Chapter 7

Dorian:

"I have an idea," David announces as he comes out of the shower as we're getting ready for the international affairs dinner.

"Hmmm...?" I mumble before applying one more coat of autumn red lipstick that matches my nail polish.

"Let's skip the limo and get the bus to there," David suggests, his blue eyes impishly bright as he combs his medium-brown hair. "I've always wanted to see what the buses are like here in the nation's capital."

I plop my lipstick down and look up at David, a bit startled, but not really surprised.

"I don't know..." I say. "I haven't taken a bus since my medical school days...I'm afraid I'm way out of practice."

"I can show you the ropes," David grins. "I always took buses before living in Llanview and in LA, I took a few when I first arrived there."

My dark eyes widen. David shows me a website on the phone and points out a couple of bus routes that stop by embassy row.

I know there are three bus stops near here...Risa often catches the bus along with the trains, so she knows more about mass transit than I do.

"We'd seem out of place..." I look down at my long blue dress suit with my white silk scarf at the collar then at David's dark gray tuxedo. My dark hair is done in a chignon knot at the nape of my neck.

"Most people use the buses for everyday work and for more casual parties..."

"So we might," David grins again. "It'd be a hoot...and here people don't look twice at odd-looking people."

I laugh a bit, knowing that David is right. In the streets, I often see people dressed from rags to polished formal wear.

The other day walking to work, I saw a lady with ragged blue jeans and a multi-colored fishnet top with her breasts partially hanging out and no one really stared.

Back in Llanview, such a getup would not only have stopped traffic and started tongues wagging all over, but probably would have ended up front page news in the Banner as a "scandal."

"All right, just this once," I agree. "Oh, don't we need exact change and all...?"

I nervously fish through my purse, but David pulls four one-dollar bills out of his wallet. "Covered...it's two dollars per person per trip."

So, we decide to try this adventure. Risa is heading over to a friend's overnight, so we bid her goodnight.

She herself is catching the train and is packing an overnight bag.

"Have a great time, sweetheart," I tell her. "See you tomorrow."

"G'night, Gran...David..." Risa says as she and I hug. "Have a great time tonight."

•••••••••••••

That bus ride is quite an adventure and a bit much for my nerves.

Thank goodness no one really stares at us. There is one lady with a nice-looking sweater dress and one man in a business suit without the jacket, so much to my relief, David and I don't stick out too much.

But I'd really forgotten how noisy and jumpy they are, even on smooth streets. I'd also forgotten how hard and uncomfortable the seats are.

I have to keep shifting and squirming to keep my butt from hurting.

I can hear everything underneath and around the bus including little rocks and bits of papers, leaves and branches and old soda and beer cans rattling past as the bus rides over them.

"The thick of the real city," David grins and leans back.

Thankfully the bus is not crowded, but several people are talking loudly both with other passengers and on their cell phones.

One young man is loudly bickering and swearing with a girlfriend or wife on speaker phone and the entire conversation can be heard by everyone, but the man doesn't appear abashed and even aware of it.

At least this bickering couple is hashing out their gripes openly instead of faking false "niceness."

At a couple of stops, people getting off have to holler, "Baaaack dooor!" to the driver to remind them to open the back. Some of them sound like ducks or geese.

Halfway there, an old lady with about five bags in different colors drags herself onto the bus and plops onto one of the front seats.

She has three garish, funny-looking hats on her head and a string of purple beads around her wide waist, so David and I stand out even less.

Nonetheless, I am relieved when we arrive at Embassy Row and we can get off.

David laughs and I grin ruefully. My ears are ringing, my butt and back are sore and even vibrating from the motion and my hands are shaking. I'm also hoping I don't have a headache coming on.

"Wow!" David crows as we walk up the walkway. "That was almost like one of those virtual reality rides back in LA."

"Yeh..." I manage, then wince as a strained-feeling muscle in my lower back twinges.

"Owwww...David...can we sit for a few moments? That ride was interesting but was a bit much for me."

"Sure..." We find an iron bench and sit for a while.

The night is cool with an almost full moon. Gazing at the moon and enjoying a cool early autumn breeze relaxes me.

"Maybe it's my age, but I think I won't be taking buses again," I declare, closing my eyes a bit. "I think as I get older, I get drained more quickly now."

"Sure..." David says breezily. "We can get the limo back home afterwards."

After a few more minutes, I've recovered. We head into the embassy where we meet a huge plethora of people speaking over a dozen languages.

David chats with Irish and Scottish parliament members while I am delighted to be able to speak with nearby Italian parliament members and diplomats.

I'm so glad I learned Italian from my semester and summer abroad in Italy during my third year of undergrad school. I have always found Italian and Spanish to be lovely languages.

I have a wonderful hour with two groups, one from Italy and one from Spain exchanging ideas on how our respective governments are run, what could be done to help more people, where money could be better spent, what the general feel of the people of our nations are toward us.

I speak Italian with the group from Italy, much to their delight. I'm happy that I can still speak Spanish proficiently enough to be understood by the group from Spain, although unlike Italian, I am not quite fluent in Spanish.

We sit down to eat. David tells me that since he can understand a bit of French, he actually was able to understand a few French phrases here and there.

The food and conversation is stimulating. Across the table, I hear Russian. I find that I can understand some of the words and phrases.

I also catch and can understand a couple of the words of a German-speaking couple walking by us.

However, I lack the confidence to try to join the Russian conversation because despite being able to understand some of spoken and written Russian and even being able to understand the Cyrillic alphabet, I am at mostly a loss at speaking Russian or German, which has always been a bit of a disappointment for me.

My maternal grandmum taught my sisters and me a few phrases and words when we were small.

She sometimes spoke a bit in Russian to us, but now I just remember it in fragments and I was never able to get the pronunciation correct in the few words I could speak.

It's sort of too bad because the parts I can understand from the Russian conversation across from me sound intriguing and I have always wanted to learn more about Russian every day life, especially in the post-Communist era.

As I eat and people-watch, I reflect on the irony of this. I have mostly Russian and German ancestry with traces of Asian going way back to the eleven-hundreds AC.

I am fluent in speaking Italian and am proficient in Spanish, yet the Eastern European languages are still mostly a mystery to me.

All in all, however, it does turn out to be an enlightening delightful dinner and both David and I get to chat with many interesting, intelligent people that evening.

David even meets and chats with a few people, spouses of ambassadors, who are into filming and they discuss a big filming studio in Ireland, bigger than several of Hollywood's and New York City's studios.

I myself exchange information with a couple of Italian ambassadors and agree to keep in touch by e-mail and text even if we don't see each other face-to-face.

As we take the limo home, I drift off happily in David's lap trying to enjoy his company before he has to fly west again.

Once we get home, since we have the entire house to ourselves tonight, we make love in the living room and sleep right on the couch that night.