he glum little man waded through his low, throbbing mire of vague
depression as he made his way down the street. His countenance was one with
which you are possibly familiar: the bleak, afflicted look of one washed about
in the great sea of the city. I of course don't mean his countenance in
particular, but rather the expression it bore - - which often can be found on a
number of faces: at intersections, eating hurried lunches, behind steering
wheels in traffic jams.His countenance in particular, for those who need to know such things, was short, compact, and oddly efficient. He rarely made an unnecessary gesture or word - not even an eyebrow twitch. He moved quickly and quietly through the proscribed vector of A to B to C without much external stir, and ate his lunches alone and unnoticed.
Now he was walking homewards, his face in its perpetual haunted, worried look, although there was nothing he was specifically haunted or worried about.
As chance might have it, a glum little woman was driving her car down the self-same street as the glum little man, only in the opposite direction. She wasn't as little as the man - - she would have towered over him, in fact, were she to stand back-to-back with him - - but she was similarly under a cloud of nonspecific glumness. The weather wasn't helping either of these two benighted souls much, either.
But as she drove her little car down the street, she happened to glance out the window and spotted the glum little man - - and mistakenly recognized him as a co-worker of hers from about three years ago, but whose name she had, naturally, forgotten.
She brightened up slightly, knowing that this co-worker, whom she had rather liked, was still around (unaware of his two tragedies: one, the loss of an eye; and the other, his tragic death in an automotive accident some months later). So, she honked her little horn and waved out through the window cheerily, and yelled out "Hey!" (as she had forgotten her co-worker's name).
The man (whose name was, coincidentally, Ray) looked up as he thought he heard his name, and only just glimpsed the woman and her cheery wave out her car window as she drove past. He brightened, and waved back with a "Hi!" - - thinking that this must be an old college friend or some such. His spirits rose slightly, as he didn't think of himself (especially in the mood he'd been in lately) as being somebody people would recollect or (even if they did recollect) wave at several years down the road.
So, the glum little man walked home a little less glum, and the glum woman drove on, happy that her ex-co-worker remembered her enough to wave back at her; and neither knew that they had been cheered up by perfect strangers, who would probably intensely dislike each other if they had to spend much time together.
Ah, the folly.
G6b(5)