It was close to midnight. He was headed home in one of those small buses used only for night lines. He wasn’t tired, but his eyes were closed; he couldn’t bear the quiet emptiness and solitude of streets after streets he was passing by, even though he usually liked the town this way. But not tonight. Tonight he was afraid of ghost sidewalks, closed shops, bright colours of blinking neons and — just a second later — dark abysses of deserted alleys. If he was to be lonely, he preferred being lonely in his own world behind his closed eyes.
– What do you see there? – he suddenly heard a question asked so quietly that he barely understood it over the monotonous hum of the bus’s engine.
He opened his eyes. She was sitting across, but she wasn’t looking at him.
He saw her — a stranger — already twice that day, also in a bus; he’d never suspected he would see her again so soon.
– Where? – he answered with a question.
She slowly lifted her hand and pointed to something high outside.
– In the stars…
For a split second he thought he misheard her.
– How do you know? – he asked without thinking.
– What?
– How do you know I look at the stars?
She smiled, gently. The streetlights passed by casted shadows on her face.
– You answer first – she almost whispered.
He looked in the direction she previously pointed at.
– What do I see in the stars? – he repeated slowly.
He sensed more than noticed her nod. He really did not think about it much before. About how every night he looks for the Moon in the sky as if so much depended on its presence. About how he could stop sometimes, look up, and for a quarter of an hour look into the suns pretending to be tiny, pulsating dots. And about how he sometimes dreamt so hard about being next to one of them…
– Hope… – he finally answered.
– Hope for what? – she asked so quickly it seemed she already knew his answer.
– Hope that somewhere out there must be a better place… It has to be, hasn’t it?
That last bit sounded like a question, but he never expected a reply. He was still looking out the window and it must’ve been minutes before she spoke again.
– It will be the same out there, unless you find hope here…
With these words, she put her right hand on her heart and looked at him for the first time.
Suddenly, he became scared. So far he liked this scattered conversation, those half-words, but right now he wanted to stop all of this and tell her everything. Everything. There was something about this situation… Now that she was looking at him, he couldn’t return her glance, so he closed his eyes and started turning his thoughts into words as quickly as he could.
– I don’t know if you can believe me, but… I saw you earlier today and I couldn’t stop looking at you. I saw you later too, on the same bus, and the moment you left I started regretting that I didn’t speak to you, even with one of those idiotic pick-up lines you use in these situations… And now, now that you’re sitting here… The same day… Again… It’s statistically impossible, it’s as if I…
– I liked it better when you were talking about stars – she stopped him, again with a whisper.
Two seconds of silence.
– Besides, statistics has nothing to do with it…
He looked at her, confused.
– How do you know? – she finished.
– What?
For a second it seemed she fought really hard not to smile, but perhaps it was just an illusion.
– How do you know it’s a coincidence?
— Szczecin, 2002 (translated from Polish in 2007).