Silly grin

The mid-April snow had turned into a chilling, intermittent rain. I made my way toward the quay from the rue Agar, my face bent out of shape against the cold.

“Take your winter coat,” he had said that morning, “it’s going to be freezing out today.”
“No way,” I grumbled back, “I’m sick of wearing that damned thing!”

I sat down on the bench under the cover of the #70 bus stop on the Pont de Grenelle, wondering why I hadn’t taken his advice. Next time I’ll listen to him, I thought, no matter how much he sounds like a nagging grandmother.

There were four of us huddled under the shelter, silently cursing the wait. Up in the distance, just off to the left of the Eiffel Tower, the faint shadow of a rainbow managed to pierce its way out of a dense, dark cloud, and brought a warming smile to my face. I sat there grinning and wishing it could be contagious. I had the urge to say to the others, “Look, did you see the rainbow?” with my big dorky, naive smile. But I didn’t, either by my own self-consciousness or the disbelief that they would have appreciated it as anything other than mundane.

So I sat there ginning and feeling a little warmer. The bus still didn’t come. A few more people gathered around. Then, instead of the bus that we were all expecting and hoping for, from around the corner came a woman, on foot, wearing a rain slicker with a bright yellow hood, leading three saddled ponies. The rain continued to fall. My grin widened. She stopped in front of us for a minute to adjust the bridals in preparation of crossing the bridge. I turned to the woman next to me and said, “Now there’s something you don’t see everyday!” She smiled, but didn’t say anything. We all watched with curiosity, my smile now a permanent fixture, the woman’s next to me had faded like the rainbow.

Finally, the bus arrived. I was the only one smiling.