We All Have Our Stories
SHE ALWAYS sat in the fourth row of seats. And never on the driver’s side. She was the sort of person who anticipated accidents. So many had already occurred.
Her coat was a subdued rust-orange. All the lint had been picked off her black cloche hat. It was important for her to be clean and stylish. She didn’t want people to think she was a gypsy—it wouldn’t be convenient. In this country, gypsies often weren’t clean, and had stopped being stylish more than a half-century ago. Back home, she had enjoyed flaunting a cat-eye, but here she wore her face stripped of makeup. She had thick, dark eyebrows and full lips. Her face didn’t need to be painted for the features to stand out. Everything was already clearly visible, and when people were taking the measure of her, she wanted a single glance to be enough.
Not that this worked on the bald guy.
She called him “bald guy” in her mind, because she didn’t know his name. They had never spoken, but they had communicated. And here he was again today. Muscles under his leather jacket. A quiet, black scarf. Looking at her and looking away. Taking a seat that would face hers, as he often did.
Her name? Myrtle.
A sentimental aunt had given it to her. And she had worn it self-consciously ever since she had realized that the curiosity people expressed when they heard it for the first time was not benign. Such an old-fashioned European name for someone who was not of European origin. “My family…they are Anglophiles, you know,” she would say to those who asked about it. Apologizing.
Myrtle had grown up in Queens, in New York, but had since moved eastwards.
The bald guy would continue on to Beroun. And she would get off at Vráž. An unlikely place for an American woman to live. But for her it was the right kind of hermitage.
“You don’t want to live in Prague?” people would ask. Astonished.
“No, I see enough of it when I work, and I can always stay back for something in the evenings if I want” was her reply.
She didn’t need to huddle with all the other foreigners in Prague. The Czech lands were not closed to her
