On Friday I hurried to the bus stop to catch Bus 316 to the Metro station and head into Brussels for a chiropractor appointment. There’s a girl waiting there who looks to be about 18, her yellow hooded top revealing a narrow sliver of brown belly above her jeans, her white sneakers are scuffed, her cell phone waits in her hand. She’s leaning on the bicycle rack, and tired after a long week, I slip over to the glass bus stop enclosure and drop down on a bench.

And that’s when I see him, the old guy that haunts my village, wandering streets and stores, aimlessly riding the buses, bumming euros from strangers. I shrink into my own skin a he approaches the bench I’m sitting on and sits down next to me.

I want to escape, but the words I always preach to my kids ring in my own ears: “Treat every person with dignity and respect.” Damn. I hate it when I have to be a better a person than I am. Parenting does that to you. I sit up a little taller, I take a deep breath, I don’t run away.

My new companion has an enormous bottom lip that curls down toward his chin like a giant wave ready to crash onto shore. Gravity pulls its weight towards his chest and reveals the lip’s glistening pink underside, which trembles a bit as he talks.

“Want a cigarette?” Big Lip asks.

“No, thanks.” I check out his bony frame, his dark brown pants, loose fitting buttondown shirt, and the dusty leather Docksiders he wears on his feet. His hair is shot with gray, neatly trimmed but long and stringy, very dirty looking. It is in total disarray. But he doesn’t smell, and for this I’m grateful.

“Are you English?” he asks.

“American,” I answer.

“From where?” he asks.

I’m doubtful it matters, but I answer anyway, “ Virginia .”

“I’ve been there,” he exclaims. “ Virginia Beach !”

I’m surprised. “I have a good friend there,” I say, and then stare off into the distance, thinking of Lynn, who is getting ready to start a new job this week. What would Lynn do if she were here?

He admires the spectralite necklace I’m wearing, the one Eric bought me in Finland in April. “It’s very nice, “he says. “Very beautiful.” His words are a little slurred: Is it because of his vibrating lip or has he been drinking? I don’t smell alcohol on his breath.

“I should stop smoking,” Big Lip says, “I want to stop, but it’s too hard,” he explains as he extracts a crumpled package of cigarettes out of his pocket. I nod in understanding and wonder if he’d slept with the cigarettes, slept in the rumpled clothes he’s wearing.

He lights the cigarette, takes a long drag, and immediately begins coughing. His breath rattles in his chest. This is my cue to casually escape the glass cage I’m in.

I wander out to the sidewalk and start to pace. Where the hell is the bus? It’s late.

The teenager is looking bored, praying for her cell phone to ring, the bus to help us get on with our lives. I edge closer to a tiny stone building next to the bus stop. It has a peaked roof and a French door. I peer in to see an altar to the Virgin Mary, the words “Ave Maria” set in stone, the year “1937.” Who built this and why is it here? It’s no bigger than a porta-potty and the door is locked. Are those flowers on the altar? Who put them there?

Full of questions, I turn my eyes back toward Big Lip, who is pulling a long strand of drool off the precipice of his lower lip and flinging it onto the sidewalk as he stands and hitches his pants up on his bony hips.

“How long ‘til the bus?” he asks me.

“Any minute,” I say. The girl and I exchange impatient glances. I move closer to her and we watch as Big Lip shuffles over to the side of the bus shelter, opens his fly, and takes a leak. The girl and I roll our eyes at each other and she shakes her head and says, “God, some people are so weird!”

I tell her if we position ourselves to get on the bus last, then he can’t sit near us. I immediately feel guilty. Mary’s ghostly white face is a shadow in the roadside shrine. Once again, I shrink into my skin.

A bus approaches. It’s 318. Big Lip flags it down. I sigh in relief. Me and the girl are waiting for 316. I watch as 318 carries away Big Lip but leaves my shame behind. I carry it with me as 316 pulls up to the curb.

September 3, 2005