invisible?"

Lucy smiled at his attempt at humor. "No, what I meant was if I don't spend a good hour working on my make up before I come out in public then people just push past me like I'm some kind of worthless bum – They think I'm going to ask them for a cigarette if they so much as catch polite eye contact."

"Do you ever feel like getting rid of them?"

"Getting rid of them? Some people... yeah."

"No. I mean cutting your dreadlocks off."

She felt the pallor in her cheeks. "Not at all! They are like an extension of myself. Like a limb or something."

Lucy's locs had made her scornful of salespeople. As consumers threw wads of money at brand new electronic devices - for example through the start of the millennium everyone was trying to find smaller and smaller cell phones until they were talking enthusiastically to a microphone earpiece and making passersby dart worried glances around ... and then, out of the blue, phones had started to get bigger and bigger. Luckily, she had kept her large phone from the pre-Millenium era... as it was now so obviously back in fashion.

Her hair caused a lot of expectation from people; as soon as she unveiled her dreadlocks people treated her differently. Whereas before when she was traveling around in a house truck with her unknotted hair people liked to think she would come around to the conventional ways soon enough. But with dreads they treated her like pond scum. If she didn't dress up nicely then she could be stuck for hours in a fairly awkward position. Instead of making her want to conform it had made her embrace her individuality. Dressing in things she normally wouldn't have. Like the outfit she was wearing today... a pair of thick woolen stockings under a crocheted emerald green dress and a large wooly white jersey.